Who defines marriage anyway?

I've been debating for a while about whether or not to post anything, for fear of being miss-heard. But since you asked (Hee hee) I'd like to offer a slightly wider perspective. The reason I may be miss-heard is that some may think I am making a comment on gay marriage, when it is only a comment on marriage in general.   

I believe the debate on gay marriage needs to go back down the legal road a couple of steps, back to the debate on what marriage is in the first place. How can we redefine something that is so off base that redefining it is a lateral move?

Marriage is supposed to be an oath to God that we two people promise and declare to the public that we will commit to be a family for life.  Hopefully there will be progeny from this union, but that is less the point than we believe that together we can serve the kingdom of God better than we could individually.

Marriage is a “church” thing.  The second the “state” began issuing a marriage license it became a legal construct.  It is a tax on a promise two people make to God.  How does that even make sense?  It has become about how we file our taxes, and who can be listed on insurance, and who can visit whom in the hospital, and who will care for the kids when we’re gone, NOT about a promise to advance the kingdom of God. I believe this is why marriage is failing both inside the church and out.  Our attitude toward it is a legal one, not an oath before a Holy God.  When it becomes a matter of legalism, the immediate human reaction is to see how far we can push the boundaries before it brakes. 

Here in lies the problem with “redefining” marriage.  Marriage was NEVER meant to be two people declaring each other “hot” then giving them the right to have sex in the eyes of society.  It is not just a party celebrating the fact that two people have feelings about each other.  Nor is it even about a commitment to monogamy.  (A commitment to monogamy should be the result of our oath to God, not the cause of it.)   It is not about defining what makes a legal household! 

If two people want to join bank accounts, this is a legal issue, NOT a marriage issue.  Redefine banking practices, not marriage.  If two people want to get group insurance, restructure insurance. If someone wants to visit someone else in ICU, rewrite hospital policy, not just for gay people but for everyone. Go down the list and change the stupid rules.  For most of these issues there is a legal solution already in place: wills, living directives, trusts, guardianship, etc.  Many European couples can’t fathom why they must get “married” when they arrive in America in order to take advantage of these privileges.  If two people want to join financial forces and buy in bulk, what business is it of the state if the relationship is a casual friendship or a long-term commitment? 

We as an American church swallowed the “redefinition” of marriage beginning in Massachusetts in 1639 with the first marriage license issued by the State (a state where the Puritans were in charge of the government.  Don't even get me started on why their beliefs about God effected the tyranny they inflicted).  Over the years, this legal document has been wielded as a control mechanism in many ways.  In the past the argument was about “racial purity” (whatever that means to Americans, the mutts of the world). There were Christians inflamed on both sides of that debate too.  The solution is that state should get out of the marriage business all together; they have no place in an oath between us and God. Marriage is not a secular issue at all! 

If your definition of marriage ends with “between a man and a woman,” then you have already redefined marriage.  Marriage is an oath to God.  Period.  If you are not ready for that, DON’T GET MARRIED.  

If marriage were defined correctly in our society most folks fighting for the right to get married would be running from "marriage" faster than anyone else.  They are not fighting for the right to become responsible to God for their commitments, they are fighting for legal privileges that are set up in an unconstitutional way.  It is a legal matter, not a marital matter.

Why would any secular person want to enter into such a binding contract anyway?  If you want an excuse to get dressed up, throw a big party.  Divorce costs too much, why bother getting “married” if you are not in it for life for the good of society?  Why become legally bound to each other, just for a recognition of your sexual relationship?  Why do you want to force other people to declare whether they are for you or against you based on who you have sex with (hetero- or homosexual), when their love for you is not based on anything you have or have not done; rather it is based on the fact that God loved me enough while I was still His enemy that He died for me?  How can I not love you too?  (That doesn't mean that I will agree with you on everything or help you hurt yourself, just that you are valuable treasure regardless of what you do or don't do.)

Christians seem to jump up and down in a panic over which two people have the right to receive a legal document from the government.  We need to first get our noses back into our own business.  Define marriage rightly in house.  Until we are willing to fix our own problem with breaking an oath toward God, we need to worry less with what society is doing. 
   

Society’s real problem with marriage starts inside the church and can only be fixed starting inside the church, inside individual people's relationship with God.  The problem is our lack of understanding the concept of "take up your cross and follow me."  Love at all costs.  If two people are only in it for how-you-make-me-feel, they will fail.  It must be TWO people committed to love the other regardless of the others imperfection from the very beginning, otherwise the whole thing breaks down pretty quickly.  Even those who stay legally bound to each other lack the joy of relationship when both of them are not committed to the self-sacrifice of real love.

Unless we are willing to go to the extreme of making divorce illegal (and I don’t see that happening any time soon), then we really don’t mean what we say about standing by traditional marriage.  If I say make divorce illegal, it sounds ludicrous!  And it should!  That is because marriage is NOT supposed to be a legal construct.  We cannot fix marriage with legislation.  I know that this is true based on the divorce rate.  If we could legislate true traditional marriage, no one would be getting divorced in the first place.  They would be committed to loving God and loving others (especially each other) together as one stronger force.  We as a church need to set our mind on “marriage is an oath to God in the presence of these witnesses.”  The government needs to get out of the licensing business.  Only when we stop looking at marriage as a legal document, and start setting our hearts on healing broken people can we then go about fixing marriage.

(This is the part where many Christians I've talked to start freaking out because they have miss-heard what I am trying to say.  They start foaming at the mouth over whether or not I believe there should or shouldn’t be gay marriage and yell at me in angry tones for contributing to the decline of society.  If that’s what you are thinking after you read this, you’ve missed it entirely.  The issue is about marriage, not gay, not straight, not black, not white, not poor, not rich, not handicap, not man, woman [or other], nor about any other sects’ right to a legal document.)

And that is my unsolicited opinion.