He Made Them Male and Female
Last week
we began to examine what the Bible teaches concerning man. Some of the most
important points we considered were that (1) man is not the product of blind
evolutionary forces, but is instead the very handiwork of God; (2) the creation
of man was a collaborative effort of the Holy Trinity; (3) man was created in
the image of God; (4) the human race is one (implication: since we are
all descendants of one man, we are all distantly related and there is no room
in the thinking of a Christian for racism); and (5) man was created to glorify
God.
What we
did not have time for last week, but is nevertheless essential for us to
discuss—especially after the decisions of the Supreme Court this past week—is
the fact that God made man male and female. In our
opening text we read this:
So God
created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
And then
in chapter two we have the details. Chapter one gives us a general overview of
creation. Chapter two gives us some of the particulars about the creation of
man. This is important to understand because there are some people who set
these two chapters over against each other and claim they give us two different
and contradictory accounts of creation. Perhaps to a
superficial reader they appear contradictory, but they really are nothing of
the sort. They are complementary, chapter one giving us an
overview, and chapter two breaking it down and giving us some of the details.
The thing
that is vital for us to understand, however, is the fact that the creation
narrative is paradigmatic of God’s intention for marriage. This means that the
creation narrative sets the example, serves as the pattern, gives us the model
for properly understanding God’s intention for marriage. In other words, the
creation narrative is an expression of his will.
This is
certainly what Jesus teaches, isn’t it? Do you remember when the Pharisees
posed a question to Jesus concerning divorce? They asked him, “Is it lawful to
divorce one’s wife for any cause?” What they were asking is expressed more
fully in the NIV: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any and every
cause?” They asked this question of Jesus because there was a controversy in
his day between the two chief schools of rabbinic thought. The majority sided
with Rabbi Hillel who taught that a man could divorce his wife for virtually
any reason whatsoever. And they were asking Jesus, “Is this true?” And how did
Jesus respond? It’s very interesting. He grounded his answer in the
creation narrative. He took the narrative as an expression of God’s will
concerning marriage. He said,
Have you
not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,
and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? (Matt. 19:3-5)
And then
he draws a conclusion that relates directly to the question he was asked. He
said, “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together,
let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). Jesus takes the creation narrative as an
expression of the divine will and as providing moral norms with respect to
marriage. (And by the way, Paul does the same thing in First Corinthians 11 and
First Timothy 2.)
The
question Jesus answered from the creation paradigm concerned the subject of
divorce. But the creation narrative expresses a number of other aspects of
God’s will concerning marriage as well. What things? Though we could identify
several more, let me just mention four today.
Monogamy
The first
is monogamy. The word monogamy, of course, means marriage to one
person. You will recognize the Greek prefix mono as meaning
one (monologue, monocle, monotone, monotony, monopoly, mononucleosis, etc.).
The second half of monogamy comes from the Greek gamos,
meaning marriage.
God’s
will concerning monogamy is evident from the fact that God created one man and
one woman. He did not create one man and several women. It wasn’t Adam and Eve
and Mary and Susan and Patty and Jane. Nor did God create one woman and several
men. It was one man and one woman. This
provides us with the divine norm for marriage and clearly rules out polygamy or
plural marriage. This is why we find Paul teaching that one of the
qualifications for serving in the offices of elder and deacon is that a
candidate must be “the husband of one wife” (1 Tim. 3:2, 12). A more literal
translation of the Greek is “a man of one woman.” This means that not only are
elders and deacons each to have only one wife, but they are to be faithful to
their wives, meaning that not only is polygamy ruled out, but so is adultery
and everything else that betrays a lack of devotion to one’s wife.
Paul
establishes this as a rule for elders and deacons because it is in accord with
God’s will as it is revealed in the creation narrative, and elders and deacons
are to be examples to the flock. They are to be devoted to one woman. And this
devotion to one’s wife is to last for life.
Lifelong monogamy
God’s
will, then, is not only monogamy, but lifelong monogamy. God
didn’t create Adam a new wife after a few years of living with Eve, or Eve a
new husband after a few years of living with Adam. He didn’t say, “Look Adam I
know you need a little variety in life to spice things up a bit, let me create
you a new woman.” No. God said that a man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. He
shall not discard her.
