I have the honor and good pleasure to conduct seven weddings this year. As I have been planning wedding services and conducting pre-marital counseling for seven couples, marriage has been on my mind a lot lately. What follows is a general reflection on the phenomenon of marriage:
As I mentioned in last week's blog post, marriage is a human cultural invention.
God did not command us to get married, he commanded us to be fruitful and multiply. God did not conduct a wedding for Adam and Eve, nor did he require them to endure one. God did intend them to be together, for "It is not good that the man [or the woman] should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). Adam and Eve were made out of the same flesh, and so ideally should work toward the reunion of that one flesh. But humans created marriage to mark God's less formal and more primordial intentions.
Marriage is not a commandment of God, but instead simply a human mechanism to help us follow God's more general wishes: 1. that we not be alone 2. that everyone has an equal partner or helper, and 3. that one be able to trust and depend on his or her partner. God never commanded humans to state explicit vows to one another. We require each other to make marriage vows, so that we can rest assured in the explicit intentions of another human being. After all, God made a covenant (a system of bi-directional vows), so why wouldn't a human being make a covenant with his or her partner?
But just as with sex (see last week's blog post: "How Does God Want Us to Have Sex?: In Search of a Biblical Position"), marriage in the Bible is very different form what marriage is today.
Biblically speaking, marriage is intended to be contractual. In the Bible, marriage and sex were a transaction. The man and woman entered a practical, socially binding agreement that gave each party something that they needed. In marriage, men were assured an heir. That's right, men (and not women) got married for the babies. Meanwhile, women were assured socio-economic security. Women could not own property themselves, were not given the freedom to work to support themselves. Women were, generally speaking, weaker and held no rights--not even rights over their own bodies. Thus, women needed a man to provide for them and protect them. The vows of marriage were to ensure that the man and the woman worked together for mutual benefit and didn't try to take advantage of the other.
The Bible, therefore is clear: marriage is not about love. God wanted all of his children to love each other. For our One God there is but one kind of love--the love one human is commanded to show God and every other human being. That love is modeled not on the goddess Venus or her son Eros, but rather is modeled on the one, true God's love for God's creatures. Judeo-Christian love is of one kind: steadfast, non-romantic, and based not on emotion but rather on promises. God's love is not about inter-personal relationship, but about mutual trust and support--providing for the practical needs of survival.
Think of it this way: the only type of love that matters for a Christian is the type of love found and expressed between the Father and the Son, the Father and the Spirit, the Son and the Spirit...and so on. There is only one love. It is not sexual. It is not emotional.
There is but one kind of love.
Sex is something else.
Emotion is something else.
Romantic involvement, broadly understood, is something else.
What we, in Christianity today, call marriage is something else.
The New Testament is pretty clear: disciples of Jesus Christ are married to Jesus. One vow, one relationship super-cedes all others--our vow to love God and be in relationship with God alone. Our relationships to everyone else and to everything else are mediated through that one marriage to Jesus Christ (accomplished through the Church). If I love my neighbor, it is only because of my marriage to Jesus Christ and the fact that I relate to my neighbor only through marriage. I have no spouse but Jesus. I have no family but Jesus. I have no friends but Jesus. If I have any enemies, it is because I have made Jesus my enemy first. (Remember, I can only relate to others through Jesus. Therefore, if another person is my enemy, Christ has already become my enemy.)
You see, when one is baptized, that one is made one with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; the person is clothed with Christ, joined to Christ in his dying and rising--not just until death parts them. Baptism is one's marriage to God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For this reason, St. Paul and other New Testament writers adamantly preached that Christians should not get married at all. If our nation and culture were truly Christian, marriage and weddings would not exist. Paul wrote that marriage was allowed only for the weak--those who were tempted to have sex and could not avoid their addiction to "the flesh." Marriage, Paul argued, was the only context in which preferential love and sexual expressions of love were even remotely permissible. For Paul, marriage is--at best--a necessary evil. The only thing that marriage is good for is to prevent you from doing other evil things beside getting married.
According to Jesus, the only thing worse than marriage is divorce. Why? Because if you cannot be faithful to another human being with whom you have entered a covenant, then you certainly cannot be faithful to your God. Indeed, dismissing the marriage covenant between you and another human is--by the same stroke and action--dismissing the marriage covenant you have made with God. In the very act of divorcing my spouse, I have divorced God. (No wonder Paul tells us not to get married! The stakes are absolute.)
In sum, the only good marriage is our marriage to God. This statement is most certainly true...if we trust the words of Scripture.
So why is the Church in the business of marrying people to each other at all? For the life of me, I can only think of one reason: the Church is unfaithful to God.
When it comes to marriage as a spiritual--or religious--phenomenon, there is only one marriage allowed: our marriage to God; there is only one wedding allowed: baptism. And the One Marriage is only allowed to be consummated in one way: holy communion. (Some Christian mystics use sex as a metaphor for communing with God, which is a good and helpful enough metaphor. But literally, the only communing we do with God is the Eucharist.)
Marriage to a human spouse is not spiritual, but mundane and practical...not religious but secular. Human marriage is, therefore, a matter of the secular state and not within the purview of the Church.
