04-29-2020, 04:58 PM
I'm fully aware of the hierarchy of so-called Charismatic gifts, but sometimes you have to cut through the classification system to get to what's standing behind it. I don't know what to call it, but I know that at times in my life, my convictions shouted at me and I just had to obey.
Both my sisters have been through multiple marriages. I performed some of those ceremonies. Right now, the one is married to a great guy; I'm proud to have been the one who was there to make the ceremony happen. There was something redemptive about it. The other sister is still in a marriage that, while it seems to be just fine by most measures, it has a dark shadow over it. Back when she married this guy, my wife and I both had reservations about performing the ceremony, but in those days we hadn't yet worked out how to express such things without pointing back to some kind of rules. My excuse at the time was that, by Baptist rules, I couldn't marry two people who were both divorced.
Looking back, that wasn't the real reason. The real reason is that something about the marriage itself is rebellion against God. I got close enough to them to smell the smoke from the pits of Hell, as it were. It still is in rebellion, so far as I can discern. I haven't been in contact with them in a decade, but something in my convictions still rattles my cage about it. There's no redemption in it. From several hundred miles away, my spiritual nature rebukes it.
It's the same thing that rejoiced when my parents divorced a while back. Despite that being the means by which I was born, that marriage was bad. Just saying so breaks a lot of church rules, but it seems to me mostly a silly version of New Testament legalism. People look for a lot of excuses to avoid doing the hard work of moral discernment. It's not exactly one of the gifts mentioned in Paul's letters, but I can tell when something makes no sense at to my mind, yet is clearly the command of God for me.
Both my sisters have been through multiple marriages. I performed some of those ceremonies. Right now, the one is married to a great guy; I'm proud to have been the one who was there to make the ceremony happen. There was something redemptive about it. The other sister is still in a marriage that, while it seems to be just fine by most measures, it has a dark shadow over it. Back when she married this guy, my wife and I both had reservations about performing the ceremony, but in those days we hadn't yet worked out how to express such things without pointing back to some kind of rules. My excuse at the time was that, by Baptist rules, I couldn't marry two people who were both divorced.
Looking back, that wasn't the real reason. The real reason is that something about the marriage itself is rebellion against God. I got close enough to them to smell the smoke from the pits of Hell, as it were. It still is in rebellion, so far as I can discern. I haven't been in contact with them in a decade, but something in my convictions still rattles my cage about it. There's no redemption in it. From several hundred miles away, my spiritual nature rebukes it.
It's the same thing that rejoiced when my parents divorced a while back. Despite that being the means by which I was born, that marriage was bad. Just saying so breaks a lot of church rules, but it seems to me mostly a silly version of New Testament legalism. People look for a lot of excuses to avoid doing the hard work of moral discernment. It's not exactly one of the gifts mentioned in Paul's letters, but I can tell when something makes no sense at to my mind, yet is clearly the command of God for me.
