Bride leaves groom at the altar over politics

Sara Carlton was all set to marry Ben Mezzenga until she learned about his political beliefs. When she asked about Black Lives Matter, he said, “I guess I never really thought too much about it.” She asked what his church’s beliefs were, and he said he did not know. So she watched a sermon online about sexual identity which she described as “traditional.”

As a result, she left him at the altar.

Now, we need to know that all of this was part of the reality show Love is Blind. Since I don’t watch reality shows in general, much less this one, I have no opinion as to how much of this was real and how much was staged.

But I do know that marriage has become something of a “reality show” in general, chosen for transactional reasons that, if they change, warrant ending the marriage. Or so many believe.

The US has the fourth-highest divorce rate in the world, behind only Russia, Belarus, and Gibraltar. The No. 1 reason? “Lack of commitment,” followed by “argue too much.” “Infidelity” ranks third, followed by “married too young,” “unrealistic expectations,” and “lack of equality in the relationship.”

What the Bible describes as a lifelong covenant between two people has been turned into a contract that either party can end whenever they wish.

How’s this working for us?

“Art is giving meaning to the chaos we’re living through”

The origins of our cultural plight go back much further than you might think.

We could plausibly point to the so-called sexual revolution that began in the 1950s and escalated in the 1960s. Or to the introduction of the “pill” in 1960 and our consequent ability to have sex with less fear of procreation. Or to the advent of no-fault divorce in 1969.

But we should actually begin the conversation in 1858.

That’s when Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published, creating a foundational shift in how the West views its origins. Prior to the popularization of atheistic evolution, it was conventional wisdom that the world was ordered by God. In the biblical worldview, we were created good but fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. As a result, we stand in need of redemption through divine grace and live our best lives in alignment with the divine will.

But if we are here by coincidental chance, we are no different from the other animals that have evolved along with us. According to Darwin, our ethics are part of our “survival of the fittest” impulse, created to propagate our species and promote personal flourishing. There can be no such thing as objective morality in this worldview, and the Bible becomes an irrelevant, if not dangerous, artifact of ancient history.

As someone claimed at the recent Academy Awards, “Art is giving meaning to the chaos we’re living through.” There are no sources for such meaning except what we create for ourselves.

“Get your own dirt”

Of course, this claim is contradictory on the merits.

If humans evolved our ethics and sense of subjective meaning only to promote ourselves and the propagation of our species, how do we explain acts of altruism and sacrifice that benefit neither? In a world bereft by loneliness, anxiety, and “deaths of despair,” can we seriously claim that our secularistic, self-reliant morality is working for us?

And what, we might ask, is the source of our world and our lives? Darwin claimed that we evolved from less developed species, but from where did they come? You can take the argument all the way back to the Big Bang, but from where did it come? If physicists are right in stating that “matter can be neither created nor destroyed,” how and where did matter originate?

You may know the story of the scientist who told God he could make a better world than the Lord constructed. God agreed to the challenge. The scientist bent down to scoop up some dirt to start, and God said, “Get your own dirt.”

“You are my help and my deliverer”

What Jesus said to the Pharisees he could say to us: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” (Mark 7:9).

Our democracy, built on the biblical assertion that “all men are created equal,” now rejects biblical truth and ethics. Even though George Washington and our other founders were convinced that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” of the nation they forged, we have decided that we know better than they.

All the while, our loving Father continues to work in the world he made: “Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen” (Job 37:13). Here we find a powerful summary of divine agency on our broken planet:

• He seeks our “correction” and repentance so that we might turn to his grace.
• He works to protect and advance “his land” and created order.
• And he works, as Augustine argued, “for love” of each of us as if there were only one of us.

Because he is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful, we can know that his best is always best for us. But he can give only what we admit we need. If we pray with David, “I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God!” (Psalm 70:5a), we can then testify, “You are my help and my deliverer” (v. 5b).

“The rudder for keeping us on the right course”

Like the wayward hiker who insists on using a flawed compass he made, we can choose to make our own rules for marriage and life. But if insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, what is this?

Or we can decide that our omniscient Creator knows how to run his creation better than we do and choose to align our lives with his word and will. St. Cyprian (died AD 258) exhorted us:

Dear brothers, the commands of the Gospel are nothing else than God’s lessons, the foundations on which to build up hope, the supports for strengthening faith, the food that nourishes the heart. They are the rudder for keeping us on the right course, the protection that keeps our salvation secure. As they instruct the receptive minds of believers on earth, they lead safely to the kingdom of heaven.

Accordingly, I encourage you to join me in a commitment from the Book of Common Prayer I offer to God every day:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And amen.