{"id":13149,"date":"2014-10-29T09:37:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T13:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theamericanjesus.net\/?p=13149"},"modified":"2014-10-29T09:37:07","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T13:37:07","slug":"day-jesus-redefined-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/zackhunt\/2014\/10\/day-jesus-redefined-marriage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day Jesus Redefined Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"ring(H\/T Reeknees, Flickr Creative Commons<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

This week in Nashville, folks from the Southern Baptist Convention have been\u00a0gathering for the 2014 Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission National Conference.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I didn\u2019t know a thing about it and probably would have gone on living in blissful ignorance if #ERLC2014 wasn\u2019t popping up all over Twitter. So, I had to do a bit of googling to figure out exactly what was going on.<\/p>\n

Turns out that the ERLC folks in Nashville have gotten together, at least in part, because like many other conservative Christians across the country they are concerned about same-sex marriage, or what they view\u00a0as the redefining of marriage.<\/p>\n

As they put it on their website<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Are you and your church prepared for the moral revolution surrounding homosexuality and same-sex marriage happening across America? While human sexuality and social institutions are being redefined before our very eyes, the Bible presents marriage as an unchanging picture of the gospel through the union of one man and one woman. The gospel announces that the story of Jesus is greater than the sum total of our sexual desires.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I think that first question is important and I completely agree with that last statement, that claim\u00a0in the middle really caught my attention\u2026and not just because the gospel has nothing to do with \u201cthe union of one man and one woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re plugged into the Christian world in even the smallest way or if\u00a0you\u00a0flip over to Fox News<\/em> every once in a while or, you know, if you\u2019re just a human being living in the United States, then chances are good you\u2019ve heard the outcry over the so-called redefinition of biblical marriage.<\/p>\n

The thought behind the outcry being that marriage has always been the exact same institution ever since the dawn of time or at least since the dawn of the Bible. Same-sex marriage, it is argued, is a radical departure from this unbroken tradition.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0does the Bible actually present \u201cmarriage as an unchanging picture?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And, either way does the Church completely adhere to whatever picture of marriage the Bible presents?<\/em><\/p>\n

The answers might surprise you.<\/p>\n

Now, you\u2019ve probably heard folks point out that marriages in the Bible weren\u2019t\u00a0always between one man and just one woman. That King Solomon fellow, for example, had quite a few wives.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for those of us who could barely afford one wedding,\u00a0polygamy died out\u00a0in the Old Testament. However, the move from polygamy to monogamy wasn\u2019t the only time the biblical definition of marriage was redefined.<\/p>\n

While the biblical definition of marriage is a mantra that gets tossed\u00a0about a lot, and we\u2019ve all heard about polygamy in the Bible, what\u00a0gets talked about far less often is the day Jesus redefined marriage.<\/p>\n

Ok, perhaps it wasn\u2019t just one day.<\/p>\n

To be fair, many scholars think the Sermon on the Mount is actually a collection of teachings Jesus gave at various times throughout his ministry. But even if that is true, there was a day when Jesus said this\u2026.<\/p>\n

It was also said, \u201cWhoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2,000 years after Jesus uttered those words, we tend to get caught up on the issue of what does or does not constitute a justifiable divorce. While that\u2019s certainly an important part of what\u2019s going on here, there\u2019s a more seismic shift in the\u00a0biblical understanding of marriage that\u2019s taking place.<\/p>\n

That \u201cit was also said\u201d part\u00a0refers to Moses.\u00a0You probably already knew that. But did you catch the way Jesus quoted him? No? Maybe you did or maybe you\u2019ve already checked out and are currently pasting every Bible verse about homosexuality that you can find in the comment section. Either way,\u00a0let\u2019s look at it again. But this time I\u2019ll highlight the part we\u00a0really<\/em><\/strong> need to pay attention to.<\/p>\n

Whoever divorces his<\/strong> wife, let him<\/strong> give her a certificate of divorce.<\/em><\/p>\n

That use of gendered pronouns is not an accident.<\/p>\n

These days, we have very romantic, Nicholas Sparks-inspired notions of what marriage is all about. While we may ground some of those ideas\u00a0in the Bible \u2013 even in the Old Testament \u2013 marriage during the time of Moses was typically a far different arrangement than it is nowadays.<\/p>\n

We often like to talk about marriage being a covenant today, but while that language is rooted in scripture, a better way to think about marriage during Moses\u2019 day is something of a business arrangement.<\/p>\n

At the risk of oversimplifying things, marriages in the time of Moses tended to work like this: a contract\u00a0was\u00a0negotiated between a man and his potential father-in-law and once financial terms were agreed concluded, the wedding night sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

Literally.<\/p>\n

Well, and figuratively too, but get your mind out of the gutter.<\/p>\n

Anyway, only men were allowed to initiate a divorce because only men were property owners. Their wives were quite literally their property which is why we see so many laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy\u00a0detailing renumeration for various sorts of \u201cdamage\u201d to the husband\u2019s \u201cproperty.\u201d If things didn\u2019t work out for whatever reason, only men could initiate a divorce because only a property\u00a0owner had the authority to conduct such important business regarding their property.<\/p>\n

But when Jesus starts talking about divorce during the Sermon on the Mount he takes a radically\u00a0different approach to marriage<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t just give new guidelines for divorce.<\/p>\n

