The Sanctity of Marriage

July 1, 2015

Well, here I am blogging about something I told myself I just wouldn't.  But you know me, it's a little difficult to keep my mouth shut when compelled.  Or maybe it's the Spirit moving through me.  In any case, I want to pose a few thoughts to the controversy of the right for homosexuals to marry.  Yep this one's a doozey and I just may lose a few friends with this post but I think it's important to share differing views – sometimes it even helps to gain perspective of all sides of a discussion.

I consider myself a Christian.  I am as Christian as any human being can be.  Which to me means, I believe in God as the true Creator, that Jesus was the Son of God sent to save man-kind, and that the only way to salvation is through Jesus' sacrifice, and nothing of my own volition.  I am a sinner that constantly asks God for forgiveness.  I am a sinner because I am a human being and I continue to struggle to be like Jesus or God or anything REALLY close to those entities.  I try, I tell you, but I am just plain NOT successful.  Just to reiterate, I have sinned in my past, and sadly I will mostly likely sin again, because I AM a human being and am NOT, nor ever will be Jesus or God, no matter my pursuit of such holy quests.

It is super tough for me to consider homosexuality a sin.  It's mentioned only a few times in the Bible and none of which are in the Commandments, what I like to call God's Top 10, and the term homosexual isn’t even in any Bible until the 1900’s.  All of the more current translations that mention “homosexuality” can been explained either as stories where the Roman soldiers were raping boys and men as means of torture and dominance.  Yeah, rape, no good – that, I get.  Or used as a translation for “buggery” which is conflicted in definition.  Not even a handful of countries can define that one word concisely nowadays – let alone the fact that we are translating a Hebrew word (whatever it was) to buggery (whatever it means) however many thousands of years later.  In everything I have read, consensual homosexuality wasn't a part of society back in the Bible-writing days, (much like monogamy, mind you, which I will get to in a moment) only dominant sodomy, i.e. rape.

Personally, I think we, as translators of God's Word, quite frankly, suck.  Sometimes we have to take the written Word literally and sometimes it is a subjective teaching, like a fable.  Well, I don't think we are educated enough to understand which passages are which.  I think our translations have made it so confusing that no one really knows except the Big Man upstairs.  It's like we are supposed to be able to decipher His message after playing the worst game of "Telephone" for thousands of years.

Since so many overly zealous people believe that homosexuality is an actual sin.  Let's just think about that for a minute.  I was once taught in Sunday school that the "rules" of God written in the Bible are in no particular order.  That, in the eyes of God, telling a lie is as bad as committing murder, which is as bad as disrespecting your parents, which is as bad as coveting thy neighbor, which is as bad as judging others, which is as bad as adultery and so forth and so on.  So according to God, there is NO priority to the commandments.  You must keep them all or you may suffer very tough consequences, many of which involve death.  (This, BTW, is the most problematic thing for me – i.e. people who curse their mother or father must be put to death according to the Bible, but “Thou shalt not kill” is a commandment that can’t be broken.  Clear as mud, right?) 

I don't know, I'm not a Bible expert so correct me if I am wrong but I am not seeing a clear hierarchy of sin in the Holy Word.  I personally believe murder is more of a sin than cursing your mother or father.  This could be self-preservation – because I have cursed my ‘rents on occasion and I haven’t committed murder.  Or maybe I believe this because I know murder violates another human being’s rights a little more so than some teenage disrespect.  You know, the victim being dead and all.  Truth be told, my opinion or beliefs aren’t what is proven in the Bible. God says all commandments should be equally kept or followed and considering that death is the said punishment for murder, adultery & cursing one’s parents, as mere examples, I really think He is saying ALL sin is considered EQUAL in His eyes. 

There are also MANY principles and practices of the Bible that we do NOT follow anymore, and thank goodness for that.  One example?  How about three: polygamy, slavery and the treatment of women.  Yes, in the Old Testament, polygamy was so common-practice that many righteous people in the Bible participated and yet God did NOT condemn them.  In fact, He BLESSED several polygamists (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, Belshazzar).  Slavery – where do I even start?  In Exodus 21:1-11, it’s spelled out exactly how a slave should be kept or go free, including if you choose to sell your own daughter!  It’s 6 years, in case you wondered.  A slave was to be a slave for 6 years and then in the 7th year he could be set free.  However, there were more rules: if he obtained a wife and/or children after becoming a slave, the wife and kids were the master’s property once those 6 years were up, not the slave’s.  And if after those 6 years, a slave chose to stay with his wife & children, under the master’s roof, the slave was branded and considered a slave to the master – for life. 

