Marriage And Why Christians Should Consider It Serious Business

Note: I'm single, but I still highly respect the concept of commitment and marriage as an honorable institution, especially as God intended it to be. I also would like to dedicate this post specifically to Jason Gress, co-founder of ChristCenteredGamer and someone I personally know to take their marriage vows as seriously as Jesus advised all men should.

Marriage is a concept that gets treated with shockingly callous indifference in this day and age, and while I have no plans to get married and am happy single, I respect anyone willing to do so and stick with it, because that requires some long-term commitment, and if you marry as Christians are supposed to, that takes SERIOUS commitment, because you just aren't bound by mortal laws on the topic, but spiritual ones.

Another reason marriage is important aside from the obvious commitment is that God made a direct comparison between marriage between a man and woman is the same as his commitment to us. Making a mockery of marriage is basically giving God the middle finger, and considering God admits to grieving in sorrow when we forsake Him, Marriage is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

If one reads the Bible, the above point is repeatedly stressed. Marriage is a small scale reflection of the larger promise God committed himself regarding humanity, but it's no less meaningful, and by remaining faithful to one another in a marriage, the married couple also remains faithful to God.

If you are Christian, then the following practices should be detestable to you, and while I don't believe they need elaboration, I'm going to provide it anyway because it should explain why God takes it so seriously:


Cuckoldry: This is basically no different than when Israel forsook God to practice idolatry despite him being willing to remain fully faithful to all the promises he made, and then to His horror had to watch the people he chose to forsake him for powerless statues and carved tree trunks.

God did not appreciate being cucked, and neither should anyone in a marriage want to feel the same because not only is it spitting in the face of your spouse, it's spitting in the face of God, who meant marriage to be a binding promise of love and devotion, and turning your spouse into a cuckold just degrades them, much like God felt degraded when his people forsook him.


"Open" marriages: This is another concept God finds contemptible because marriage is an exclusive promise between one party and another, it's not meant to be treated like a rope of sand to break into fragments when one feels like it.

Just like God was offended by the idea people might worship an idol and then worship Him just to hedge their bets, so should any Christian couple be repulsed by expanding the number of people in the marriage bed. The whole point is to remain faithful to who you married and them alone, it was never intended for more than that.


Homosexual marriages: This is spitting in God's face twice over. Not only did he never intend Adam and Steve, but marriage is also between a man and a woman only, he made no other provisions for alternative arrangements.

Just as he made a covenant where it was stipulated there are no other gods before him, a Christian should always remember marriage has immutable conditions that cannot be changed on a whim, they are set in stone, and homosexuality is off the table no matter if you are married or single.


I could go on, but if you are single, fine, so am I, but if you believe in God, you are part of the bride that is humanity that God pledged himself to, so by walking with God, you honor your vows as the humanity betrothed to God. If you are married and also believe in God, then you have honored his vows both in miniature and in an even greater sense, and you will be blessed for it.


In conclusion, I believe Ephesians 5:25-33 puts it best:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church"

Religions I Personally Cannot Believe In and Why

Note: I have gone on record I'm a non-denominational Protestant, yet I do not actively hate anyone of any faith or no faith, but I wanted to explain why I cannot buy into the tenets of several belief systems in particular and why from a personal perspective.



Atheism: While this is technically the absence of faith or denial of a higher power, I'm covering this first just to cover all the bases.

My reason for not buying into atheism is that, if you apply logic, it has a pretty hopeless message. Apparently, we live, die, and that's it. Our memory may exist for future generations, but if humanity as a whole dies out, our existence ceases to matter.

I can understand agnostics a little better than I do atheists, but flat out saying we were born, will die, and that's it for our existence is one of the most fatalistic things I've ever heard, and I refuse to believe human life is that pointless.



Scientology: Let's pretend I don't believe L. Ron Hubbard was a lying fraudster, which I'm absolutely convinced of, so instead, let me just point out the inconsistencies with pure logic.

Scientology was preceded by Dianetics, which was pseudo-psychology invented before it became the basis of religion, and the actual backstory of Scientology itself has no backing whatsoever in any objective historical sense. Most other belief systems at least have some form of objective historical basis, but Scientology does not even have that.

When the foundation is that shoddy, how am I supposed to swallow anything else about it?



Buddhism: Don't get me wrong, I do find some of Buddhism's tenets admirable, and many emphasize virtues many Christians would find laudable. I even admit praise for its emphasis on the denial of vices and folly and rising above that which makes us petty and venal.

My problem again goes back to logic. While it's well and good to follow it on this Earth, if humanity ceases to be, and in fact, Earth itself ceases to be, what benefit arises from its teaching anymore?


Hinduism: It's a great source to mine for mythology and fiction, admittedly, but as a faith, you are required, upfront, to believe a lot of things that have been endlessly retconned over and over again over centuries, not to mention it a pretty India centric faith, Buddhism made better inroads elsewhere because Hinduism was pretty much tailored for one specific geographic location.


Islam: Islam has a problem with basic logic that I cannot resolve. It claims Jews and Christians have an imperfect version of God's revelations, but the inconsistencies pile up fast.

First off, the very beginning of the Qu'ran says humanity was created from a clot of congealed blood, whereas the Torah and Bible cite we came from dust. Also, for a religion that claims Abraham as a patriarch, it sure has a lot of naked contempt of the Jews and a lot of advocacy of putting nonbelievers to the sword, whereas Jews mostly set themselves apart from others on God's instructions, and Christians merely exported the basic tenets of Judaism minus the Jewish specific parts because the religious franchise was made available to Jews and Gentiles equally.