He redefines the very institution of marriage<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yes, the grammatical emphasis is still on the husband, but the foundation for marriage has changed. No longer is marriage an issue of property. For Jesus, marriage is about the sacred commitment we make to one another.<\/p>\n

This is why when Matthew elaborates on this teaching in Matthew 19, we read\u2026<\/p>\n

Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, \u201cIs it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?\u201d\u00a0<\/span>He answered, \u201cHave you not read that the one who made them at the beginning \u2018made them male and female,\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and said, \u2018For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh\u2019?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We tend to get fixated on the male\/female dynamic in that passage, but that\u2019s not what Jesus is focused on. The point Jesus is making to the\u00a0Pharisees is that what is fundamentally important about marriage is the fact that two people have been joined together in a sacred way. It\u2019s not a business arrangement. They haven\u2019t just signed a contract. Through the grace of God, they\u2019ve made a holy commitment to one another and in doing so they have become united on a level so deep they are essentially \u201cone flesh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course,\u00a0this passage is often cited as \u201cproof\u201d that Jesus defined marriage as something that happens exclusively between a male and female. But not only does Jesus not actually do that in this passage, that argument completely misses the point of what Jesus is saying.<\/p>\n

For Jesus (at least in this passage), what is fundamental to biblical marriage isn\u2019t the male\/female dynamic.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the sacred commitment of two people to one another that ultimately binds them together as\u00a0one flesh, not the physical act of having sex<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why he references Genesis; not to proof-text gender difference, but to make the point that such an intimate union has been ordained by God since the beginning.<\/p>\n

We can see the importance of this redefinition of marriage in the idea that the Church is\u00a0the Bride of Christ. Obviously, when Jesus comes for his Bride\u00a0we aren\u2019t becoming one flesh with Jesus through any sexual\u00a0act.\u00a0Likewise,\u00a0within that Bride are both male and female members. Nevertheless, we can still be the Bride of Christ and become one with him (known by our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters\u00a0as theosis<\/a>), because for Jesus and therefore for the Church, marriage is, at its core, a spiritual union.<\/p>\n

In other words, biblically speaking, gender difference is\u00a0not quite as fundamental to marriage\u00a0as it might seem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also interesting\u00a0and important to remember that\u00a0the redefining of marriage didn\u2019t stop with Jesus.<\/p>\n

Though many of us in the Church criticize\u00a0secular culture for trying to redefine marriage, the Church actually redefined marriage long before the \u201cgay agenda\u201d arrived to \u201cdestroy America.\u201d<\/p>\n

At least the\u00a0Protestant part of the Church did some redefining.<\/p>\n

In our zeal to defend biblical marriage, we tend to forget that as Protestants we\u2019ve already redefined marriage once before. In the Bible, Jesus gave one reason and one reason alone for justifiable divorce: adultery. But we\u2019ve tempered that quite a bit and made space for divorce (and remarriage) by redefining adultery to mean not\u00a0just cheating sexually, but any of a variety forms of \u201cmarital unfaithfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, don\u2019t get me wrong.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s a justified move very much in the spirit (or is it Spirit?) of Jesus\u2019 locating the foundation of marriage in our commitment to one another. Anyone who\u2019s married can tell you that sleeping with someone else isn\u2019t the only way a spouse can be unfaithful to their marital commitment.<\/p>\n

But the fact still remains that just like Jesus, we\u2019ve done some redefining of marriage ourselves.<\/p>\n

Like Jesus, we\u2019ve acknowledge that just\u00a0because the Bible says it, that doesn\u2019t settle it.<\/p>\n

Which\u00a0is why proof-texting hasn\u2019t ended the debate over same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n

Now look, if you\u2019re opposed to same-sex marriage, I\u2019m\u00a0not na\u00efve enough to think that\u00a0a blog post will\u00a0change your mind.<\/p>\n

Big shifts in thinking don\u2019t happen over night. I get that. Even when Jesus redefined marriage, it took a long, long time before husbands\u00a0began to stop\u00a0thinking of their wives\u00a0as\u00a0property. Yet, even today that sort of thinking continues to persist in many corners of the world.<\/p>\n

However, if Christians are going to continue to oppose same-sex marriage, we need to stop\u00a0and rethink our demand\u00a0that the Church never consider accepting same-sex marriage because to do so would be to redefine an unchanging picture of marriage.<\/p>\n

Because while the gender dynamic may be becoming more inclusive, redefining marriage is nothing new.<\/p>\n

It might not actually be that bad of a thing.<\/p>\n

And, as both the Bible and Church history show us, sometimes it\u2019s a necessary thing to do.<\/p>\n

Which is why it\u2019s so important that we press pause on\u00a0all of the fiery rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Because it may just be that\u00a0those in the Church who are attempting to redefine marriage are, at least in spirit (or is it the Spirit?), not just following the example of their ecclesiastical forefathers.<\/p>\n

They may just be\u00a0following in the footsteps of Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(H\/T Reeknees, Flickr Creative Commons) This week in Nashville, folks from the Southern Baptist Convention have been\u00a0gathering for the 2014 Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission National Conference. To be honest, I didn\u2019t know a thing about it and probably would have gone on living in blissful ignorance if #ERLC2014 wasn\u2019t popping up all over Twitter. 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