Having been blessed with the most amazing, brilliant and gorgeous husband in the universe, it is not difficult for me to defend marriage. Chris is so much more to me than what the word marriage could ever justify. He is my best friend and soulmate. Our lives intersected 13 years ago and as time grew, so did our love for one another – a natural progression from friendship to love to covenant – just the way God intended it. Now, we have an extra blessing in raising our Granddaughter Brooke together – something we thought we would never experience with one another. Which brings me to the defense of marriage. Emotionally, my gut reaction is that I just don’t want the sanctity of the covenant of marriage to be convoluted. Chris and I thought long and hard about our decision, we sought wise counsel from our church pastor before ever taking our vows. We know that God does not take His covenants lightly, and our marriage was not something we took lightly either. It is a sacred and holy thing in our book.
Lately, I have been hearing that marriage is an evolving paradigm, that it is being redefined, that it is on the decline, that people are doing it within days of meeting one another and that gay people are mad because they can’t participate in it. I read recently that there were people in the streets of California RIOTING because the majority of people voted to keep marriage as it is currently and historically defined – between one man and one woman. In fact, some people are actually resorting to violence against others in an effort to force change upon the rest of us. Marriage was never intended to be any of these things.
What really stands apart from the mire, the muck and the mud that we all hear about, though, is that marriage is standing strong and fierce in the face of those who operate under some delusional ideal that what someone wants, everyone must get, including changing the foundation of marriage.
The Archbishop Joseph Kurtz sums it up best. “Marriage is not something we invent or change to suit our own purposes – it is a gift given to us, a blessing that originates in God. Therefore, we are not free to change it.” Wow, how right he is. It is not in our realm to alter such things of God! Marriage is a holy endeavor. God does not create a bond, a covenant, that cannot withstand the test of time. Which is one reason why one can argue this issue on its own scientific and philisophical merits and not even rely on Biblical proof.
Biological fact: species propagation requires procreation with one male and one female. No progeny is ever created by anything other than one gamete provided by one male and one gamete provided by one female. Period. Although God made it that way, this method is scientifically irrefutable. From the earliest of times, there has been a special bond between the procreative pair which was eventually and gradually recognized and formalized by invention of the institution we now know as marriage.
This does not mean that marriage cannot entail many additional, ethereal gifts, but it does mean that marriage is meant to involve and include participation in God’s creation by the sexual union of one man and one woman leading to the birth of children. Because of this, marriage by definition is a relationship including only one man and only one woman and is rooted in our human nature!
When marriage is undermined by gender confusion and by distortions of its God-given meaning, generations of children and youth will find it increasingly difficult to develop their natural identity as a man or a woman. Some will find it more difficult to engage in wholesome courtships, form stable marriages, and raise yet another generation imbued with moral strength and purpose.
Once we water down the meaning and definition of marriage, we dilute the foundation of our society. We will not further ourselves if we allow marriage – the pure, whole, ancient, holy meaning of marriage – to become something it was never meant to be.