First, let's define "blasphemy": from Answers.com
- A contemptuous or profane act, utterance, or writing concerning God or a sacred entity.
- The act of claiming for oneself the attributes and rights of God.
What brought this question on?
Paula, from Words of a Fether, wrote on a set of sample wedding vows from Bible.org, saying,
Especially repulsive is no. 12.
Here is the text of the sample:
Male
I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor and cherish you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship, and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to Christ as Head of our home as I have looked to Him as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.
Female
I love you, ______, and I thank the Lord for the love that has bound our hearts and lives together in spiritual fellowship of marriage. I will love, honor, cherish and obey you always. As we enter upon the privileges and joys of life's most holy relationship and begin together the great adventure of building a Christian home, I will look to you as head of our home as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church. I will love you in sickness as in health, in poverty as in wealth, in sorrow as in joy, and will be true to you by God's grace, trusting in Him, so long as we both shall live.
Paula's take:
Sorry, bible.org, but that makes the husband a blasphemer (taking the place of Christ in the life of another person) and the wife an idolater (looking to a man instead of Christ). This abominable trend in the churches has infected influential leaders in the Christian community, and it’s spreading rapidly. Those men love to “keep their place” and to be “head over” someone, especially women. We women are expected to spend our lives stroking their delicate egos, making them little gods over us, and believing it’s God’s divine order. (the bolded text is my emphasis).
My take, let's compare Scripture to the sample vow (just the "repulsive" part):
(Scripture): Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
(the vow): I will look to you as head of our home...
(Scripture):For the husband is the head of the wife...
(the vow): as I have looked to Christ as Head of the Church...
even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Scripture goes on: Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Paula called her post "Vows and Wows". I agree.
It's a "wow"...when wedding vows that reflect Scripture are called repulsive, blasphemy and idolatry.
I wonder if it would be blasphemy if the bride quoted (as her vow) Ephesians 5:22-24 directly from Scripture, the groom quoted (as his vow) verses 25-28 and the pastor quoted the rest?
I wonder....
Paula goes on about Bible.org and complementarian belief that a wife should submit to her own husband, as to the Lord, and as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands:
Now evangelicals can take their place beside Muslims, Jews (traditional rabbinical views), Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses in making women truly subhuman.
I repeat: wow.
And I am truly saddened.