These thoughts are from a section in our notes in our marriage class…
Contrary to much popular opinion marriage does not have to turn out to be a bad thing. In fact, marriage is a good gift from God that leads to great joy in our lives. However, there are many who doubt this premise. On the one hand there are many who refuse to get married because they perceive to live with one person the rest of your life sounds restricting and impossible. They reason that they could never live with the same person for the entire lives. They want to be’ free.’ On the other hand there are those who are already married and find no joy in that relationship. In fact, their spouse is a ‘burden’ to them. These people are always complaining to others about the shortcomings of their spouse. Anybody know that guy? Both groups, those not desiring to be married and those already married and regret it, seem to follow Kurt Cobain’s philosophical, lyrical masterpiece (please read much sarcasm into that), “married, buried.”[1] This is far from the biblical ideal of marriage. God desires that our marriages be satisfying and joyous. He desires that they be growing and nurtured into a joy filled relationship that demonstrates the Gospel. There is absolutely nothing wrong in delighting in your spouse![2] However, sadly it seems that there are very few that find this. Why?
There definitely is no lack of energy among married Christians to find this satisfaction in their marriages. There are thousands of Christian couples trying to save and will do anything to save their marriages and, consequently, they run to the Christian bookstore for help. These people are facing serious issues such as: their husband doesn’t treat them as their greatest possession; their wife doesn’t respect their authority; their husband is always out with his friends and spends no time building the family; or maybe their spouse is cheating on them. They are all looking for that one book that will rescue their marriage. So off they run to the local Christian bookstore, which has no shortage of ‘Christian Marriage’ books. The sad state of affairs of the books in the ‘marriage’ section in these local Christian bookstores, however, is revealed through their ‘stepping stone’ theology. Yes, I just made that up. Dozens of these books use the Bible to get you a better marriage, rather than using our marriage to glorify and get God! These books are little more than self-help books that use the Bible to instruct someone on how to use God to get what they really want–a happier marriage. For these people God is the not the ultimate person to be gained, but their spouse. God is not the ultimate object of their affections, but getting what they really want—respect, love, or time. Keeping in theme with ‘old music’ philosophy the Monkees got it right when they sang, “I am not your stepping stone.” God is not our stepping stone to get what we want. God is the only ultimate thing to be gained that will give us true joy in our marriage. Some of these books, for example, argue that your marriage is not thriving because the husbands don’t love their wives and the wives don’t respect the husbands. So if the spouses did these two things then your marriage would be great.[3] Others advocate that one should do something nice for your spouse for 40 days to improve their marriage. Again, the Bible and God are used to improve your marriage, but the end thing gained is not God but their spouse. Plus what happens on the 41st day and you don’t do anything? We end up feeding our spouse’s idols so much that books have been written specifically on how to identify my spouse’s idol languages, so we can feed them!
Sadly and more ironically these books deliver what the people were looking for. People have claimed that these self-help books saved their marriages. But in what sense were the marriages saved?[4] As we will argue later, the reason marriages are not what they should be is because each spouse has idols that are not being met, but when each spouse feeds the idols of their spouse they find happiness, their marriage has been ‘saved.’ So these self help books just teach us how to feed our spouses idols, which in turn makes them happy, which ‘saves’ their marriages. Really? Saved our marriage? A problem with this rescue method is that our spouses will not at all times feed our idols, then what? Off to another Christian, self-help, stepping stone marriage book? We end up in an endless cycle of futility looking for someway for our spouse to make us happy, rather than submitting and finding our rescue in God’s love for us through Jesus.
[1] The song is called “All Apologies” and is a very interesting song on the marriage relationship as a whole.
[2] The problem we want to avoid is that we don’t take a good thing, our marriage or spouse and make it an ultimate thing. Far too many of us commit marriage/spouse idolatry, which is putting our ultimate trust and hope in something other than God Himself.
[3] Even though love and respect comes from Ephesians 5 and the commands are to be obeyed, the principle fails because the success of the marriage is based on the ability of the other spouse to carry out their responsibility. And when they fail to live out their responsibility, then the marriage problems are solely their fault.
[4] This leads directly into what is a ‘successful’ marriage? We must understand that success is not just staying together, not peacefully coexisting, and not even just loving each other. A successful marriage is one that does all of these because God is the ultimate object of their worship, such that they exemplify the Gospel to the lost world.
