I started this series complaining about gay marriage, because frankly most people who cheer over this graphic do so for spite of those who oppose gay marriage. They find objections to gay marriage shallow, and are unafraid to stand for their position as an attempt to shame others in line with this now dominant position in America. And why shouldn't they? This will likely be a huge issue in this country for years to come until both sides can truly understand each other more clearly.
But other than briefly evaluating the gay marriage issue from a Biblical standpoint (I am not concerned for socio-political aspects), however, this series clearly was about so much more than that single topic. It was about the role and purpose of marriage. It was about cultural standards and social values. It was about taking a closer look at whether our values and priorities put us in a position of superiority from which to judge the ancient world.
The reason I allowed this series to stray into so many areas was that those who rave about this graphic are, in one way or another, implying it serves as an argument against accepting any Biblical standards for marriage. The entire reputation of the Bible's moral standards weighed in the balance! This is also why I looked so closely at each of the items the graphic depicted. I wanted to dissect what was being objected to. Was the information accurately portrayed? Did it show a clear understanding of historical and social context? Was the Bible being evaluated with objective hermeneutical principles?
In each case, I found the answer to one or more of these questions in the negative. As you hopefully saw as you followed me, this required more than simply saying "the Bible says x". Instead, I had to also ask "What does x mean?" I had to put myself into the mind of a distant past time, a foreign culture and an unfamiliar language. I had to evaluate some seemingly uncomfortable circumstances and try to make sense of them. I had t o dig deep into various websites and books, and give all sides of an issue the benefit of doubt.
Needless to say, the work done for this was far more than I guarantee was done by any of the graphic's authors, or those who parrot it and reproduce it on social media. This in and of itself should serve as a lesson on the level of diligence Christians need to show in Bible study, but that may be a topic for another time.
So, how can I summarize this series in a way you can take something home for future use? First, one error consistent for each case evaluated was simply that our opponents appeared to see no distinction between ancient culture and modern. Either ancient people were held to modern standards, or treated as if they were nothing else than a modern day stereotype! This seems as if it would be something more obvious to people, but it truly is a cancer that plagues today's popular theology as much as it does the ideas of skeptics and critics. In short, the warning here is to be careful in your approach to comparisons when practicing theology. Without knowing it, you could be using the same kind of logic as critics of Christianity! Patriarchy is not something to insult as an oppressive and dark part of past history, but something to be merely understood in it's own context for it's own value and merit.
We also saw throughout this series how important it was to realize that marriage, much like "love", was historically unrelated to the mushy romantic ideals of the present. This was true not only for the world of the Bible, but for literally all pre-industrial societies. It could not be stressed enough how important this is for the church to understand today. People continue to ponder the poor state of marriage in America, holding it up as an ideal but communicating little of its true substance. Can we ever expect things to get better if marriage is still believed to be something all rosy that makes us happier? We easily blame laws, politics or an influx of radical ideas for shaping our concepts. But such things are filling a vacuum created in the first place by our neglect to understand, study and teach that which we hold dear. As the popular Christian book by Gary Thomas asks - "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?"
I hope this series also served to show you how important word studies can sometimes be. We saw more than once how words could take on different meanings by their context, and words shift in their meaning rapidly over time (this, btw, is why their continue to be so many Bible translations). One size simply does not fit all - even when it comes to Bible translations. Why is this? Quite simply, not all Bible scholars are translators, and vice versa. There is a tremendous amount of scholarly research put into the Bible by people who have no time to contribute to translation issues. Similarly, most translators could never possibly be aware of everything scholarship has to say about the issues they face.
Finally, and perhaps my most important point to make is that ancient forms of marriage ultimately served a purpose - for the good of society. If anyone is to hold up their own standards, or criticize those of the Bible, they need to show how such standards serve (or fail to) everyone's benefit. In other words, proponents of gay marriage need prove it will benefit everyone some way. But this can't be done. Instead, the issue has been more about the personal "rights" (for the benefit of self), or benefits married couples receive (which are not "rights"). Because this is still what we champion in our free, democratic society. But should we rush to change common law in this way? Are we even thinking about what kind of equality we want people to have?
Now that this series is over, I have dozens of simpler and shorter topics I will be commenting on in the months to come. Work has been busy and that's why this is coming so late, but this means you should get much more of my brain in much less time for a while. My busy schedule also means I've had to put off other writing (my book), but everything must come in it's proper time, I suppose. Thanks for following me, and helping take every thought captive on what Biblical marriage is!
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