This
rules out serial monogamy. This really was the question the
Pharisees posed to Jesus. Those of the school of Hillel taught that a man must
be faithful to his wife so long as he was married to her, but he could divorce
her for any one of a number of different reasons, including not cooking his
food according to his liking, or because she had bad breath, or even because he
found another woman more attractive. Any light or trivial thing could be used
as a justification for a man to divorce his wife. Jesus, on the other hand,
said that divorce was allowable only when there was an offense that struck at
the heart of the marriage covenant, like infidelity.
The
liberal divorce law of the Hillel school is the sort of thing the Lord speaks
against in Malachi.
And this
second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s
altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the
offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. [dje – that is, the
Lord has no regard for your worship or answers your prayers] But you say,
“Why does he not?” Because the Lord was
witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been
faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not
make them [dje – husband and wife] one, with a portion of the
Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So
guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife
of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her [dje – without
proper justification], says the Lord,
the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves
in your spirit, and do not be faithless.” (Mal. 2:13-16)
The
paradigm of creation teaches not just monogamy, but lifelong monogamy.
Only when there is an egregious breach of the marriage covenant resulting in a
lawful divorce, or in the case of the death of a spouse, is a second marriage
permissible.
Heterosexual Lifelong monogamy
It should
be obvious from everything that we have said so far that God’s intention for
marriage—his will for marriage—does not include
homosexual relationships whether gay or lesbian. God made man male and
female. He made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, nor Eve and Genevieve. He
made a man and a woman. He made man male and female, and he made them this way
for a purpose, in order to fulfill a calling.
God’s Calls Married Couples to be Fruitful and Multiply
This
calling is central to the creational paradigm for marriage. We must not
overlook the fact that God called Adam and Eve to be co-creators with him in
the procreation of children.
And God
blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth” (Gen. 1:28).
Remember
what we read in Malachi:
Did he
not make them one [husband and wife], with a portion of the Spirit in
their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring (Mal. 2:15).
Procreation,
or having children, is not incidental to God’s purpose for
marriage; it is fundamental. But of course procreation is
impossible in homosexual relationships. It is a calling that neither two men,
nor two women can fulfill…for obvious reasons: they are not properly
equipped for the task.
Now
perhaps someone will argue, “Well some male-female couples are unable to bear
children, too. Does that mean that they have no business being married?” No, it
doesn’t mean that at all because there is a vast difference between the two.
The inability of a homosexual couple to conceive is inherent in
the nature of the relationship. The inability of a heterosexual couple to
conceive is only accidental. Homosexuals know going into it that
they cannot produce children. Infertile heterosexual couples don’t know until
afterward. In their case, it is a matter of finding out that something is
physiologically wrong. But a homosexual couple can be perfectly healthy and they
can still never bear children. In other words, they cannot
fulfill one of the fundamental purposes of marriage.
Heteros Trashed Marriage, Sex, and Family First
I must
say that it has been a departure of heterosexuals from a biblical view of
marriage, sex, and family that has paved the way for the advance of the
homosexual agenda. The decline of marriage—the assault on
marriage, really—began among heteros with the separation of sex from any
consideration of bearing children, a separation which was made possible by the
pill. (A good book to read on this subject is Adam and Eve After the
Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution, by Mary Eberstadt, 2012).
If there is little to no risk of sex leading to children, then there is little
to no need of waiting for marriage to have sex. Casual, recreational,
indiscriminate, and promiscuous sex does not bear the same consequences as it
had always done in the past with respect to producing children. Knowing that a
brief casual sexual encounter might lead to a lifetime responsibility of being
a parent had the effect of encouraging sexual self-control—especially among
women, because the larger share of the responsibility of raising a child has
always fallen upon the mother. It was not in her interest to have a child out
of wedlock. Enter the pill. Consequence removed.
There are
still other consequences, of course: physical,
emotional, spiritual, and relational consequences, but these are
not as immediately obvious or as easily quantified and so they don’t provide as
much incentive for sexual self-restraint. But my point is that when heteros
began to think of sex apart from marriage and family, it paved the way for
homosexuals to say there really is no difference between us.
