Into the Wardrobe

I have a question which pccurred to me as a result of the gay marriage discussion. But it is OT enough to warrant a separate thread.

It's addressed to Christians mainly.

Do you, as a Christian, believe that God blesses civil marriages? I mean, someone said on the gay marriage thread that marriage is the joining together of two people by God. So, even if two atheists choose to get married in a registry office, with no mention of God whatsoever, do you still believe that their marriage is blessed by God, even if they don't. God is everywhere, right? So they were still married in his sight.

Or does he just ignore those sorts of marriages?

Wow Stanley. That is quite a beautiful way of saying what the Bible states about unions. I never really thought about it like that before.

I believe that God does what He wants and our viewpoint has little to no effect on the "blessedness" or "non-blessedness" of civil marriages. My dad is on wife number 5 and the last 4 have been civil marriages. This marriage is different though and I can't tell you why except that I trust God in the changing of my father. His first marriage (to my mother) ended in divorce so by this standard it should have been blessed but wasn't. Yet it produced my sister and I so was it blessed? I becomes quite a conundrum to blanketly say that a church wedding is blessed and a civil marriage is not. There are no absolutes when it comes to what God will do.

Reminds me of a story I read once (not to digress!?). Anyway, there once was a man who, with his family, had some horses. One day his son comes back from the fields with a gorgeous white stallion in tow. All his neighbors gathered round and said, "Oh, how wonderful. Look at that animal. What a blessing he will be as a sire to your mares." The man looked down and said, "Well, we'll see."

The next day came and all awoke to find the corral fence broke down and every one of the horses escaped. The neighbors again gathered around and moaned, "Oh, how shocking. That horse was surely not a blessing. He's stolen your whole herd!" The man again looked down and said, "Well, we'll see."

The day after that his son came home with the whole herd plus more horses in tow, including the white stallion. The neighbors gathered again and cooed over the luck of the man. He was still quite quiet about it all.

The day after that his son got on the white stallion, hoping to begin breaking him in. Suddenly the stallion reared up and bucked the boy off. He hit the ground at a bad angle and broke his leg. Again the neighbors woed these bad tidings and again the man said little.

The day after that the king's men came and took all of the fighting-aged men in the village because of a war that was going on. All the neighbors gather yet again and said how blessed the man was that his son had a broken leg and therefore could not go to war. The man remained quite silent, knowing that it may or may not be. Who was he to say?

All this story tells is that it is our perception that says whether or not something is blessed. How are we to know? There is no hard line on this, much in the same way that I see no hard line on gay marriages. I am only to look for God's hand in all, not judge whether He blesses something or not.

Ah, now I understand. I certainly don't think God considers people married outside of the church still unmarried. I think only a very minute number of Christians would feel that people married outside the church are not really married.

The term "bless" in the New Testament is the Greek word eulogeo (we get "eulogy" from this word), and it means to celebrate, praise or to make happy. I think, with that meaning in mind, God does indeed bless most marriages, whether inside or outside of a church.

- Dan -