Marrying Wal-Mart

Genesis 28:1-9

The issue of who you marry and cultural and religious purity is not the issue for today’s world that it was at the time of Jacob and Esau. Spiritual partnership in marriage is of course a very live issue, but it is not so much now a question of identity as it was then. That issue has shifted to a broader landscape. It seems to me it has more to do with the Christian’s involvement in the world. How does it actually work to be “in the world but not of it”?

There could be a separate blog just on that. But for the Christian church the issue is one of distinctiveness versus sharing the world with other religions. In recent centuries western civilization has identified itself as the Christian world. We can no longer get away with that. Today’s Christianity is closer to the Christianity Christ founded and the Paul celebrated, in that it can no longer be identified with any one culture. That leads us to recognize what is truly distinctive about Christianity, and that is person of Christ.

Couldn’t that be partly why the church is on fire with growth in parts of the world where there is not the baggage of Christ tied to a culture, and particularly our culture? The world’s perception of our Lord is being liberated from too close association with our highly materialistic and resource-gorging lifestyle.

For reasons that were pertinent to the time and culture of this Bible passage, there was concern about who your sons married (again with the patriarchy), as a matter of the survival of a people.

What are we married to?

Prayer:
God, you know I am talking about things that I need to change myself. We are pretty much all identified with what we own, acquire, control. Let the Christ who had nowhere to lay his head and owned nothing be our Lord in new ways. Amen.