Incidentally, as a government teacher, I would note that this issue is much larger than just marriage; it has become the case with all rights.  In the modern understanding of the progressive worldview, the government is the catalyst and creator of rights.

The founders, and many modern conservatives, hold to the idea that all rights are fundamentally “endowed by the Creator” and are either recognized and protected by government or not, but cannot be created by anyone but God.  They are unalienable.

Seeing these basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness taken into the hands of a government that thinks it is the arbiter of these rights should be sobering to everyone.  

A government that believes it creates and bestows rights will also believe that it can adjust them…

or deny them…

and eventually, they always do.

*****

Because the government taking imminent domain over marriage greatly concerned me, I had to dig in and make some big personal decisions about marriage.  For example, I had to decide what marriage is.

I now am of the opinion that marriage is the covenant between an adult man and an adult woman to be faithful to one another until one of them is dead.  Only two humans are required; only one Witness is required.  Keep in mind any definition has to allow Adam and Eve to be married. I came at that with the thought experiment – could the last two survivors of a Mars expedition be married?   

No matter what else you believe is happening in the account of Adam and Eve, certainly “marriage” is being created in that moment.

²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” ²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2)

They were married before there was a government, a church, the nation of Israel, or even a community!

In other words, The Church can only witness and/or approve of a marriage – it is not needed to create one!  In other words, The State can only witness and/or approve of a marriage – it is not required to create one.  One man, one woman, their covenant and the witness of God.  Any community of people can ALSO tell you that they accept you as being married, but they are NOT required.

I was shocked at my own conclusions and was not trusting of them, so I started asking other ministers and biblical scholars.  Imagine how additionally surprised I was to hear them agree with that definition.

In response, I immediately changed my wedding ceremony to make it clear that I was witnessing the creation of a married covenant as a representative of the Great State of Texas (that is what a licensed minister is… and let’s not even get started on that) and as a representative of  The Church.  I am not authorized to create a biblical marriage, nor is the any State or Church… we can assign the name, but we could call it a blueberry muffin.

In other words, I realized that it was totally appropriate for me to witness a wedding/marriage in the name of the Church but not the State… Certainly, I have witnessed plenty just like myself in the audience without representing the Church or the State.  Again, I was amazed when almost all of the pastors I knew agreed with this conclusion.

Those insights and new ways of thinking became a catalyst for the larger conversation.

What happens when that overlap I mentioned at the beginning of this article – the ease of being a good Christian and a good citizen – begins to disintegrate?

Fortunately, we aren’t the first to experience this.  In fact, we are among the only ones to NOT face it, today and in the past.  The Jews had well-reasoned various responses to living as faithful Jews in the midst of Greek and then Roman cultures.  I will analyze our options through theirs. Ready?