It’s interesting to me that the Christian Church, which makes a great use of symbols - both pictorial and verbal - has chosen to retain the symbol of sacrifice when describing the faith, and has rejected another symbol that is widely used throughout Scripture. I refer to marriage. Christ calls himself a "bridegroom"; the church (and also Israel) is referred to as the bride; the covenant relationship of God and Israel is allegorized in the story of Hosea and an unfaithful wife; and the very word "covenant," a major theme of the Bible, is a marital allusion. Yet we rarely use this imagery at all.

Why have we continued to speak of sacrifice when the whole concept of altars and sacrifical lambs has been gone for centuries, and neglected to use the illustrations of marriage, when this is so fa…