This is not Christianity accommodating its language into the terms of today, or being relevant to changing circumstances. This is Christianity submitting itself to society’s rejection of the Creator and his ways. This is “being conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2).

Seeking to be contemporary entails risks of diluting core principles. An innocuous looking change which at first blush appears to be nothing more than an exercise in bringing an old domain into the new can in fact be a change that starts to reject God and His ways.

One has to understand the world we live in. Be attuned to development, changes and trends. That understanding and being tuned in, must be accompanied by a clear understanding of basic doctrinal tenets of our faith. I don’t think that’s being unnecessarily religious nor is it being needlessly caught up with unhelpful focus on how the world is changing. I think that is knowing clearly what it is we believe in that is not inconsistent with the Apostle Peter’s call for us to be ready to give an account for our faith, and as Phillip has counseled, take care against being conformed to this world, especially where in so doing we would be joining the world in rejecting the Creator and his ways.

That extract came from an article by Phillip Jensen titled “The Devolution of Marriage”. That article can be found here and is reproduced below.

The Devolution Of Marriage

Originally Published: 21st September 2012

Weddings and marriage have been in the news a lot recently. Same sex marriage and revising the wedding vows are not unrelated issues but reflect the community’s confusion about the nature of marriage and the place of weddings.
Over the last 30 years Anglican wedding services have evolved steadily away from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. This change in theology and liturgy has undermined the minister’s ability to teach the faith and help couples to understand marriage.

It should be obvious that the Bible is the basis for Christian understanding of marriage. It teaches that marriage is a work of God in creation, symbolising our redemption, just as it speaks of the ways to conduct ourselves in marriage in the light of our creation and redemption.

The Book of Common Prayer(1662) is held by the Anglican Church of Australia to be “the authorized standard of worship and doctrine of this Church, and no alteration in or permitted variation from … shall contravene any principle of doctrine or worship laid down in such standard”.

The Anglican Church of Australia has produced two prayer books: An Australian Prayer Book (1978) and A Prayer Book for Australia (1995). The first of these, 1978 was accepted by the whole Australian church, but the second, 1995 was not accepted by everybody – the Diocese of Sydney rejected it, though certain sections became acceptable variations.

The simple changes in these prayer books involved modernising 17th century English into contemporary wording. The more dramatic change was to offer alternatives. The 1662 book had only one form of each service. The Australian books gave us two or more variations. Generally the 1978 provided a ‘conservative’ form, which was an updated version of the 1662, as well as a completely new ‘contemporary’ form. The 1995 book offered even more variations.

However, it was in the evolution of these variations, such as in the wedding service that the Bible and the 1662 standard were left behind. For the ‘contemporary’ form of 1978 became the ‘conservative’ form of 1995, and the genuinely Anglican form of 1662 was omitted entirely.

The Bible teaches that God made humanity as male and female so that out of the unity of husband and wife would come children who would be raised to godliness as they filled and subdued the world (Genesis 1:26-28, 2:18-25, Malachi 2:10-16, Matthew 19:3-6). Jesus explained marriage in these terms: “He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Marriage is therefore intended as a lifelong, monogamous, procreative union of a man and a woman. Its male and female polarity is God’s intention in creation and reproduction. Its unity is made by God and maintained by each party being faithful to the promises of their common agreement or covenant. Faithfulness rather than love lies at the basis of this union. Marriage symbolises Christ’s relationship with his bride the church – symbolising both the union between Christ and his church and also the diverse responsibility of the groom and bride (Ephesians 5:22-33).

This Biblical teaching is reflected throughout the 1662 service, such as in the introduction when the minister enumerates the reasons for marriage as (i) procreation, (ii) remedy against sin (drawn from 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Thessalonians 4), (iii) companionship.

