CLAIM:
I believe that a loving, committed relationship—regardless of whether it fits the traditional mold of a man and a woman—can be just as healthy and pleasing to God as any traditional family.
REBUTTAL:
On the surface, it is difficult to dispute this claim. After all, studies and common sense repeatedly demonstrate the value of a “healthy home.” But I want to take a step back and focus on the words “I believe,” not only as they apply to this claim, but as we invoke those words in all our viewpoints on relationships.
The Weight of “I Believe” Statements
Beliefs function as interpretive lenses, shading every aspect of how we understand relationships. What one values as “traditional” or “healthy” is deeply rooted in foundational convictions, upbringing, social influences, cultural context, and anecdotal experience.
When the claimant favors “healthy” over “traditional” families, his beliefs are tainted by his experience and definition of both. The buoyancy of his beliefs is rarely dependent on little more than his intuition and the favor it finds with others. The more eloquently stated the belief and the larger the following, the greater strength the belief has as an operational principle of life, even if factually incorrect.
Examples of this can be found in the Bible.
- The Golden Calf (Exodus 32:1-4): The Israelites shared a common conviction that they faced an uncertain future with Moses (Exodus 32:1). The belief of some that their deliverance from Egypt was due to a human-made golden calf became a collective belief of all.
- 12 Spies in the Promised Land (Numbers 13:26-14:4): God promised to give the Israelites the land of Canaan as their new home. An advance team of 12 spies inspected it. Caleb and Joshua reported that they can take the land. The ten other spies reported that it looked impossible and convinced all the people.
- Pharisees Controlled Religious Practice (Mark 7:1-8): Over the years, the Pharisees expanded the laws of God into meaningless traditions that eventually defined the prevailing religious practices of the time, even though they had drifted from God’s intent.
- Passion That Deafens (Matthew 26:31-35): In their zeal for much of what Jesus had done, his disciples wouldn’t hear Jesus talk of his primary mission to offer himself as the sacrifice for sin. Peter espoused the belief, and the others joined in.
In every instance, a point of view dominated the masses, even though it ran contrary to God’s revelation.
That doesn’t mean a point of view rooted merely in intuition or opinion could not be a correct one. The belief statement is not the matter in question, but rather, why the belief statement exists at all. On what authority does a personal observation or conviction become a dominating, society-forming, incontrovertible principle for life?
Sifting Truth from Conjecture
When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree (Genesis 2:16-17), their intent was clear: “…to be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Humans wanted to be like God. They wanted to do more than know God’s version of the truth. They wished to create their own version of the truth. They wanted their own ideas of good and evil. We saw it in Cain killing Abel (Genesis 4:1-10). Instead of the result of eating the forbidden fruit being pure hearts, men and women had hearts inclined in the opposite direction, opposed to God (Genesis 8:21).
Understanding the sharp distinction between purity (1 John 3:3) and evil (Isaiah 64:6) is key to realizing that we cannot sift our own idea of truth (Ecclesiastes 8:17; Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33-34; 1 Corinthians 1:25). We will invariably get it wrong.
God is the creator of all things (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16-17). We cannot fathom how He did it or how He does things today (Job 11:7-8; Psalm 145:3). Our alternative is to fabricate ideas, get support for those ideas, and soon our notions become fact, even though they lack the objectivity necessary to filter out our biases and evil inclinations.
Mark Twain once said,
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.1Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (Hartford, CT: The American Publishing Company, 1897), 156.
Fiction, theories, notions, ideas, and so forth that sprout from the imagination of human beings must always be logical to gain a following as credible by fellow human beings. Logic is our common language. The problem, however, is that the truth is not bound by logic. We cannot describe how a creative command from God brings something from nothing (Hebrews 11:3). Even our feeble attempts at logically explaining how the world came to be are crippled by our need to be logical when the truth is so inexplicable.
Tainted by Our Biases
The problem with objective truth is that it can seem like a cruel taskmaster. It demands nothing less than complete submission to work. The biases we develop over the course of our lifetimes are always pleading for exceptions. Consider how Satan began his big temptation of Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” [emphasis added] (Genesis 3:1) What finally pushed Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit was this reality:
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. (Genesis 3:6)
She couldn’t resist. The clarity of God’s command to not eat of the fruit faded with each glance and every thought about what that fruit would do for her.
