Our children have learned too well. . .

Sitting with a catechism class teaching on marriage as the SCOTUS is debating on which to revise the definition of marriage for all states is interesting, to say the least.  These middle schoolers with a couple of high schoolers thrown in have learned well -- not from mom or dad or the church but from the prevailing mood of America and the revisionist view of all things marital, sexual, and political.

Our children have learned to see marriage as an emotional, romantic, sexual bond between two people.  Even when they are opposed to same sex marriage, they are opposed because they find it personally unappealing and not because they have any real or substantial reason to oppose it.  Whether moms and dads and churches have not been teaching it or not teaching it as well as the media, educational enterprise, and culture, they see traditional marriage as an emotional, romantic, sexual bond between two people.

I tried to point out that if that is the working definition of marriage, why on earth can you justify excluding marriage between any and all people who desire this emotional, romantic, and sexual relationship?  And that is where the blank looks begin.  Remember that I am speaking within the confines of a church population and not opining on a street corner somewhere.  What do you suppose happens among a typical college discussion of marriage?

We have it all wrong.  SCOTUS will not redefine marriage; marriage  was redefined already, most likely in the hidden consequences of the sexual revolution.  We are in no danger of marriage being redefined; it already has been and this revisionist view of marriage has become the definition used even by people who might come down on the traditional side with respect to same sex marriage.  SCOTUS will not redefine marriage but will simply recognize whether it has been already redefined and if the constitutional issues can all be written into this changed definition.

The gay liberation movement is not the force behind this redefinition.  We had already sown the seeds of their claim to this right when we removed from marriage the distinctives that had shaped its definition for millenia.  Once sexual fidelity, child bearing, financial unity, sacrificial love, life-long expectations, public accountability, etc. . . were removed from the definition, there was and there is little reason left not to include anyone and everyone who wants some sort of emotional, romantic, sexual bond with another person for as long as it lasts or feels good.  When happiness and pleasure became not only the aims of marriage but the criteria on which marriage is judged or kept, we had already prepared the future we now find.

Read through so-called Christian marriage books or books on sex.  They do not read like Scripture nor do they present a view consistent with our Judeo-Christian history.  Just the opposite.  They read like the times in which they were written and published.  It is all about me, all about happiness, all about emotion, all about getting what you want from your significant other (especially in the bedroom), and they give all the how-to details of every kind of sex without a hint of an idea that there is anything that feels good that might not be good.  And then we complain about those liberals.  We have become them -- subtly and so slowly that what was revisionist has become traditional even to a great segment of Christian population and what is Christian has become so completely out of step with their views that it is almost reprehensible in their minds and hearts (witness the Roman Catholic mess on the Synod for Family).

It is too late to assign blame and there is more than enough to go around.  If we hope to recapture the truth for our children, we have our work cut out for us.