The Analogy of Marriage

Marriage is a reflection of the relationship between God and humanity.

I understand that I am not the first one to say this stuff, in fact, it was reflecting on my limited knowledge of the Theology of the Body that inspired me to think of it. I wanted to figure out why God became a male. My professors and peers were claiming that it was an accidental event, or, if it wasn't accidental, that God HAD to become a male in order for people to respond to him. However, I think that the answer comes from our understanding of teleology -- the idea that life has a plan, a purpose, and a promise, and the Christian understanding is that this design comes from an intelligent designer, one who is personal, benevolent, and just. This of course raises many other questions, such as the problem of evil, which we will not discuss at this time, but if God is teleological, then why was his masculine incarnation purposeless?

First of all, we can understand why God would want to visit us. We are tactile people; we receive love by touch, and being near our loved ones provides comfort and joy. Therefore, it is natural to think that a God who loves us beyond our understanding would want to touch us, would want to be near to us.

Secondly, Christians think of God as a being who accommodates, and the incarnation, his taking on flesh -- becoming a human to the fullest extent of what it implies to be a human -- is the best example of this reality. The question is, however, what was he accommodating, society and its laws, or the human individual who was an inseparable member of the Jewish community? Of course we can apply this question to modern times, since the issue of Christ the Accommodator is very real to the many facets of social and religious thought. Nonetheless, if Christ was appealing to public sentiment, then he would be, in fact, guilty of sexism in one of two ways: through a sin of omission or a sin of commission--in other words, involuntary of voluntary acts, respectively. That is, Christ's sin could be seen as implicit, by simply becoming a male in order to appease popular thought, or explicit, by intentionally condoning such an ideology. To claim, then, that the Incarnation was an inherently sinful event, is heretical since it denies the unfathomable love that the Father has for us.

Furthermore, we know that God is teleological. He is intentional. He deliberates and acts upon what is best. Therefore, it cannot be an accident that Jesus Christ came as a male, and that he gives his body to us in the Eucharist. God wants to encounter us, or rather, he wants us to encounter him. Touch: a spiritual, psychological, emotional, and sexual connection between God and us is what he longs for. He chooses to need it, to be incomplete without our union with him. Marriage, then, is the only human relationship that fits this type of love and commitment. Hence, this all-loving, accommodating God is calling us to be in a marital covenant with him.

But why marriage? Because marriage is an intimate union between the sexual, emotional, and intellectual traits of a male and a female. It demands a converging, an encounter with the other, as spouse and partner. Marriage demands a death to the ego of the individual, and a vibrant unity of two wills. Marriage necessitates touch; it requires an emotional, sexual, psychological, and physical intimacy between the lovers. Without this, their relationship is incomplete. The desire for the union of marriage ontologically subsists within our human nature.

The analogy of marriage, then, reminds us that Christ came as a male so we could be the female, so we could receive and incubate his divine life within our hearts. He wanted to enter a marital relationship with us. Therefore, if we claim that he came as a male to appease the unjust social maxims of his day, or that it was purely accidental that Christ came as a male, then we do nothing less than cheapen the incarnation and its relevance to the intrinsic nature of our humanity.

Man: The "She" of Creation

*** An interesting note: without realizing it, this post was origianlly written on the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year. I wanted to change the date so that my next topic would be right above it. Still, I thought that was kinda neat, since I will be discussing humanity's relationship with the Trinity ***

I would like to hear some thoughts on this one. I was listening to Christopher West's take on the Theology of the Body, and this phrase popped in my head while I was trying to make sense of what he was saying: "Man is the 'she' of creation." In my next few blogs, I want to try to discuss what that phrase might mean, and what might be its implications.

The "she" of humanity, the female, the woman, is receptivity. Women, who naturally espouse this receptivity, are "incubators," much like soil, in that they receive a word, an idea, or a concept, and allow it to germinate, take root, and blossom. This kind of receptivity is also evident in their physiology, since their bodies are even hardwired to receive and incubate life. Men, on the other hand, generally shuffle information much like a cd player, moving form one song to the next, often with no record of the previous song. Again, the male physiology mirrors this -- especially in our sexuality (and the same goes for women). Have you ever heard of the cliche, "men are like microwaves, women are like slow-cookers"? It refers to is our sex drive -- push a button, and the male is ready to go, while it takes a little while for the female to get ready (generally speaking, of course). The female incubates, the male plants. Although the degree to which each male or female plants and incubates varies, no matter how you look at it, there will always be this stark difference in how we process and recieve information. Spiritually speaking, the male must become like the female in this respect. The male must move from planting to receiving in his relationship with God. In fact, all of humanity must somehow become this "she" in order to find fulfillment; in other words, the "he" of our humanity must become like the "she." We must be willing to receive from God, the source of our humanity, if we want to become fully human.

But the question that I have is this (and I want to talk about this later): if we are to become the "she" of creation, then what does that make God? Do we continue to treat God as a complete genderless being and speak of God as some sort of androgynous entity? Or is there wisdom in the words of Christ: "This is how you ought to pray: 'Our Father...'"? Furthermore, is it purely an acidental phenomenon that Christ came as a male?