This
point is well made by Yale professor George Chauncey, who is himself a
homosexual. He has shown that the acceptance of homosexual behavior was,
profoundly
shaped by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s. All around them,
lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men saw their heterosexual friends decisively
rejecting the moral codes of their parents’ generation, which had limited sex
to marriage, and forging a new moral code that linked sex to love, pleasure,
freedom, self-expression, and common consent [dje – in other words
disassociate sex from marriage and family]. Heterosexuals, in other words,
were becoming more like homosexuals [dje – whose sexual acts could
never produce children], in ways that ultimately would make it harder for
them to believe gay people were outsiders from a dangerous, immoral underworld.
Moreover, the fact that so many young heterosexuals considered sexual freedom
to be a vital marker of personal freedom made lesbians and gay men feel their
quest for freedom was part of a larger movement. Ultimately, both gay people’s
mass decision to come out and heterosexuals’ growing acceptance of them were
encouraged by the sexual revolution and became two of its most enduring
legacies. I think this did not represent the assimilation of gay life into the
Normal so much as the transformation of the Normal itself.[1]
Most of
us here in this room were raised either during or after the sexual revolution.
We can hardly imagine a world in which the Norm is not “do
whatever you want with whomever you please whenever and wherever you wish.” We
can hardly imagine a world in which the cultural expectation was more or less
consistent with what the Bible teaches, even if it stemmed more from pragmatic
considerations than from Christian convictions. We can hardly imagine a world
in which the institutions of society supported marriage and welcomed and
encouraged the having of children, encouraged fidelity, looked with disapproval
upon sex before marriage, a world in which virginity was beautiful and
honorable and a prized possession.
The vast
majority of our social ills would disappear if such things were true today.
Today’s cultural assumptions and practices with regard to marriage, sex, and
family have been devastating at all levels: personal, family, and
societal. For instance, one of the reasons the government has grown to such
enormous proportions is because of the breakdown of the family. The government
is increasingly taking on the role of parent, and this only further encourages
the breakdown of the family. If the government is there to pick up the slack,
then we can all shirk our responsibilities.
The
transformation of the Normal with respect to sexual behavior necessarily includes
a redefinition of marriage. Marriage is no longer viewed even
by most heterosexuals as a “comprehensive, exclusive, permanent union that is
intrinsically ordered to producing children.”[2] It
is instead “an emotional union, rather than one inherently ordered to family
life.”[3] And if such an emotional bond can lead to
marriage among heteros, in other words, if heteros no longer think of bearing
and raising children as fundamental to marriage and sex (children are
just an option)—then why not homosexual marriage?
Reasons for opposing the redefinition of marriage
There are
many reasons to oppose gay marriage. The first is because “gay marriage” is an
oxymoron. It’s a self-contradiction. It is war against reality. And it is
never wise to tamper with reality.
The
second reason to oppose what is called by the oxymoronic term “gay marriage” is
that if such a union is given the same legal status as real marriage, then on
the principle of equality, people in said unions will demand the right to have
children (adoption, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, etc.), and
it is demonstrable that children who are brought up with same sex parents are
worse off in nearly every measurable way. [4]
There are
eight outcome variables where differences between the children of homosexual
parents and married parents were not only present, and favorable to the married
parents, but where these findings were statistically significant for both children
of lesbian mothers and "gay" fathers and both with
and without controls. While all the findings in the study are important, these
are the strongest possible ones--virtually irrefutable. Compared with children
raised by their married biological parents (IBF), children of homosexual
parents (LM and GF):
· Are much more
likely to have received welfare (IBF 17%; LM 69%; GF 57%)
· Have lower educational
attainment
· Report less safety and
security in their family of origin
· Report more ongoing
"negative impact" from their family of origin
· Are more likely to suffer
from depression
· Have been arrested more often
· If they are female, have had
more sexual partners--both male and female
The
following…are some additional areas in which the children of lesbian
mothers (who represented 71% of all the children with homosexual
parents in this study) differed from the IBF children, in ways that were
statistically significant in both a direct comparison and with controls.
Children of lesbian mothers:
· Are more likely to be
currently cohabiting
· Are almost 4 times more
likely to be currently on public assistance
· Are less likely to be
currently employed full-time
· Are more than 3 times more
likely to be unemployed
· Are nearly 4 times more
likely to identify as something other than entirely
heterosexual
· Are 3 times as likely to have
had an affair while married or cohabiting
· Are an astonishing 10
times more likely to have been "touched sexually by a parent or other
adult caregiver."
· Are nearly 4 times as likely
to have been "physically forced" to have sex against their will
· Are more likely to have
"attachment" problems related to the ability to depend on others
· Use marijuana more frequently
· Smoke more frequently
· Watch TV for long periods
more frequently
· Have more often pled guilty
to a non-minor offense
The third
reason why we ought to oppose what is called gay marriage is for the purpose of
giving hope to those who ensnared in this sin. Legalization legitimizes a
behavior. It expresses social approval. And if homosexual behavior is viewed
with approval, what social incentives are there for homosexuals to change?
Approval only confirms them in their sinful and self-destructive ways and
offers them no hope of escape. If we love them and care for them—and we
should—we will tell them that their behavior is unacceptable to God and
offensive to him, but that his mercy is great, and if they turn to him he will
forgive their sins and give them the power to overcome their temptations and
change their desires (1 Cor. 6:9-11). You can find many wonderful and very
moving testimonies online.[5]
The
fourth reason we ought to oppose what is called gay marriage is that widespread
acceptance and practice of homosexual behavior and other sexual perversions
will be visited with the wrath of God. We have, of course, the example of Sodom
and Gomorrah (not that homosexual behavior was the only sin
that led to their downfall, but it was certainly a prominent reason). In
addition, we have the warning of Leviticus 18:24-30 and the teaching of Paul in
Romans 1:18-27.
If This Then That
We are
naïve to think that recognizing homosexual relationships as the moral and legal
equivalent of marriage is where the matter ends because the reasoning which is
used to justify it will inevitably lead us to justify polygamy, incest, and
even pedophilia. If all that is necessary is an emotional bond where two people
profess their love for each other, then on what rational basis can we limit the
relationship to just two? Is it not inherently discriminatory to polyamorous
people to prevent them from marrying? Why shouldn’t marriage
involve more than two so long as they can say, “But we love each
other”?[6]
On what
rational basis can we deny marriage to a brother and sister who profess their
love for each other, or between a mother and her son, or a father and his
daughter? I mean, if they really love each other? We can no
longer use the excuse that children born to incestuous relationships are more
likely to have birth defects, because after all there is always the pill, and
if that fails there is always abortion, or if Peter Singer has his way,
infanticide.[7]
Further,
if “love” is the only requirement for sex or marriage why not an
adult and a child, if the child is willing?[8]
My point
is that the rationale or the logic used to justify same-sex marriage
necessarily leads us to this brave new world where anyone could marry (or at
least have sex with) anyone and as many anyones as they profess to love.
But
perhaps the most troubling aspect of the SCOTUS decisions last week is the
assumption, clearly written into the opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy for the
majority in the DOMA case, that those who oppose the legalization of gay
marriage are motivated by hate. Justice Antonin Scalia put his finger on this
when he wrote in his scathing dissent that the court has adjudged those who
oppose gay marriage to be “enemies of the human race,” and that by so opposing
it we intend to “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate”
homosexuals.
Even
though the DOMA decision only affects the definition of marriage for federal
purposes—striking down the requirement that marriage necessarily involves a man
and a woman—the reasoning of the court will necessarily lead to challenges of
state law. If limiting marriage to the union of a man and woman at the federal
level is hateful and discriminatory, why wouldn’t this be true at the state
level? And if so, the situation will have to be remedied.
The
redefinition of marriage will also have a huge impact on religious liberty. If
opposition to gay marriage is hateful and bigoted then clearly such opposition
cannot be tolerated. They try to assure us that it will not impinge on
religious freedom, by which they mean that ministers and churches will not be
forced to participate in homosexual unions. But that is the limit of their idea
of religious freedom with regard to this issue.
There has
been, of late, a troubling change in terminology by members of the current
administration, a change from talking about freedom of religion to
freedom of worship.[9] The change may
seem inconsequential, but it is potentially very far reaching in its
implications. Worship can be taken to mean “what you do in church.” If this
change in terminology reflects an underlying shift from the exercise of
religion in the broad sense that the First Amendment undoubtedly has in view,
to “what you do in church on Sunday morning,” then what this effectively means
is that you may behave as a Christian when you are in church, but not
elsewhere.
