Concerning the Christian Position on Marriage

Concerning the Christian Position on Marriage

Recently, the church I am a member of decided to finance an expensive marketing campaign to let the community know where we stood in the same sex marriage issue, primarily by using billboard ads to declare what we believe marriage is. This is a letter I wrote to the elders after I asked the Father what He thought about that idea during my prayer time:

Greetings in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Let me ask you a question: Does witnessing or evangelizing to people mean trying to make them do what you or God thinks they should do, or is it about convincing them to change their hearts so that they want to change their rebellious ways? Did Jesus Christ commission born again Christians to immerse ourselves in our society’s fruitless efforts to elect officials and pass laws in order to make lost people (some of whom appear to be masquerading as Christians) toe the line, or did He commission us to be dispensers of grace, mercy and love in quantities which will overwhelm the evil in men’s hearts, and cause them to search Him out?

Christ calls us to be His ambassadors to the world (1 Cor 5:20), yet we insist on being an army of occupation. We seem to be more concerned about exercising our citizenship in this country than we are in expressing our citizenship in the Kingdom of God. What good is it to spend a lot of money, talent and other resources on creating a huge campaign to market the concept of “Marriage – one man, one woman”, when statistics show that around one third of the marriages in the Christian community average 2 men and 2 women (just not at the same time)? Do you not see the hypocrisy of this endeavor?

I would surmise that some of the motivation behind this plan is your concern that our society is going, pardon the expression, to hell in a hand basket; or worse, God’s going to loosen His wrath on America and destroy our comfortable little haven of Christianity. In that case, let me ask you to recall Abraham’s hypothetical negotiation with God in Genesis, chapter 18, over His planned destruction of Sodom, a city which had been overcome by sexual perversion and immorality. Remember? Abraham asked God if He would spare the city’s destruction if there were fifty righteous people living in the city. God told Abraham that for fifty righteous people He would spare the city. Abraham continued negotiate: What about forty five; what about forty; what about thirty; what about twenty; and finally, what if there were only ten righteous people in the city? In every case, God said He would spare the city. (Please recall that although he destroyed the city and its occupants, He made provision for sparing the five righteous people who did live there.) My question is this: Shouldn’t we be about being one of the righteous persons that God would spare the city, or country – or world – for, rather than trying to be the conscious of a bunch of lost and rebellious people by passing a new law for them to struggle with?

You see, I believe that our focus is not to be on the family, or marriage, or the church, but rather, on Jesus. As Christians, if anyone comes up to us and asks us what we think about same sex marriage, shouldn’t we answer them by first asking them what they’ve done about Jesus? If they haven’t become born again and made Jesus Lord of their life, then our answer is only for the sake of argument, because they are lost and facing eternal damnation, regardless of our opinion, or their actions. On the other hand, if they have accepted Jesus, and believe in His Word, then they already know what God’s plan is concerning marriage, and again, our opinion concerning this subject doesn’t really matter.

Now, one final question: Do you really think that people in our community, whether they belong to the church or not, do not know where our church stands on the subject of same sex marriages, or abortion, or any other of a number of social ills? Brothers, if we have to have a marketing campaign to declare our position on these issues, then haven’t we already missed the boat on presenting who we are and what we are about? Which is more important: Evangelizing the lost, or being a conscious to the community?

I think Philip Yancy said it best in his book on Grace: He said, “If my activism, however well intentioned, drives out love, then I have misunderstood Jesus’ gospel. I am stuck with law, not the Gospel of grace.”

Thank you for your time and consideration.

A Concerned Church Member

PS – For the record, I do believe in “God’s plan”; I have been married to the same person, who is of the opposite sex, for thirty-plus years!