WHEN MARRIAGE IS NOT

David Cameron’s announcement of a consultation period aimed to lead to the legalization of gay marriage, and the support for this from the leaders of all the main Parties, has moved this issue up the political agenda. As I posted the other day, the Coalition for Marriage have launched a campaign to resist this move, and I guess most readers of this blog would be supportive of that campaign (and I’d encourage you to sign the petition). However, I think many Christians struggle to provide an adequate answer when pressed as to why gay marriage should not be allowed. In the following extract from my book Sex Talks I try to answer that question…

Gay marriage is a hot issue across the western world because an increasing number of governments are allowing it in one form or another. This means that if you live somewhere where gay marriage is allowed but say that it is wrong, you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law. So we need to be really clear about what we think about this, and the best place to start is with what we have already seen marriage is meant to be about: Fruitfulness, faithfulness and sacrifice.

Fruitfulness

Marriage is meant to produce children, because sex is meant to produce children and sex is meant to be part of marriage. Obviously, this cannot be the case in a gay marriage. Baby, it takes a man and a woman to make a baby.

This means that gay marriage fails the first test of what a true marriage is. However (and this is an important point that gay couples will want to make), not all heterosexual marriages produce children. Do we say that these are not really marriage as well?

The difference here should be obvious. If a married man and woman are unable to have children because they are infertile, that is what philosophers call accidental effect, whereas the inability of a homosexual couple to reproduce is an essential and inevitable aspect of their relationship. Heterosexual couples can be fruitful, unless there is some biological reason preventing it, but the only way a homosexual couple can have a child is by involving a third party – by buying or borrowing someone else’s eggs or sperm, which is a form of adultery.

Marriage is the basic building block of community and having children is an extension of that community. If a couple refuse to have children they fail to create community and so miss out on that aspect of God’s intended plan for marriage – and I would argue that they shouldn’t have got married in the first place! Gay relationships, by definition, fail to create community because they are by definition incapable of producing children. And this means they are incapable of receiving this aspect of God’s blessing upon marriage.

Faithfulness

It is on the grounds of faithfulness that the strongest argument can be made in support of gay marriage. If a gay couple love each other, and are committed to each other, why shouldn’t that relationship of faithfulness be recognized and celebrated just as much as would be the case for a heterosexual couple?

That is a good question! To answer it we need to be clear about how the Bible defines faithfulness. The biblical model for faithfulness is God himself – God makes promises to his people and is faithful to them. It is this example that then becomes the model for faithfulness within human marriage.

But here’s the thing: The Bible always describes this kind of faithful marriage as between husband and wife. Of course, there needs to be faithfulness in all kinds of other relationships – between parents and children, between friends, between neighbors – but these relationships are different from marriage. Gay relationships can be faithful, but they do not reflect the marriage relationship between Christ and his church, which is always described in the language of male and female. This distinction between male and female is not merely a question of language – it has profound implications for how marriage partners relate to one another, as we will see when we consider the sacrificial aspect of marriage. 

Sacrifice

Ephesians chapter 5 is one of the key Bible passages that helps us understand God’s intention for marriage. In verse 32 Paul describes the relationship between Christ and the church (and between husband and wife) as “a profound mystery.” What does this mean? Why are these relationships mysterious?

A large part of this mystery is down to the fact that the partners are so very different.

Think about the relationship between Christ and the church. There is a mystery to it! How could it be that God should be so passionate about a bunch of sinful humans? How is it that God should give himself up for us, even dying on a cross for us? How is it that God should make such great promises over his church, that he will keep us and guard us, and that he is preparing a wedding feast for us? How is it that God can say that we are his body on earth?

These things are a profound mystery!

The point Paul makes in Ephesians 5 is that the relationship between husband and wife is also mysterious, because men and women are so different. There is mystery about the way in which a man and a woman can become one flesh in marriage. There is a mystery about the way in which two people who are different can experience a greater sense of unity in this relationship than they do in any other.

