Joe, you have said a mouth full there for sure.
It is indeed the hatred of authority that drives much of the issues. Children do like parental authority because of sin. Families do not like each other at times and women and children at times hate male/headship authority at times. Men often hate being under pastors/elders who have rule over them in the Lord. Joined men and fathers often hate being under a spiritual leader. People in general hate and despise governmental authority. This type of spirit is running wild among Christendom. Immature saints, babies in the Lord, and pagans who profess Christ but do not truly know him hate authority.
Indeed the world was created for a man, Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh. People ultimately hate his headship over the universe.
As for terms, the terms marriage, husband, and wife are actually secularized terms created out of the Roman statist system. For example the English term wife developed around the 10 to 13th or so century in Europe when Rome had a stronghold over religious and political sectors.
This carried through over into Colonial America then into the United States. The problem then is exacerbated by the fact that translators today use the statist Roman terms to translate the word wife and marriage in our English translations.
Technically speaking if we want to be exact and literal to the original languages, and non-offensive to the Roman State system of today (which includes many Christians who use it), we should not use those terms unless we have used their system. The biblical term gameo from the Greek means to merge, to join, to come together, to become part of the other. The Hebrew term laqah simply it its most base form means "to take, to grasp."
Then when we come to the Greek the word gamos and gameo we can see one base form of the meaning is to have sexual relations, to enter into the conjugal state. But a key to this is that term is at times connected to a legal status.
But there is ANOTHER term used by Christ that is a non-legal status term. It is suzeugnumi. This is the term used by Christ when he says, "let what God has JOINED together man not separate" in Matthew 19. The term means together, yoke, pair, to unite, to join together.
So we have two ideas in the Bible and two ideas in culture.
Biblically the two terms gamos and suzeugnumi mean to unite together. If the legal systems of the day support the union then it can in that day and age wherever the people live they can use those legal terms. But if the legal structures do not agree with the biblical terms then people can unite but just not with or in use of the legal terms. In other words, there is a two layers approach here. Marriage, wife, etc in our culture are English created terms of the 10 to 13th or so century that carry over into today's legal state systems. Those who use the state marriage licenses use their system. I find that system more and more troubling though especially since most all states now have the no fault divorce clause, along with others issues. How can we ever agree to that? We can't if biblical! More so, now we see the state defining their systems as marriage with male homosexuals, something God clearly condemned. So again as biblicists we cannot agree to that either.
So is there a Christian way around it? Certainly. Those who do not use the statist licensure system can still in the words of Christ suzeugnumi with each other (ergon is part of it in that it is mean to work together, to yoke to one another), or join together. We ought to therefore indeed use different terms.
Terms like:
union
covenant union
Christian cohabitation
synergists or synergy
mate
Covenant partner
Christian covenant partner
Christian union
Covenant life partner
so and so forth as others could be thought of to capture the thought.
What ought to happen is up coming Bible translators who make new translations of Scripture they ought to discard for Christians the term husband, wife, and marriage and go back to translate those words literally without legal language playing or bleeding into the translation. They can translate the term aner as man or if by context a "joined man" or a covenant bonded man or a united man. When they come to the word gune for woman they can translate it if needed by context as a united woman, covenantally bonded woman, or a joined woman. This would get rid of the statist influence over the chosen words of the Bible.
If the states want to set up their own licensure systems for some who desire that then so be it.
But Christian, and all people here in this land, today can legally cohabitate without threat of the state punishing it under criminal law. Christians can covenant together without the need of the state licensure system.
It is only a matter of time before the term marriage is useless to us anyway. I think it ought not to be the preferred term today when it is defined as a system where people can walk away with no reason at all. The no fault divorce rules is one reason why so many adopted and pushed for the "Covenant Marriage laws" that did pass in some states. But again, that is still one step short of the right answer. The right answer is for saints to form their unions by way of contract and not through a licensure system as defined the way it is by the state. In essence when people take the legal systems today they are in one sentence saying they need this license by the state to unite with this person. But in doing so they also take to themselves the rules of the state such as no fault divorces and whatever else that attach to it.
There are better ways and there are now better ways to term the relationship, such as with the simple terms listed above.
As corrupt as the ideology is today behind the legal system I do not know why any woman would want to be degraded by the use of the term "wife." It is a higher position and a more holy position to a helpmate, or a covenant woman, or a covenant life partner than the term wife today as so defined by many of the states. If I were a woman and someone called me a wife under the state legal definition I'd be mad and just plain out offended. A woman of God is precious and she is a companion, mate, partner, helpmate, and is precious in every way. The legal systems of the day have degraded her to a status far below what she really is in the eye of God and to a righteous man. A woman today under the statist system has to fear that at any point her man can just say we no longer get along so I want out and the courts will honor that in many places. A wife today as the homosexual crowd grows can be either a male or female depending upon the roles taken by those in other legal unions.
So why desire those terms? I see no use for them and they cause more trouble in the long run for those who use them and for those who try and go through that system while trying to maintain biblical standards.
Christ gave us a system where people can be joined together outside of legal structures. These unions are valid, holy, and becoming more and more the norm in this culture. We would do better therefore to re-translate these terms in our Bible back to its most literal meaning and let the state have its own system for those who desire to be a part of the licensure system.
