We live at an advanced state in the destruction of Christian marriage by the secular (Left) state (aided by the mass media and all the other major institutions).
At first we had 'no-fault' divorce, which meant that marriage lacked even the status of a legal contract (so that just one party could dissolve the marriage, unilaterally, and without any sanctions). This continued with unlimited serial marriage, same sex marriage, marriage of 'trans'-sex persons, multiple marriage (half-implemented - accepted legally in the UK but not yet legally initiated)...
On the horizon we have non-human marriage (e.g. Men with animals) and marriage including children - these are mainstream-mooted, and 'logically' implied by consistent application of the current minimalist concept of marriage in terms of 'principles' and trends.
What we have (from a Christian perspective) is a social system where 'legal marriage' - the 'institution' of marriage - is (already, here-and-now) both corrupt and corrupting; and becoming ever more so.
'Legal-marriage' is already a manyfold-fake - we just have not adjusted to the fact.
Or, to put it bluntly, official-marriage is now evil: a creation of an evil-corrupt state; and 'arbitrarily' created, expanded, sustained or ended by that evil-corrupt state.
Add to this the 'convergence' of all the major, mainstream churches with the secular-Leftist state; which means that church-marriage is already just as bad as legal-marriage in most instances; and the real Christian churches that are current exceptions all display signs of being on the same path towards ever-fuller convergence as the mainstream churches.
In sum: a fake church cannot (and will not) sanctify Christian marriages.
So, the option of real-Christians having a separate system of 'church marriage' - to substitute for the legal marriage seems to be, at most, a temporary expedient.
And even if this expedient were attempted, it is clear that - while the Western state will tacitly (de facto) sustain the marriages of some religions (including allowing, and not interfering with, the operations of religious courts which may impose severe negative sanctions for marriage transgressions - including physical violence and even death); this will not apply to Christianity.
Quite the opposite. It is ever clearer (albeit only to those with eyes to see) that the unifying purpose behind the half-century of wide and expanding range of changes of law and practice in relation to marriage and the family, is precisely the destruction of Christian marriage.
The consequence for real Christian marriage, as I foresee it, is pretty extraordinary.
Christian marriage will need to become a personal commitment between a Christian man and woman. Full Stop.
Whether made in public or private, this marriage commitment will (ultimately) neither be validated nor sustained by any formal institution; neither state nor church.
Marriage will rely exclusively on the two parties - who cannot depend on help, or even encouragement, from anyone else... Who should, to the contrary, expect that institutions will continually be working towards the break-up of that marriage.
Meanwhile, 'official' marriage will go in quite the opposite direction; and more and more 'relationships' are recognised legally and socially; with the increasingly 'unorthodox' participants seeking the status, protections and sanction of an official marriage.
In the end, real marriage is the only (official) 'fake'; and only fake marriages are 'real'.
It may be that real Christians may be among the few people who do Not marry (legally).
We may soon be in an inverted-world where zero Christian men-and-women but instead nearly-everybody-else (in various combinations and numbers of men, women, other self-identified genders, animals, children, AI robots... who knows what?) will become the majority of 'married' (um...) entities.
8 comments:
I see the possibility of the marriage institution moving along a parallel track with the Church as an institution. The traditional Christian understanding of marriage is "til death do us part." This comes as a relief to many or perhaps most marriages but is that the way it is supposed to be? Maybe in the past that was sufficient but maybe God wants us to move on to something more. Is marriage meant to be pragmatic in God's ideal? I think the Mormons do have it right that marriage, ideally, is eternal and central to the whole thing. But that raises a whole slew of new questions, still unanswered, since no person, family or Church is capable, in this life, of selecting eternal partners for people. Only God can do that and be sure to get it right.
So the Church as an external institution is ending, per God's eternal plan, so that we may learn to hear and know God personally, for ourselves, without relying on external authority. Perhaps marriage is undergoing a similar change, for our benefit. Man's consciousness is changing. The old rationales and explanations for marriage no longer work. Man wants something more, senses there's meant to be something more here and the enemy is attempting to sow confusion and misery by jumping into the breach with all these distortions and perversions while man is vulnerable to new possibilities.
-Andrew E.
@Andrew - I certainly agree with the Mormon ideal of eternal marriage; but in mortal life it is 'an ideal', and does not always/ usually work, especially in modern conditions (not even for the most devout Mormons; and there are possibilities - e.g. psychiatric illness, brian damage etc. - that might potentially affect anyone).
But God cannot choose our eternal spouse for us, that must be the ultimate *personal* decision; however (I think) certainly-eternal commitments become possible only with resurrection.
Yet lessons we learn from our struggles in mortal life *may* (it is sure to be an individual thing) prove vital to our capacity to choose for eternity.
The marriage situation is slowly devolving to the level of a Saturday Night Live sketch; and like a Saturday Night Live sketch, there's not all that much to laugh about. It's beyond tragic. As is the case in so many other areas, I can see no limits or boundaries on the horizon. On the contrary, many of the potential examples you cite will come to be. And what then?
I can't help but think of Arkle in this case, and his insistence on the importance of marriage and the family for spiritual growth and development. The Establishment fully understands the spiritual significance (and sanctity) of Christian marriage, which helps explain why they are so adamant about destroying it.
I got married around 3 years ago. I recount my experiences here as they might be of interest since they're relatively fresh.
The enforced UK civil ceremony felt like some sort of pantomime and was entirely conducted entirely by female civil servants, however this wasn't as bad as what followed..
