Why We Must Make Our Marriages Work
Married couple Ed and Christine opened our Gender Matters conference in Pasadena last week; they spoke frankly about how Jesus and His Church were helping them to be good gifts to each other in light of fears and failures.
Healthy marriage is the foundation on which we as a community can call all persons to chastity—to rightful integration of our gender, as well as the self-control and confidence to offer ourselves to the other’s good. If Christian marriage falters, we as the Church have little authority to call persons fueled by LGBT+ fantasies to chastity.
How so? Today’s new freedom to change one’s gender or to seek to transcend gender altogether did not just appear out of nowhere. Perhaps it is sourced in our ‘no-fault’ divorce culture in which men and women sacrifice their children on the altar of broken vows, the snappy way we become one then tear ourselves from the other when things get rough. ‘Rough’ means disillusionment of many kinds—usually sourced in the perception that this one did not deliver the goods. So we move on. We create our own freedom distinct from Jesus’ stern warning that ‘what God has joined, let no-one tear apart’ (Matt. 19:6).
Today we employ ‘grace’ to give Christians the freedom to break vows and re-engage with sexier models as if God was giving them a ‘second chance.’ I marvel at our indiscriminate use of Scripture, our consumer mentality, our disregard for the spouse, and especially for the children of divorce who have no voice. In the wise words of Dr. Rebecca Morse: ‘We give adults every liberty they want then leave kids to take whatever these adults want to give them.’
We create our own freedom. On the fault-line of ‘no-fault’ divorce, a person with same-sex attraction creates his own ‘gay’ destiny; a woman seriously unhappy with her gender begins to transition to another ‘self.’ One false freedom does lead to another. And at our core, we know that our compromise chokes our witness of the goodness of God’s order—the Cross that enables us to stay true to what He asks of us and all of creation.
So we go back to the Source—Jesus and His effectual call to make our marriages work. A panel of 4 couples—two touched by good old traditional idolatry and two by same-sex idolatry shared incisively at our Living Waters Leadership Summit last weekend. They spoke joyfully of love and pain and the power of Christ to release them over and over to fulfill their vows. He is faithful to those who choose the other’s good. And who humbly enlist fellow members of Christ in order to do so. More than anything, we want Living Waters to strengthen chaste ‘gift-giving’ and so strengthen the whole Church to enjoy the freedom of God’s commands.
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