Tagged: marriage

Article XVIII of The Baptist Faith & Message 2000: The family

Following is another in a series of columns on The Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

Marriage, family, and gender are gifts from God. They are established for the good of all people, who are created in the image of God.

Article XVIII of The Baptist Faith & Message 2000 reads:

“God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

“The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

“Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

Southern Baptists added Article XVIII to The Baptist Faith & Message in 1998, thus making it part of the 1963 confession and carrying it forward into the 2000 edition. Witnessing the erosion of our culture’s view of marriage and family, Southern Baptists boldly reaffirmed God’s unchanging standards as revealed in Scripture and embraced by Christians throughout the centuries.

Today, the prevailing secular view is that marriage is an archaic, man-made institution in need of revision, while family is an evolutionary unit that may be restructured to meet changing societal needs.

The Bible says otherwise. Marriage and family are gifts from God. They are established and fixed for the good of all people, who are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).

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Joseph Smith and polygamy: An inconvenient truth

Joseph SmithDoes it make any difference that Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, married as many as 40 women, some of whom already were married?

Smith’s marital history has been the subject of much debate, but until a recent essay by the Mormon Church acknowledging the founding prophet’s multiple wives, the church has maintained that Smith was happily married to one woman.

The essay explains that Smith was a reluctant polygamist, agreeing to multiple marriages only after an angel threatened him with a sword. Further, the essay notes that Smith was restoring the “ancient principles” of biblical prophets like Abraham, who took secondary wives.

In appealing to Scripture to address the inconvenient truth of Smith’s polygamy, the LDS church offers evangelical Christians a unique opportunity to urge our Mormon friends to revisit the Bible, which takes a back seat to the Book of Mormon and other church documents in LDS theology and practice.

Consider three biblical perspectives: (1) God’s creative intent; (2) His divine accommodation; and (3) His warning against polygamy.
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A Really Royal Wedding

Some quick facts on the recent royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge:

  • If you Google “Royal Wedding,” you’ll come up with about 790 million search results — more than twice as many results as if you Google “Jesus.”
  • Approximately 3 billion people watched the royal wedding, give or take 500 million, according to the New York Times.
  • 22.7 million Americans tuned in, according to Nielsen, compared to an average of 24 million who watch “American Idol” each week.
  • About 1,900 guests entered Westminster Abbey, including 40 invited heads of state. Not invited: the U.S. President and First Lady; Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of Prince Andrew; and Joan Rivers.
  • Estimated cost of the wedding varies widely, but most guesses come in at $16 million to $64 million; the cakes alone cost a cool $80,000.
  • The negative impact on the British economy due to lost business because of a declared bank holiday: as much as $10 billion.

I share this trivia because it demonstrates our fascination with royalty — even in nations like the United States that shun the very concept of a monarchy. But our intense interest in such matters is nothing new. In the days of Jesus, the wedding of a king’s son was the focal point for one of the Messiah’s most telling parables about the kingdom of heaven.

Read about Jesus’ parable of the wedding for a king’s son.