As some conservatives and even Christians rush to embrace the notion that two men or two women can be married, it’s important to remember one basic rule of construction. A weak foundation means a vulnerable, fragile structure.
The foolish man builds his house on sand ( Matthew 7:26) or even, builds his house with sand. What is being embraced is the sin-based family.
Families constructed around sexual deviance stand in defiance of God’s eternally –revealed truth. No matter how “conservatively” and faithfully two men or two women operate as they consider themselves a marital union, the structure is still in defiance of God’s created order of male and female as the framework for marriage. Men and women already have the right to marry, because they are free to marry someone of the opposite sex, so the goal is a new structure.
As Jesus told us in Matthew 19, a man and a woman constitute what He considers marriage. Humans are not created in a possibly “wrong-sex” body, as the transgender lobby would have us believe, but were designed as male and female “from the beginning”—and Jesus should know, since as the eternally- existent Savior who was God on earth, He was present at creation.
So from the get-go, the same sex union is structurally unsound. Functionally, the intentions can be the best, but the homosexual humanists who have created their own law will live and die by it, because God has made His standard clear.
Many say that divorce is a much greater threat to the family than homosexuality, and it’s true, but it’s a different problem with a different solution. In divorce, the problem is function, not structure. With counseling, and a change of heart and behavior, one can fix a troubled heterosexual union. The structure starts out in accordance with God’s plan, and can be repaired.
But let’s take two men, trying unsuccessfully to “consummate” their relationship. It is impossible. Forgive the graphics here, but neither oral nor anal sex, nor mutual masturbation will ever unify them structurally. In fact, actual anatomical damage can occur through anal sex. This ought to serve as a big clue from God, in case we weren’t paying attention.
The other big clue is the lifelessness. No new life can ever come from a homosexual relationship. Those few who do desire children (a minority) always have to involve at least a third and possibly a fourth party. The options are adoption, artificial insemination, or inclusion of children from a previous marriage: yes, a heterosexual, fruitful one, back before the discovery of “inborn” homosexuality.
The awesome privilege of creating, with God’s help, new life from the love of two humans, is only available to male and female. This structural privilege is open to those who do it God’s way. Even Japanese Buddhists or Native American shamans--those who don’t believe in God—- understand this structure. Sometimes it is violated by polygamy—usually multiple women with one man. Jesus made it clear that was never His plan, and in the Bible where polygamous unions occur, they are fraught with problems: jealousy, revenge, violence, etc.
But, wait, what about the man and woman past child-bearing age, who marry? They will not produce the fruit of new life. Yet each such union still respects the structure and teaches, by modeling to younger generations, the way the building needs to be built. Not all homes have the warmth of a hearth, but they will all provide shelter during the pouring rain.
Again, we turn to on function. What about the leaky roof? What about the abusive husband, the alcoholic wife? This functional flaw can be fixed and often is, through adherence to biblical standards of conduct. In stable communities, it’s the other dads and husbands who keep abusive men accountable, or the other women who encourage the substance abuser to get her act together. They can do this because they operate from positions of strength in being responsible in their own households. As a community has fewer such families, there is less accountability.
What about the woman raising children without a father? This is an extremely fragile form of family as well, but it depends on the history and her relationship with God. She had sex outside marriage, but if she is repentant and leaves that behavior behind, God can certainly bless her and provide for her household. If she continues the sex outside marriage, and is modeling this to her children, she has created her own law, and its toxins are likely to destroy her and her kids.
Much discussion of public policy today advocates so-called “rights” for these sin-based families. They dream of marriage re-structured for everyone, including all our young, who will be taught to ignore basic instincts affirming workable structure and who must embrace the new man-made, sand-made design.
Some believe that as long as it’s called “marriage,” this can still be called “conservative” or even, “Christian.” The rationale is that God has evolved, He is “bigger” than this, and that if a vocal minority insists that they were designed this way, they must be correct. But God was big to begin with. It’s us humans who think small, imprisoned by our own sinful conduct.
And this isn’t the only area where the lines are being blurred. We are awash in the architects of new human destinies, from the “inborn” appetites of the morbidly obese, to the elevated sexual desires of the porn-addicted, to the struggles of healthy, intelligent, attractive people who starve themselves, intentionally, because they see a fat person in the mirror. Can we not see the evidence of ongoing delusions of all kinds around us? “Inborn” homosexuality is one of these.
Must they all become the norms for our future cities in the sand?
And when the structures are deficient, often the function is as well. So the GOP can claim all day long that they need to stick to the “pressing” issue of the economy in preference to the “divisive” issues of abortion and homosexuality. But such cowardice ends up treating the symptoms and not the disease, and mis-understands that these weakened structures need the repairs first and foremost.
Just as a child is far less likely to suffer abuse in the home of his/her married, heterosexual parents, so the opposite is true. Where the structure is sin-based, other sins are more likely to scurry in through the cracks. Substance abuse and self-destruction accompany sexual deviance. And some of this means poor decisions about finances.
The mortgage crisis was the sin of temptation being offered by those who relaxed legitimate standards, offered to those without the personal standards to resist. This easy-pay physical structure was too good to be true, and appealed to an increasingly covetous segment of our culture. Sexual and material covetousness are usually sin siblings. It would be interesting to study the families who have defaulted on mortgages for the correlations between structural and/or functional weaknesses like infidelity, divorce, gambling or porn addictions, job instability, credit card default, domestic abuse, sexual deviance, and criminality. There is also a high likelihood that poor or no church attendance would show up as a factor as well.
But back to our main point, probably few such households are homosexually-headed, because few homosexuals want to settle down to any kind of permanence, despite the plea for the honor of the marital designation. Many unmarried mothers of children born out of wedlock are on public assistance, which means they are unlikely to have had a mortgage. So when we look at the mortgage crisis, we could analyze it as a shift in the American family, but these families would not begin to reflect where the greatest structural weaknesses already exist.
Like the home inspector who focuses on a leaky faucet and ignores termites, we need to see the reality before us and stop thinking it will vanish. We must start asking the right questions as we return to divine standards. God, our merciful but completely just Creator, urges us to get the structure in place and then concentrate on the function. Trusting Christ as our Solid Rock and God’s timeless parameters for every family will improve our lives, our nation and not coincidentally, our economy.