The First
Amendment might well keep clergy from being forced to celebrate same-sex
weddings, but their lay coreligionists will not enjoy similar protections, nor
will their educational and social-service institutions long escape
discrimination in licensing and government contracting. From the wedding on
through the honeymoon and into common life, couples transact as a
couples with countless people. Photographers, caterers, innkeepers,
adoption agency officials, parochial school administrators, counselors,
foster-care and adoption providers, and others will be forced to comply with
the revisionist view or lose their jobs.
We are
not scaremongering: we are taking revisionists at their word. If support
for conjugal marriage [dje – traditional marriage to the exclusion of
“gay marriage”] really is like racism, we need only ask how civil society
treats racists. We marginalize and stigmatize them. Thus, in a rare departure
from professional norms, a prominent law firm in April 2011 reneged on its
commitment to defend the Defense of Marriage Act for the House of
Representatives. In Canada, Damian Goddard was fired from his job as a sportscaster
for expressing on Twitter support for conjugal marriage. A Georgia counselor
contracted by the Centers for Disease Control was fired after an investigation
into her religiously motivated decision to refer someone in a same-sex
relationship to another counselor. A ministry in New Jersey lost its tax-exempt
status for denying a lesbian couple use of its facility for a same-sex wedding.
A photographer was prosecuted in the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for
declining to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.
The
courts are already eroding freedoms in this area, as champions of the rights of
conscience have shown. In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to give
up its adoption services rather than violate its principles by placing children
with same-sex cohabitants. When public schools began teaching students about
same-sex civil marriage, precisely on the ground that it was now the law of the
commonwealth, a Court of Appeals ruled that parents had no right to exempt
their students. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reports that over “350
separate state anti-discrimination provisions would likely be triggered by
recognition of same-sex marriage.”
Because
of the mutual influence of law and culture, moreover, emerging legal trends are
mirrored by social ones. The dismissal of the conjugal view as bigotry has
become so deeply entrenched among revisionists that a Washington Post story
drew denunciations and cries of journalistic bias for even implying that one
conjugal view advocate was “sane” and “thoughtful.” Outraged readers compared
the profile to a hypothetical puff piece on a Ku Klux Klan member.[10]
Conclusion
It
remains to be seen just how hard and how consistently the proponents of gay
marriage are willing to suppress dissent, but at this point things do not look
good for those who are anything other than enthusiastic cheerleaders for the
cause.
In the
meantime let us be remember that “no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can
avail against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). He is not worried. Rebellion against the
Lord is doomed to failure.
Why do
the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings
of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us
burst their bonds apart
and cast their cords from us.”
He who
sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he
will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury (Ps. 2:1-5)
One last
thing: the political and legal battles must be fought, and thank God for
those individuals and organizations who are on the frontline, but that is only
one aspect of the warfare. The other—and more important one—is the Christian
family. Never underestimate the powerful witness of a home that is filled with
love and joy and peace as a result of the grace of Jesus Christ. It is a beautiful thing.
Let’s strive to live in such a way in our own families so that when others see
it they can’t help but say, “I want that!”
[1] http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/2482?page=4
[2] Justice
Samuel Alito in dissent in the DOMA case as quoted in “The Supreme Court, You
and Me, and the Future of Marriage,”
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/06/10455/ by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P.
George
[3] Sherif
Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, What is Marriage? Man
and Woman: A Defense (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2012)
[4] See
the results of the study released last year by Mark Regnerus, “How different
are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings
from the New Family Structures Study”
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610); for an
overview of the study see “New Study on Homosexual Parents Tops All Previous
Research,” by Peter Sprigg
(http://www.frc.org/issuebrief/new-study-on-homosexual-parents-tops-all-previous-research)
[5] https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ex-Homosexual-Through-Jesus-Christ/227709067265250
[6] “Plural
marriage supporters find hope in this week’s court rulings”
(http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=25771381). The ACLU’s official position is
favorable to polygamy (http://www.acluutah.org/pluralmarriage.htm)
[7] “Taking
Life: Humans” and excerpt from Practical Ethics, 2nd edition,
Cambridge, 1993, pp. 175-217
http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/1993----.htm ; see also Alberto
Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, “After-birth abortion: why should the
baby live?”
(http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411.full.pdf+html)
[8] “Pedophiles
want same rights as homosexuals: Claim unfair to be stigmatized for
sexual orientation,” http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=11517
[9] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/july/2.12.html
[10] Sherif
Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, What is Marriage? Man
and Woman: A Defense (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2012)
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