James explained the process like this:
[E]ach person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:14–15)
Our biases tempt us to favor things not only for us but also for how we think things should be. A biblical example of this involved a relatively unknown prophet of God named Micaiah.
When King Jehoshaphat (of Judah) was asked by King Ahab (of Israel) to join him in a battle against Ramoth Gilead (1 Kings 22:1-40), Jehoshaphat wanted to get input from Micaiah, the prophet of God. Ahab objected. “I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad.” (1 Kings 22:8).
Ahab was correct on this one. Micaiah said Ahab would be killed. Ahab’s response was: “Didn’t I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?” (1 Kings 22:18) The truth was irrelevant to Ahab because it was not what he wanted to hear.
Because we have a bias opposed to God (Romans 8:7), we cannot be objective when we develop our own belief statements. We are too heavily influenced by emotion, culture, and the compelling arguments of others. That is why objective truth can be a cruel taskmaster. The truth doesn’t care about all of that. It stands on its own.
Belief Built on Objective Truth
The claimant venerates his belief that a healthy family is preferable to a traditional one. I suppose a study or two can be found to support that belief. But the claimant leaves so much to speculation. What is healthy? Is healthy by today’s standards the same as healthy a century ago, or will it be healthy a century from now?
And what does he mean by traditional? Who defined traditional, and why would that definition be subordinate to his understanding of “healthy?”
God’s word, the Bible, in all its cold, unequivocal, loving, and devoted statements that instruct us on how we should live, is not an arbitrary rule book. God intends to preserve us (Jeremiah 29:11). To accomplish this, He gave us His word, the Bible, as the objective authority to guide and preserve us (Deuteronomy 10:12-13; Psalm 19:7-8; Romans 8:28).
To the child of God (believer), His word is not a drudgery or a killjoy on all the fun things in life. Instead, when a heart is rightly calibrated as God’s child, His word is a source of joy, and obedience comes not like a yoke over our necks but as the directives on how we can please God who was so sacrificially pleased to save us (Psalm 1:2; Psalm 119:16; Colossians 3:15-17).
The incredible part about obeying God’s word is that it also brings us good that is temporal and eternal (Psalm 119:1-2; John 13:17; Romans 6:15-18; 1 John 2:17).
Belief and Healthy Traditional Relationships
You do not build the best automobile by first picking the paint color. Appearances, while admirable and attractive, can be deceptive (1 Samuel 16:7; Proverbs 31:30; John 7:24). A non-traditional family, defined as “healthy” by the world’s standards, is viewed through a distorted lens (1 Corinthians 13:12). Scripture is clear that apart from faith, we do not please God, no matter how much we may please others (Hebrews 11:6).
Because of sin in the world, and because no one is exempt from the consequences of sin, even believers in God and His salvation in Christ make terrible mistakes and do some horrible sinning (2 Samuel 11:1-12:7; Matthew 26:69-75; 1 John 1:8). That is why God-pleasing living begins with faith, and continues with the struggle to live according to that faith (Philippians 3:12). When it comes to a family, God’s ideal for a pleasing life is that a marriage consist of a husband and wife, that is a male and a female. While many non-traditional households may appear well-adjusted by the world’s standards, the world will pass away. The standard that endures is God’s standards (Psalm 119:89; Matthew 24:35; 1 Peter 1:24-25).
A God-pleasing relationship begins with the awareness that there is more to life than meets the eye. There is more to existing than what we accomplish within an earthly life span (Luke 12:23; 2 Corinthians 4:18; 1 John 5:12-13).
Jesus reminds us:
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)
We share a common goal in having a healthy home. It is prudent to let the Author of life, the One who instituted marriage, be the beginning of that healthy home. We begin by doing so with what the claimant refers to as a “traditional” relationship, which consists of a man and a woman. Anything intentionally contrary to that is nothing more than fooling ourselves.
0 Comments