No, not mine 🙂
I attended a friend’s wedding on Saturday. I’ve known the friend since school (which I left not long enough ago to purge the accursed experience from my memory, in 1988), but we have quite different (putting it mildly) religious viewpoints.
The wedding was fun, as far as wedding’s go, what with children drowning out the ceremony, and the string fastening the ring proving challenging to undo, resulting in a long-enough pause to get the pastor to tell a story of a really disastrous wedding. He started the story saying I was marrying my cousin, bringing a few inpolite guffaws from the less propriety attendees. Hastily corrected to performing the ceremony, he continued the story saying that as the bride came up the isle, lightning struck the church, knocking out the electricity, leaving the church dimly lit by 3 candles. Then an almighty thunderstorm struck, and the church proved less than waterproof, causing a certain reshuffling amongst the congregation, as well as a frantic hunt for buckets.
Ring duly detached, the ceremony continued. One of the readings was from Ephesians (Ephesians 5 v 22-25), and spoke of wives submitting to their husbands, while the husband’s were to love their wives. Aspects of the Christian bible really get my hackles up, as it’s contains so much that is dated, yet believers swear by certain choice passages. 2 verses later (Ephesians 6 v 5), Paul (the author of the letter to the Ephesians) commands: slaves obey your masters with fear and trembling.. do your work as slaves cheerfully. Wonder why that one isn’t quoted so much…
Earlier, waiting for the ceremony to start, I took the opportunity to read the book of Titus, one which, in spite of my Christain youth, I’d never heard of. It contains what can easily be interpreted as a command against circumcision (read Wikipedia’s article on circumcision in the bible for more on this). Interesting how circumcision was a big no-no for early Christians, but has become acceptable amongst most modern-day Christians.
However, perhaps what’s really caused Titus to drop from favour is Paul’s racist diatribe against Cretans.
Cretans are always liars, wicked beasts, and lazy gluttons. For this reason you must rebuke them sharply… They are hateful and disobedient, not fit to do anything good.
Yes well.
Dogma aside, the pastor gave some really good relationship and marriage advice, which has been rare in my experience of weddings (which is about 6. It was certainly better than the go forth and multiply I heard at a Catholic wedding).
To my friend and his wife, I wish you both well in your new adventure.