God created the family as the first of
three institutions designed for the governing of human beings. (The other two are the church and the nation,
or civil government. See Essay #1, Government:
A Creation of God.) The
family was organized around the permanent union of a man and a woman known as
marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court’s
shocking usurpation of God’s authority in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling supposedly “redefining marriage” was
the most radical transgression in American—perhaps human—history.
The notion that human government
could transgress so far into the domain of an eternal God is unprecedented in
human history. There is no record of
even Sodom (Gen. 19:1-25) claiming
that its signature behavior was “marriage”.
Nor did America intend or foresee that its first federal intrusion into
marriage law, the Revenue Act of 1913, would devolve 102 years later into the Obergefall ruling.
One of the contentious questions that
Jesus’ enemies put to Him was whether marriage should be easily dissolvable via
divorce (Matt. 19:3-9). Every word of Jesus’ reply is full of
very important meaning on this issue, but we will focus first on v. 6.
Jesus refers to the married couple as one flesh. “What therefore God has joined together, let
not man put asunder.” We often hear this
recited at weddings, or we should. Jesus
contrasts God’s authority and man’s in marriage and denies the latter, prohibiting
man from overruling God. Eph. 5:31-32 links the marriage union
with the holy union of Christ and His bride, the church.
Same-sex “marriage” has clearly been the
most radical rejection of God’s definition of matrimony in human history, going
beyond any other aberration. (See Essay
#8, Homosexuality.) Jesus’ teaching on marriage in Matt. 19 is very direct on this issue
also. In v. 4, He specifies that God created Adam and Eve as a male and a
female. Next, He reasons, “For this
cause shall a man leave father and mother” (not two fathers or two mothers,
by the way!) and the two become one flesh.
Then comes His admonition, referenced earlier, that man must not undo
what God has done in marriage. The
maleness of Adam and femaleness of Eve is the specific “cause” that makes the
marriage appropriate.
The U.S. Congress took a strong stand
defending God’s definition of marriage in 1892 when the Utah Territory sought
admission to the Union as a State. The
Mormon culture’s practice of multiple marriage put them at odds with America’s
traditional belief in New Testament Christian monogamy. The founders knew that instances of polygamy
in the Old Testament, from the very first one (Gen. 4:19-24) appear as aberrations from God’s perfect will for
marriage, and generally led to family strife.
Congress rejected the Mormons’ “freedom of religion” argument. They ruled that Americans had never considered it a religious liberty to adopt public policies contrary to the Bible, especially in a matter as close to God’s heart as marriage.
Historian David Barton describes a court
case in which the justices were asked to redefine marriage. They declined the opportunity, saying that
marriage was a creation of God, and not within their jurisdiction to change. That healthy reluctance has faded in recent
years, however, as courts, legislatures, and even city councils have felt
qualified to re-invent marriage.
Christians should not overlook the subtle
groundwork that was laid for years leading up to Obergefell including trends such as “no-fault divorce” and social
acceptance of cohabitation without marriage. For all our concern about
“homosexual marriage,” more damage has been done to the family by heterosexuals
who have devalued marriage by having children out of wedlock or by abandoning
marriages. One tragic consequence has
been millions of children raised with deep spiritual, social, educational and
economic disadvantages. (See Essay #5, Poverty.)
The notion that sexually “liberated”
unmarried couples living together acquire a better preparation for being
married has been thoroughly debunked by now.
A study published in the Journal of Family Issues reports that only a
third of cohabiting couples ever marry, and their divorce rate is higher than
that of couples who did not live together before marriage. The same study indicates that three-fourths
of cohabiting women would rather be married.
Charles Colson in his book Against the Night says that in the years
after 1970, the marriage rate had dropped 30% while the divorce rate
skyrocketed 50% and the illegitimacy rate doubled. Over half of inner-city children were being
born out of wedlock. Millions of
children live in one-parent homes, and the parents of another million children
per year are divorcing or simply abandoning relationships that were never
marriages. Aside from the personal
trauma suffered by each of these children, there is a growing traumatic effect
on our society that cannot be borne much longer. Institutions such as welfare programs,
schools, medical facilities and law enforcement systems cannot bear up under
the growing load forever.
The marriage of a man and woman is the relationship God chose as the natural comparison for the relationship between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-33). Jesus Himself (Matt. 22:15-22, especially v. 21) says that we owe some allegiance to civil government, but a higher allegiance to God. It is time for the church to place the highest priority on respecting God’s great gift of marriage, and to show our society the way back to the blessings that come from obeying God first of all.
For Further Study:
Charles Colson,
Against the Night (Chapter 7),
1989, Servant Books, PO Box 8617,
Ann Arbor, MI.
Bridget Maher,
ed., The Family Portrait, 2002,
Family Research Council, 801 G St. NW,
Washington, DC, 20001,
www.frc.org
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