Mary's Aunt
Mary's in a fix. Her family's all upset and I can understand why. A few days ago her aunt died. Well ... "Aunt" is what she called her, though she wasn't your typical kind of aunt.
See, Mary's aunt was the long time companion of Mary's aunt. Yes, Mary's Aunt Mary was "married" to Mary's aunt. Or sort of. You get the picture.
I'm not defending Mary's "aunts." I'm simply telling their story -- a true story, despite altered names. For Mary it had never been very complicated: she simply had two aunts. It had always been that way and until she got old enough to think about it, she never thought about it.
But now she was thinking about it a lot. For Mary's surviving aunt was in a terrible mess. Rightly or wrongly she had built an eighteen year relationship with someone she deeply loved. Her grief was as real as that of any "normal" couple. She had lost someone whom she deeply loved, and to whom she had devoted her life. Together, as far as they were concerned, they were family -- all of them.
But the state doesn't see it that way. Mary's surviving aunt can make no legal decisions on behalf of her departed soulmate. It's as if she doesn't exist. For nearly twenty years everyone in Mary's family thought of her as family, but now in their moment of crisis the state won't even let them decide whether she is cremated or not. Can you imagine the trauma added to trauma that this scenario creates for Mary's family?
So Mary's taking a day off work to help locate a long forgotten relative of her aunt. Someone who may not even know or care that about the deceased. Someone who share's her aunt's blood lines, but has little connection to her love lines.
Does this story trouble you? It does me. A lot.
I freely confess to a worldview which has always held that Mary's "aunts" were involved in a lifestyle outside of God's preferred plan. I share the concerns of my religious peers over the erosion of traditional marriage values.
Still, would it really be so harmful to provide some sort of legal protection for people who want to commit their lives to one another as Mary's aunts did? Would the venerable institution of marriage crumble? Can there be a distinction between a civil union recognized by the state and a "sacrament" recognized by the church? Why should the church be so dependent upon the state to support its view of marriage anyway?
I don't know what the right legal answer is to Mary's family predicament. But from now on I won't be able to think about this question without thinking about Mary's family.
posted by Steve Gilbertson at 10:22 PM
3 Comments:
I'm sure you won't have to look very long to find a reductionist who can quickly and simply clarify everything for you. Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. Unfortunately this is one of many issues that are exceedingly complex.
Perhaps as a defense mechanism, so we don't have to think about it too hard, the standard response is to reduce the issue to a simple right/wrong answer. Along with that we have a tendency to make long lists of possible negative consequences if we answer wrongly and possible positive outcomes if we answer rightly. Of course to a reductionist these aren't "possible" outcomes, they are inevitable.
Your post raises the question, is it wrong for a Christian to favor a law that shows grace and mercy to sinners? Put like that it seems very difficult to answer no. But as soon as we do we will here things like "slippery slope", "crumbling morality", "undermining marriage", etc.
Aren't there two scenarios here? Where were the friends of Mary's aunt who provided sound counsel on legal matters. It seems a will, power of attorney, etc. would fix the problem.
The other scenario is clouded by our unwillingness to understand that God's process may be radically different than our own. I spoke to a friend of mine one day about his views on homosexuality. He told me it was a sin, and that you couldn't be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time. It was as if being saved, born again, would immediately transform someone. There's no room for God's process. What if God puts a message on someone's heart and that person doesn't act immediately? What if God's process for changing/curing a homosexual is a long, multi-year process? My friend had a hard time with that.
I'm always upset with our (humankind's) insistance on having God work using our methods and timing. If America was asked to be in the desert for 40 years, we would've claim that God had left the planet by year two....
Tom, you said,
"Your post raises the question, is it wrong for a Christian to favor a law that shows grace and mercy to sinners?"
Thanks for crystallizing this issue for me.
Like Forrest Gump, "That's all I want to say about that."
Unlike Forrest, however, I can't resist another thought: Ironically, your comment reminds me of what Jesus said to the religionists about Moses' concession to divorce. "It was because of your hardness of heart," he said. And I've always thought it odd that Jesus essentially calls into question a law given by God via Moses. The law was a concession to human sin; it must have come from God's heart, being recorded as it was in the holy book. Was Jesus really against it, or was he frustrated at how the religionists had turned a law meant to express grace into a legalistic loophole? What this all means to the discussion is likely nothing, but I find it ironic nonetheless.
Post a Comment
<< Home