We see the mystery of marriage especially worked out when a couple have a baby. We might understand the biology of how this happens, but there is still something spiritually mysterious about the way that sex can create babies. When Grace and I had our babies it felt mysterious every time. We knew how Grace had got pregnant – I mean, that didn’t just happen somehow in our sleep – but that this thing should be the result felt utterly mysterious, magical and miraculous.

Marriage is an embracing of this mystery – it is an embracing of the difference between a man and a woman. When we marry we join ourselves to someone who is fundamentally different from us, but, mysteriously, we become one flesh with them – which means there is a total joining together, in body and spirit.

Understanding this is difficult, because it is so mysterious. But the mysterious, sacrificial, meaning of marriage is probably the main reason why there really cannot be such a thing as gay marriage.

The difference between true marriage and gay “marriage” is that when two people of the same sex join together they are embracing someone the same, rather than someone different. Doing this doesn’t require the same degree of sacrifice, and it cannot involve the same degree of mystery. It cannot reflect the relationship between Jesus and his church in the way that marriage is meant to.

And because of this, and because it cannot be fruitful and is not faithful in the way described in Scripture, I do not think there can really be any such thing as gay marriage.

WHEN EQUALITY IS NOT

The launch of The Coalition for Marriage (C4M) this week has set the cat amongst the pigeons.

David Cameron wants to make the redefinition of marriage, so it can include gay and lesbian couples, a key achievement of his time in office. C4M have a petition opposing this and in todays Daily Telegraph   Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has pushed back against the C4M campaign.

There is much to be said about all this, and much that is being said, so I’ll be brief here.

First of all, this all really has very little to do with equality. What is has to do with is advancing one particular belief system over another, long-established one. If true equality is the goal, then the Prime Minister’s aims are far too modest. True equality of sexual expression, recognized in marriage, would include many more options than allowing a gay couple to marry. Logically, it would include any sexual arrangement consensually entered in to.

Polygamy would be a good place to start. This, after all, has the advantage of a great deal of historical ‘normalcy’, having been practised in many cultures for all of recorded human history. Why should such an arrangement not be recognized as marriage within British law? (The obvious, immediate, answer is “because our Christian heritage has long deemed such an arrangement inappropriate” – but that is merely to beg the question about why gay ‘marriage’ is also unacceptable.)

Or, if a 14 year old girl (or boy) eagerly desires marriage to a 40 year old man, why should she (or he) be prevented from entering this relationship?

Or why should a brother and sister be prevented from marrying?

The answer to all these questions is that every society draws moral lines between what it considers acceptable and unacceptable, and by so doing – by definition! – creates inequality. Moving the line so that gay couples can marry does nothing to increase equality, it merely makes plainer the inequality experienced by other non-mainstream sexual choices. And it is also arguably unfair towards married heterosexuals as it fundamentally alters the definition of what their marriage is.

The fact that the agenda being pursued is not about equality is already clear from the rules governing civil partnerships. If civil partnerships had been genuinely fair, then the polygamist would have been able to formalize his relationships, or two sisters sharing the same house would have been able to enter a relationship that would have safeguarded them both financially. It was never about fairness or equality though, it was always about advancing a particular moral agenda. It was always about gay sex.

Many of us tread increasingly cautiously into the waters of commenting on the gay agenda. This is partly out of a wise circumspection, as there is no point stirring up a hornets nest if we don’t have to. It is partly from fear, because the political and legal climate is increasingly hostile to anything deemed ‘homophobic’ by the thought police. And it is also because we genuinely do not want to alienate or wound those who are gay.

But sometimes we just have to say that things are wrong, and the drive towards gay marriage is wrong. Saying this is beyond the pail politically – it means, for instance, that anyone holding this view would find it practically impossible to be selected as a candidate for any of the mainstream political parties. It means that if gay marriage is legalized and I refuse to recognize that relationship as genuine marriage there will be legal consequences to face. It means that a position supposedly born from a desire for equality effectively disenfranchises any who believe that this is an area beyond the competence of Government.

Let’s not just lie down and let David Cameron push this one through. Get onto the C4M website and sign the petition against it. 

