This coming Sunday I am preaching with the title "A Christian Marriage?" and over the last week have been reading some theology - including church history - to try to get my head round something of how we got to where we are at the start of C21 in the UK, specifically Scotland.  It is fascinating stuff, not least because for the first four hundred years or so the Church had a very ambivalent view on marriage, favouring celibacy as the Biblical ideal and seeing marriage as a necessary means, put bluntly, of ensuring another generation of Christians.  The 'marriage is about procreation' understanding actually underlies an awful lot of what is taught in churches, even today. 

I really enjoyed the reading and learned a lot which I will be sharing on Sunday, but one of the things that struck me is the frequent allusion back to Genesis 2:24 "therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings (cleaves) to his wife, and they become one flesh'.  I just wonder what might have happened if instead the church had opted to major on 1 Corinthians 7, especially this bit:

Actually I would prefer that all of you were as I am; but each one has a special gift from God, one person this gift, another one that gift.
Now, to the unmarried and to the widows I say that it would be better for you to continue to live alone as I do.
But if you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry - it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

1 Cor 7:7 - 9 GNB

If this was our 'proof text of choice' then marriage would emerge as God's 'second best', which would rather put the cat among the theological and ecclesiological pigeons!