A “Should’ve Asked Question”

While the Supreme Court mulls about trying to figure out what to do with the Frequently asked question:

What do we do with “gay marriage”?

we are actually left with more pertinent questions. Digging into the politics and legal cases for and against “marriage equality” send us into a spiral of other begged questions:

What does allowing LGBTQ persons to marry outside of gender norms do to “our” idea of marriage?

What does gender itself do to marriage?

What is marriage, anyway?

The more we dig into these questions, the more likely we are to confuse the most pressing, most important question. The question we should be asking:

What should marriage be?

This is the true question. This is the one that matters most. What are we to make of marriage today?

The Anecdote

As a priest, I have found that the few couples coming to our church to be married come at mid-life, rather than pre-life. Even those in their mid-twenties.

The vision of marriage passed down to many of us was marriage as rite of passage. School, college, marriage, job, children, mid-life, empty nest, retirement, death. A woman I dated once gave me the ultimatum: a marriage proposal before graduating college. It was certainly a new spin on the old fashioned life project.

But marriage as rite of passage? As the thing you do before you live the next big steps in your life? Nobody is doing it that way.

OK, some are doing that. But nobody who has come to see me in the last 8 years is. Most people are living lives and then getting married.

The more common equation is living together as a couple first. And for many, more contractual obligations first. Messier emotional and legal stuff: buying houses and having children. For Christians and for proponents of “traditional” marriage, this should be the biggest wake up call for us:

For many, getting married is scarier than buying a house or having children with someone.

And rather than tisk, tisk the culture, we should hear this for what it is: that we’ve screwed up the message. We’ve taught our children to fear marriage so much that these other things are easier and more fulfilling. Then again, there might be some truth to that.

Jesus on Marriage

For as much as Christians love to talk about marriage and make it the center of everything, Jesus hardly says anything about it. What he does say, however, is a doozy.

In Matthew 19, Jesus is asked about divorce. This is a passage that people love to quote the first half, the part where Jesus is building up to the real teaching:

Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

(Matthew 19:3-6)

In the question, the Pharisees suggest only men can divorce women. Jesus’s response is to say that in marriage, they are not man and woman, but one person. In marriage, Jesus sees not two people or natural order, but singular binding.

But the next part is where the real juice is:

They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ He said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but at the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.’

(Matthew 19:7-9)

The people only have divorce because they suck at marriage.

This is pretty much the extent of Jesus’s teaching on marriage and divorce. GOD binds us together, but we have trouble being one; we long to be two. Therefore we have a means by which we legally become two again.

The emphasis is not on the institution as the people are practicing it, but what it should be. But, since the people suck at doing marriage the way it should be, we’re stuck with a corrupted institution and a means of getting out of the corrupted institution.

The rest of this chapter keeps the pressure on us, as Jesus pushes his followers on accepting eunuchs, blessing the little children

Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.

and frightening the pious young man because faith isn’t about theological purity, but actually doing the hard stuff, like getting rid of possessions and following Jesus.

This, of course, is the teaching. It isn’t only divorce and marriage. It is about how hard it is to follow GOD as we are. As the world directs us.

Accept Change

We must accept that redefining marriage is

1. traditional
2. good for us
3. what Jesus wants

We always redefine marriage and have throughout history.

Taking the long view, the most consistent truth of marriage is not lifelong bonding, heterosexuality, loving companionship, or procreation. Marriage has not been historically bound by our bodies and the created order. All of these definitions are relatively new redefining elements. Marriage throughout history has been arranged by fathers for the distribution of property (including the wife herself), the perpetuation of a man’s legacy through potential children, and in Hebrew culture, the protection of women in their inferior status.

We redefined marriage to make it about love. About babies. About companionship. About togetherness. About equality. About teamwork. About fidelity.

In the oral arguments phase, Justice Samuel Alito found himself unintentionally exposing this very problem for those against marriage equality. Alito wrongly presupposes that marriage in Greece two thousand years ago had much in common with marriage today. And yet, it is the distinct lack of what any of the characteristics we would call essential to marriage: love, commitment, fidelity: that are exposed by his example. Our marriage is nothing like their marriage!

I think we ought to celebrate many of these redefined characteristics because we have made marriage better! We have made the institution more sensible and attractive. At the same time, we have also made it harder to maintain and made many of us struggle to “succeed” at it.

Response to the Question

So here’s how I think marriage should be. It should be closer to what Jesus actually describes: singular identity. Not in the faux singularity of complementarism, which is another way of keeping the two as two. We should strive for unity of being. When one is in pain, the other feels it. When half struggles, the whole struggles. When half celebrates, the whole have a great big party!

It means we have to deal with those things that deprive one another from experiencing joy in marriage. Those tangible things, like institutional denial of affirming and joyful unions to joblessness, financial insecurity, and inaccessible childcare. We should eradicate all of the stresses that unduly prevent the married from remaining one.

We should take the same approach that Jesus and Paul take toward marriage: that it isn’t for everyone. It isn’t the “preferred way” to raise children or live with one another. Unless mutual indwelling in the life of the Spirit is what we’re talking about. If it is just that old canard about “raising kids right” or making marriage into a rite of passage, then Dude, that ship has sailed.

Marriage is ultimately about love of GOD and one another. Marriage is one of our sacramental rites, and if you actually read over the liturgy, you can see that it has the same focus as our other liturgies: Holy Eucharist, Holy Baptism, Ordination, the Burial of the Dead. It is an Easter celebration of a risen Christ in which our worship of GOD is central. If we don’t get that, then we don’t get marriage at all.