I recently wrote a little essay on the meaning of matrimony, and want to follow that up with a few thoughts about its significance in terms of human culture. If, as Scripture teaches and history bears out, marriage is the fundamental human society, the health and solidity of the institution of marriage will have a profound influence on society more broadly. This gives us a lens to understand so many of our culture’s ills, and offers a prescription for addressing them.
The family is the basic social unit. Here the fundamental diversity of humanity as man and woman shows its complementarity in the unity of marriage; this unity is (normatively) fruitful. Thus husband, wife, and children, the basic society, form the cells of a healthy social body on the larger scale. In the mutual love and support of the family an environment is created that is naturally conducive to human flourishing—naturally, because this is the divine design.
In saying this, I do not mean to deny the great value of extended families, close friendships, neighborhood communities, and all the rest. I only point out that the core human society is the nuclear family, and therefore that marriage has a social significance frequently neglected in the contemporary west. This is the fundamental building block of a healthy society, and our long denigration of the institution of marriage has, it stands to reason, a sizeable share in the blame for the extent of our besetting social ills: poverty, drug abuse, abortion, suicide, and so on.
The project of rebuilding western civilization, which we might fruitfully consider, would need the restoration of marriage as a core tenet. Bear in mind that all of this assumes a true understanding of marriage, a Christian understanding of marriage. Marriage with the gospel at the center is the kind of marriage we need.
So, in the first place, churches should invest heavily in nourishing strong Christian families. Every marriage truly consecrated—Christward, God-centered marriage—is a fortress built in the kingdom of God’s invasion of this dark world. Here a tree has been planted to bear fruit in the midst of the desert. Here a sanctuary has been fenced to raise children who will be protected and loved and taught to stand straight in a culture enslaved, who will know the truth, and by God’s grace may believe the truth. Here a banner has been raised to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the wonder of the Spirit’s transforming power.
Secondly, we should oppose any ideology, force, or movement that aims to displace or dismantle the family. This is a typical tendency of contemporary secular social philosophy; the family is to be denounced as an artificial construction, and its functions outsourced to the community or the government. We see this in educational agendas, political policy, and social advocacy, to name a few. But any denigration of the family is fundamentally misanthropic, and must be resisted.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we must see the implications of this for the family of the church. In our fallen world, human society will never be as it ought. God is at work to repair what sin has broken, and this is primarily exercised through the community of the faithful. The church, in fact, supersedes the biological family (without nullifying it); separated from the family of God, the family of man will be inevitably dysfunctional. The church must be family for all the families of the church, and for all those who have no other family.
For in His love, God has made a way for us to come into His family. In the church, we realize now a foretaste of the fellowship of the family of God. For all those who are lonely and lost, for those whose families are broken or abusive, God reaches out with His gospel of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing. This is the message that transforms lives, communities, even cultures; this is the message of Christian marriage and the proclamation of the church: God has made a way, in Jesus Christ, for us to be reconciled to Him and adopted into His family.
God has worked to draw us to Himself. That is the testimony of matrimony.