More on marriage and the separation of Church and State

I obviously did not get back to finishing the previous post as quickly as I thought I would. Nevertheless, here goes...

One of the bottom line questions regarding the protection of marriage is, Who has jurisdiction over marriage? Church or State? The State of Indiana claims it has jurisdiction; therefore, it has the right to define marriage in accord with its political interests. I do believe the State has a set of interests related to matters of marriage (and divorce). So I am not in favor of cutting the State out of the issue altogether. But I would remind the State that marriage was God's idea. He designed it, and no one has the right to change or redefine it. No one.

With that said, I also am not in favor of the Church pursuing its interests on marriage solely in the political arena. Once we agree with the State that marriage is simply a matter of politics and man's law, we have lost the long-term fight, no matter what our short-term gains may be. This is not to say that we should not participate at all in the political process. I am grateful for Christian political leaders and others who involved in the political process as believers. I am suggesting, however, that a political solution cannot be our only nor our even our primary course of action to defend the sanctity of marriage.

So what is our primary course of action to defend the sanctity of marriage? It is for individual Christians to make the sanctity and success of their own marriage a top-shelf priority of their life. Collectively, the Church should model and facilitate the same. This not to suggest that we should begin punishing people who have marital problems. There has been enough of that sort of thing in fundamental circles to our shame. It is to say instead that our best defense of the sanctity of marriage as between one man and one woman is to make our own marriages examples of what God had in mind from the beginning. As we do so, and as we help others outside the Church to do better in regard to their own success in marriage, we end up marginalizing the State's jurisdiction.

Another way to say all this is to refocus our attention on marriage as God's good for us. When we live out God's good for our lives in the way he intends, it makes alternatives of our own self-styled good look much less attractive. Then, instead of alternatives to biblical marriage looking like they point the way to true happiness, our culture would be presented with overwhelming evidence of exactly the opposite: we cannot improve on God's good. Self-willed alternatives to God's good, whether in regard to marriage or other practices, only lead to death; that is, to soul death, and to eternal death, and occasionally also, to physical death.