We had such an interesting discussion last night at the cathedral’s LGBT Group (aka Gay Club).
The conversation was about marriage, looking at it from a biblical, social and personal point of view rather than talking about the current attempts to change the law.
The question that we really found interesting was how many positive role models of married life we could find in the bible.
The truth is, we struggled far more than we imagined we would.
Suggestions included:
- Ruth and Boaz – but we know far more about them before they were wed than after
- Mary and Joseph – again we don’t know much about their married life apart from the fact that they lost their son on a day out
- Adam and Eve – well, we are in the mythic here and there’s a lot of squabbling about blame to wade through before we can really talk about relationships.
So, your suggestions please. Can you think of good role models for marriage from the bible? Who would you nominate?
I thought the definitive answer had been given by Mrs Betty Bowers? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
David and Jonathan? Ruth and Naomi? At least they provide us with Scriptural passages that would grace a wedding service!
I was just about to give them a shout out myself. Admirable stories of love uncluttered by the dysfunctional horrorshow stuff attending upon some of the previous suggestions.
Well, David and Jonathan were each married to someone else and Naomi, as Ruth’s mother in law does offer her useful tips on how to seduce her kinsman Boaz. (Go sleep with him on the threshing floor and uncover his “feet”).
Lovely as some of the ideas are around David and Jonathan and around Ruth and Naomi, I do struggle a bit to think that they are good examples of married coupledom.
No, especially as the clever money is on David engineering Jonathan’s death …
Well, that’s me telt.
If it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for in the Bible doesn’t that rather suggest:
1) you’re trying to fit the Bible to your world-view rather than the reverse;
2) that, therefore, a non-Biblical culture is dominating your Christian discipleship
3) that it may be worth trying the reverse procedure – rather than saying “how does the Bible answer my question that I bring to it?” saying “what does the Bible have to say to me, ask me, about how I conduct my life?”
My reading (for what it’s worth) is that neither the Old nor the New Testament, taken as wholes, are particularly positive about “marriage”. They regard this institution as full of risk and danger, of suffering and of pitfalls (like the rest of human life). Indeed the New Testament promises the end of marriage (Matthew 22:30//Mark 12:25 – when the dead rise they will neither marry nor be given in marriage)
http://loveswork.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/why-are-there-two-distinct-teachings-about-marriage-in-the-new-testament/
No, Nick. I don’t think that because one can’t find something in the bible it suggests that I’m trying to fit the Bible to my world view.
Nor does it suggest that a non-Biblical culture is dominating my Christian discipleship.
I take the bible more seriously than to think anyone could live in a “Biblical culture”
So far as I can see, your comment was more about your world view than mine.
So why can’t you find what you’re looking for? If you’ve searched the texts for something (in this case positive role models of marriage) and failed to find it, what does this mean?
I’m also puzzled about your rejection of the possibility of a “Biblical culture” (a phrase I didn’t and wouldn’t use, but never mind). What is the relationship between the Kingdom of God and culture, do you think? It rather seems to me that the coming of the Kingdom for which we pray would necessarily involve the coming into line of “culture” with the will of God, which in the meantime is revealed to us, as best we can find it, through the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments, discerned under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (to use my denomination’s formula).
I’m far from certain that God has will. Most people who want to tell me what the will of God is seem to be trying to make me change to suit themselves.
“Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven” – I’m presuming you, like me, say this reasonably often (possibly in more contemporary English). What does this mean, if it doesn’t mean that God has some “will” for us and for all creation? (I would stress that I am not claiming to know what that will is nor whether anything in particular is or is not in line with it, just that I’m not sure what discipleship could be if it weren’t the attempt to discern and align to God’s will).
I think that God’s will is for our good.
It seems improbable to me that the prayer “your will be done” simply means “our good be done”. I simply can’t hear it as not meaning that God has some intentions (opaque to us) and we are praying that those intentions be realised. I don’t doubt, however, that those intentions, that will, are for our good.
Having read, as I do the first third of the Holy Bible in the last three months….I am struck by the fact that we don’t actually seem to see anything that is a ‘good example’ of monogamous marriage. Many/most men are polygamous and the prevalence of the concubine is almost universal.
The ‘models’ in particular Mary and Joseph are not drawn from Scripture it would seem but from tradition, nothing wrong with that. But a lot of it is fanciful don’t you think.
The received wisdom nowadays that Mary was most likely in her early to mid teens and Joseph probably 30+ (possibly much older) would raise all sorts of questions and, indeed, eyebrows in your average Church