a friend wrote to me saying,

The language of "ideals" moves matrimony from the realm of the real world into the realm of pure ideas, more or less granting in advance that in the mundane realm the ideal will not be possible because even the best marriage will be less "pure" than the idea of marriage.

Under the canon of modern pragmatism, to fail to accomplish that which is impossible cannot truly be a "sin." One merely learns from his mistakes and tries, tries, tries again.

This same pragmatism builds on the common experience of multiple marriages in a divorce culture as a demonstration that lifelong, monogamous marriage is an unrealizable ideal (and thus, in the end, impossible) to do away with all commandments, which are in turn transformed into ideals themselves. "All have fallen short" ceases to be a confession of sin and a plea for mercy, becoming instead a sort of "So what. Everybody does it."

The net result is a type of practical incomprehension of the meaning of the doctrines of grace. Why should anyone who tries his best to do the impossible be thought "guilty" or in need of an unmerited redemption? Thus, we end up telling one another that we're all good chaps after all, which leaves Jesus hanging on the cross for no particular reason.

The first generation or two that treat marriage and other commandments as an ideal may very well retain some sense of sin and redemption, however vague. But the generations of children that they raise, who see their parents and their pastors doing what God forbids and not doing what God commands, will tend to draw the inference that the whole business of sin and redemption is quaint and out of date. They don't, after all, see any major consequences of sin or failure in this world. If anything, they see a great deal of self-affirmation among those who have departed from God in this or some other particular.

But if we imagine Adam and Eve declaring to God that they had a right to happiness and that the forbidden fruit was an integral part of that happiness, we can see how silly such arguments are.

We need to keep fighting on this line.