Christians: Is marriage between a man and a woman?

[Fool]

Just one come to immediate attention, "Love not the world, neither the
things in the world. If a man love the world, the love of the Father is not
in him."

sorry for any paraphrase.

god is in the world and the world in god, god is omnipresent. loving christianity and jesus are worldly things. hating god's children; which are worldly things is a sin.. the form counts for nothing, the tree isn't known by what it wears, but by the fruit it produces. flesh begets flesh and spirit begets spirit.

 

[PruePhillip]

god is in the world and the world in god, god is omnipresent. loving christianity and jesus are worldly things. hating god's children; which are worldly things is a sin.. the form counts for nothing, the tree isn't known by what it wears, but by the fruit it produces. flesh begets flesh and spirit begets spirit.

The world is anything not of God. Those things which offend God.
The bibles speaks of things which offend God, these include adultery,
selfishness, adultery, dishonesty, false swearing, loving other things
more than God, loving the pleasures of the world, vain worship,
hate, violence, forgiveness, homosexuality, pride, foolishness,
immodesty, divorce, disobedient to parents, disrespect for authority,
disbelief, vanity, forsaking the Sabbath and so on, so on.

 

[Marcion]

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 19:1-13 - King James Version
People often challenge Christians to demonstrate what Jesus said against same same marriage. My general assumption is that He said nothing in favor of it. The point is not to be unlike Christ, but to convey the information, and let people decide how to live. In the preceeding link, Jesus refers to marriage between a man and a woman, as was the religious opinion of most Jews in His day.
This: Bible Gateway passage: Ephesians 5:22-33 - King James Version link also shows marriage between a man and a woman. The husband is shown as the head of the wife, with Christ as the Head of the Christian Church.
Another link, shown here: Bible Gateway passage: 1 Peter 3:1-7 - King James Version demonstrates that the wife is to obey the husband. Who does the obeying in a gay relationship?
Conclusion, I personally believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but I am not here to force my religious beliefs on anyone, just to convey Scripture and its meaning.

What is expressed in those (now) biblical letters, is the opinion of the people leading the early Christian church not even of direct disciples.
Yeshua himself may have frowned on gay marriage but there is simply no record of him saying anything on the subject.

 

[Fool]

The world is anything not of God. Those things which offend God.
The bibles speaks of things which offend God, these include adultery,
selfishness, adultery, dishonesty, false swearing, loving other things
more than God, loving the pleasures of the world, vain worship,
hate, violence, forgiveness, homosexuality, pride, foolishness,
immodesty, divorce, disobedient to parents, disrespect for authority,
disbelief, vanity, forsaking the Sabbath and so on, so on.

he who loves authority, earthly parents, the sabbath more than me is not worthy of me. the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. love does not have a respect for persons, love doesn't make a difference between one and another.


we are called to love our enemies, our neighbors, our Father in heaven, our Mother, and one another.


he who knows love, knows god. I AM that i am, I AM omnipresent

 

[Kenny]

What is expressed in those (now) biblical letters, is the opinion of the people leading the early Christian church not even of direct disciples.
Yeshua himself may have frowned on gay marriage but there is simply no record of him saying anything on the subject.

Did he need to?

 

[Prestor John]

Or because homosexual relationships were taboo in that culture at that time, not wanting to be unduly controversial and create a stumbling block for those who were culturally programmed into thinking certain ways with certain cultural biases against homosexuality, Jesus simply used the convention of referring to hetrosexual relationships.

It does not mean Jesus was against love, in whatever forms that took. I wouldn't think he was, since God is Love. Jesus seemed to be about seeing beyond our prejudices and seeing as God sees, seeing beyond our culture's ideas of Truth and seeing with the eyes of the Spirit.

The belief that homosexuality is sinful and harmful to the souls of Man is not based on either prejudice or cultural biases.

The Lord Jesus Christ had no need to speak on homosexuality or same-sex marriage to the Jews because they already knew that the behavior and the practice were sinful.

The Lord, in the Law, condemned many forms of "love" (or rather lust) so there is no reason to assume that the Lord Jesus Christ would be in favor of homosexual relationships or any other behavior that encourages sexual sin.

 

[Prestor John]

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 19:1-13 - King James Version
People often challenge Christians to demonstrate what Jesus said against same same marriage. My general assumption is that He said nothing in favor of it. The point is not to be unlike Christ, but to convey the information, and let people decide how to live. In the preceeding link, Jesus refers to marriage between a man and a woman, as was the religious opinion of most Jews in His day.
This: Bible Gateway passage: Ephesians 5:22-33 - King James Version link also shows marriage between a man and a woman. The husband is shown as the head of the wife, with Christ as the Head of the Christian Church.
Another link, shown here: Bible Gateway passage: 1 Peter 3:1-7 - King James Version demonstrates that the wife is to obey the husband. Who does the obeying in a gay relationship?
Conclusion, I personally believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but I am not here to force my religious beliefs on anyone, just to convey Scripture and its meaning.