Similarly, the 1662 service emphasizes the Biblical teaching on the differing responsibilities of husband and wife. Not only are the consent and vows different for men and women, but also it is only the man who gives a ring and his wealth. At the end of the service we read: ‘if there be no Sermon declaring the duties of Man and Wife, the Minister shall read as followeth. “All ye that are married, or that intend to take the holy estate of Matrimony upon you, hear what the holy Scripture doth say as touching on the duty of husbands towards their wives, and wives towards their husbands.”’ There follows a sermon addressing first the husband and then the wife, using and reading three passages of scripture (Ephesians 5, Colossians 3 and 1 Peter 3) that differentiate the responsibilities of husbands and wives.

The contemporary service of 1978 changed all this. Children became the last reason for marriage, not the primary one. Marriage was now about love: a relationship of “a deepening knowledge and love of each other”. More striking still was the removal of all gender distinctive responsibilities. The consent and vows for groom and bride were identical. Worse still they became vacuous – giving each other the “honour due” as wife and husband without explaining what such honour is.

In 1995 the contemporary service of 1978 became the conservative service and a new contemporary service was introduced. All the services of 1995, even the conservative one, were unisex with identical consent and vows. Totally missing was any teaching on differing responsibility of husband or wife. Now the reason for marriage was first and foremost for love and secondly where children ‘may be’ born.

All this matches society’s move away from marriage, away from life-long monogamy, away from commitment and faithfulness, away from family life towards the romance called ‘love’, away from ‘husbands and wives’ or even ‘spouses’ to ‘partners’.

Sadly Anglican liturgies have given up on the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. This is not Christianity accommodating its language into the terms of today, or being relevant to changing circumstances. This is Christianity submitting itself to society’s rejection of the Creator and his ways. This is “being conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2).

Family life is where creation speaks deeply and intuitively to people and where today’s unhappy society is so desperately in need of the cross. This is the time and the place to teach accurately the Creator’s purpose and the Redeemer’s actions.

Facebook has its countless critics but for me, it has done more good than harm. Earlier today, someone posted an old account of a high school science lab event he wrote about some 15 years ago. Apparently that account got him into a prestigious university in America. I’m sure his academic record and extracurricular activities helped, because while a very entertaining and well written piece, I’m not sure it is something which – on its own – suggests prodigious talent lurks somewhere within the author. Or maybe it was only an extract which was set out. This person is nevertheless, a highly talented and smart young man and I’m sure will go the distance and achieve much at work.

I guess different members of the panel who read the essay may have taken away different things but to yours truly who is an ex-Malaysian who continues to have Singaporean touch points, it shows Singapore as so much more sanitized than Malaysia. For I too recall a cockroach legend and it presented a rawness that has been cured out of Singaporean society.

One of the rites of passage for a student streamed for more success via a scientific path in Malaysian schools involved a close up of the anatomy of a cockroach. One is to catch one’s own cockroach, keep it alive in a container (a jar if you’re from a family of means or a matchbox if you’re not) and bring it to school for the ceremony. If you’re lucky the biology lesson took place during an early period and you get rid of the die-hard cretin early. Otherwise the matchbox stays in your drawer and slowly emits its defensive mechanism as the day wears on.

Mrs Gladys Louis was my biology teacher and I cannot remember now if it was her who provided the instructions. Come to think of it, I can no longer recall if the cockroach rite took place during Form 4 or in lower secondary school, where instead of Biology it was General Science (then known as Integrated Science). If the latter, it was Mr Tai – a small man with a limp – who was the teacher with the honour. My memory in this regard isn’t important fortunately because the incident in question actually took place in my brother’s class.

My brother is a year older than me and so he went through the rite of passage involving the cockroach, a year earlier. One of his erstwhile classmates is in Melbourne and we attend the same social functions every now and then. We often talked about this legend where someone in my brother’s class did not have a cockroach with him but the teacher could not bear to mete out any punishment. How do you punish a boy who has just won a bet by eating his cockroach? Actually the teacher also provided dispensation to another student, whose cockroach was also eaten. A double or nothing bet saw a second cockroach become lunch and I don’t think any teacher has ever seen (or has since seen) any student absorb the intricacies of a cockroach’s anatomy as comprehensively as my brother’s classmate. A legend was born after that meal and I think a teacher’s warning not to eat the cockroach one has brought for a Biology lab lesson no longer was just a warning by an absent minded science teacher.

