She asked me, "Do you think they are really married?" I thought, I don't know since there was no priest (or minister, she was/is Southern Baptist) to marry them.
It took me a while to discover that it's not a minister that makes someone married, but the couple themselves.
But, how can that be? Well, the nitty-gritty of it is that a marriage really takes place when it is consummated between man and woman. So, in any culture, if they are Christian or not, a man and women are married when the marriage is bonded in the flesh.
This actually comes from Jesus' own mouth.
He [Jesus] said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” Matthew 19: 4-6So, before Abraham (Judaism/Islam), before Christianity (the incarnation), before all modern religions, the way to make a marriage was through becoming "one flesh".
(Of course, many other questions could be raised, but that's all I'll say about this for now.)
