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Showing posts from June, 2012

Why bother to defend lifelong heterosexual monogamous marriage?

Here in Australia we're in the throes of debate about same-gender marriage.  One of the issues in the debate is: from the secular side: "what right do Christians have to dictate how other people live?"; and from the Christian side, the exact same question in reverse: "why bother trying to impose Christian values on non-Christians?  They're unforgiven sinners anyway; just let them do what they want." Here's some thoughts on why Christians care about other people's marriages.  Not specific to the same-gender marriage debate, though of course it has implications for it. 1. Biblically speaking, God instituted marriage in Genesis ch 1 & 2.  It's an aspect of being created male & female, for procreation - babies - and ruling the earth.  Jesus validates heterosexual lifelong monogamous marriage in Matthew ch 19 (and parallels).  There is a consistent Biblical metaphor of God and his people being compared to a groom and his bride, eg: Ezekie...