Only between a man and a woman.

 

[columbus]

Conclusion, I personally believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but I am not here to force my religious beliefs on anyone, just to convey Scripture and its meaning.

The tendency of revealed religion to drag antiquated ethics into the modern world is a big part of the reason I doubt that they have anything to do with any higher power.

That said, I think you misunderstand what marriage is. The church doesn't marry anybody, nor does the state. People marry each other. The church might "bless" the marriage.
Or not. I don't care.
The state merely recognizes the marriage. For whatever reason, two people choose each other as "next-of-kin" and then get on with their lives.

For most of history, marriage was primarily a sanctioned breeding pair. But that was then and this is now. A good marriage is a mutually supportive, exclusive, and committed relationship, whatever that means to the participants. I believe that the vast majority of people will have the best life in such a relationship. So I support marriage as a concept and don't much care about the gender of the couple.
If you want to take marriage advice from people who thought the earth is flat, have at it. But don't expect me to take you seriously.
Tom

 

[Prestor John]

But that was then and this is now.

What does time have to do with marriage?​

If you want to take marriage advice from people who thought the earth is flat, have at it. But don't expect me to take you seriously.

Even if that were true, why would someone believing that the Earth was flat instantly disqualify them from giving sound advice about marriage?

So, if you are wrong about anything at any time that means you are wrong about everything all the time?

 

[Shiranui117]

Or because homosexual relationships were taboo in that culture at that time, not wanting to be unduly controversial and create a stumbling block for those who were culturally programmed into thinking certain ways with certain cultural biases against homosexuality, Jesus simply used the convention of referring to hetrosexual relationships.

It does not mean Jesus was against love, in whatever forms that took. I wouldn't think he was, since God is Love. Jesus seemed to be about seeing beyond our prejudices and seeing as God sees, seeing beyond our culture's ideas of Truth and seeing with the eyes of the Spirit.

Jesus and the first Christians did plenty of things that were taboo in Jewish culture; if homosexual marriage was part of the things that Jesus wanted to allow, He could have. Homosexuality wouldn't have been so different from throwing off some of the extrabiblical laws of the Pharisees.

 

[columbus]

What does time have to do with marriage?

Ethics have improved greatly over time.
In the days of Scripture authors, marriage was more like a man acquiring an all purposes domestic appliance.

I like modern ethics better, because I have a few thousand years more experience to draw conclusions from. There's a bunch of stuff Scriptural authors believed that we now consider horrible. Because we're better than they were.

Even if that were true, why would someone believing that the Earth was flat instantly disqualify them from giving sound advice about marriage?

No, it just speaks to their primitive thoughts, understanding, and ethics.

So, if you are wrong about anything at any time that means you are wrong about everything all the time?

Your strawman is making me itch.
Tom

 

[Windwalker]

This is disingenuous. You are saying that all love is good, and that is not the bible's position
at all.

Your response is disingenuous. So, you believe that not all love is good? Can you please support that with the Bible? If not, can you support that with any degree of reason whatsoever? Love is always good. God is Love. Or is God sometimes evil, to you?

There are many things we shouldn't love, some of them might even be good in some
senses.

There is nothing we should not love. "For God so loved the world...." (Jn. 3:16)

People excused themselves from the kingdom of heaven because of attending to
their marriage, or going about honest business (parable of the Lord's supper.)

Or by indulging themselves in their biases and ignoring their Lord who says instead to them, "Judge not, lest ye be judged".

The bible's position on homosexuality is understood by those who read it.
Love alone won't make the grade.

I think you should maybe actually read your Bible. Love alone is exactly what makes the grade. "For by Grace are ye saved." Yes, you have not read it yet, it seems. Let me know when you have, and we can discuss this further.

 

[masonlandry]

Using the fact that Jesus pointed to the example of a woman and a man to talk about marriage as evidence that hetero marriages are the only ones he approves of is akin to my former church maintaining that using musical instruments for worship is sinful because the bible only mentions singing and praising with the voice. Of course, not everything not explicitly mentioned is morally permissible, but we have reasonable, common sense to use as a judge. What isn't explicit, we can judge by the two greatest commandments, love God and love your neighbor. When we are doing harm to another, there is room to judge that. Homosexuality, especially a loving marriage between two men or two women, does no harm and brings more love into the world.

You can hardly pull old testament passages forward into time to claim homosexuality is wrong now because the Jews were given laws about it. They were given laws about a lot of "abominations" that no Christian recognizes as needing to be followed. If you want to use that metric, there are a lot of other Levitical edicts you'll have to start following as well.

