What makes traditional marriage traditional?

I've been thinking about the phrase "traditional marriage", and wondering how the concept of "traditional" is being applied. I concluded that it must be related to time; the length of a practice and its repetition renders something a tradition.

And so I decided to look at the "one man, one woman" argument, commonly known as "traditional marriage" from the perspective of time.

Turns out polygany (one man, more than one woman) was alive and well in Christianity until relatively recently.

• Paul counseled that church leaders have only one wife, which makes it pretty clear that it wasn't a requirement for regular Christians.
• Augustine and St. Basil of Caesarea both wrote about it in the 4th century. Socrates of Constantinople addressed it in the 5th century.
• Even Reformation hero Martin Luther thought it was permissible under some circumstances, saying:

"I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture. If a man wishes to marry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may do so in accordance with the word of God. In such a case the civil authority has nothing to do in the matter." 

• In simultaneous contrast, the Council of Trent took a firm stance on the issue however in 1563, finally declaring polygany and concubinage anathema.

So. Let's ignore the polygany that continues to occur in Mormon circles etc., and call 1563 the beginning of "one man, one woman." That means that what people are calling "traditional marriage" has been the standard for 452 years as of the date of this writing.

I think Abraham is the first biblical example of polygany, and he walked the earth around 2,000BCE. If I do the math, that means that for at least 3,563 years, marriage between one man and more than one woman was occurring among the faithful.

That's 3,563 years of polygany compared to 452 years of "one man, one woman".

Which, then, is more "traditional"?

On Romans 1 and 2

Someone in an online discussion about same sex marriage asked me how I filtered Romans 1 and 2 through the lens of Christ.

First let's do what Jesus does and consider the individual person and situation. Just as each of the gospels is written by a different individual having different gifts and backgrounds and speaking to different audiences, so do the epistles. In this case we are talking about Paul. A Pharisee, someone who never spent time with Jesus or observed him in action. Called by God to make use of his education, skill, and passion to make up for the persecution of those who walked in The Way.

The audience is the nascent church in Rome. The gentile population in Rome was exposed to the worship of multiple gods. (I've stood within the Pantheon that is still located there which points out that reality.) Paul speaks to the young Christians and acknowledges that even the pagans had an understanding of "God" in their hearts, despite not having grown up with the Jewish understanding. And he warns this group to be careful that now that they have been informed about Jesus, they should not mingle their theology with the old ways. He mentions making idols that look like birds and animals etc. And those old ways of worshiping lower case gods were characterized by many negative characteristics, including debased sexual practices.

Paul pulls out his extensive understanding of scripture to try to convince the population that bad things will happen if they try to mix gods and God. Just as it was bad for the band that had been freed from Egypt.

He talks about lusts. Lusting is bad. It's often coupled with coveting, fornication, and adultery. And that goes for all humans, regardless of orientation. In verse 24 he talks about dishonering of their bodies, perhaps in reference to masturbation (an action clearly not limited to homosexuals.) In verse 27 he talks about being "consumed with passion". God does not want us to be consumed with anything but him. He wants all of our being to focus on him, and our sexuality to be channeled through that relationship.

But it is interesting that there is such a focus on just the sexual statements, when the list of bad stuff is long. And many of those bad behaviors run just as rampant in Christian circles as in pagan.

Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ... 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

I wish that I could say this list of crappy behaviors is not found among Christians. But sadly that would be a lie. In recent online discussions about the same sex marriage ruling by the Supreme Court, I have seen countless examples of Christian malice, slander, insolence, haughtiness, boastfulness, and heartlessness. The passage above says that the wrath of God is against ALL the ungodliness and unrighteousness included in that list. But unlike those very Christians who act in these ways, I will not proclaim, as if carrying God's holy hammer of justice, that they will burn in hell.

For God himself knows more than all of us. And he sent Jesus Christ so that we could be saved by grace, through faith. And Romans warns us that reliance on law makes us subject to the law.

As for me, I accept Jesus' offer which Paul describes. I return to the covenant of Abraham; a relationship that took place prior to Moses and his thousands of rules.

Our bigender God

My wife and I have been thinking a lot about gender lately.

An article my daughter posted pointed out the layers of complexity of the issue which Caitlyn Jenner brought to America's door step. Women have been working for generations to not be labeled as simply soft, vulnerable, lipstick-slathered corset wearers. For over a century we've been trying to get society to accept that having the equipment necessary to grow babies doesn't mean women should be prevented from voting, or get paid less, or be kept out of scientific circles because of our emotional mushiness and our distracting sexiness.

Meanwhile, here comes Caitlyn, posing in undergarments and talking about being glad she can wear fingernail polish long enough for it to chip. Bruce fought for the chance to transform into Caitlyn and now talks about the relief of being able to chat with a group of women about what dress to wear to dinner. The excitement about her new ability to "act like a girl" is palpable.

It's all very confusing.

But reading through some of Caitlyn's interviews raised an interesting point. She mentions having been given the soul of a woman.

Here's what the scriptures say about the creation of humans.

Gen. 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

I'd not really thought about the fullness of what this means until recently. I'd always focused on the binary statement of what He made: male OR female. But what this statement says is so much more profound than that, because it speaks not only about us as human beings, but about who God is. And that's a biggie.

Apparently the image of God is male AND female. (Not neither male nor female. BOTH male and female.)

I've always believed in traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity (vive la différence!), and have associated each with particular body types. I've also believed that this gender assignment remains beyond those bodies, traveling with us into eternity.

