Category Archives: Marriage

Who needs marriage?

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There is no denying the universality of the family unit (defined as at least a mother, father, and their children).  Attempts to do without the family as a basic socialising agency have been abandoned.

As for marriage, a number of important functions may be identified:-

  • to regulate sexual relationships
  • to provide the core of family life
  • to contribute to personal and social well-being
  • to provide stable and enduring relationships

Patterns of marriage

Marriage has not only sexual, but economic, aspects. …

God’s good design for men and woman

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It is sometimes thought that in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we have two entirely separate and self-contained creation accounts, so different as to be incompatible.

But they are neither contradictory accounts, nor carbon copies of one another.

Claire Smith discusses the similarities and differences most helpfully:

When we look at these two accounts we see there is sameness and difference. They are not conflicting accounts, but they are not carbon copies either. Each makes its own distinctive contribution.…

‘It’s never going to happen. And when it does…’

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Rod Dreher’s ‘Law Of Merited Impossibility‘ is an epistemological construct governing the paradoxical way overclass opinion makers frame the discourse about the clash between religious liberty and gay civil rights. It is best summed up by the phrase, “It’s a complete absurdity to believe that Christians will suffer a single thing from the expansion of gay rights, and boy, do they deserve what they’re going to get.”’

Or, put more simply: ‘It’s never going to happen. …

Don’t overspecify the biblical text!

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Mark Ward comments on the (otherwise excellent) conference speaker who, referring to Titus 2:4, said that because phileo is ‘friendship love’, it’s important for husbands and wives, and parents and children, to be friends.  Although there may well be some truth in this (Ward remarks), as far as the text in Titus is concerned, it is reading too much into the word; it is ‘overspecifying’ the text.  Husbands and wives are to be lovers, and not just friends. …

‘A better story’ – 16

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Let’s begin by acknowledging that the better story that Christians tell will not be welcomed in public square.  No matter how sensitively well tell our story, many will be offended by it.  But we cannot remain silent.

Our story begins with the hall-marks of the sexual revolution: radical individualism, a redemptive trajectory and a moral vision.  Our story must connect with these distinctives.  We need to show how the individual thrives when we safeguard the many, and how our narrative engages with concerns about equality, justice and freedom from oppression.…

‘A better story’ – 15

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To flourish is ‘to realize the full potential of what it means to be created and redeemed in the image of God.’  It is to follow our Creator in being creative.  It is to make more of the world in which he has placed us.

There is also a relational element to human flourishing.  Because relationship is central to God’s being as Trinity, love belongs to his very nature.  And, as God image-bearers, we ourselves are incomplete without God and without one another. …

‘A better story’ – 14

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C.S. Lewis invited us to consider that our appreciation of everyday objects of desire bring ‘news from a far country’.  They bid us come and behold that great reality of which they are faint reflections.

Indeed, writes Glynn Harrison, the gospel rescues all our desires – including sexual desire.  Our worship should include all legitimate expressions of love – and not just platonic love and agape love.

Sexual love teaches us about the intensity of divine love.…

‘If the church were Christian’ – 9

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If the church were Christian, writes Phillip Gulley, ‘It would care more about love and less about sex.’

The church, apparently, is obsessed with sex.  It frowns on sex outside marriage, divorce, dancing and (especially) homosexuality.  Indeed, it finds the whole subject distasteful.

This anxiety about sex probably has two causes: Victorian mores and ‘the apostle Paul’s obvious aversion to marriage’.  Contrast Paul’s ‘sour assessment of intimacy’ with the delight and joy of the Song of Solomon.…

‘A better story’ – 10

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The sexual revolution has, in effect, declared war on the weak, namely, our children.

As our communities become more fragmented, our education system more unequal, and our families more broken, the gap between the more privileged and the less privileged is becoming ever wider.

Here’s a stark fact: by the time they start pre-school, children from professional families will have heard 19 million more words than children from poor backgrounds.

Although many factors are at play, the stability of home life is a critical one. …