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Same-sex marriage makes perfect sense—if you buy North American culture's take on sex and marriage. More than four decades after the introduction of the Pill, hardly anyone now getting married remembers the time when pleasure, procreation, passion, companionship, and parenthood were all intimately knotted into a bundle called marriage. Without those connections, marriage has become an arena for mere self-fulfillment and sexual expression. Even the Ontario Court, in its June 10 affirmation of same-sex marriage, could describe marriage as only an expression of love and commitment. If that is all there is to marriage, why not grant the same legal benefits to committed same-sex couples as to married heterosexuals?

There is, however, an alternative view, rooted in the Bible, in history, in tradition, and in nature. And those of us who see marriage through those lenses can only think of "same-sex marriage" as we think of "fat-free sour cream"—a triumph of the modern, technologically blunted imagination.

The modern spirit has often been devoted to overcoming nature with technology. This has been a blessing when it has nearly wiped out some life-threatening diseases. Unfortunately, it has also synthesized inferior substitutes for real things, ranging from the invention of calorie-free sweeteners to the recent creation of embryos that were genetically both male and female.

That same modernist spirit is at work in the juggernaut that seems bent on normalizing same-sex marriage in North America. May God bless the resistance: First, Matt Daniels and the Alliance for Marriage for promoting the Federal Marriage Amendment. Second, Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R.-Colo.) and her 75 colleagues cosponsoring the Amendment in Congress. And third, commentators like Cal Thomas and Mona Charen for exposing the diabolical logic of the Supreme Court's recent Lawrence v. Texas decision. And Maggie Gallagher for elucidating the cultural consequence of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Still, the local church has a key role in recreating a biblical understanding of marriage in our society.

First, we must admit that the church's current record is dismal. Divorce statistics inside the church are indistinguishable from those outside.

Second, we need to repent for allowing the Zeitgeist of expressive individualism to permeate the way many of our churches relate to marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Third, we need to restore the community context of marriage. A married couple is more than the sum of its parts. It is a thread in a community fabric. Societies are built out of people who are loyal to one another and who work and sacrifice for the common good. Expressive individualism is a poor foundation for a society, and marriages so conceived do not build loyalties or give us practice in sacrificial service. Marriages and families are schools for service.

Fourth, we need to recover the sense of human limitation inherent in marriage and family life. This is the beautiful biblical picture: a two-gendered, complementary couple improving on and channeling nature, but neither conquering it nor twisting it.

Modernism is about conquering nature, but marriage is about living with nature. Illness and irritating habits, economic reverses and recalcitrant children—these things give us practice in living with limits. Sing Me to Heaven is Margaret Kim Peterson's affecting memoir of building a marriage in the face of limitations. Knowing that her husband had a terminal illness from the beginning helped her to realize that marriage is not choosing a future; it is choosing a partner with whom to face the future. And to varying degrees, that always involves living with limits as "helpers suitable for each other."

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September 2003, Vol. 47, No. 9