The only places "homosexuality" is mentioned in the new testament are not by Jesus, and they aren't very solid as far as translation goes. A scholarly reading of the passages to determine the intended meaning of malakos and arsenokoitai - the Greek words translated in some English Bibles as homosexual, effeminate, or sodomite - tells you that "malakos" refers to the pre-pubescent slave boys kept by many wealthy Greek men as prostitutes or sex slaves, and "arsenokoitai" meaning the men who kept those boys. This is made clear by the grouping and structure of the words in the passage. The condemnations come in groups of related sins, like "murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, and manslayers," "lawless and disobedient," and "liars and perjurers." The group of sins including what is commonly understood as a blanket condemnation of all homosexuality is grouped as, "pornoi, asenokoitai, and andropodistai." Pornoi translates as whoremonger, and andropodistai as slave-keeper or slave-trader. It only makes structural sense that andropdistai is a condemnation of those (literally translated "man-bedders") who bedded the slaves they traded and the prostitutes condemned in the word previous. All three of which were common in the place and time where Paul was writing to Christian churches. A blanket condemnation of homosexuality is not supported by an intelligent translation and is only there because of pre-held bias against it.

 

[Salvador]

If Christianity strictly defines marriage as between a man and woman, then does Christianity exclude hermaphrodites (intersex persons) from being married? If so, then should a male/hermaphrodite couple or a female/hermaphrodite couple who were wanting to be married with each other together reject Christianity in order to become a happily married couple?

 

[Kenny]

Using the fact that Jesus pointed to the example of a woman and a man to talk about marriage as evidence that hetero marriages are the only ones he approves of is akin to my former church maintaining that using musical instruments for worship is sinful because the bible only mentions singing and praising with the voice. Of course, not everything not explicitly mentioned is morally permissible, but we have reasonable, common sense to use as a judge. What isn't explicit, we can judge by the two greatest commandments, love God and love your neighbor. When we are doing harm to another, there is room to judge that. Homosexuality, especially a loving marriage between two men or two women, does no harm and brings more love into the world.

You can hardly pull old testament passages forward into time to claim homosexuality is wrong now because the Jews were given laws about it. They were given laws about a lot of "abominations" that no Christian recognizes as needing to be followed. If you want to use that metric, there are a lot of other Levitical edicts you'll have to start following as well.

The only places "homosexuality" is mentioned in the new testament are not by Jesus, and they aren't very solid as far as translation goes. A scholarly reading of the passages to determine the intended meaning of malakos and arsenokoitai - the Greek words translated in some English Bibles as homosexual, effeminate, or sodomite - tells you that "malakos" refers to the pre-pubescent slave boys kept by many wealthy Greek men as prostitutes or sex slaves, and "arsenokoitai" meaning the men who kept those boys. This is made clear by the grouping and structure of the words in the passage. The condemnations come in groups of related sins, like "murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, and manslayers," "lawless and disobedient," and "liars and perjurers." The group of sins including what is commonly understood as a blanket condemnation of all homosexuality is grouped as, "pornoi, asenokoitai, and andropodistai." Pornoi translates as whoremonger, and andropodistai as slave-keeper or slave-trader. It only makes structural sense that andropdistai is a condemnation of those (literally translated "man-bedders") who bedded the slaves they traded and the prostitutes condemned in the word previous. All three of which were common in the place and time where Paul was writing to Christian churches. A blanket condemnation of homosexuality is not supported by an intelligent translation and is only there because of pre-held bias against it.

1) - The bible doesn't only mention singing with voices... on the contrary y mentions a multiplicity of instruments
2) - You have precedent
3) -Arsenokoites - can refer to slave boys but isn't limited to

But all of this is irrelevant. Once you accept Jesus Christ, He begin to reconstruct ones life and that is all types of life. In Christianity, the work of the Cross is more than sufficient even for the self-righteous.

 

[Katja]

The first passage is in response to specific questions about a male-female marriage. Nowhere does it say male-female is the only way to do it (though at the time, it was), just like it doesn't say it's only a man's prerogative to initiate divorce even though this is what it mentions.

The second two, specifying submission, says specifically: *wives* submit to your *husbands*. It doesn't say *husbands* submit to your husbands, or *wives* submit to your wives. It's merely speaking of one type of relationship. (By which I also assume you must think wives must submit to husbands, correct? Because if you're going to cite this passage as being against homosexuality, then you must also necessarily be against women being agents of their own destiny-- in which case you're probably no doubt of the opinion that I need to quickly get married so I can ask my husband if it's okay that I post this... {or would calling my dad for permission be okay?})

The world is anything not of God. Those things which offend God.
The bibles speaks of things which offend God, these include adultery,
selfishness, adultery, dishonesty, false swearing, loving other things
more than God, loving the pleasures of the world, vain worship,
hate, violence, forgiveness, homosexuality, pride, foolishness,
immodesty, divorce, disobedient to parents, disrespect for authority,
disbelief, vanity, forsaking the Sabbath and so on, so on.

