Ever since President Obama revealed his (unsurprising) view that same-sex couples ought to be allowed to marry in the United States, everyone not only in America, but around the world has been thinking about gay marriage. One of the statements that I’ve repeatedly heard over the last month is that gay marriage is the greatest threat to Christian marriage.

To clear the ground, so that I am not misunderstood, I cannot imagine myself as a Christian pastor performing a same-sex marriage now or at any time in the future. Same-sex marriage is utterly inconsistent with my understanding of God’s intention for marriage as communicated in Genesis 2. I could not imagine so long as I am pastor of Vineyard Columbus, that either I or any of the other pastors on staff could ever participate in blessing a same-sex marriage.

But is same-sex marriage the greatest threat to Christian marriage? In preserving marriage as an institution, should we as Christians be focusing our biggest guns on this particular issue? I don’t believe so.

I believe that covenant-breaking (i.e., divorce) is a far greater threat to God’s intention for marriage and for bearing witness to the Triune God than is same-sex marriage.

Consider the following facts: The divorce rate in America for first marriages is 41%, for second marriages, 60%, and for third marriages, 73%. Brad Wright, a sociologist, claims the divorce rate among Christians is somewhat lower than the general public “if you factor in regular church attendance.” But Wright concedes that the divorce and separation rate even among weekly church-going evangelicals is nearly 40%.

If we start with a base of 60 million current marriages in the United States and we assume that somewhere around 40% of those marriages will end in divorce, then that means 24 million couples will get divorced. This is a huge number. It dwarfs the approximately 130,000 gay marriages in America by 185:1. Put another way, gay marriages occur about .5% as frequently as Christians get divorced.

So, what is the greatest threat to Christian marriage? Indeed, what is the greatest threat to all marriages in America right now? It seems to me that we have simply lost any notion of covenant-keeping in our country. We Americans (including American Christians) have redefined life’s highest goal as self-expression and self-fulfillment. Covenant-keeping is sometimes the opposite of the direct pursuit of one’s own happiness.

Currently in the U.S. we have reduced every single interaction to an economic exchange. By economic exchange I mean that if the cost is low enough and the benefits are high enough, I’m in. But if the cost gets too high, and the benefits are too low, I’m out. I’ve said this before in one of my messages: “I love Starbucks. But if they keep raising the price of a cup of coffee, or if I don’t like the barista, I’m definitely going somewhere else.”

This is the way we Americans relate to the most intimate of our connections with each other – specifically, the way we relate to our spouses. We’ve reduced marriage to an economic exchange. So long as the cost remains low enough and the benefits remain high enough, we’re in. But if the cost goes up and the benefits go down, we in America say, “I’m out of here.”

Covenant is not an economic exchange. It is, rather, the way that God expresses himself in relationship to all of creation. And covenant-keeping is the way that the Triune God’s indwelling of the Christian ought to find expression through our lives, especially in our most intimate relationships, namely our marriages. It is covenant-keeping and covenant-breaking that ought to be occupying the lion’s share of the Christian church’s attention and not gay marriage. A failure to understand covenant and the practice of covenant-breaking are the greatest threats to Christian marriage.

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