The legend – a true story, I am satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt – also had it that David, the cockroach eater, stuck out his tongue to proof the poor creature was dead and had to swallow the remains as part of the bet. If you consider this boy had to lift the cockroach with his fingers, stick it in his mouth, chew it, open his mouth to show the animal was lying in state, before swallowing it, you’d think (1) he’d be a fool (2) he was incredibly brave or (3) the wager was substantial for him to do it a second time. But David was a prefect, he winced when we asked him about it and it was a RM5 bet.

Now that I have read a Singaporean version of a school boy’s rite of passage involving a cockroach in a biology lesson, I am convinced the incident in my school was possible because we were Malaysians. Or more to the point – we weren’t Singaporeans. No Singaporean boy who could be traumatised by the sight of a jam jar filled with the remains of violently shaken cockroaches can fathom how a Malaysian – or anyone – could do what David did. Twice.

Here’s the Singaporean experience (could be an extract):

Yet another one of my most memorable experiences from secondary school is an incident which my secondary three class have fondly come to term “The Cockroach Bottle”. It all began with a biology experiment involving the dissection of cockroaches. We “oohhed” and “aaahed” as Miss Phuan deftly clipped back the cockroaches’ wings with drawing pins, calmly exposing the mysteries of its insides. We applauded loudly as she named even the most minute parts of its anatomy. But she was most disappointed when we all coyly declined her offer to decapitate the next specimen. As a result, we had a number of the pests left over, which my friends Jarrod and Jacques collected and stowed away in a jam jar.

I next saw the bottle several days later. Inside, the cockroaches had breathed their last, but their final slumber was cruelly disturbed when Jarrod began to shake the bottle. He shook it very, very hard. Several days, and many hard shakes later, the bottle had already passed through the hands of every member of the class. Inside, a soggy white paste, not unlike mayonnaise, was splattered around the sides of the glass, and it was still possible to recognise a head, and several pairs of extremities. It was indeed a most ghastly sight, and not a few remarks were made about the appropriateness of using a jam jar.

One week later, Jacques decided to open the jar. In ten seconds flat, the class was empty. Like the survivors of a war, we gathered along the corridor outside, still reeling from this massive assault on our olfactory organs. Even at the end of lunch, when Miss Phuan came for her biology lesson, we were all still hanging around the corridor, and absolutely refused to return. With ingenuity which would have done credit to any scientist in a crisis, she decided to move that lesson outdoors. However, I hardly heard a word she said that day.

For me, the true lesson in biology had already been firmly imprinted in my memory – I had seen first hand the rate of diffusion of molecules in the air, and the speed was incredible. I had also learned that though it takes the molecule of an unpleasant odour an infinitesimally small amount of time to fill a classroom, it takes at least a week for these same particles to exit through the open window. Fortunately for us, that was the last lesson in our classroom for the day, and our teachers were not forced to make any more unscheduled changes to the timetable. But for the next few days, the air was filled with a surprisingly strong smell of cologne.

On hindsight, it was really fortunate that Jacques had had the presence of mind to close the bottle before he joined in the general retreat. Had he dropped the bottle, the consequences would have been unthinkable. Whatever the case, this little seemingly insignificant event has left an indelible mark in my mind. It showed me the lighter side to science; more importantly, it showed me that one should think before one opens a bottle full of decomposed cockroaches.

Entertaining and well written huh? And so sanitised compared to the Malaysian heroics, dont you think?

We were at a dinner with Jason earlier and he had again expressed frustration with the idiocy of the “leaders” at LifeGate Church of Christ in Glen Waverley. Ben Foo the “chairman” continues to hound him without assurance of a bona fide intention. All that does is stir annoyance – even anger – and affirm their lack of forethought, even cluelessness. Won’t 2014 bring some wisdom and courage on that mob?