TRINITY RAP

I spent today teaching on the doctrine of the Trinity. When I do this I always ask students to write a creed, but, today, inspired by my friend Jon Clark I got them to rap it.

I thought this one, featuring Gateway's very own Paul Barnett, was rather good...

MEDITATIONS ON ECCLESIASTES 9:7-10: WORK

Monday is my day off, my day of rest, my day of recuperation. It is Monday that makes sense of the six days on which I work.

On Sunday night I turn off my phone, and don’t turn it on again until Tuesday morning. I don’t check my email on Monday. Instead, I eat my bread with joy and drink wine with a merry heart and wear whatever I’m comfortable in (generally walking socks on a Monday) and enjoy life with the wife whom I love.

This day – let’s call it a Sabbath – is not a denial of work but a recognition of it. Without it work becomes merely toilsome and tedious and tiring. With it the working week is dignified, as it is the day of rest that provides energy for the six days of labour. And it is that day off that also keeps work within its proper bounds. The work is good, not god. 

MEDITATIONS ON ECCLESIASTES 9:7-10: LOVE

The other day I sat awhile with two of the older members of my church. They are ‘shut-ins’ now, as a result of ill health; they’re lives confined within the small space of the converted garage in which they live.

We talked about their relationship – the story of how they met, and fell in love, and have been 49 years married. It was a story of enduring, faithful love; of enjoyment of one another, and the on going serving of one another. Their care of each other is very obvious in their current diminished physical state, but their continued enjoyment of each other is also still clear.

They reminded me of another older couple I met in the park soon after moving to Poole. John & Hannah had been married 60 years and were in their late 80’s. I had taken one of my daughters to the café, and they were there having an ice-cream. Hannah had Alzheimer’s and I was deeply touched by way John was caring for her – wiping ice-cream from her face, and saying, “She was always so giving.”

There is something noble, but simple, innocent and tender about couples like these; something so different from our cultural obsession with ‘romance’ and sex. They have looked the vanity of life in the face, and demonstrate the power of genuine love.

MEDITATIONS ON ECCLESIASTES 9:7-10: CLOTHES

“I’ve nothing to wear!” – the familiar cry in the face of a heaving wardrobe and in a nation that spends more than £30 billion on clothes each year.

For me, it’s socks. My sock draw is overflowing, but all too often I have no socks to wear. And this is odd, because I only ever wear three types of sock – black ones for everyday use, running socks for running, and walking socks for walking. It is not that I am spending hours agonizing over what colour or style sock to wear each day – there are only three types of hosiery in the Hosier universe, and that is enough.

But my sock draw is overflowing, partly, I think, due to a lack of discipline in disposing of those socks that have served their time. There are rogue elements lurking there that do not fit my three required categories, but somehow I cannot bring myself to dispose of them – “I might need them one day, in an emergency” – despite knowing, in my heart of hearts, that wear them I never shall. And I must also admit to a great fussiness about my socks, in that I cannot abide them to be scratchy or uncomfortable in any way, or to wear an oddly matched pair, which means there are old socks languishing in my draw, never to be worn because they are shrunken or misshapen, lacking a partner, or in some other way below the necessary quality quotient, yet – again – they are allowed their place in the sock firmament in case, one day, I might need them. Which I never will.

Sadly, this fussiness about the comfort of my feet does mean that there are days when there are no socks in my drawer that I can wear, even though the drawer is full.

I think this is the kind of scenario that Solomon had in mind when he penned Ecclesiastes.

MEDITATIONS ON ECCLESIASTES 9:7-10: DRINK

Solomon tells us elsewhere that those who linger over wine have woe, sorrow, strife, complaints, wounds and bloodshot eyes (Proverbs 23:29-35). But the wine itself is good. To drink it with a merry heart is good, and God takes pleasure in our pleasure.

Drinking without lingering.

Enjoyment without idolatry.

Pleasure without addiction.

And, of course, the encouragement to “Eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do” points us towards the food and drink of the Lord’s Supper – where with joy we should drink the blood of the covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins.