Please disabuse me of these shallow, sad thoughts. Like most everyone, I'm not capable of arguing your historical points, or the theological ones. In the perfect world to which the writing aspires, everyone would endevor to live in such a way as to bring heaven to earth. But I don't live in that world and I've never seen a perfect marriage, in any culture or religion, close enough to say "this is the divine plan." I'll just argue what I know - not the Living Church but the living marriage.
There is nothing in hetrosexual unions that comes close to the heavenly union. Ours is not the constant perfect understanding that God has for us, nor the perfect love. We may aspire to it, and imagine it, but we fall short when it comes to "making the word flesh." We either make compromises to ensure that the marraige survives, for the sake of the divine sparks in our care, and because in the end that is what we see as a higher purpose, or we don't. But to say that how we touch ourselves or each other has any impact on how close we come to touching God is a joke.
God loves us too much to set us up like this. Jesus may have talked the talk - you know better than I - but he never walked the walk. Marriage is not Holy Orders. "Thou art a husband forever" never came into the picture. The codification of marriage isn't a divine institution - we're still practicing serial polygamy. We're so far from God's love in that single, man-made, political and material union that I don't even want to contemplate what soul-destroying power we're trying to paint it over with. These "shalt not"'s are a man-made crock. The marriage I'm living in has just as much to be penitent about as any homosexual union. Caving into sinful desires isn't limited to fornication, and fornication isn't limited to un-married or sterile intercourse.
God is love - I agree wholeheartedly. But to say God is marriage is another thing altogether, right up there with God is government (which also used to be a popular sentiment). God the Father is an incarnation I can agree with, but not God the husband.
Please please convince me otherwise. Writing this has left me unusually bitter, and I honestly don't think I have anything to complain about.
Why any couple would want to be married is beyond me, but...
There is nothing in hetrosexual unions that comes close to the heavenly union. Ours is not the constant perfect understanding that God has for us, nor the perfect love. We may aspire to it, and imagine it, but we fall short when it comes to "making the word flesh." We either make compromises to ensure that the marraige survives, for the sake of the divine sparks in our care, and because in the end that is what we see as a higher purpose, or we don't. But to say that how we touch ourselves or each other has any impact on how close we come to touching God is a joke.
God loves us too much to set us up like this. Jesus may have talked the talk - you know better than I - but he never walked the walk. Marriage is not Holy Orders. "Thou art a husband forever" never came into the picture. The codification of marriage isn't a divine institution - we're still practicing serial polygamy. We're so far from God's love in that single, man-made, political and material union that I don't even want to contemplate what soul-destroying power we're trying to paint it over with. These "shalt not"'s are a man-made crock. The marriage I'm living in has just as much to be penitent about as any homosexual union. Caving into sinful desires isn't limited to fornication, and fornication isn't limited to un-married or sterile intercourse.
God is love - I agree wholeheartedly. But to say God is marriage is another thing altogether, right up there with God is government (which also used to be a popular sentiment). God the Father is an incarnation I can agree with, but not God the husband.
Please please convince me otherwise. Writing this has left me unusually bitter, and I honestly don't think I have anything to complain about.