Man and woman. Woman, a compliment to man. The wife deeply respects her husband and the husband loves his wife as he loves himself. The marriage. Gods arrangement.
I'm all for the institution of marriage, but lets bring it up to date by getting rid of the patriarchal rehtoric. Women and men complement each other in a successful marriage, and they should both respect and love each other as they love themselves--and God and their kids. (Before somebody pounces, I'm using "God" here to signify values beyond self and each other. I know atheists can have strong marriages.)
replace "woman" with "man" in that sentence, leave everything else the same, and suddenly everyone has a problem with that. that's what happens when you believe in gods and follow an ancient book for modern social values.
The Catholic church believes that the ministers of the sacrament of matrimony are the people being married, not the priest, not the church, not God. This is good. It makes gender irrelevant as the giving of self and to whom it is given is entirely up to the individuals involved.
substantially there are no marriages in heaven but we appear as angels ministering to each others needs
This is Pauline christianity. Fine if it floats your boat, but I much prefer Jesus Christianity. The Kingdom of God is here, now, just waiting for us to accept it. Focus on the sermon on the mount. It is the heart and soul of his spirituality. The beatitudes are his spiritual exercises.
actually we are in the. Of the first resurrection at this moment we are in the millennial reign I am the writer of the White Horse and I gather the 144000 time to get on your noble steed this is no joke
who will become one flesh? cthulu. (my apologies to anyone motivated toward christianity by love or good intentions. but i really couldn't resist. and no, you're "devel" didn't make me do it either)
What do you have against flesh? The "one" part, though, is a little creepy. I love my wife and am a big fan of marriage, but I think one of our strengths is that we have separate identities, as well as our common ties, and we respect each other's needs for individuality, as well as unity. Pushed to far, the "one flesh" idea could be stifling. But it's a metaphor emphasizing the idea that marriage shifts priorities from the separate to the common. BTW, I'm pro-gay marriage, too. I agree with my wife that they should be able to enjoy the same status that we find so satisfying.
I'm an old man now. When I was a young man I was awash with old fashioned ideas about relationships. My quest from an early age was to find "the right woman" to "complete me". Using that narrow criteria led me in and right back out of many relationships. I wasted my 20s on 3 near marriages that fell apart almost entirely for reasons I caused. The longest lasted over 4 years before my inner asshole finally drove her away (with the help of her family who only saw me as a loser). When I met Jane, my wife, I was already redefining myself. Instead of trying to find the right woman to make me whole, I decided that I had to be the right man first. By the time I met her I was finally starting to get my shit together. However, it would still be a few years before I finally kicked the last problem, my love of hard drugs (particularly uppers and coke). What we had in common though was our Catholic upbringing and how much we both disagreed with much of its teachings. But that some were absolutely worth considering. The first place we agreed was that our relationship, the marriage, was more important to us than our families, jobs or even the church itself. That last part puts us at conflict with our Christian teaching because the church is always supposed to be #1. As children this was easy to swallow. As adults we could see the church was largely a self-serving money pit. When the pedophile scandal broke, we severed all ties with the Vatican or any of its churches. There was no way we were going to raise children in such a conflicted environment. The church has clearly lost its mind. Again, what has kept us together in spite of ourselves is our dedication to the marriage above it all. The marriage we have, while sanctioned by the government, is central to our being. For us, that's what makes it work. If we choose to have a covenant with God, we don't need a church to be the gate keeper.
