Nowhere in the bible is marriage a manmade post-JC phenomenon, described or made a sacrament. Which in truth is just around 300 years old as a convention.

Convention which gives the control freaks control over who can mate with who? And eliminates unsuitable religions from their practice! Or until quite recently, unsuitable mixed marriages! In the bible, a man just took a wife without pageantry or ceremony.

Albeit, there may well have been much celebration? And the quaffing of copious quantities of wine or strong drink?

JC remained unmarried right up until the time of his crucifixion? And unusual in Jewish tradition, which could have seen him taking a wife with the onset of puberty? So, was he gay?

Time for we the people to take back control of this convention and got rid of all the pageantry, ceremony and rank BS! Along with all the other freedoms stolen by the church hierarchy! Which alone have made church-related paedophilia, possible?

Who takes who to wife or husband should be nobody's business but the copulating couple! Unless it breaks age-related, barrier law!
Alan B.

Until the ABC is abolished, marriage remains in the same abolished basket!

A well written essay, but it is completely delusional, beginning with the nonsense about Adam and Eve, as if they were are or real human beings. Nonsense, because it is not grounded in how the emotional-sexual drama works, and more often than no,t fails.
http://www.beezone.com/adidajesus/adamnervoussystemeveflesh.html

Some essays on the nature of the all important emotional-sexual dimensions of our existence.

On the nature and purpose of marriage

http://www.dabase.org/2armP1.htm#ch3b

On why the usual marriage inevitably fails;

http://www.beezone.com/da_publications/beyoedip.html

http://www.beezone.com/da_publications/feelvwnd.html

wives submit to your husbands. Husbands lay down your lives for your wives like Christ did for the church. Sells you can't improve on it so why try. Those who have tried have ended up with nasty marxist/feminist types who only emasculated males would want anything to do with. Face it men are called to servant leadership of their homes. By far the healthiest outcome.

I saw a different system used by remote tribes on a documentary one night
and I thought it made more sense than our system.

It is based on a system where the brothers and uncles provide for the children
of their sisters and women in their family and tribe.

The couple fall in love and marry and go to live in one tent together. When they have children,
or when bad arguments start and continue, the tribes come to the tent and insist that the couple are no longer allowed to live together.

The woman is taken back to her family tribe with the children. The father only lived a short way down a track with his family
so the children could go and see him whenever they wanted.

There is no financial need for a warring couple to stay together,
because the brothers and uncles provide for the children of the women in their respective tribes.

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Dear Peter,

.

You wrote :

« There is a wonderful hopefulness in Adam's voice when God presented him with the woman:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken »

This signifies that the method “God” employed to create Eve was different from that which he employed to create Adam. Eve was simply a by-product of Adam, a part of Adam. In other words, something less than Adam.

You also clearly state ;

« God presented him with the “woman” », not with the “wife”. There is no mention at all about marriage.

You then indicate :

« The promise of being one flesh is a promise of a natural intimacy » - That’s it. Again, nothing about marriage !

It is clear that Adam and Eve, the very first human beings, product and by-product, were not married. Yet they obviously had children. How can that be ?

Did “God” condone sexual relationships and the raising of children outside of marriage ?

Also, Peter, I must say that I was a little surprised, having read your article carefully, that you do not indicate what marriage means to you personally and why you consider it is important, given that you advised in your previous article that both you and your present wife were both divorcees before you married.

Is not the “natural intimacy” of Adam and Eve, which you seem to hold in such considerable esteem, not sufficient in the eyes of he whom you refer to as your “God” ?

Or is it something else ? Do each of you judge that it is a purely personal matter between you two, to which “God” is not party, just as he (presumably) was not party to the divorce of either of you ?

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