Last week, in "Your marriage ain't my business (or God's)," columnist Dennis Wilken creatively made some sound observations about marriage.
"Marriage is hard," he observes. As one who has been married to one woman for 37 years, I couldn't agree more. In fact, she would agree with equal vigor. Wilken continues, "Staying married is even harder in today's debased American pop-culture drivel muddle." Oh yes!
And, I think I hear Wilken saying, because marriage is really hard and we don't quite pull it off a lot of the time, we ought not to stick our noses judgmentally in one another's marriages and marriage failures. I'm still with you, Dennis. As one whose family has been touched by the pain of divorce, I have no desire to be condemning people whose marriages fail.
At the same time, I think the columnist misses the boat when he implies that marriages are not the community's concern. Doesn't the community have a stake in the success of the marriages that are so vital in the well-being of adults and children?
Wilken's column goes on to aggressively support "gay marriage."
Here you would expect me to take issue with Mr. Wilken. After all, I am a pastor in a church characterized by a commitment to Christian orthodoxy often called "evangelical." But don't dismiss what I have to say, any more than I dismiss what Wilken's column advocates. Why, I wonder, would Wilken assume that the only reason someone might disagree with his point of view is that "some bigot interprets God's Word in a fashion to suit his or her fears and prejudices"? In these days of polarizing voices, we really do need to listen respectfully to one another.
Maybe we need to start recognizing the difference between marriage as sacrament and marriage as civil con-tract. Marriage as sacrament is a covenant deeply rooted in Christian Scriptures and the historic traditions of the church. This sacramental covenant is established before God and the faith community. Our hope is that both God and the faith community will support and help the couple live out that covenant in the hard knocks of life.
Marriage as sacrament has been recognized and formalized by government. Maybe that's one way the national community expresses its commitment to the well-being of marriages. When I officiate at weddings, I sign a document I send back to civil authorities. Before I marry someone I insist they show me a document licensing the wedding ceremony. So sacrament and civil contract have been merged in our culture.
Civil contract aside, those who believe in marriage as sacrament continue to see it as covenant union of a man and a woman, who together fully reflect what the Bible calls "the image of God." Genesis 1 sings: So God created the human being in His own image, / In the image of God he created him; / Male and female God created them...
God being without gender is reflected not just in the male or in the female, but in the union of male and female.
Dennis Wilken or anyone else is welcome to disagree with this point of view. But that is a basis for the historic view of marriage in the Christian community. That's why many of us resist calling the union of two men or of two women marriage. It is not out of disrespect for gay people, but because of our understanding of marriage as Scripture-defined sacrament.
Should people in committed unions, both homosexual and heterosexual, receive equal rights and protections under the law? I, for one, have no desire to limit equal rights and benefits. Whether I endorse homosexual behavior is not the issue; there are actually quite a few things in contemporary American life I do not endorse. But that does not require me to insist everyone share my beliefs. We need to work out an appropriate kind of equality.
Should people in committed unions, both homosexual and heterosexual, be able to have the sanction of civil government for their relationships? I, for one, do not question the right of civil authorities to recognize such committed partnerships. But I don't call it marriage. Maybe that's where Wilken and I most differ.
We, as residents of Queen Anne and Magnolia, may disagree with one another about this matter. But let's do so having listened carefully and with respect to the reason for the other's point of view.
H. Mark Abbott is pastor of First Free Methodist Church and a Queen Anne for 21-plus years.
[[In-content Ad]]
