Subversive Christian Unity

I return to my occasional subject of men, women and marriage, earthly mirror of Christ and the church, that great mystery. I do it with diffidence.  I cannot say I understand the mystery from either side. The heavenly mystery of the church as Christ's bride is difficult to understand. It could be I do not quite understand the earthly and commonplace side of it either. Women can be confusing to men: I expect that to pass muster as a self-evident proposition. When I do not understand something, storytelling may be more helpful to me than logical exposition. Here are some stories that seem cogent. The knight Fairhands (Beaumains) and Lady Linet From Malory's Arthur, the story of a knight assigned to serve and protect a woman who thinks he does nothing right. She nags and belittles and says King Arthur should have assigned her a better knight. He succeeds in his quest anyway, and weds her more appreciative sister, the noblewoman on whose ...

Here is another of the species of papal pronouncements that I have dubbed Francisisms : headline-grabbing, crowd-pleasing remarks by Pope Francis that later need to be walked back by others in his church. What you thought you heard was not what was truly said, or meant at least. "May 4, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, considered second only to the pope as the Vatican's authority on doctrinal matters, has responded to the question of whether Pope Francis’ recent exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, has opened the door to giving Communion to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s response is unambiguous: the Church’s teaching cannot be changed, and the exhortation did not do so." Read more:  Cardinal Müller: Pope’s exhortation does not allow Communion for divorced/remarried | News | LifeSite : 'via Blog this'

Lately I have been trying out online dating. To explain the process for those men who have not tried it, it consists of driving all over town to meet women who are nothing like their online profiles. In most cases, there is no deceptiveness involved. It is simply that it is very hard for people objectively to describe themselves and candidly explain what sort of match they are looking for. The problem is even greater if you are seeking a woman who understands and approves the traditional and biblically mandated roles in Christian marriage. Our society has largely turned against such ideas and failed to follow them. Thus, there are not a whole lot of examples of that kind of marriage for people in our society to look at and learn from. The best place to encounter such an example is, doubtless, in one's own home growing up, but such homes appear to be uncommon. I certainly saw nothing of the sort as a child. Many women cannot recognize the Christian pattern as the good idea that...

I have been watching the homosexual schism with interest. By that I mean churches distancing themselves from one another and sometimes splitting up within, over the issues of gay sex and gay marriage. As a student of church schisms it is interesting to have one unfold before my eyes. I have heard, over and over, assurances from traditionalists that having gay desires is never the sin, the sin consists only in homosexual copulation. I have a question about that. I am not sure I am able to figure out an answer. Check out the sidebar: I am not here to propose final answers but to raise questions. If looking at a woman to lust after her is a sin, how is it not sin if one looks instead at a man? What if for years many of us have been reading it wrong, and the problem with a man looking at a woman lustfully is not that it is in itself sin, but predisposes us to the thing that is the real sin, causing us to surrender in advance to the temptation, taking away our resistance to sinning s...

By Charles Marsh Secular society has wrecked itself utterly in the matter of how, typically, women and men in love relate to one another. The secular view is that love is all about attraction and affection and that it is measured by the strength and urgency of our feelings. Quite often the secular thinking is echoed and believed by people in the church, to their detriment. I would like to draw this to the attention of both women and men. We need to reexamine relationships and how they work. What we do, based on wrong expectations, is find someone who sparks our flame and stokes our fire and think we have thereby found a candidate to give us lifelong bliss. We have the qualifications wrong because the job of wife or husband is actually a bit more involved than tab A into slot B. The wrong understanding is the result of a secular worldview that excludes the supernatural, exalts the merely material and physical, and sees people as meaty machinery rather than liv...

"The traditional viewpoint makes our families inherently part of the sacred order of things, a consistent part of, and continuous with, what the church says, is and models to the world." I here revisit the topics of the bride of Christ and human marriage. To the extent that churches do not honor Christian marriage in its historical, first and lasting meaning they mar their witness about Christ and the way he honors his church. The one is our example to understand the other. If we say that men may marry men, or women women, or that marriage is not that important and Christian men and women can casually cohabit and have affairs or divorce for convenience just like their worldly neighbors, we do not have an example to use in illustration when we talk about Christ and the church. We also have lots of people not as happy as they ought to be, in a matter that should be joyous, even profoundly so, the joining of women and men. So then, consider this a plea, pleadingly plead...