Islam rolls all that back and makes conversion an even MORE exclusive experience than the things it claims precedes it.


Mormonism: Logic makes this one easy to skewer. It's basically the Bible with a lot of fanfiction attached that cannot be backed up by archelogy or any other branch of history, and it introduces a lot of concepts neither Judaism or Christianity ever countenanced or supported.

My late grandfather said he didn't believe it but it had a good backstory, and I agree. It's entertaining in a fictional sense, but I in no way can buy into its legitimacy because all we have is Joseph Smith's word for it, and even other non-Christian faiths bring more to the table for the verifiable historical fact than that.



I could go on about other, more minor faiths, but the short version is that while faith is a key component of all of them when I try to reduce them to logically provable stuff, Judaism and Christianity at least have provable continuity and a high level of consistency.

I won't claim they are perfect and that they don't have mysteries or inconsistencies, that would be arrogant and foolish, but at the end of the day, I'm a Christian besides faith in the creed because it has the least amount of inconsistency compared to its competitors based on the available evidence, and I'm convinced Christianity logically follows from the foundation of Judaism.

Why I'm a Biblical "Loose Constructionalist"

I once told one of my bosses at ChristCenteredGamer I have a somewhat liberal take on the Bible, and since that is a bit vague, I believe I need to explain that further.

First off, in general, I consider the Bible, while a record compiled by Man and thus flawed and imperfect, it's still an authoritative compendium of all the basics any self-respecting Christian should adhere to, that is NOT up for debate as far as I'm concerned.

However, I do have the following caveats, based on the same ones Christ Himself and His Father made clear concerning God's law:

1. As for the things not up for debate, like "do not steal", that's a pretty clear and straightforward command, you'd be hard-pressed to argue against that or saying it has some wiggle room.

2. As for the laws with extenuating circumstances, I take the more liberal view. For instance: "do not kill".

First off, it would be more properly rendered "do not murder", as there are several times God declared inflicting death permissible.

1. First, if he told you to end a life, then you had His approval.
2. Self-defense or defending another in such a manner lethal force is required.
3. Killing in a war as a uniformed combatant.
4. Killing for food (hunting animals or slaughtering animals for food preparation). If you want to be really comprehensive since plants can feel pain and are alive, harvesting them for the same reasons.
5. Putting to death someone after a trial of their peers judged them worthy of such punishment for an applicable crime.

In this case, you have to have a looser take on the no-killing rule because of all the caveats when it's okay as mentioned above. Trying to obey that one without doing so is not only being dense, it's literally impossible, because you literally can't kill ANYTHING, you'd starve to death pretty fast because you cannot eat any form of food, and given all the microbal beings that exist in water, drinking anything would be a death-dealing act too.

However, it's otherwise a rule you should take very seriously as far as not committing an act of killing in cold blood. That's explicitly condemned and there is no room for debate on that one.

3. Jesus was super fed up with the Pharisees taking a hyper autistic approach to this because their version of strict constructional adherence to the Law missed the whole moral and legal backing the Law was meant to enforce.

For example, when he healed people on the Sabbath, they called him out on doing work on the Sabbath, saying it was wrong.

Jesus considered this nonsense, and if you apply logic, you can see his point.

1. God's Sabbath day command was "do no regular work". Curing people of blindness and reviving the dead is hardly "regular work".

2. Jesus was doing those acts of healing on behalf of God, and if the Pharisees bothered to remember their own history, previous prophets had performed miracles for the glory of the Lord every day of the week and God never saw a problem with it.

3. He found it really galling they were more obsessed with following the LETTER of the law as opposed to its spirit. God commanded people to not work on the Sabbath because he wanted people to focus on HIM, not because he was pushy bureaucrat whose nose got out of joint if things weren't done in a certain way.

Jesus, whenever he healed people, he gave God the credit, and thus fulfilled how God wanted the day set aside for him to be one where you remembered what God wanted you to do, so Jesus never broke the command's spirit, and he'd really only be guilty of breaking the letter of the law if you hyper-autistically divorce it from it's legal and especially moral intent.

Another area I personally consider a loose constructionist point is the topic of swearing and "curse words".

I, of course, condemn stirring people to wrath, nor should one speak rashly or foolishly, since God does admonish that, but the Bible does not have a list of specific words that are condemned by the mere act of their utterance.

For the purposes of this discussion, let's take the mild expression "crap". By some standards, it's considered a word you should not say.

It would stir others to anger and thus tempt them to sin if you called them "a piece of crap", so yes, you should not utter it in that instance. Conversely, there is no moral prohibition on saying you need to clean up some dog crap off the floor because in that case you are simply stating something not calculated to stir someone to sin by your words and there is no rashness nor foolishness in stating a fact. You could use the words "turds" or "poop" if you find crap offensive or others find it offensive, but in that case, it would be personally offensive, not anything based on Biblical precepts. Thus, while I discourage and do not condone anyone being a potty mouth, no specific words are condemned by the Bible, but I do acknowledge some have no other purpose than to induce others to wrath and thus to sin and should be avoided on those grounds alone.


My conclusion is a simple and logical one: If God explicitly commands something is not to be done or his command covers an act condemned in a reasonably broad sense that your specific action would fall under in His moral and legal context, then don't do it. Otherwise, I would do as Jesus pointed out we should do and follow the Spirit the Law is meant to enforce if not the exact Letter because to do the latter without keeping the former in mind is missing the point.