by John Hargraves

Created on: May 31, 2007

Christian Reflection: Honoring Marriage is a great discussion.

About 4 years ago my brother got married. It was an emotional time for me. I lost my partner about 2 years prior to due to cancer. I was not allowed to get married because of laws prohibiting it, and it was very difficult with everything I went through. The surgery was brutal enough on him, then came the wait, the time in a hospital bed wanting nothing more than for him to survive and pull through it with me. A bit selfish on my part but who wants their partner to die if they actually love each other? The hardest yet best thing was to let go!

My brother met a beautiful girl in college and lived the life my parents expect him to. He has my parents blessing at almost anything he does because he is married to a woman. They have a gorgeous little girl and a boy on the way. At the rehearsal dinner I stood up to congratulate them and through slight tears told them to never take advantage of the rights they have under the laws of America. Laws which protect my and their freedoms. Laws which the government is invading churches telling them what they can and can't do while the Christians put up with it.

Honoring the person/spouse you have is so vital to longevity in the relationships. Unfortunately due to finances, lust, or other outside forces many times it is hard to honor the person you are with. I went through a series of relationships where the person I was with did not honor any type of commitment and it made it difficult to stay in that relationship. Walking in finding your parter with another man is not an easy thing to deal with. What do you do at that point? Do you risk staying and dying from a deadly disease that that person might have just picked up, or do you honor yourself enough to move on? I have struggled with these questions, when I made a commitment and that person did, and they broke it, do I have a right to move on with my life?

Jesus never once condemned anyone for their lifestyles, he defended a woman caught in adultery, he was friends with whores, he did everything He could to live his life above reproach and what we as Christians don't see is that Jesus loved the sinners who admit they need help more than the people that were "acting" a certain way to make themselves appear good. He actually got upset more with tax collectors for taking money and religious people for their closed-minded views than he ever got at someone who was sinning in ways that might be more "obvious sins" to people who don't understand God and Jesus. He condemns the hypocrits which is what many of us modern day Pharisees and Sadducee's live. Jesus attacked organized religion and wanted people to understand that there is a higher power God that we need to respect and worship, but not to live our lives so stressed out worrying about the "laws" men that wrote the Bible decided to make important. If you read what Jesus' message was, it was not what those men who wrote the Bible teach. Jesus taught LOVE, he taught PATIENCE, he taught ACCEPTANCE, and he taught RESPECT for anyone we come in contact with. We need to observe the "perfect human" and live like he did, not like the religous leaders and corrupt people He attacked and that ultimately attacked Him!

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