My first job as a minister was at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, N.C. I was an assistant minister. It did not take me very long in that position, working with the Pastor, to discover that in the world of theology and politics, the labels are all mixed up. Those who are called "conservatives" should really be called "liberals" and those called "liberals" should really be called "conservatives."
I still think that the labels are all mixed up. Labels do have a way of changing and names given to groups stay the same but the groups often change. But basically, it seems to me that it is the Christian who most wants to be faithful to the story of Jesus, i.e. the most conservative Christian, who wants to conserve the message of Jesus, who ends up being the most liberal in the political arena. It is the Christian who is called the most conservative who ends up being the one who engages in the most twisting and changing of the Biblical story.
Take the debate about marriage currently alive in our political process. Those who are called "conservatives" declare that the Bible demands that marriage be between one man and one woman. It is the "liberal" Christian who is supposed to be twisting and distorting the Biblical story to suggest that marriage in the Bible has no such narrow definition. But if one reads the Bible carefully, there is the Creation story of Adam and Eve where it is declared that a man needs a helpmate. So there is presented the idea of one man and one woman. But no sooner do you leave that story than you begin to have the story of the patriarchs who have multiple wives. Then there are the stories of David and Solomon who have lots of wives. These are all people God continues to bless. Family arrangements come in all shapes and forms in the Biblical, and one must not forget the "arrangement" of Mary and Joseph in the birth of Jesus. Those who are called "conservatives" edit and pick the portion of the Bible they want and are thus the "liberals" who are changing the story, while those who are called "liberals" are really the ones who want to conserve the whole body of tradition.
The Christian who wants to live and maintain the Beatitudes in life, to conserve the ethical values of that sermon, will be described as a flaming liberal in our current political cultures, while the one called a conservative Christian will be the one who makes the most adaptations to the tradition.
The labels are all mixed up and backwards, but the differences remain the same and the struggle to be faithful would not be any easier if we got the labels right. Jesus invites us to follow him and that is not easy no matter what we call ourselves.
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When a man or a woman find a spouse, they may marry thinking that they will live ‘happily ever after’. They may think that nothing can disturb their happiness and that their life together will be like sunshine every day without any clouds. They may also doubt whether there will be any serious problems in their relationship because everything has gone so well so far.
However, the fact is that we live in an imperfect and fallen world in which nothing is as it was when Adam and Eve lived together in Paradise. In practice, this imperfection means that when people get together, they also bring to the marriage their own difficult personalities and especially their selfishness, which is a result of the Fall of Man and certainly the biggest reason of homes breaking up these days. If we do not want to be freed from this selfishness, it can greatly harm the relationship.
In any case, below we are going to deal with this area especially in the light of the Bible. We are going to concentrate on those common mistakes and ways of doing things of which we might be guilty because we have not seen them in ourselves, nobody has ever told us about them, or because we have not understood them in the light of the Bible. If you notice any of the issues we are going to bring up in your own life, you can be freed from them; especially if you ask for God’s help.
http://koti.phnet.fi/elohim/help_to_marriage
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