Christian Ethics in a Confused Age, Episode 12

Few ethical questions reveal the difference between modern ideas of identity and the Christian view of humanity as clearly as the question of the body. We live in a culture that regularly tells us to look inward to discover who we really are. The assumption is that somewhere beneath our biology, family, responsibilities, and physical limitations exists an inner self that is more authoritative than everything else. If the body seems to disagree with that inner sense of identity, the body is increasingly treated as the part that needs to change.

Christianity begins from a very different place.

We do not begin by asking ourselves who we would like to be and then reconstructing reality around that answer. We begin with the God who created us. That does not mean our feelings are irrelevant or that personal struggles should be dismissed. Feelings can be powerful, painful, and deeply connected to the way someone experiences life. But Christianity has never taught that the strongest feeling inside us automatically reveals the truest thing about us.

Christian Ethics in a Confused Age, Episode 11

Christians should have a very high view of marriage. Scripture gives us good reason for that. Marriage is established by God in creation, it forms a one-flesh covenant between husband and wife, it provides a place for companionship and family, and Paul even uses marriage as a picture of Christ’s relationship with His Church. After spending the last several episodes talking about marriage, faithfulness, adultery, divorce, and covenant, it would be easy to come away thinking marriage must therefore be the normal destination of every mature Christian life.

That would be a mistake.

Christian Ethics in a Confused Age, Episode 10

Divorce is one of those subjects where it is very easy to speak clearly from a distance. Marriage is a covenant. Jesus teaches that what God has joined together should not be separated. Christians should take their vows seriously. All of that is true, but those truths can sound very different when you are sitting across from someone whose spouse has been unfaithful, abandoned the family, become violent, or spent years destroying the trust that marriage was supposed to protect.

This is where Christian ethics has to be able to do more than repeat a principle. We need the principle, because without it marriage eventually becomes whatever two people want it to be for however long they want it to last. At the same time, biblical truth should never become so mechanical that we stop seeing the people standing in the wreckage of another person’s sin.