A reader quotes an earlier one:
Perhaps we should apply that same formula to heterosexuals. Who needs another human being when there’s God? In fact, it’s pretty obvious that any relationship OTHER than one’s relationship with God is inferior, a distraction from our one and only necessary relationship. Right?
Although I don’t think he sincerely believed it, my evangelical, heterosexual father expressed precisely the theological stance this reader posits sarcastically: Marriage was provided by God as a moral option for humans too weak in the flesh to commit fully to a relationship with God. Of course this in no way supports an argument that heterosexual marriage is fine and homosexual isn’t, but it does display a fascinating worldview. There is a higher morality that humans are invited, but not expected, to achieve.
The evangelical reader who started the thread follows up:
I’m very grateful for your posting of my earlier comments on this topic! I don’t want to fill up your inbox and use too much of your team’s time. But I get the impression that you don’t get too much evangelical input. This email is sent in reaction to your reader in Dissent of the Day, Ctd.
Your reader is absolutely right that the evangelical church cannot talk with credibility about same-sex marriage without a coherent theology of singleness and heterosexual marriage. Western society seems to treat single people as though they are living a kind of maimed half-life, robbed of ultimate fulfilment and human wholeness (and devaluing aromantic friendship, as you pointed out recently). It’s unsurprising that opposition to same-sex marriage attracts such ire in this context.
The Biblical viewpoint is very different (even if, sadly, that isn’t always what we see in churches). According to the Apostle Paul, singleness (for whatever reason) is a gift, neither superior not inferior to marriage. Indeed, he insists that marriage has tremendous dangers:
the spouse may become an idol, competing with God for attention (1 Corinthians 7:32-35). If a prospective marriage is going to stop the couple from giving “undivided devotion to the Lord”, they shouldn’t get married. Christian marriage is for those who will glorify God better together. It is, emphatically, not to fill some sort of gap in our hearts/ we should be looking to Christ to fill that gap. As Vaughan says, the fulfilment of our relational longings is found in knowing the God who made us: the evangelical position would be inexcusable were it not for this fact.
Every Christian – male or female, gay or straight, married or single – in reality already has a bridegroom. In Hosea 2, God declares his intentions regarding his rebellious people:
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her… I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in unfailing love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.
And let’s not forget that the word “know” here is the same verb used when Adam “knew” Eve; intimacy with God is total intimacy in every dimension. From the Biblical perspective, earthly marriage is just a shadow of this heavenly union, when Christ will become “one flesh” with his church (Ephesians 5:25-33). I was foolish to describe God giving himself to us “in return”, as though this were some kind of transaction; I meant that walking more closely with God is always worth it (not just theologically, but emotionally and experientially) because one is walking more closely with God. Whenever we disobey his commands, we are defrauding ourselves of our joy, precisely because we have taken our eyes off God.
Another responds to that reader’s first email:
The “dissent of the day” reflects why all too many Americans, especially young Americans, are moving further and further away from evangelical and fundamentalist churches. Once, as a very young, enthusiastic (and often naively egotistical) evangelical several decades ago now, I used a “Christian cliche” in a college class, the metaphor from the Revelation about “the blood of the lamb.” Some astute “non-believer” (to me) asked me if I meant literal lamb’s blood. I had a difficult time explaining what the metaphor even meant, let alone why I was using it, because I was conditioned to use it within “the tribe,” the evangelicals with whom I had associated.
These types of Christians, in their attempt to explain their theology of sex do themselves no favor by wrapping their fear of their own bodes and the world around them with such a high view of God that God ends up being so ultimate, so necessary to our existence that anything short of “Him and Him alone” means a failed life. How demeaning is that to our full humanity, one shared even by God Himself, to those of us who hold to the incarnation? How much this clap-trap sounds like the same old tired God who claims to give us free will but only if we willingly deny that free will for him, a God who sounds more like a kidnapper, holding us hostage and saying we have the freedom to leave but He will kill us if we do? What kind of freedom is that?
I don’t think too many of those in the American evangelical camp can quite grasp the disdain all too many have to them in this culture because no matter how hard they try, sincerity comes across as sanctimony.
The Dish 