Living in Sin?

For a long time now I have found that I don't see any difference between a committed couple who are living together or a married couple. I am always delighted to marry people because it is an expression of their love and joy that they want to share with the rest of us. It is also an expression of hope and commitment to one another and it is lovely, lovely, lovely. However, having discovered how difficult it is to get unmarried I understand why people perhaps choose to keep things simpler from a legal point of view (if living together is simpler) and I can also understand the desire to proclaim that they live together because they want to and not because they feel bound contractually to do so. I am not sure which route I would choose if I was a lay person, as it is, I do not have the luxury of the choice as I am ordained.

This feels like a very controversial stance in the company of some, but there are a couple of things that I can use to justify it. The first is the question of when a couple 'get married', is it:

• when they sign the register
• when they first have sex
• when the priest announces that they are man and wife or
• when they determine in their hearts to love one another for the rest of their lives?

For me it is the last one, and so a wedding service becomes an outward symbol of an inner reality, a bit like baptism.

Secondly, historically this was always the case. A clever friend of mine wrote:

In the Bible there are lots of marriages but precious few weddings. The bridegroom does a deal with the bride’s father and takes her to bed – at least in earlier passages. If we think of marriage as a committed relationship of two people to each other, usually with the possibility of producing children, people do it because they want the relationship. When a couple announce to their friends and relatives that they have decided to live together, they are doing what would have counted, near enough, as marriage in the UK before the 1753 Act.

So can we all just let people get on with it and if there is a wedding then great, let's party, but otherwise let's trust folks to know for themselves what is best for them?