The man is to lay down his life for the woman. This means that all his life decisions are framed with her safety and wellbeing in mind as matters of highest priority. I was called to task for something I wrote lately . The charge against me was that I had taken too high a view of Christian marriage. The particulars of the charge were as follows. Surely, with all the dysfunction and divorce going on, I was too idealistic about marriage and the good it can, and should, produce. I was thus too negative toward those who opt for alternatives to marriage, such as living together or having a long term affair. I deny the charge. The divorces that I see involve violations, whether by one spouse or both, of the way marriage is intended to work. I heard of a case where a husband divorced his wife because of her mental health issues. Whither, then, "in sickness or in health"? The only way such a divorce could at all be conceived of as a loving act is if he were the cause of her m...

Grace is given to us not so that we can excuse our own sinful purposes but so that we can fulfil God's higher and better purposes for us. The misuse of God's grace to excuse (not only forgive) things God calls sin is the problem leading to schism. "Go and sin no more" turns into "go and sin."  Love does not mean that one is infinitely indulgent. God is infinite in love, but his word promises us either his mercy or his wrath. Of course it does not diminish the goodness of God that some people will not like their eternal outcomes. God is good, whether or not you choose to join into that with him. We risk doing the sinner no good,  but harm instead, when we assure him that whatever his moral failings, God's grace is sufficient for him. While saying so is true in a very real sense, it is dangerously misleading if the statement is not carefully qualified. Antinomianism is false, after all, and it comes to us speaking those very same words. It is dange...

In previous posts, here  and here , I put forth the problem of unrequited love between man and woman as analogous to people's rejection of God's love, and their condemnation to an eternity without God's favor as the result. It is not a perfect analogy but I think it is a sensible one. If the church is the bride of Christ, it is safe to say that those who reject him hold no such status--they could if they would, but they won't. This is rather like the situation of my unhappy young friend Jack. Anna could be the bride of Jack, if she would have it so, but she simply won't. Who in this world is (are) the bride of Christ? I would say, in a genial and ecumenical spirit, that it is all who love the Lord in sincerity. (Eph. 6:24) No narrower definition, such as just Catholics or just Protestants or only left handed evangelical Baptists, really does justice to what scripture is trying to tell us. Christ loves you. Love him back--the real Christ and not some false image o...

In a previous installment I told of the woes of Jack Clark, a mentee of mine who had come to the end of things with his erstwhile girlfriend, Anna.* He had thoughts toward marriage and children, and she had wanted nothing of that. I suggested to him that he look into the apostle Paul's teaching about the church as the bride of Christ, and the reflection we see of that in the secular matter of women, men and marriage. I thought that would gain him a wider perspective in which to evaluate his own woes. I hinted that there was more besides in the rest of scripture, that shows us the true nature and high significance of being created male and female; Paul is not speaking in a vacuum. I was fortunate to come across a brilliant short talk by N.T. Wright which ties up a good deal of the biblical imagery and thought in an overview. Of course I thought Jack had to see it, and we watched it together when he visited me again. I thought I would post it here too. Jack's feelings by ...

A young man came to see me the other day. I had not seen him for several years, but I remembered him clearly. I had been, I hope, of some help to him previously in his spiritual growth, as his teacher, challenging him and offering the kinds of unsolicited advice that a young man may see as helpful in retrospect, if not at the time. He was back now seeking advice. There was this girl, see... As he talked about her it was clear that he was thoroughly smitten. Cupid had scored a direct hit. My young friend was head over heels. The trouble was that the young lady returned his affections unequally. She thought he was nice. She wanted to keep him as a friend. She had feelings and desires. As for the rest it was no dice, buster. She didn't want to date him anymore, now that she knew he had real and deep feelings for her--feelings of love, the real and dangerous kind that can spin your life around. His thoughts had turned to marriage and children and committing his life to her happine...