Thread by @owenbroadcast

been watching a lot of docs with wife, who is, nobly, limited in energy due to being with child. watched one about marriage recently where a guy just interviewed people about the concept of marriage. this was a fascinating case study in what marriage "is" without religion. [..]

in this documentary, they ask all these different people what marriage is. and they're giving all these weird but slightly wholesome answers. but no one mentions anything supraphysical. its all very pleasant, but you can feel there is something missing, and it never comes.

it occurred to me that without any knowledge of God's existence woven into the situation, marriage really is just a piece of paper. i suppose thats obvious, its kind of a cultural talking point i guess, but theres "the idea" and then there is seeing it actually played out, right.

so you see all these people talking about why they got married and there is this weird subtext of, "well i guess thats just what you do" or, they're appealing to the legal aspect, or, it seemed like some of them didn't even know why they did it, despite enjoying it.

most, if forced to define marriage, appealed to the legal aspect. i think this is demonstrably not what it is, right. we can do a thought experiment and imagine, if the state somehow made marriage illegal tomorrow, i would still marry my wife. so its not conditional on the state.

one theological term i picked up in my studies which is known and used but i think is not really understood in an intuitive sense by most people is the term sacrament. marriage is a sacrament. literally, its on most lists of sacraments, for example, the catholic 7 sacraments:

if you look up what a sacrament is you'll often get a kind of technical definition, naturally, as those defining it want to be very specific and not accidentally mislead people. that makes sense. usually its something like, a sign of inward grace instituted for our sanctification

but theres a lot of terms in there that most people operating on the folk religion (ie the not huge book academic theological) level probably couldnt just define off the cuff, like what specifically is inward grace, and you could write a whole book on what sanctification is.

one casual definition i picked up from someone that i like (im just some random guy research this stuff yourself) is that sacraments are things God gives us to be close to him. speaking totally casually and without worrying about technical language or cutting things too finely...

theres stuff going in the direction from us to God, like prayers, but theres also stuff going in the other direction, from God to us. God gives us some "official things" that are kind of like tools for us to be closer to him. marriage is one of those things. in my view.

so thats a very man on the ground non technical understanding of it, but that perfectly clarifies the whole thing. it answers all the questions, why get married, what marriage is, what it does, what its for, it makes everything perfectly clear so even a child could understand.

it just struck me as interesting watching all these people who when pressed, actually fully appealed to and defined marriage as something totally mundane and secular. it reminded me of that critique teenagers often seem to spontaneously generate about marriage.

that being, why do i need a piece of paper forcing someone to be with me? if i want to be with someone, we can just be together. interestingly, i had just seen that some cultural celebrity had said that exact thing in a magazine and it was making the rounds before watching this.

and it formed this whole cohesive picture in my mind because i realized that without appealing to anything divine or within the sphere of divinity, you actually cant really answer that question. its a valid critique in that worldview. i guess there are a few legal or tax reasons.

i dont often dig into the nuts + bolts of totally normal peoples worldviews anymore (actually i do, a lot, but i only do it at a distance now), so it was interesting accidentally getting a window into people who never really thought about it trying to explain why they got married

theres a jump here into the fact that most people, i think, intuitively partake of the theological framework of the universe because that [is] how things are and its encoded into them. "why are you doing that?". "uh idk, its just what im supposed to do i guess". well, thats true.