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.