What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word marriage?  Marriage is between a man and a woman only.  Everyone has a belief, a world view (a view that is brought on by what the common population believes to be true), everyone has a bent towards something whether they admit it or not. Everyone has a message that they are trying to convey.  Everyone wants YOU to believe the things they believe, and see things the same way they do. The T.V. shows you watch and the music you listen to are all geared to pushing their own views and beliefs on you and making you believe what they believe.  So what is influencing you? Have you noticed what messages are being thrown at you?  Whose view of marriage is speaking louder, in your life? God’s or the worlds?  I went through a list of the most popular T.V. shows, and picked two to look at: Glee, and Family Guy.

Glee

Okay, so lets look at some of the main characters, and how marriage or the lack thereof, is viewed in their “lives”.

Let’s start with Rachel Berry. In the first episode she is introduced as a young talented singer, who wants to be known and viewed as successful. She tells of how she was made with love by her two gay dads, by the means of artificial insemination into a surrogate mother with a turkey baster.
Will Schuester has a passion to teach. He is a dedicated teacher at William McKinley High School, and he takes on the Glee club, to try and keep it alive. Though he encounters many struggles, he perseveres. Will is married in the first season to Terry; though there are struggles in their marriage he continues to make sacrifices to please his wife. In the first episode, when he gets news that he needs to pay money out of his own pocket, to keep the Glee club alive, he immediately begins to find ways he can hide the $60 dollars from his wife. Both Will and Terry hide things from each other. Terry does the same thing when she finds out from the doctor that she isn’t actually pregnant, and instead of telling her husband, she decides to hide it. At one point Terry decides to tell Will of the fake pregnancy, but Kendra, her sister discourages her, telling her: “Dishonesty is food to a marriage, and it will die without it.”.
Kurt Hummel has a passion for performing, and is all about being fashionable. He, along with much of the Glee team gets bullied for being different. Kurt confesses to his dad that he is gay, his dad accepts him, and tells Kurt that he already knew. When Kurt asks how, he is told that it was noticeable from the time he was little, when he took interest in trying on high heels.

In the first season Quinn Fabray is head of the cheerleaders and the president of the celibacy club.  She is introduced in the first season as Finn Hudson’s girlfriend (the schools star quarterback). While Quinn and Finn never have sex, they do have heated make-out sessions. Though on the side Quinn cheats on Finn and gets pregnant, and convinces Finn that he is the father.

The celibacy (not having sex, and remaining pure till your married) club turns out to be a joke, as both the lady’s and the guys go into separate rooms and while they give the impression to each other that they are talking about celibacy, it turns out they are talking about quite the opposite. In the first season they do an “exercise” where they pair up, dance with each other while they hold a balloon between them; they are told if they make the balloon pop the “angles will cry”. While this exercise is very impracticable, and is more of a joke when most of the guys turn the popping of the balloon into a goal, what seems like the only voice of reason comes from Rachel when she yells out that both parties want sex just as bad as the other one, and that they should just try safe sex. Glee gives the idea that celibacy is impossible, or impractical if you truly “love” someone, considering the president of the celibacy club gets pregnant. 

 
Family Guy

 
Family Guy starts out with the introduction of the Griffin family, Peter and Lois have three kids- Chris, Meg, and Stewie. The Griffin family also has a talking dog named Brian.  In the first season Family Guy starts out with the Griffin family, and though they have problems they work it out in the end. Peter seems to have a lot of the problems, but by the end of each episode he learns a valuable lesson. He learns lessons about how family time is important, and how being honest is the best thing. Peter seems like a real family guy.

In the first season, Family Guy gives the view that porn is even okay in marriage. Peter goes to hang out with his buddies, and they all sit down and watch a pornographic movie together. Though, as seasons pass, important lessons seem to be lost. Suggestive jokes and little hints are interjected about homosexuality, transvestites, and “guilt free” one night stands.  Unfaithfulness in marriage, divorce and the view that once you’ve fallen in love with someone else or things “change” its okay to divorce and look for someone new. Marriage… if you even get married, is not necessarily meant to be a life time commitment.

Now that we have looked at some of what the world is saying about marriage… Let’s see what God has said about marriage, and compare the two.
From the beginning God laid out the ground work for marriage. The Bible opens up with the book of Genesis, with God creating the world… and the human race. In Genesis 2: 7 we are told how God created Adam, but then God notes “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18). So, God then makes woman- Eve so that Adam would not be alone, and so he would have a helper. From the very beginning, we are shown that we need each other. Note that God did not make Steve for Adam no, He made Eve, a woman. In Leviticus 18:22 homosexuality is called an abomination to the Lord.  Look at the way God made us, as the same sex  body parts don’t even go together; homosexual couples can’t reproduce, and we are commanded in Genesis to “Go forth and multiply.” ….So tell me how that works? Now, I’m not saying “God hates gays” , , because He doesn’t, but I am saying that the sin itself, like any other sin, is an abomination to the Lord- not the person. No one is born gay, but we all have different sins that we struggle with, we just need to look to Christ instead of embracing the sin.

 After Eve had been created, it’s said: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24).  We are shown that Adam and Eve “became one flesh” … or had sex after they were considered married before God. God created sex to be a wonderful thing, but it was made for the confines of marriage only, between one man and one woman. It then says in verse 25 – “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” If you have ever had sex or have sinned sexually and you can relate to that shame, the thick guilt, the dirty feeling that comes on you, and the feeling of despair that you can’t make it better, and things will never be the same. Yeah, that’s for a reason; God made sex for marriage and if you use things God makes out of context there are consequences. But! Adam and Eve had sex in marriage, and they felt NO shame! None! Guilt free! Amazing huh?

That is what God wants for us. We are meant to have one marriage partner for life, unless our husband/wife dies, we are to stick with them no matter what “In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer.”  In Romans 7:2, 3 Paul talks about this: “For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is freedom that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.”
So, with all this said- Everyone has a message everyone has a view point, belief, a world view; and they want you to see it how they see it. So what is the world telling you? What is influencing you the most about your view of marriage? The world and the shows you watch? Or is it what God has to say about the matter? How does it play out in your life? Are you taking steps to save yourself for marriage?