In Western culture today, both in the “secular world” and among many Christians, the institution of marriage is a mess.
Most people would say that marriage should be based in love, and by that they mean romantic love. (The Bible uses the word “eros” for this kind of love.) Love is that funny feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you think of the other person. The joy you find in being together, and the longing you experience when you are apart. You tell your friends, “this may be the one!” And if that feeling lasts… you get married.
Even when that feeling fades (and it always does) most marriages are based in “getting my needs met.” We are together with the other person because they meet our emotional, physical, and sexual needs and desires. We enjoy spending time together (for the most part) and there is mutual benefit from the relationship. Of course, that can change. One or both of the partners may no longer feel like they are getting their needs met. Or they no longer find it beneficial to be together. Or maybe they find they just don’t like each other very much. In these cases the marriage ends.
The Bible paints a very different picture of marriage! From God’s perspective, marriage was designed to give us a place to live out a different kind of love. “Agape” love is love that is unconditional and is focused on the needs and desires of the other, not one’s self. The Bible says things like, “submit to one another, out of reverence for Christ.” Submission is all about setting aside one’s own needs and desires for the sake of the other. The goal of Biblical marriage is two people who are so focused on each other that there would never be a thought of bringing that marriage to an end. Biblical marriage is about self-sacrificial love and unconditional commitment to another person for life.
When we consider marriage among Christians, I see two huge problems. The first is this: most Christian marriages look much more like the worldly form of marriage than the one the Bible describes. Christians choose their spouse and decide to marry using the same criteria the rest of the world does. Many Christian couples treat one another the same way their non-believing friends do. Divorce rates among Christians are about the same as in the secular world.
The second problem more insidious, especially when you consider the first. Many Christian churches teach that marriage is the ultimate goal and expression of relationships in life. Young Christian men and women are encouraged to find a Christian spouse so they can experience God’s blessing in their life and live out his plan for believers. In my own denomination I have even heard church officials say the ultimate form of evangelism is “good Lutheran couples having lots of good Lutheran babies.” All this totally ignores the fact that Jesus never married, and that the New Testament also lifts up singleness as a calling and gift from God. The Apostle Paul actually writes that singleness is to be preferred over marriage! (see 1 Corinthians 7) Yet many Christian communities seem to marginalize adults who are not married.
Think of the effect this has on LGBTQ people. In many cases it is the same churches that lift up marriage as the ultimate goal for all people that then tell LGBTQ people that marriage is not an option for them. The not-so-subtle message is, “If you are single there is something wrong with you because God has not blessed you with a spouse, unless of course you are gay and then being single is what God requires of you.”
And when churches DO approve of LGBTQ people marrying, what they are basically doing is inviting them into the same unbiblical ideas about marriage that most Christians have. There is no call to see marriage differently than the rest of the world, and to truly give yourself in sacrificial love to another person.
What a mess.