Opinion
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October 13, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Are you not looking for true love?

Every man, woman, and child who has ever lived has longed for true, faithful, permanent, unconditional love. That is the deepest desire of every human heart.

For most men, this longing includes a longing for the exclusive love of one woman. For most women, this longing includes a longing for the exclusive love of one man. But today, throughout the world, there is widespread confusion, as many men and women doubt that it is possible, or even normal, to be happily united to one man or one woman for life. This, in turn, has led to endless misery — since people who do not believe that a thing is possible rarely invest enough time and effort to do that thing, even when it is perfectly feasible. The purpose of this series of articles is to show that the ideal of “one man for one woman united in love for life” is feasible and that the first step to attaining that ideal is to believe in it.

Origins of the Marriage Ideal

In examining any subject, it is good to start at the beginning. Where did the idea of one man being united to one woman for life originate? Was it a man’s idea? A woman’s idea? Or something else?

In most schools all over the world, children are taught that human beings and apes evolved from a common ancestor somewhere in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. According to this view, the union of man and woman is not very different from the union of a male and female monkey or chimpanzee. It is something that developed as part of the struggle for survival. And people who hold this view are quick to point out that there are many places in the world where it was normal for one woman to have many men or for one man to have many women, providing evidence, so they say, that “one man for one woman” is one of many arrangements that have been tried in the struggle for survival, and not necessarily better or worse than any of the other arrangements. People who hold this view often determine what is normal or natural for human beings by studying what is normal or natural for animals in the world today. If baboons practice homosexual play, then that must be normal for humans. If a male seahorse takes care of the baby seahorse, then that must be a normal role for a male human being — and so on.

In the future, people will look back at these ideas in amazement that intelligent human beings could have placed such faith in them. Yes, it is a matter of faith — because, in reality, there is no proof whatsoever that man has evolved from a common ancestor with apes. All of the evidence that has been touted for human evolution has failed to prove any link between human beings and sub-human ancestors. Since this is an article about true love and not about evolution, I will not be able to present all of the evidence against the hypothesis of human evolution here.[1] Instead, for the time being, I have included a link to an article that exposes the fatal flaws in the hypothesis of human evolution so you can examine the evidence and judge for yourself. But what can be stated unequivocally here is that according to virtually all of the cultural traditions in the entire world, the idea of one man for one woman for life was not a human invention. It was God’s idea.

Male and Female He Created Them

The most accurate account of the creation of the first man and woman can be found in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Holy Scriptures of Christians and Jews. But the idea that the first marriage was made in heaven is not unique to Christians and Jews. All over the world, countless cultures have handed down accounts of the creation of the first human beings. Although they differ in details, most of these agree in recounting the creation of one man and one woman who became the ancestors of all of mankind. Under normal circumstances, the integrity of a packet of information will deteriorate during transmission. In the light of this truth, it is all the more remarkable that many accounts of the origins of man and the universe that agree substantially with the Genesis account have been preserved until recent times without Jewish or Christian influence. For example, one of the first Christian missionaries to modern-day Myanmar (formerly Burma) was a Baptist named Adoniram Judson. According to one account:

Judson canoed down the Salween River back into the jungle to a tribe called the Karen, whose pagan traditions were strangely amenable to the gospel — they had a Creator of man, and woman from his rib; an ancient temptation and fall; expectation of a white man’s appearance with a sacred parchment[.] … When Adoniram Judson died, there were 8,000 believers and 100 churches in Burma, which today, known as Myanmar, has the third-largest population of Baptists in the world, mostly the Karen and Kachin tribe. (Andree’ Seu, “Gospel Cyclone,” World (May 31/June 7, 2008).

The idea of one man and one woman united in love forever is God’s idea, not man’s (or woman’s) idea. And, because it is God’s idea, and He created us, we reject it at our peril.


[1] J.C. SANFORD and ROBERT CARTER, “God, Family, and Genetics” in the proceedings of “The Two Shall Become One,” a Symposium on the Special Creation of Adam and Eve as the Foundation of the Church’s Teaching on Holy Marriage (Rome: Human Life International, 2015) https://kolbecenter.org/god-family-genetics-bible-perspective/