On my mind today is marriage. Actually, marriage is on my mind on a regular basis, as anyone who knows me and my girl would know; today, my specific thought is on the topic of marriage in relation to separation of Church and State. This is not a thought I spontaneously came up with, it's more what I would consider a suggestion to a blog written by a buddy of mine, Kevin, who was responding to a blog post by Tony Jones, a prominent pastor in the Emerging Church movement. Now Kevin and myself agree on many theological issues as far as I am aware, and neither one of us is usually in agreement with Tony Jones or that movement in general, but Jones did bring up a legitimate point in his blog.
In that blog post, he stated that he believes that pastors should give up the right to perform legal marriages. For Kevin's comment on the post, click here. The point in question is that while we are commanded by Romans 13 to obey the government as far as is possible, it is hard to challenge it when necessary when you are an agent of said government, which is exactly what clergy and the church becomes when you are granted the power to legitimize legal marriages.
Now, I will not go out of my way to fully explain what the others articulated in their posts, since it would be easier for you to go and read them yourselves. But I do have a suggestion as to a possible solution, and I'll leave it to you reading to decide its merit and comment accordingly, since this was a random, spontaneous thought while headbanging to As I Lay Dying. It would go as follows:
(In case you didn't notice, I do enjoy numbers and lists)
1. Obtain a legal marriage license.
Since we are to obey the government, a couple would go to a Justice and become legally married.
2. Enter into Sacramental marriage.
Obviously, what culture defines as a marriage and what scripture defines as a marriage differ. Therefore, after becoming legally married, the couple would have a sacramental wedding. What I would propose (and I realize this may all seem horribly redundant to state but in case it isn't I'm posting it anyways) is that the couple would go through the wedding ceremony the same as they do, except instead of signing a marriage license, they would sign, along with the pastor and usual witnesses, a covenant agreement for their marriage, much like churches do with those becoming members. In the covenant would be the agreement on what the Bible defines as true sacramental marriage, the Biblical definitions of the roles in marriage, each spouse's responsibilities to the other, and agreeing to open themselves to church discipline in their marriage if needed.
Now obviously this is a little rough, unspecific, and I'm sure there are many "what if"s and "what about"s that could arise from this process, particularly since I mentioned nothing about the processes leading up to marriage, but that is, in a sense, why I'm posting this in the first place: feedback.
4 comments:
I will come back and comment more on this later, but for now I'll just say Amen.
And....man, you should live down here. We could have some great conversations over .... beverages. :-)
This is something about which I've read a tad bit. It's been called covenant marriage, I believe, in the articles I've read. I like the way you're thinking so far. One "problem" I see, by signing a contract, with witnesses, is...we live in such a mobile society, who would be there for you, other than relatives, five years later, when the difficulties come, and you need counsel? If we have relatives than we can counsel with, that would be ideal, but many people don't have the heritage of Godly families. So would this marriage contract REALLY mean anything, or would we think we could throw it out when the going gets tough?
Thats the point of having the church around you. If you don't have your physical family, you have your spiritual one. This is assuming that you're in a church that practices biblical accountability and church discipline. In the cases where there isn't, I don't have much to say because I'm determined to shoot for the ideal.
In the cases where there isn't, I don't have much to say because I'm determined to shoot for the ideal.
Amen brother. :-) Not much to say except go find a church that *does* provide those things.
On your original post, I think most of the window of opportunity for relevant commentary has closed. I actually need to get cracking on an exposition of Romans 13 that I want to write. I really think the modern church has really failed to understand this and some of Christ's comments regarding taxation in their historical context. But - that's for another post.
I agree that the idea that the State is what legitimizes a marriage is a really bad idea. When you have that, you also have strings, and when the government ties more on, one at a time, it's a gradual acceptance of terms that get more and more problematic.
If we didn't give all kinds of "tax breaks" and other such benefits to families I don't think we'd have the same pushes to legitimize abominations like homosexual "marriage". Not that I don't want to keep my own money that I've earned, but that's fixed by scaling the government down, not by taking my money and then giving some of it back.
a random, spontaneous thought while headbanging to As I Lay Dying.
Hehe. As an aside, I love their music, but the vocal style is something I just can't get past. I don't mind it as a counterpoint in some music, but as the primary vocal strain it's a little much to take.
The sacramental marriage concept is a good one. And Teresa is right, that ideally families *should* be a big part of this. Also, the people who stand up with you when you are married should not just be chosen based on who has been friends with you, or is family, but people who you trust to hold you accountable in your marriage. People who will call you on the carpet when you mess up.
And as I mentioned above, you're right too that this is the church's responsibility as well. We're way too cavalier about divorce in the church. Exercising church discipline when one spouse or the other starts straying from their duties and responsibility to each other or to the church would be a big step in the right direction.
Of course - for the churches who do this it can be very discouraging, because you can't hardly swing a dead cat without hitting a church that'll take them in without caring a whit for whether they're under discipline, even in their own denomination/association.
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