But lately I've been thinking more deeply about this question. When we are no longer equipped with genitalia, Adam's apples, or bone structure, what will our gender resemble? Will our presences in the mystical state known as heaven be intensified versions of binary genders, or will our spirits broaden to be even more like God. More fully both, just as He is?

Paul seems to think it's the latter:

Gal. 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And since this is the case, aren't people who are gender fluid actually more God-like than those of us who binarily gender identify?

In reading these scriptures, I think the answer has to be yes.

If the scriptures are unchanging then they are dead

Hebrews 4:12

Evangelical Christians often proclaim that the scriptures are alive and yet unchanging and unchangeable. But let's look at what it means to have life. Here's a definition from www.dictionary.com.

 LIFE: The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally. 

If the scriptures are alive, then they can't be unchanging. The only things that don't change are those that are already dead, or those that never contained life in the first place.

The act of living is a process of transformation and change on all sorts of levels. In the case of a plant, water permeates a seed and swells the cells until they burst forth as a shoot and push out into the air. Then air and water and light are transformed into energy and growth occurs. Eventually flowers come and more seeds are produced and then the plant dies and decomposes and the process of change moves on to some other life form.

The process is similar for pretty much all life forms: insemination, birth, growth, response to stimuli, death.

So listen up, conservative Evangelical Christians. You have to choose:

Either the scriptures are unchanging, and therefore dead. Or they are living, and therefore equipped for change and adaptation.

Forgive me, my sweet, atheistic prophet

After reading Jesus' excoriation of the pharisees in Matthew chapter 23, I've been thinking about the prophets. Here's why:

³³ “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? ³⁴ Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.

The passage came up while I was writing this post: Jesus was talking to us when He spoke back then. Except for this one part. I've been thinking about it ever since, and contemplating what it means to be a prophet.

The traditional Christian view of prophets comes from the Hebrew scriptures, with John the Baptist bringing up the tail end. (I've even heard him called the last of the prophets.) This crowd of greats preached repentance and a turning away from other gods: "Turn back, oh man, or be consumed by fires and floods and pestilence."

But here we have Jesus telling us that He will send prophets, sages, and teachers. So who are these modern day speakers of God's truths to the religious who refuse to listen?

Turns out my daughter was one. For years she tried to open my Pharisaical heart to truths that I could not allow myself to embrace. She tried to explain that my views on gender were narrow minded and culturally inflicted. She told me stories of the good people she knew who were transgender. She debated with me about the causes and social ramifications of homosexuality. And she did all this gently, and for the most part, very patiently. She knew I was like those Pharisees that Jesus disdains, and I think she also knew that she would not be able to persuade me of the truth of her words.

And so I say now, on the record and officially, that I'm sorry, my brilliant and beautiful atheist. You were right. I couldn't hear it, and I was like the pre-Paul Saul, on fire with my own inaccurate idea of who God was.

I hope I can be as brave and truthful a prophet as you some day.

Jesus was talking to us when He spoke back then. Except for this one part.

A week or so ago I was called "a special kind of stupid" for sharing this in response to a conservative evangelical Christian's post about the Caitlyn Jenner hype:

In the same thread, another person said I was preaching "the Gospel according to Suzanne" because I suggested that when the Bible doesn't speak of an issue (in this case, transgender individuals), we must always approach it with love.

Over the same timeframe, my children's picture book, Rumplepimple was launched. This tore open the wound my relationship with my wife Diane has created with her beloved sister. Rumplepimple is a dog who's family structure mirrors ours; he has a sister cat and two moms. Diane's heart has been sick over her sister's unwillingness to engage in conversation about God's view of same sex relationships. Having come from the same background, she understands the conservative evangelical view because she held it. Given my Catholic background, I also get it. But our attempts to explore the scriptures about the issue with her sister have been met with slammed conversational doors at best, and claims of religious persecution at worst.

So I've been pondering. And as part of these ponderings, I thought about Jesus who was harsh to only two groups: those who turned His father's house into a marketplace, and the pharisees, who blocked the way to the kingdom and bore their religiosity like a golden hammer.

Evangelical Christians tend toward a Bible-alone theology, and tend to believe that the scriptures are evergreen in their entirety. The approach generally seems to be that all the rules presented then still apply. (Except in the case of things like hair cuts, fabric composition, stonings, and dozens of others dismissively lumped into "Old Covenant". I've dealt with this inconsistency in previous posts, so I'm brushing over all of that now.) What struck me today was a new kind of hypocrisy.

It seems as if this particular brand of modern Christians dismisses the entirety of Matthew 23, apparently deeming it as merely historical. Perhaps snickering at those persnickety Pharisees, who counted cumin seeds and nagged about unclean creatures in the meager wine cups of the poor. These moderns seem to feel good about what they believe is a simpler relationship, based on faith alone, and if Jesus' woes apply to anyone, it's to the Roman Catholics.

But this is exactly the kind of viperish hypocrisy which Jesus condemned. Out of one side of the pulpit we hear that all of the scriptures continue to apply to Christians today: all the parables, all Paul's warnings about sin, and most especially those meager mentions of same sex relations.

But that same pulpit doesn't seem to think Jesus' woes should be viewed as a warning to God's people today. And that seems exceedingly odd, given the unprecedented harshness of Jesus' stance, and the sheer force of His derisive disapproval.

Jesus never speaks to anyone in the scriptures that way again. It's to this group of rule-wielding God defenders alone that He unleashes the full force of His verbal condemnation. And remember, conservative evangelicals, this warning is evergreen. He's still unleashing His disapproval on those of you who continue to do it today:

Matt 23:13 "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces." 35 "And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth"