Social Orientation

It was during the early 1930s when there appeared some laws that ended Common Law Marriage.  The change was based on several beliefs which were perceived as negative to both the social structure (as represented in government), and other reasons such as effect on children and the hypocrisies that grew out of acknowledging singleness when that proved a benefit, and marriage when that proved a benefit.  Before the law was stricken there was no contract that would hold up in court when unmarried couples split and a settlement of mutual property was legally appealed.  Living together without marriage was taken as something of a moral matter, even by the state.  It had always been a major issue of morality in the Christian culture and usually in the humanistic as well.  There was a feeling in the general population that there was a spiritual factor in marriage. Clergy involvement was common.  Homosexuality was understood to represent some sort of dysfunction, and both genders were treated (not well) for it.  The Christian society accented it as a moral matter: the humanist as a disease.  As society sped toward a new millennium, and as it developed a more sophisticated approach to personal and social life, some former prohibitions fell away.  More persons were living intimately together without marriage, and more homosexuals were coming out to admit their orientation to intimate life with another of the same orientation.  They sought marriage status, and their wishes are being legalized – at this writing, a writing that is taking place just a matter of days after my state made same-sex marriage legal.  The marriage definition and meaning, applied for thousands of years – as far back as we can go in history – has been changed by legislatures in a matter of a few years.  Never has a tradition of rather universal acceptance been changed so rapidly, and that with so little support except for an interpretation of fairness and equality.  Human rights can be protected without violation of nature’s indications. That fairness and equality might have been given by some other respected and legal means was not well examined.  Supporting forces insisted on the marriage status change.

What remains for the Christian who accepts the meaning of marriage as between one male and one female for the good of society, for the meaning of biology, for the care of children, for understanding of morality, and for obedience to Scripture?  That the same sex choice of partnership is a matter of freedom for any society is not to be doubted.  To grant it makes it easier to define the meaning of Christian marriage, and the reasons God approves gender patterns.  It is an option that, in God’s Common Grace, has existed as far back as we can measure social life, even though other sexual intimacy was frowned upon.  The issue for the Christian is not found in legality, but in morality.  If the community creates further tension in the resistance to biology, there will be some social confusion.  The Christian community ought to simply hold to biblical order, and gracious to all persons who keep the laws of their community.  Acceptance does not mean approval.  Reality may be diluted.  The Christian should ask for the freedom to declare the gospel, and the way of life illustrated in Scriptural morality.  If this holds up, there may be a surprising context unfolding that truly holds to individual freedom of thought and conduct.  God is quite able, in any society to hold his holiness.  That will not change.  It is the Christian duty to gain education on that life context and live it.  It is the duty of others to permit that perception of faith, and expect those of that faith to follow it.  The greatest personal Christian issue in this matter is to believe and live a biblically oriented life.

In the present atmosphere of life in the developed world there will likely appear live and let live patterns. That is to say: You live your way, and I will live mine. We will both accept the rights of the other, and we can do that without losing respect for each other in the normal course of exchange.  Again, there will be an increasing acceptance if there is no demand for approval.  Acceptance must not be interpreted as approval. Tension will arise over the differences about morality.  Increasingly the general society is taking the position that human morality is: that the individual does not damage any other individual, or groups of individuals.  That is not possible to model, but it does have appeal.  The Christian ideal is found in the values of God as revealed in Scripture and illustrated there.  The history of male/female marriage has the support of the evidence of physical science for ideal marriage identity.  Scriptural approvals fit nature.