And you're as equally offended by all of those things as you are by homosexuality, right?

 

[PruePhillip]

And you're as equally offended by all of those things as you are by homosexuality, right?

Absolutely.
The argument that we must accept such and such because it's "natural" is beside the point.
Nearly EVERYTHING we do is "natural" like envy, dishonesty or hate.

Some churches opposed gays but allowed divorce. That's a form of hypocrisy - it was easier
to do this.

As an aside - in Australia last year there was a vote on "gay marriage"
One of the arguments laid out by the gay lobby was that gay marriage would not effect
religious rights. Less than a year later and the same group are challenging religious rights.
I am reminded when the gay lobby said decriminalization wouldn't lead to promoting gays
in schools, or gay marriage.
So why am I against the gay lobby? Despite liking gays as people, I see my rights rapidly
vanishing, along with societal standards of behavior, by people not telling the truth.

 

[columbus]

Despite liking gays as people, I see my rights rapidly
vanishing,

What rights?
Specifically.

along with societal standards of behavior,

We don't casually discriminate against black people any more, the way we used to.
Gotta problem with that?
Tom

 

[PruePhillip]

Using the fact that Jesus pointed to the example of a woman and a man to talk about marriage as evidence that hetero marriages are the only ones he approves of is akin to my former church maintaining that using musical instruments for worship is sinful because the bible only mentions singing and praising with the voice. Of course, not everything not explicitly mentioned is morally permissible, but we have reasonable, common sense to use as a judge. What isn't explicit, we can judge by the two greatest commandments, love God and love your neighbor. When we are doing harm to another, there is room to judge that. Homosexuality, especially a loving marriage between two men or two women, does no harm and brings more love into the world.

You can hardly pull old testament passages forward into time to claim homosexuality is wrong now because the Jews were given laws about it. They were given laws about a lot of "abominations" that no Christian recognizes as needing to be followed. If you want to use that metric, there are a lot of other Levitical edicts you'll have to start following as well.

The only places "homosexuality" is mentioned in the new testament are not by Jesus, and they aren't very solid as far as translation goes. A scholarly reading of the passages to determine the intended meaning of malakos and arsenokoitai - the Greek words translated in some English Bibles as homosexual, effeminate, or sodomite - tells you that "malakos" refers to the pre-pubescent slave boys kept by many wealthy Greek men as prostitutes or sex slaves, and "arsenokoitai" meaning the men who kept those boys. This is made clear by the grouping and structure of the words in the passage. The condemnations come in groups of related sins, like "murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers, and manslayers," "lawless and disobedient," and "liars and perjurers." The group of sins including what is commonly understood as a blanket condemnation of all homosexuality is grouped as, "pornoi, asenokoitai, and andropodistai." Pornoi translates as whoremonger, and andropodistai as slave-keeper or slave-trader. It only makes structural sense that andropdistai is a condemnation of those (literally translated "man-bedders") who bedded the slaves they traded and the prostitutes condemned in the word previous. All three of which were common in the place and time where Paul was writing to Christian churches. A blanket condemnation of homosexuality is not supported by an intelligent translation and is only there because of pre-held bias against it.

I am wary of "Greek translations" that people go into. Greek words, like English words, have multiple meanings and can be arranged to serve multiple ways. One heroic effort of Greek translation saw Mother Mary as not only not being a virgin but being raped as well.
Generally homosexuality came under the class of, how shall I put it, "strange sexual practices"
ie sex with children, bestiality, divorce, adultery, living in sin and the like. "Fornication" is a term used in the King James translation.
I find gay marriage an uncomfortable subject - because the Gospels isn't so much about prohibition as about the changing of one's life. I appreciated seeing a man return to this church after some ten or twenty years - and returning to his wife as well. His whole attitude had changed.

 

[PruePhillip]

What rights?
Specifically.
We don't casually discriminate against black people any more, the way we used to.
Gotta problem with that?
Tom

The one just mentioned is an example. Having assured Australians that gay marriage
is not going to effect religious rights - the gay lobby now challenges religious rights.
This is in our news as the Labor and Greens seek to stop religious exemption in schools.
Religious schools choosing their own staff or forcing children to attend chapel service have
been cited in the legislation.
Gay groups going after a corporation because one of the board members belonged to an
anti-gay church (just last year) suggests what could happen in religious schools. I told
someone yesterday that these groups could challenge bible translations, gender pronouns,
ratios of heterosexual to non-heterosexual teachers, teaching of queer theories and the
like.
Love to see someone try that on Muslim schools. I suspect the lobbies won't as Islam
has some sympathy to those with political agendas.