On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in such a way that the United States will almost certainly grant to homosexual couples the same legal status as heterosexual couples. It is often described as a redefinition of marriage.
This thinking is imprecise.
If this really were a redefinition — changing the idea from one thing to another — then marriage would be only something we thought up. However, marriage does not come from our minds. Natural marriage — as distinct from sacramental marriage — comes from the nature of humanity. Specifically, it comes from what it means to be man and what it means to be woman. When the two are united, the species is united and may continue. But this is not really the point here.
The point here is that these two cases were even brought to court, that they could be seriously argued, that the result could be celebrated by our friends and countrymen. These three ideas show we as a country has forgotten natural marriage. We have not destroyed marriage, for what marriage is, how it’s made, what it’s made of, and what it’s for is as inevitable as a theorem. We did not change it, because for the same reason marriage itself cannot change. Minds, however, can change, and that is what has happened.
This is bitter, but it is also hope: We have not experienced a redefinition. We have felt a memory loss. More exactly, we have felt a symptom of memory loss, and it is because of memories we lost a long time ago. (Putting it shortly, the Sexual Revolution lingers. If you have more time, read Steven Greydanus’ excellent essay.)
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Marriage can never be destroyed. It can only be forgotten. By the grace of God, the sorely needed grace of God, there may even be hope for our country, which might still remember over the course of a long, hard century. Our task now is to remember what marriage really is, and to remind everyone we can.
For there is hope, in the end, and the source of our hope is in Christ. We must turn to Him. We must bend the knee. We must unclench the fist. We must submit to God, and to His Church, because in doing so we become channels of God’s grace. In this twilight of civilization, we must share the love of God.
Maybe I’m a pessimist, but what makes me sad is to contemplate what would need to happen in order for our society to go back to God’s definition of marriage as the only option for people. I’m thinking it will have to get real ugly. So, it would seem that either homosexual ‘marriage’ is here to stay (and who knows what other combinations may follow?), or the culture will be in such chaos and devastation, and God’s grace so absent, that the only grace He will give is an awareness that we need to find our way back. I won’t live to see it, but my kids or their kids will have to suffer through this, one way or the other.
That which is private and beautiful and intimate is God’s intention for Marriage, which is instituted by God alone to Co-Create with Him. The faculties we have to pro-create with Him, are given to us as a covenant with God as part of His creation not for our recreation. Get it? …Marriage is instituted by God alone, if people want to initiate; through their God’s given “free will”, intimate relationships that are not part of His Co-Creative plan of life for us, then these are not part of his Marriage Covenant with Him. …Trying to change the meaning of Marriage, is direct derision against God the creator of all things. …Fine if you must do what is not in God’s intentions for our plan of Life, then call it something else, but do not insult God by calling Marriage what is not marriage, why not find a different term? Is that too difficult? …Or perhaps changing the term would not disturb and insult most people, and it wouldn’t be liberal enough?
For thousands of years Marriage, before it had a legal use, it was a Jewish and then Judeo-Christian Covenant with God, an ancient meaning that means always the same, the union between a Man and a Woman. This modernity of wanting to change the meaning of the word is very recent. My proposal is to let those wanting to accommodate their lifestyles to whichever norms they think fit to their personal preferences to be as such, no imposing here. What is being imposed here is the inclusion of something that was never part of the definition of Marriage in millennia, to something different which historically has always meant the union between a Man and a Woman, it is contrary to reason. Is the same as if I were to start calling Night, Day and Day, Night, when we know that it is not so.
The practical difference is that the reason for God creating Woman, is to Co-Create with Him, He said then be fruitful and multiply. This covenant with God is simple a Man and a Woman = Children of God. Therefore the purpose and precise reason for our faculties to Procreate with Him, not for re-creation but for Co-Creation. It is a mockery against God’s will to do otherwise. So, I propose that same sex unions use any term they like for their unions, and that those pertaining to God’s Plan in the Covenant to Co-Create with God, call it something else, after all these two are very different unions. The one is to Co-Create with God, and the second is obviously not. It is clear they are not the same, and they should have different vocabulary terms used. …I’m not comfortable that the term Marriage is being interchanged for what is a same sex union. …However, if they want to highjack the term Marriage to use for same sex lifestyles and we have no other recourse, fine, then we have to start using a different term for what is Sacred and God’s Covenant with Him. …We will miss losing the meaning of the word Marriage, as we lost the meaning of the word gay, rainbow, etc…
Marriage history: “In Bible times, Jewish marriage customs regarding a couple’s engagement were far different and much more stringent than those we are familiar with today, especially in the West. Marriages were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom and often without even consulting the couple to be married. A contract was prepared in which the groom’s parents paid a bride price. Such a contract was immediately deemed binding, with the couple considered married even though the actual ceremony and consummation of the marriage would not occur for as long as a year afterwards. The time between was a sort of testing of fidelity with the couple having little, if any, contact with each other.” – http://www.gotquestions.org/Joseph-and-Mary.html