Marriage between two people is a state matter. Christians, being in the world but not of the world, are justified in seeking a legal marriage in order to obtain the protections, rights and privileges such a relationship offers under and according to the law (worldly law).
Throughout history, marriage has always been more about legality than spirituality. Marriage, remember, is a cultural institution, not a divine one. Marriage was invented as a means for human beings to hold two people accountable to one another--a means for a human being to hold her spouse accountable. Marriage is not about God holding us accountable--we are accountable to God for our promises whether or not there is a formal vow or a public vow or a legally recognized vow creating a legally defined relationship. Marriage is about humans holding humans accountable. Thus, marriage is a state matter.
Faith offers no reason to get married, but every reason to avoid a religious/spiritual marriage.
Meanwhile, human law offers every reason to get married. Tax laws, parentage rights/responsibilities, public validation of social position, inheritance laws, economic provisions, etc. are the only reasons to get married.
In the early Christian Church, weddings simply didn't happen. Marriage was solely a state institution. No wedding liturgy dates back to the early Church. And there is no evidence that Christian Churches were called on or felt obliged to bless civil marriages. Rather, Paul curses marriage and instructed churches to teach the same.
Notice also, that when Paul recommends marriage for those who cannot handle a pure Christian life, he is not sending them to the Church to get married. Paul is sending folks to the state. Although Paul does not make his theology about the role of state governments in the world yet, one can already anticipate in his thought what later theologians would conclude. To wit, God instituted state governments to help curb sinfulness by creating societies of peace and stability. In other words, when Paul suggests that Christians marry, he is, in effect saying, "Since you can't follow the Church, at least the non-Christian state help you avoid as much evil as possible."
But by the Middle Ages, marriage had become an action of the Church. Why? Because in 425 C.E. the Church became the bedfellow of the state because of Emperor Constantine. Since that time, the Church has continually tried to monopolize marriage for one reason: power. By the Middle Ages, the Church was already aiming to hold power in the world. Marriage was one instance of the Church usurping power from the state. Eventually, the state was not allowed to give two people the rights and privileges of being united under the law without the authorization of the Church. The Church wanted as much worldly authority as it could get. The Church wanted power and was given power.
Today, when I conduct a wedding, there is no doubt in my mind that I am acting as a representative of the state more so than the Church. As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, I can bless all sorts of relationships. But when I marry two people, that marriage is only effective when I sign a legal, government document. And most of the time when two people ask me to marry them, what they want me to do is serve as their public witness and substitute government official to sign off on their legal marriage. In their minds, marriage happens in church. Traditional weddings are officiated by a pastor, not a judge. What couples usually want is a traditional wedding, not necessarily a divine blessing on their marriage.
If it were up to me, I would have the Church quit being involved in marriage. If it were up to me, weddings would be something that people sought from the state alone. All marriages would be conducted by a justice of the peace or some other governmental official vested with the power to marry. Only then, if--and only if--two people desired to hear the Good News that Jesus alone was the foundation of their relationship together, I would have the Church be on hand to bless their civil union and to ask God to help them live together in love, faith, hope, etc.
If it were up to me, I would never be asked to exercise the powers invested in me by the state of Illinois by pronouncing two people to be married.
After all, when I conduct pre-marital counseling, I am not really preparing two people for marriage. I am preparing two people to live as followers of Jesus Christ. The three of us present at those sessions implicitly understand that I am equipping them for Christian behavior within a relationship specifically and completely defined by a worldly institution...the state.
Faith informs a couple's marriage relationship in the same way that faith informs an individual's politics. The Church is forbidden to dictate the latter, why is the Church able to officially determine the former?
[Note: This year, I am doing more weddings than I have ever had the opportunity to do before. Weddings are not my favorite part of ministry, but I am growing to enjoy them more and more. It is not that I dislike performing weddings. Instead, from what history has taught me and from what the Bible teaches, I believe that the Church really has no business performing marriages for the state. The ELCA has orders (liturgies) for blessing homes and new jobs and all sorts of things. I am all for blessing marriages in the context of worship. But the Church has no official capacity or power when it comes to people buying homes or seeking new jobs. We can ask God's blessings on marriage without the Church being a servant of the state. I would prefer just being a servant of Christ's Church. For that reason alone, I will continue to preside as a deputized state official at weddings...because for the time being, my Church asks and expects me to serve in that way.]
You write about the truth in this blog entry in a very impressive way! It seems harsh; however, I believe that all of it is true. Indeed God did not command us to get married. He did however, give us the ability to make choices (good and bad) and because of our human nature, we needed the law (the state) to intervene with rules for our marriages.
ReplyDeleteI did a little reading on the history of marriage and it is fascinating. As you said, Ryan, marriage was intended for the mutual benefit of both the man and women. Our world is indeed very different from the time of Jesus and the centuries before us. Marriage was a necessity for survival. For one thing, today, women have the ability to be self sufficient.
I also agree with you that the church has no business performing marriages. But, since the practice of being married in the church has held up since the time of Constantine, I wonder if something must be good and right about it. Your thoughts and observations about the church, state and marriage have certainly been made before, so why has marriage stayed in the church?