Seriously, don't get me started on the treatment of women!  Want to go back to an age where women had absolutely zero rights?!?  What?  Don't want to be a subordinate wife? (Ephesians 5:22).  Or prove your virginity… lest you be stoned to death? (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). Oh, what about arranged marriages? (Genesis 24:37-38).  No, you want to pick your own love?  Last time I checked, in this country, you can only be married to ONE person at a time and women/girls cannot be treated like marital slaves or dowry embellishments, and neither can men/boys for that matter.  The current laws we have regarding just these three examples are in direct opposition to the literal translation of the written Word.  So, what exactly do we do with that??

Are we allowed to cherry-pick which rules of God we want to follow?  How could a person who was a polygamist be blessed by God?  I mean, this doesn’t exactly fit into the “one man, one woman” version of marriage that is outlined in the Bible, does it?

I do believe in one underlying Biblical principle, though, and that is love.  We are supposed to love others.  We are supposed to be respectful.  We are supposed to be good neighbors.  We are supposed to guard our own hearts (this is loving ourselves) but we are to "do unto others."  We are NOT to condemn, judge or persecute.  We are to leave that up to God.  And lately?  Well that just ain't happening, people.  Some Christians like lumping people with very little differences to us into one class – the unrighteous.  And darned if the unrighteous are not welcomed in our society or Church or anywhere.  Well, I got news, we are ALL unrighteous.  Every last one of us!  Welcome to the party, some Christians. 

If we are all unrighteous, because we all sin, and we are all commanded by God to love others and not condemn, then do I have to extend love to pedophiles?  Or rapists?  This is my ever sinful, unforgiving dilemma.  There's a line we draw, each of us.  My line is drawn before those that hurt others or remove other people rights as human beings or degrade beyond comprehension.  Murderers, pedophiles, rapists, sex offenders, physical abusers, slave owners, you get the picture.  It's tough for me to offer forgiveness or love to people who have committed such despicable crimes against others.  Yet according to God, I know my inability to forgive someone who has committed one of these crimes is one of my own sins.

The issue is I just can't lump homosexuals in with these sorted characters.  Homosexuals, much like heterosexuals, just want to live a full life.  They want to love someone.  They want to have a family.  They want to just be accepted.  They want to live as heterosexuals do.  They want happiness.  They hurt no one in their quest, truthfully.  So, why all the controversy?  I just don’t know.

I do know this, my marriage cannot and will NEVER be sanctified by the comparisons of OTHER marriages.  Know why?  Lots of reasons.  But first and foremost, my marriage is a promise to God and to my husband to be committed to my right-hand man for life.  It involves me and him and the big Him.  That's it!  It involves NO ONE else.  Sure, Pastor Penny, <gasp> yes a female Pastor, how sacrilegious, conducted the ceremony.  Yes many family and friends attended as witnesses.  Yes, my sister and brother-in-law signed that certificate.  But the holiness of my marital union remains with me, my husband and our God.

IF a marriage between heterosexuals can only be considered a holy, sanctified act based on the ability or inability of other people to get married, then, sadly, we are ALL doomed to single life.  People who lie, cheat, steal, use the Lord's name in vein, curse their mothers and fathers, they all get married.  People who eat bacon get married.  People who are adulterers get married.  People who are married become adulterers.  People who do not follow Sabbath get married.  People who eat shellfish get married.  People who are drunks or drug addicts get married.  People who have premarital sex get married.  People end their marriages.  People who are divorced get remarried.  Racists get married.  Pedophiles get married.  People marry outside of their faiths.  Atheists get married.  If we are going to say that homosexuals can't get married because they sin, then NO ONE can get married.  Are you all following me here?

Truth is, all people are sinners, that's a fact, Jack.  The people that enter into marriage together are both sinners, and people who sin conduct those ceremonies in the name of God (sorry, Pastor Penny, but you taught me that).  I was a sinner before I entered into the marital contract and, you guessed it, I am STILL a sinner.  The sanctity of my marriage has not nor cannot be changed in any way even when others have the same governmental or spiritual rights as I.  Period.

Now before you play the "slippery slope card" and attempt to lump homosexuality into the same group as pedophilia or bestiality, I got news for you.  There's one tiny difference.  It’s called consent.  Kids and animals cannot consent.  We know this.  We know better than even this.  We don't have to be parents to understand this.  We are smarter than this.  No matter what you believe in, either God or Darwin’s evolution, humans possess the ability to reason.  Please, can we just start using that?

And if your ability to reason through this topic can’t convince you, your argument might be better understood if you stand up and vehemently deny the right to marry for ALL people who commit ANY sin.  I mean why discriminate among the unrighteous?  Like those who are not virgins before marriage or are promiscuous or those who are divorced or commit adultery or lie or lust or steal or don’t keep the Sabbath or are jealous or eat unclean meat (pork, shellfish, calamari) or have earrings or other body piercings or tattoos or have said the Lord’s name in vein or cursed the ‘rents or women who wear indecent clothing or … the list is very, very long, better get started… by the way, exactly who is left anyway?!?