People want to discuss or debate the lagalities or "rights" of gay marriage but I want to ask a deeper question, why should the church being doing marraiges that are sanctioned by the empire or state? Do our rights come from God or the state and does the state sanction the church today? The family in the Scriptures are to be under God's rule and kingdom and resist the ways of the world. Unless one is part of an Almish family, the family has taken its marching orders more from the world than it has from scripture or the church. The family is not only in trouble but it has already been redefined way before people started bringing up the gay marriage issue. If all marriage is about as a contract between two-consenting adults then why not a whole lot of alternative situations that our society has not even talked about yet (it may get there if society hasn't totally disintegrated before then).
Christian families for the most part do not disciple one another in the home. People expect the church to disciple their children and the church expects the parents to do it so hardly anyone is doing it. One would be hard-pressed to find families that have "alter-times" or moments of prayer, worship, and Bible study. Parents for the most part do not have "faith-talks" with their children and in our American society or privacy and everyone owns their own home, Christian homes as places of hospitality and open to strangers is almost non-existent. These were the defining marks of kingdom families in the early church that has been lost by modern families in our industrialized and materialistic age.
Marriage is not only entangled with the state but for many churches and ministers who perform weddings, it does not matter whether the people are believers or not or whether they havbe been married multiple times. The church has been living with these compromises for so long that when it comes to the relationship between the church and state, it has been for better or for worse.
Christian marriage is not just a contract or covenant but it is a sacrament. Marriage is not about individuals but its about families and their relationship to God's kingdom and church. Marriage and eucharist were integrated historically but since they have been separated, so the direction of marriage has become secularized and has lost much of its meaning. For marriage to be fully Christian, this divine mandate to discipleship must be regained or marriage will continue to lose itself to both the state and continue to lose its value in our modern world.
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