Right that mediating has totally messed the whole system up. There is no "marriage" in the West anymore, it's all performative.
Discussion
I think the standard contracts have just worn out their usefulness and we need new contracts. Standards are important for establishing norms and defining vocabulary.
What is a wife? What can a wife reasonably expect? What can your friends, family, church elders, and neighbors expect from your marriage and when should they intervene because you have veered too far off the path?
What sacramental marriage adds, in a practical manner, is a dramatic decrease in the number of dissolved marriages.
I also think that, if the church wants to "reclaim" marriage from the state, they should be providing standard civil contracts and mediation, otherwise there will be discord in the church.
the Church, in all of its break-away sects, is all fully infiltrated by Satan, IMO, though not necessarily all the way to the edges at the parish level
that's why there literally has to be the return of the leader to restore its original function here in the physical universe (and according to several accounts that means migrating off planet for a thousand year period at least, due to the destruction that is coming very soon)
We have to make do, until He returns, tho. Otherwise, we're just another Armageddon cult.
well, i firmly believe that this is coming very soon and the impending collapse of the earth's magnetic field and the disasters that will ensue really is within our lifetime, and you can't get that information without reading apocrypha and other science including archaeology, geological and astrophysical scientific research, and even UFO contact accounts
if He isn't coming soon, we are all gone anyway, if we didn't do our research and position ourselves for surviving the ocean washing away the land all again, and you know that The Lord promised that there would never again befall His people such an event way back as Noah landed the ark on the first patch of dry land, you really should read The Book of Enoch for more detail on that story too, enoch appears in The Book of Jubilees as well and the provenance of the text dates it as at least as old as the rest of the Old Testhament
maybe i've got a bit of an odd, scientific version of christianity... the Mormons also have some funny stuff in there that hints at the idea of advanced technology and they make some interesting prescriptions that could not have been understood until the appearance of modern chemistry
anyway, as you well know, it says repeatedly all over the place that as the time nears the seals are opened
You sound like a statist lol we don’t need all these things predetermined. Let people create partnerships based on consent and everything will work itself out. Keep it simple lol anyway good talk everyone! I gotta get some sleep gn 🫂