CT: What God Has Not Joined

While I normally warn people about the falsely named magazine Christianity Today, in the past couple of days its website has been featuring the following previously published article:

What God Hath Not Joined

Why marriage was designed for male and female.

Edith M. Humphrey

“Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” So Jesus declares that in the first marriage and in every marriage since, it is God himself who joins particular members of the opposite sex together in a natural relation unlike any other.

All societies have honored this special union that Christians, Jews, and Muslims rightly recognize to be a gift of the Creator. Even in an atheistic context like Russia during the Communist period, Muscovite couples were married with festal trappings at what passed for a sacred site, Lenin’s tomb.

Our generation has introduced a tear in this universal fabric. Same-sex activists are clamoring for the state to grant homosexual couples marital status. These blows to the definition of marriage are landing not only in the North American civil sphere, but within churches. Theological arguments may not hold much sway in public debate, and there are certainly good social reasons for preserving the definition of marriage. But for the defense of marriage in both civil society and church, Christians must look to—and guard—the deep theological foundations of marriage…

How does the Bible describe God’s activity and homoeroticism itself? In Romans 1:18-32, Paul traces the drama of creation, sin, idolatry, and rebellion…

Paul gives a vivid example of this fallout: Human passions are disturbed and the primary created relationship (male and female) is distorted into homoerotic behavior (24, 26-27).

Though the emphasis is on bodily disruption, the consequences go beyond the body to the entire self (27). Thus understands homoerotic behavior as an example of what happened to humanity in terms of the body and the passions, before it goes on to consider sins that arise within the disordered mind (28-31).

Homoerotic activity, then, is symptomatic of the primal rebellion against God—alongside covetousness, murder, strife, gossip, deceit, disloyalty, and pride.

No doubt Paul places it first because this condition shows brokenness in God’s creative order and within the ordained union of male and female (Gen. 1:27). Homoeroticism thus represents an exchange (Rom. 1:26) of what is “natural” for what is “against nature,” and is a primary breach between the two designed for each other. These relations dramatize human rejection of God’s primal purposes…

We turn from narratives to injunction. Leviticus 18:22 says bluntly: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (cf. Lev. 20:13)…

As the New Testament epistles show, the early church did not discard what the Hebrew Bible said about sexual ethics. When Corinthian Christians thought that their spiritual sophistication gave them license to sin, Paul challenged them (1 Cor. 6:9ff.): “Do you not know that evildoers will not inherit God’s kingdom?” Then he offered as examples those who steal, get drunk, scorn what is holy, pursue sexual immorality, and practice two modes of male homoerotic behavior.

Some argue that we cannot understand Paul’s reference to these two behaviors (malakoi and arsenokoitai, as in and ) in terms of homoeroticism. But arsenokoitai is in fact a compound word derived from the Greek version of Leviticus 20:13 for those men “who lie with a male.” Malakoi means literally “soft ones” and in Greek writings frequently identified the passive homoerotic partner…http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/september/11.36.html

Last night I saw Joel Osteen and his wife on Larry King Live and they also would not endorse same-sex marriage.

But many Protestants are becoming more accepting of the idea.

And in California (where I live), the homosexuals seem to be quite determined to overturn the will of the voters in the recent Proposition 8 (which banned same-sex marriage). And I suspect that ultimately the courts in California will side with the homosexuals.

I should add that the Bible warns against all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery and fornication as well. They are all “sins against the body” (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:18).

Some articles of possibly related interest may include:

The Ten Commandments Reflect Love, Breaking them is Evil Some feel that the ten commandments are a burden. Is that what Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John taught?
Hope of Salvation: How the Living Church of God differ from most Protestants How the Living Church of God differs from mainstream/traditional Protestants, is perhaps the question I am asked most by those without a Church of God background.
What is the Meaning of Life? Who does God say is happy? What is your ultimate destiny? Do you really know? Does God actually have a plan for YOU personally?
The Bible: Fact or Fiction? This is a booklet written by Douglas Winnail that answers if the Bible is just a collection of myths and legends or the inspired word of God.
Read the Bible Christians should read the Bible. This article gives some rationale for regular bible reading.
What is the Appropriate Form of Biblical Interpretation? Should the Bible be literally understood? What do the writings of the Bible, Origen, Herbert W. Armstrong, and Augustine show?
Bible and Historical Resources on the Internet Electronic bibles, Two Babylons, early Christian literature, photos, and even links to old Herbert W. Armstrong materials.