Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

Sexual sin is so predominantly the sin in the minds of many that the words “lust” and “immorality” are understood to refer exclusively to it.  This error led Dorothy Sayers to title her essay on the seven deadly sins “The Other Six Deadly Sins.”[1] The consequences of this error are so extensive that they need to be exposed before we can even begin to discuss the sin of sexual lust.  We’ll look at the two most deleterious consequences. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night my wife and I watched the 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, Sense and Sensibility.  Emma Thompson’s screenplay won her an Oscar.  Sense and Sensibility is the third Jane Austen novel that I have read (My wife has read them all.), and, while good, literarily, and especially stylistically, it comes in a distant second to Pride and Prejudice.

To prefer Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility is no surprise, but I would like to make the bold and daring assertion that the movie version of the latter is better than the novel. Read the rest of this entry »

In the previous post it was my desire to help Christians understand the broader context for The Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision on June 6, 2015, which ruled that states may not prohibit same-sex marriages.  The post highlighted the importance of understanding classical republicanism as the background to much of the Founders of the American Republic.  Classical republicanism stressed that for self-government to work the individual citizen needed to be virtuous, by which they meant one who controlled his inherent selfish patterns and lived for society’s common good.  The virtuous man was the free man because he was able to control his selfish passions.  Recognizing the inherent selfishness of human nature and the impossibility living virtuously without the support of religion, the Founders looked very favorably upon the role of religion as a source of civic health and freedom in American society, even if they did not always agree on the specific form that role would take.

In this post I want to look briefly at the philosophical and theological currents that have led to the contemporary radical change in attitude toward religion.  The four points below represent a shift in how people view reality or what is often called their worldview.

  1. Fact vs. faith. Becoming quite prominent in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was the idea that natural science was able to explain reality fully by means of the natural laws of cause and effect discovered through reason and experimentation. Science was true because it was based upon the facts.  The existence of God was not demonstrable by science, being by definition outside of the physical realm of cause and effect.  Religion was based upon faith, which was often seen as opposed to reason and without a factual basis and thus lacked a legitimate claim to truth.[1]
  2. Individual vs. society. Since faith in God was not supported by reason, man was born into a world without moral obligations to one another based upon universal divine authority. In contrast to classical thought—Christian and pagan—man was not by nature a social being with responsibilities toward his fellow human beings, but was an autonomous or self-ruling individual.  Consequently, society was no longer a positive field for the practice of virtue, but rather was a kind of necessary evil for the survival of the individual.  Therefore, working for the common good was a decision by the sovereign individual to help him survive and not a moral obligation or virtue as in classical republicanism.
  3. Negative vs. positive freedom. In a world created by God a person is not only obliged to obey God’s commandments and exercise love in society, his true freedom is to live according to his nature. This is what is meant by positive freedom.  In a world created by God one must conform his or her sexual practices to God’s will and there is no right to change the definition of marriage.   Indeed by living within God’s design for marriage the couple experiences a fully human relationship.  The predominant contemporary understanding of freedom is the lack of external constraints or negative freedom.  One must sacrifice some of his freedoms to live in society, but the truly free person may follow his passions as long as they don’t harm others.   In such a world individuals can demand that society permits them to fulfill their desire to have sexual intercourse with anyone who consents and to marry a consenting partner of the same sex.
  4. Self-divinization vs. sanctification. In Existentialism and Human Emotions the famous atheist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “There is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. … Man is nothing else but what he makes himself.” Sartre recognized that without a creator God, it is up to humans to make themselves what they want to be.  Humans become their own creators, their own gods.  With a creator God out of the picture and the freedom to create ourselves, it is not surprising that the transgender movement is following right on the heels of the successful efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.  As our own gods, we are free to decide whether we are male or female.[2]  In the Christian view God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). We do not create our own nature.  We have received it and by sin have perverted it.  The Christian gospel promises the restoration of our human nature by means of the process called sanctification.  The free person through faith in God’s grace escapes the corruption of sinful passions and is able to practice virtue (2 Peter 1:3-7) in conformity to Christ, the true image of God (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

What then is the place of religion in American society today?  The contemporary worldview that dominates not just America but Western society as a whole is hostile to most religion.  Religion is no longer is seen as a bulwark of civic health and freedom. The significant public role for religion at the beginning of the American republic was the product of a cultural-philosophical situation that no longer exists.  With the current worldview described above religious beliefs and practices are quickly being relegated to the strictly private sphere and necessarily so.  Many view membership in a church or a synagogue as on a par with belonging to a private club, except that a private club does not hold a philosophy of life that runs counter to the current cultural norms.  Also, the ever widening public sphere of increased government involvement in the daily lives of American citizens is resulting in a shrinking private sphere, which means that religion will play an even smaller role in American society.

These changes are why Christians feel increasingly marginalized in American society.  In my next post I will examine how Christians and the Church should respond.

[1] A similar approach taken by Dr. Steve Turley is worth reading.  See http://turleytalks.com/our-own-sin-writ-large-understanding-the-social-origins-of-same-sex-marriage-part-1-of-2/

 

[2] This is not to deny that there are people who suffer from a psychological and/or physical disorder that causes gender confusion.  They should be treated with compassion and professional help, but the transgender movement does not want that.  They want to have the right to decide for themselves what their gender is and to have everyone else accept that decision.

            I’ve been happily married for more than 33 years.  A constant counsel for success in marriage is that couples need to be together.  Genesis 2:18 says that God made Adam “a helper fit for him.”  Based upon this scriptural passage and the lovely evening I had with my wife last night, I’d like to suggest that it’s not just that we need to be together.  We need to do things together. Read the rest of this entry »