I’m not in that positive a mood about anything at present. All I am seeing is problems rearing their ugly heads, while the silly and the more silly celebrate the civil legalization of homosexual marriage — and the usual suspects in the MSM push for other countries to follow, I note that our rate of rheumatic fever is unacceptably high, and that we are losing specialist doctors at an unsustainable rate.
But the issue of Gay Marriage has to be seen as challenging the church. For if marriage is just about feelings and not about society, if it is not a contract with a religious and ethical basis… then it is not an institution that will last. Or to put it another way, if God does not bind two together, things will not remain. The church, as the Pirate notes, has stopped teaching this.
That all began to change in the 1960s. The real consequence is that if you busy yourselves entirely with esoteric points of theology while the culture busies itself destroying marriage and rewarding promiscuity, destroyed marriages and sexual “liberty” will become normative in your churches. It’s not a matter of “if.”
That’s when the Church has to be an alternative community. It has to be truly “transgressive” to the degree white, urban liberals like to imagine they are. The era when you could just show up to church for your weekly dose of sacraments and a sermon, then return to your ordinary, humdrum life of basic virtue and decency is over. Cultural Marxism has declared all-out war on basic virtue and decency, and it is winning. The community of saints now has to be the one place where it’s not okay to kill your daughter in the womb because she interferes with your career. It has to be the one place where no, you can’t move into your girlfriend’s apartment, and yes, you are expected to stay married even if you’re not particularly happy.
But this is not happening. SSM hits this one out of the park, while correctly calling her pastor a coward.
Men haven’t behaved like that in two generations, if they ever did, which I actually kind of doubt. Pastor’s sermon reminds me of when Hollywood celebrity types give each other awards for things like “fighting against homophobia,” as if it were something brave that they might face backlash for instead of the dominant opinion for which they will be celebrated.
Of course Pastor did not call out the women; he would never have heard the end of it if he had because in reality, it is the women in the church who are doing badly with Ephesians 5 more so than the men. Most men want to love their wives and lead their families, but most women won’t even give lip service to submission. And even if they give it lip service, after five minutes in their presence, you can tell who really considers themselves the authority in their marriage. They treat their husbands like children; I was at a small group Bible study last year where the husband of the home tossed something in the trash can, and it didn’t go fully in; his wife called him over in front of everyone by saying, “Mr. __, come here this minute! You know better than to leave that half out of the trash.” She sounded like she was scolding a preschooler. The women in the Church are in open rebellion, but our Pastors call out the men.
Headship and submission in marriage are not minor issues. The hierarchy in our marriages allows them to function properly, and mirrors the relationship between Christ and His Bride, the Church. If the Church is made up of femDOM marriages, the Church itself is most likely going to try to subvert Christ’s authority – and isn’t that often exactly what we see in the modern Church?
Which brings us back to the gheys. Now, I have sympathy with people who deal with attractions they cannot act upon. I live in an academic town, and most of the “single” women are off limits.
But we have lost the point of marriage. It is not about love. It is about covenant… oaths, faithfulness. I find if I say this to most people they get really offended, but it is not about infatuation (AKA “being in love”). There is nothing very sexy about cleaning up puke. But you love your wife… to the point of not making coffee because that makes her morning sickness much, much, worse. Or rocking your child while he has colic for an hour so she can sleep.
The church has a duty to teach our young to ignore the idea that you should wait until the hormones rise and oneitis strikes. And it should teach that marriage is for life, and hold services of mourning if there is a divorce. The church should take its model from Genesis one: for before the fall two people became one flesh in the first marriage of man and woman.
And if we do that we will need to be courageous. Because we will offend the haters, who like the herd animals they are, try to out us, shame us, stalk and harass us… because they are scared that the truth might even be whispered. The truth has power, and it is the duty of the church to proclaim it.
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