Marriage

Encouraging and disheartening news from recent TIME magazine articles. . .

In the July 13 edition, an article titled “Why Marriage Matters” explores the difficulties Americans encounter in having sustaining and successful marriages, as well as why having successful marriages is essential to our cultural well-being. I was curious as I began the article, because in the news media, traditional values (such as marriage) are often treated as out of touch with reality. I find this especially, in my random encounters with the publication, in NEWSWEEK, which often treats Christianity as a bit of hocus-pocus whose followers are simple-minded and misguided. However, the author Caitlin Flanagan makes some bold, encouraging, and research-based assertions:

“There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage.”

“Few things hamper a child as much as not having a father at home. . . ‘As a feminist, I didn’t want to believe it,’ says Maria Kefelas. . . ‘Women always tell me, I can be a mother and a father to a child, but it’s not true.’”

“. . . the middle class has spent the past 2 ½ decades - during which the divorce culture became a fact of life - turning weddings into overwrought exercises in consumer spending, as if by just plunking down enough cash for the flower girls’ dresses and tissue-lined envelopes for the RSVP cards, we can somehow improve our chance of going the distance.”

“A lasting marriage is the reward, usually, of hard work and self-sacrifice.”

Those I find as encouraging. It’s what the Bible, which has much to say on the topic, has stated very clearly and much more eloquently than I can begin to here. However, the article ends with the assertion that although marriage is tough and full of sacrifices, there is a reason to stay and to sacrifice and work out problems. It was here in the article that I waited (although I knew in vain) for the author to state: “It’s worth it because if you love sacrificially, you will gain great joy. It will no longer be a burden, but a blessing. If you follow a biblical model of marriage, infinite joy and an opportunity to display Christ’s relationship to the church will be yours. No affair or divorce will come close to the joy of what your union can be.”

Instead, Flanagan states that it is important to stay married, even though you’re miserable, because the kids will suffer if you don’t. The next generation will be significantly scarred and troubled. In this assertion, there is no hope of joy. There is no sign of how good marriage can be. God is nowhere in that answer. What she writes is true and important, but in it I found the final message to be, “Marriage, after a while, is no fun at all. You won’t like it. But you better stay.” To me, this is a tragic view.

The view got even more tragic, as in the July 20 edition of TIME, an unrelated article described a website whose sole purpose is to make getting away with marital affairs easier. The website, similar in some ways to Facebook or some singles websites, allows users (for a membership fee) the opportunity to seek others with the same affair goals in a way that provides protection from spouses finding out. Apparently, the site’s managers seem to be saying the cheating is normal and at times necessary, so we’ll make it easy for you.

I was a groomsman in a wedding in Costa Rica this summer. I love this friend of mine, and he has picked himself a wonderful spouse. We had a terrific time celebrating their upcoming marriage. During the rehearsal dinner, there was an open mic portion during which many offered well-wishes and advice. The best man, an individual I’ve come to really like and respect, stood up and gave some advice. Despite my positive affinities for this individual, I thought he gave some awful advice.

He stated that if you have the right partner, marriage isn’t hard - it’s exceptionally easy. It’s a joy-ride. There is nothing hard about it. I understood his sentiment, and I believe he has a great marriage, but I believe that is far from reality.

Marriage is not easy. And marriage isn’t designed to be easy. Full of love, yes. Full of passion and laughs and joy and inside jokes, absolutely. Easy, however, is a fallacy. It’s not easy to love sacrificially. Our fallen nature isn’t made that way. It isn’t easy, men, to love so deeply as to give up everything for the well-being of your spouse and your family, as is the requirement established biblically. It isn’t easy, women, to submit leadership to a flawed husband and trust that he will listen to all you have to say and do what’s ultimately best. It's not easy to speak well of him in a culture that values "Whose husband is more inept?" competitons. These things are not native to our sinful nature, and without daily power from prayer and our relationship with God, they may in deed be impossible.

Inside I weep at all the troubled marriages I see around me, all the individuals I see holding selfishly on to their own comfort and sinful desires and in so doing, denying themselves tremendous God-given joy.

Having read what I’ve written up to this point, I hope I don’t come off as sounding as if I’ve got marriage figured out, as if I have the perfect marriage. I don’t. I have a wonderful wife and a marriage I love, but I know every day I have to struggle against the sinful nature in me that wants to be in it for me, not for us. I simply saw these things and wanted to write about them.
The news media and the world wants to know why so many marriages struggle? Only when they can include the biblical vision of marriage will they discover the answer.

Side note: for anyone interested in what I’ve found to be the most biblically sound commentary on marriage, listen or read John Piper’s sermon series on the topic. The sermons are free on his "Desiring God" website. See http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByTopic/45/.The sermons I refer to are in the series that begins in March 2007.