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So, I also affirm traditional marriage, I believe marriage is a smaller or perhaps a more material reflection of Christ’s relationship with each of us and with His church. So Christian marriage is sacred, it is representative of so much more than just a relationship between two people.
I’ve also seen way too much sexual abuse of children, children groomed into a sexual relationship by predatory homosexuals. That truth is the invisible pink elephant lurking beneath the LGBT lobby that nobody wants to discuss. I can actually set aside religious values, but I can’t set aside the pain of so many betrayed and exploited children, many whose stories I’ve actually heard.
Now that we’ve got that settled, I just groaned at the Church of England affirming traditional marriage. This is the church pretty much formed by Henry the 8th so he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, whom He eventually beheaded. He had six wives, numerous mistresses, and was rumored to be a homosexual, too. So, like Henry the 8th affirms traditional marriage, say wut?? The guy is absolutely legendary for not honoring Christian marriage and for beheading his wives!
I don’t intend to point fingers exclusively at the Church of England, I’m just saying that’s a really big pink elephant and it totally baffles me why anyone would be so bold as to take one look at the church and just revoke their authority on any and all moral matters?
That’s just sarcasm, I really mean, why would anyone care about what the Henry the 8th church has to say about traditional marriage???! And never mind homosexuality, those weren’t gay people being divorced, cast out, or beheaded, those were all women. I’m not so sure Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn are looking down and celebrating this alleged moral victory.
My greater point in all of this is that the church overall, the church at large, has lost her moral authority, her influence, her appeal, primarily becasue of a complete failure to stand up for what is right, for covering up big issues by just draping a paper towel over them and pretending they don’t matter. We’ve done this all throughout history and we do it in modern times.
I love how the Bible tells us “blessed are the peaceMAKERS.” We make the peace. That’s an entirely different thing from being a peacekeeper. A peacekeeper tends to snuggle up to power, drape a paper towel over the mess, and tell those who have been harmed by these epic failures, to just shut up and forgive. Peacekeepers tend to just sweep everything under the rug and hope it all disappears.
Blessed be the peaceMAKERS, those who drag those pink elephants out into the sunlight, those who insist we confront the truth, those who stand up for the least of these.
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See, there's this thing called biology... 
Everything is terrible these days.
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Maybe, or maybe it’s just the mess you see when you are trying to sort things out in your closet? I’m pretty sure everything is not terrible, at least not compared to how it used to be. 🙂
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You posted about the assaults on traditional marriage and I just agreed.
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Yes, but I was trying to show that the assaults on traditional marriage began long, long, ago, Henry the 8th being a fine example.
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A think this perfect marriage talk goes all the way back to the fall of man. Adam and Eve rejected God’s perfect way with disobedience and sin has been ruining marriage (everything) ever since.
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True! Perhaps affirming traditional marriage would be more effective if we did it with some humility? Like, we could point to Henry the 8th and his issues, as a reason, as an example of why having values and standards matters. Here is the alternative, a better way, and here is what it looks like when we just make it up on our own. We could say the same about King Solomon, of course.
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As Christians we should only be pointing to God’s Word as the source of truth. King Henry, Solomon, whoever… is going to let us down and fail to uphold God’s standard – pointing toward a person will always let us down.
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Yes. I think that’s part of what bothers me. The church so often points to herself, towards a person, towards her declarations and proclaimations, and then we all look over and just see all these problem people with huge issues. Henry the 8th pretty much established the Church of England so that he could write the standard, so he could define marriage. That’s a huge pile of hypocrisy that should have been addressed.
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The Word does makes us aware of our problems, our sin. That’s valuable so we can repent and believe in Jesus.
The Church as messengers of the Gospel will always be hypocrites, in the sense that we are going to sin and fall short of God’s perfection. But all Christians are saying is that we are sinners forgiven by God and you can be too.
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This is a new perspective for me. When I think of the Church of England I think of C.S. Lewis, not Henry VIII. Not that Lewis was perfect, either, but definitely an improvement …
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Another great perspective on hypocrisy. I cringe when terms like ‘traditional marriage’ and ‘Christian marriage’ are thought synonymous. ‘Scriptural marriage’ is indeed intended to be symbolic of a right relationship with God, a spiritual union transcending that which is physical.
As humanity has attempted to reinterpret marriage, I long for the day that a significant and lasting distinction is appreciated. ‘Marriage’ and ‘civil unions’ are NOT synonymous!
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Lordy you’ve written a post that I could have written— I love knowing that my Church was the spawn of a selfish king who simply wanted to annul a 20 year marriage so he could marry a mistress he eventually beheaded— he did die of syphilis so I suppose he got his poetically just ending— and the C of E has been on a downward spiral since its inception— 😑
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“I’ve also seen way too much sexual abuse of children, children groomed into a sexual relationship by predatory homosexuals. That truth is the invisible pink elephant lurking beneath the LGBT lobby that nobody wants to discuss. I can actually set aside religious values, but I can’t set aside the pain of so many betrayed and exploited children, many whose stories I’ve actually heard.”
This a typical theist attitude that is insulting for many people. I would bet most LGBT people are not responsible in any way for creating or becoming predatory homosexuals, this is like saying all heterosexual men are somehow responsible for creating rapists.
You obviously parrot what your church wants you to believe IB, this is to take the focus of the real pink elephant that is the ugly self righteousness and smugness of LGBT condemnation when as you know the cesspit of homosexuals and child molesters have been holed up in the sanctuary of Gods holly churches for many decades.
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You shouldn’t identify the Church of England with what Henry VII did. God sometimes uses evil men to carry out his will and he used Henry to separate the Church of England from the Roman Catholic church. In a time when many churches are affirming sames sex marriage we should be thankful for any church that still holds the biblical concept of marriage.
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I’m at a loss here. I would think you would see “affirming traditional marriage” as progress; it would be a rejection of the life style of Henry the 8th. I don’t think you are promoting “non-traditional” marriage. As I said, I am lost. I read some of the comments; maybe I could understand if I read them all. But I’m sleepy. Maybe that is why I’m lost. Good-night.
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I find it funny how you Christians proclaim how marriage is so sacred, when so many of you end up in divorce court and some of you are on your second, third, or even fourth sacred marriage.
Oh and you want to talk about people who harm children? For 14 years now? I have been working in the Bishops Accountability’s Abuse Tracker blog, done my own called Rape Victims of the Catholic Church and have two groups on Facebook, Ministers Whom Rape Children and Christian Pastors of Hate.
In these groups and blogs? I have exposed over 100 thousand pedophile priests and pastors. And many of them? Were heterosexual rapes of children. Some of these scum perverts have victim counts in the hundreds. Some? Raped infants. Some? Raped deaf/mute children. One? Raped an 11 yr old girl on her fathers grave right after he held the funeral services for her father. And these? Are just the Christian priests and pastors I have exposed. This does not include the uncountable stories I have shared of Christian school teachers, Christian cops, Christian politicians, movie and music stars, Christian parents, all busted for raping children.
It is not the homosexuals out there raping children as you all proclaim in your projections of your own evil upon them. It is you Christians who are raping children. And you all got a long history of raping children. Hell, you all raped thousands of Native American children in your Protestant and Catholic Industrial Schools.
So how about you disgusting Christians look at your own evil and start cleaning that up?
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/
https://rapevictimsofthecatholicchurch.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1438329269778752/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/797949393584862/
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