Marriage and Sex In The City

Well, not so much about sex, but I'd like to look at what we on the Jesus Bus believe about marriage. Yesterday sorta' touched on the subject, when I wrote about some of my personal experience. If you ever saw the TV show Sex in the City, you get an idea about how marriage is viewed (by some) in modern Amerika. Oh, we like the sex play, but as far as having any remote idea about marriage as it was intended by it's Creator, not. The city of man has it all wrong. I hope to avoid going into autobiographical accounts about the subject, although there are a bunch of illustrations I could use from my experience. Maybe?


There I was, driving along I-80, westbound, in the western part of Nebraska. I was, as I did daily, thinking about whether it would be OK if I just left my wife. You know, she basically ignores everything I have to say, except she remembers to always feel slighted by any thing that I say uncomplimentary. And she watches Sex In The City...


Now there's a program that is 21st Century Amerika. Problem is that many are so completely
post modern in their thinking that they can't even recognize that it really is nothing more than a mockery of women. But it's funny, right. Ugh.


The marriage theme has been a topic of political discussion in the recent past. When I was a single guy, all of this marriage stuff was a topic pushed onto the back burner by me. It was mostly irrelevant. Just another mass of modern nonsense, that keeps others busy with some silly dogfights. I kept it all at arm's length. No sense getting all tangled up in someone else's brawl. It's another one of those modern debates that up until I became married, I had no skin in the game. And as usual, each side postures to defend its own position, in an effort, not to do what is right, but rather to justify their actions. When the christian community surrendered the book of Genesis to the religious revisionists, they gave up the scriptural basis for marriage. It's been given away.


What did Jesus have to say about it? Here is a passage where Jesus is involved in a debate about marriage. Guess it always was a hot topic. It's only after the fact, that I discovered just how relevant this passage is. I never in my wildest imagination thought that I would have the least concern about the subject. You know, I won't ever marry someone who has er, ah, problems. I have a lot to learn, boys and girls.


Mt 19:3 And certain Pharisees came to him,
testing him, and saying, Is it right for a man
to put away his wife for every cause?


4 And he said in answer, Have you not seen in
the Writings, that he who made them at the first
made them male and female, and said,


(In verse four, don't miss the point about 'who made them at the first'.)


5 For this cause will a man go away from his
father and mother, and be joined to his wife;
and the two will become one flesh?


6 So that they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Then let not that which has been joined by G-d
be parted by man.


7 They say to him, Why then did Moses give
orders that a husband might give her a statement
in writing and be free from her?


8 He says to them, Moses, because of your hard
hearts, let you put away your wives: but it has
not been so from the first.


9 And I say to you, Whoever puts away his wife
for any other cause than the loss of her virtue,
and takes another, is a false husband: and he
who takes her as his wife when she is put away,
is no true husband to her.


10 The disciples say to him, If this is the
position of a man in relation to his wife, it is
better not to be married.


Hmmmm. Looks to me like Jesus, in his own subtle way, is telling them that if they were not
so messed up to begin with, they wouldn't even be asking this question.


The disciples get it (this time). I get the impression that they didn't like it, though.


As an aside, notice that the concept of marriage is explicitly an arrangement between a man and a woman. OK. You want something homosexical. Fine. Just don't call it marriage. That's totally offensive to hijack a timeless tradition in order to accomodate deviant proclivities.


Here's the part that's a puzzle to me. There is no outcry. The whole concept of modern marriage has been degraded to the point that there is even a discussion about homosexical marriage. You've come a long way baby.


Anyway, it seems that the crux of the issue is that, even in Jesus' day, men had a sense of helplessness about their relationship to their wives. And not being able to hold over their head the threat of divorce, was being put in a position of defeat. You have to recall back in that time, when a woman was divorced she did not get an alimony. Without a husband she was economically abandoned. So, the threat of divorce gave a husband a means of defending himself against any foolishness on the part of the wife.


The part that is most sad to me is the realization that I came to, that in marriage as in all of human interaction, there is the base human instinct that longs for power. The object is all about who has 'control' over the situation. The feud is always smoldering in the background somewhere. The kids pick up on the rebellion on the part of the wife and then they learn to play it for all it's worth. They want to have it their way too. Let's just go to Burger King.


The original intent is that there is a hierarchy, designed by the Creator. He sits in his rightful position at the top of the hierarchy. He is a magnanimous king. We, as his subjects, will find our greatest satisfaction in following his intent, because it is where we will find our greatest reward. He knows what's best for us just like a parent knows what's best for their child. A husband has his place, and a wife has her place. The idea is that the Creator provides for the husband, the husband provides for the wife. The larger part of that provision, is the idea of guidance. The Creator says that there are things that I need to get done. The husband recognizes these things, and says to his wife, there are things that we need to do, in order for the plan of G-d to unfold.


Not such a bad scheme, if you ask me. But, it's not hard to see that it has been ignored. Now, we are entertained by TV programs about whores living glamourous lives in NYC. Wonderful. ( Outstanding role models for the young women of Amerika! \sarcasm ). Does art imitate reality or does reality imitate art? All I can tell is that we've come a long way from 'Happy Days'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Days


Beyond all of this, there is another level of significance in marriage. It represents the union between Christ and the church. Over and over in the hebrew scripture, the nation is portrayed as an unfaithful wife. They have not been true to the Lord. For those of us on the Jesus Bus, there is a much deeper significance to the marriage covenant, and it needs to be carefully guarded against degradation at the hands of the secular agenda. It's not an issue of power or
control. It's an issue of order. Once order is gone, nobody is in control. Look familiar?

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Correction. Just got Acts and Facts from ICR. I said that the Bible is not a science text.
Look at this link.

http://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_tbiatos/

Look at their position. I will have to clarify my own position in the context of a prior post.