Before we could be formally married, we had to attend some kind of 'relationship skills counselling' style Catholic Church session in the UK to get sign-off from the local diocese. We were in the minority of couples who actually had any possibility or intent of having children. We were the only people there who seemed to be in an actual openly warm relationship. The session was so awfully puerile my wife and I wanted to walk out twice.. I actually did. The wife then convinced me to stick it out despite hating it just as much. We just needed that bloody signature that we'd attended the course. I've been to speed awareness courses I enjoyed more. Arguably this experience was worse than the Civil Ceremony. It makes you think. If the Registrars office are doing a better job leaving me feel unviolated than an actual Religious institution..
Several months later we had the Church wedding in an Eastern Rite ceremony in Ukraine. I thoroughly enjoyed that, and at last.. the ritual at last matched my commitment. The real thing survives out there amongst those people, they've had a hell of a time of keeping their beliefs strong and private in the 20th century. They had to deal with the full heat all that time whereas we've been gradually boiled in the west. How long they will last in the gradual heat of the modern world is a real question on my mind but something for another time
As pointed out in the main post .. If there was some way to be married without having to declare it to anyone who wasn't a family member.. that would be the way, the right choice, the best choice. The problem is taxes. It's the worldly empire. As Bruce so rightly reminds us, all institutions are now an extension of the same panopticon/panklepticon. Or will be just as soon as. - votes or not.
When I'm asked denomination I just put 'Christian' and leave it at that.
I am very encouraged to see how much you and I think alike on this topic. This post reads like you got into my brain and wrote down my thoughts. You even got the observation that it's specifically Christian marriage they're actively seeking to destroy, and their love of validating not only perverse forms of "marriage", but also other religions' polygamous marriages, is really motivated by that.
Of course, by the time "gay marriage" received official imprimatur, marriage was already effectively dead, killed by no-fault divorce and a metaphysics such that nobody (especially women) takes marriage seriously at all. One surprise I've gleaned from mainstream articles of the last 5 years is that many women marry *knowing* they will eventually divorce and *anticipating* their eventual return to the dating market; but they want the Queen For A Day party and the status and provisioning of being married for a while, and aren't bothered that it's temporary.
@Sasha - Thanks for the comment - Very interesting.
@Jonathan - This is not a direct/ innate thing. But women are more orientated to peer groups (include fake peer groups, like the mass media), hence more susceptible to social conditioning, hence more corrupted by the evils of modernity.
For example, there is a very strong inverse realtionship between a woman's increasing education/ wealth/ intelligence/ status and fertility - meaning that success in modernity is now maladaptive, and has reversed the ancient correlation.
In men, there is a pretty 'flat' relationships between 'success in modernity' and fertility, or perhaps slightly positive. So men have not been so perversely affected. I think this applies generally.
(But we have to bear in mind that many people are alive nowadays who would have died in infancy or childhood, and many are descended from such people - and there were always a higher proportion of men than women who did not reproduce successfully.)
When society is overall-good, women tend to be better behaved than men; and vice versa.
Anyway - back to spiritual matters.
The important thing is the ideal to which people (society) is aiming - because this determines the nature of laws, regulations, social pressures.
Modern society (including modern churches) is (dishonestly, of course) aiming at the destruction of Christian marriage. Those who favour Christian marriage need to be clear about the fact; and act on that basis.
Hence 'radicals' are now the social and psychological conformists (e.g. Extinction 'Rebellion' is supported by *all* the richest and most powerful people and institutions); therefore real-Christians *must* become spiritual non-conformists.
You all seem to understand it, and imply it, but leave unsaid this thing: how the new paradigm of marriage will affect the sexual development of children and adolescents. SSM legally sanctions same-sex sex. It opens the door to _choosing_ to have same-sex sex as a legitimate sexual outlet.
The newer generations will conclude, and it's already happening, you don't have to be "born gay" or "be gay" to "do gay." Ancient Greece and "prison sex" already illustrated that anyway. Now it will be socially acceptable.
In the US, the inflection point was 2015, with the Supreme Court ruling known as "Obergefell", making SSM legal in all 50 states. Some states had already legalized SSM.
5 year olds start school (Kindergarten, here), and I assume at that age they also stsrt to absorb messages from media (TV).
Hence, those born in 2010 and later in the US have their entire upbringing under the new paradigm, with both school and media "programming" them.
Assuming age 16 is another milestone in sexual development, then anyone born from 2000 through 2009 has _at least part_ of their pre-16 development under the new paradigm.
Already, as evidenced by several studies referenced in the British press, the younger age cohorts are _less heterosexual_ than older ones, including the "greys" who identify along a sliding scale of heterosexual to homosexual.
Also, google "Harvard Freshman survey". In the four years since Obergefell, homosexual identification was up 25%, and bisexual identification was up 4 fold.
And that is among those who had "only" a few years, not their entire life, under the new paradigm. ( the new paradigm actually precedes Obergefell due to the all the social/political/media discourse in the run-up.)
the end-point of how many "new-paradigm homosexuals" and bisexuals (ie, "socially influenced", and not homosexual/bisexual from birth) there will be in terms of percentage is yet to be seen. It won't be known or observable until the born-in-2010 age cohort reaches age 18 or so, 2028, and even then, the plateau may not be completely reached.
If the Harvard Freshman survey is indicative, a signifant portion of people born in 2010 and later will be childless, and population decline of the non-Christian West will be in freefall.
Either way, the _precipitous_ drop in number of people being born, and the number entering adulthood (due to the birth rate decline already in place) and entering the job market, will suddenly hit us all in the face around 2028.
And that drop will also be a double whammy as the baby bookers will have moslty all retired by 2028. (the baby boom started to drop off in 1957 in the US, and they turn 71 in 2028.)
Employers will be begging and bribing baby boomers not to retire.
--Bookslnger.
@AG. Indeed. But perhaps explicit awareness of this reality is not universal.
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