Exaggerated, unbiblical claims for marriage

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

Many claims for the importance of marriage are exaggerated and unbiblical.

If Jesus thought highly of marriage, why did he not marry?  Was he not
supposed to be in all things like us except that he did not sin?   Would
marriage have been a sin for Jesus?

Admittedly Jesus spiked the punch on the third day of the wedding at Cana,
but is there not a bit of prankishness to this his first recorded miracle?
He turned the water into wine ticked off with his mother for asking him.
Jesus made wine so strong that the master of ceremonies complained:  he said
that Jesus violated custom, and should have made the wine weaker, not
stronger, since the participants had already "drunk freely."

Have you been to a wedding that lasted for three days of heavy drinking?  Is
the heavy drinking the part of the union that marks the wedding as sublimely
holy?

If marriage were so important, why is a reference to Peter's mother-in-law
the only indication that we have in the bible that any of the twelve
disciples were married?

Why were Jesus' closest friends -- Mary, Martha, Lazarus -- conspicuously
single?

Paul thought so little of marriage that he advised against it except for
lust control.

The church thought so little of marriage that for hundreds of years a major
portion of the church has required celibacy of its clergy, depriving that
gene pool of thousands of those the church deemed its brightest and best.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer thought so little of marriage that
he hid his wife in a box whenever they traveled outside the home, lest
others even learn that he was married.

In the marriage liturgy until quite recently the father or guardian quite
literally "gave" the bride to become the property of the groom and required
her to commit to obey him.  The husband was not charged to obey the wife.

   -- o --

I cherish my husband and I value the sacrament of marriage.  Through
marriage we have experienced inward grace.  I am enormously grateful to God
and to Ernest.

However, as a Christian I am well aware of the risk of venerating marriage
commitments ahead of more important commitments expected of all disciples.
Jesus said that those who would put family ahead of him, do not deserve to
follow him.

A loving marriage does not assure righteousness.  Couples can be thoroughly
faithful and kind and loving to each other and still be the stingiest or
meanest or most bigoted folks in the pews.  Many couples who are most kind
and generous would not go near a church because of the reputation Christians
have for self-righteousness and shallow, phony hospitality.

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so
unlike your Christ." -- Mahatma Gandhi

Louie, Newark deputation

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary