Marriage

Brenda was a pert twenty-four-year-old who worked behind the counter in a photofinishing store. I often brought my film there for developing. One day I noticed a tiny diamond ring on her engagement finger. She told me that just last night she had become engaged to the man she was living with. I bragged about how I had been well married for over twenty years. Her face whitened. “I have never met anyone married that long!” she said. I asked her if she would remain married throughout her life, and she answered, “I don’t think so. I don’t know anyone who has been married for twenty years.” Both she and I were amazed by the encounter.

Faithful Attraction

A pastor visiting a fourth-grade Sunday-school class asked the class, “What does God say about marriage?” Immediately one boy replied, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Many marrying couples do not know what they are doing. But the statisticians say they are still doing it successfully.

The good news for most married couples is very good indeed. There is a resurgence in faith about marital faithfulness, which researchers are calling faithful attraction. Andrew Greeley reports, on the basis of four surveys of couples, that 90 percent of American spouses have been faithful since they were married. Also, more than 60 percent say their marriage is very happy, 75 percent say their spouse is their best friend, and over 80 percent say they would marry the same person again if they had to do it over. Faith Alive magazine (July 1994) asked their Canadian readers (mostly church attendees) to rate their marriages, and on average they rated their marriages with a B+. Over 95 percent of women and men had not had an extramarital relationship, though about 12 percent of men reported that they had been tempted. Of those who rated their marriages with an A+, the most common thread was “seeking God’s kingdom first.”

The marrying couple may well not know what they are doing, but they know what they want. Willard Harley in his book His Needs, Her Needs points out what he has discovered as the priorities of the sexes in the order of importance. A man desires sexual fulfillment, recreational companionship, an attractive spouse, domestic support and, finally, admiration from his wife. Harley’s research indicates that a woman desires affection, conversation, honesty and openness, financial support and family commitment. With such different expectations, it is little wonder that the process of becoming one is so fraught with challenges and opportunities.

The Bible speaks often about marriage, but nowhere so eloquently as in the creation story in Genesis 2:18-25. The section begins with this striking announcement by God: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). Adam is alone, and that state is “not good”—the only thing in creation that God judges to be not good. As the man began to function as God had intended him (naming the animals that God brought to him), he became profoundly aware that all the beasts had “equal others,” but he did not. He became lonely. Being alone is always a negative concept in biblical history, for the full life is found in community with all of God’s people (see Eccles. 4:9-12; Jeremiah 16:1-9).

The Need for a Helpmate

Christian marriage is particularly unpalatable to some because of the sacrifice or submission implied, so it is thought, in the phrase “helper suitable” (translated in the KJV as “help meet”). God, however, does not think of this term as a pejorative one. He takes this word helper upon himself in several passages in Scripture, for example, “Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword” (Deut. 33:29). The word helper essentially describes one who provides what is lacking in the other. The woman by relative difference but essential equality would be the man’s fitting complement. What he lacked, she supplied. And it is equally true that what she lacked, he would supply. The man was thus created in such a way that he needs the help of a partner. Human beings cannot fulfill their destiny without such mutual assistance. What the Bible does not do is spell this out in terms of specific roles.

Several years ago there was a teaching in the church that it was the husband’s responsibility to do the home finances as an expression of his God-ordained leadership. This might work well with businessmen or accountants, but with me the teaching was disastrous. Now having control of our modest income, I quickly gave much of it away to those needier, and I spent the rest on books that I was sure I would need one day (many of the books are still unread!). Eventually I came to my senses and returned the responsibility to the member of our family who had the requisite gifting. My wife made up for my lack (and financial deficit) when she used her gifting for our benefit. This is what it is to be a helper. What the man lacks, the woman supplies. So Scripture explains the need for a companion; it also explores the process of becoming married.

Marriage as a Three-Stage Process

Mike Mason, author of The Mystery of Marriage, comments that “a marriage is not a joining of two worlds but an abandoning of two worlds in order that one new one might be formed” (p. 91). This was not in Brenda’s mind (nor probably her fiancé’s) as they began to think about marriage. For her the idea of merging two worlds into one is a dusty virtue for antiquated Christians. But the concept of offering up your own life for the blessing of another is both biblical and profoundly psychological. Marriage is a continual three-stage process that involves leaving, being united and becoming one: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:24-25). Each of these three dimensions is needed for a complete marriage.

Marital leaving. The process of leaving means disengaging from one’s family of origin (the family that you were born into and where you formed your initial preadult values and view of the world). It has to do with ending the dependency on the original family and becoming “jointly autonomous” with your mate. It may also mean giving up adolescent expectations of sexual intimacy so that the marriage can be free to enjoy the pleasures and disciplines of marital love or relinquishing the fantasies of being forever nurtured and adored. Whatever kind of leaving is required, the leaving will be ongoing. It is not a “been there, done that” phenomenon. There is a continual leaving of the old to engage the new, even after many years of marriage (see Family Systems).

Many couples in marriage counseling find they must work through this issue of leaving. When the first or second child comes around and needs extra care, they begin to parent as they were parented. The problem is that both parents were parented differently and conflicts arise. Both will need to rethink their ideas of what parenting is about. This is the process of leaving. It is a continual process and is provoked by the inevitable conflicts of living in marital proximity.

Marital union. The idea of being united with one’s wife or husband as found in Genesis 2:24 raises the question, How do spouses become intimate? This too is a continual process in which none of us is an expert. To be continually united involves many everyday skills of friendship. This is why good friendships so often lead to secure and satisfying marriages. Being united involves mutual affection and mutual appreciation. There is no one who can live in the intimacy that marriage requires without the affirmation of one’s partner. Also, it is impossible to become close friends without the glue of emotions and their effective communication. These emotions may be unpleasant ones (for example, anger or resentment) or the more pleasant emotions of marital arousal and love. Further, becoming united requires simple acceptance of the other and the skills of conflict resolution and anger reduction. No one masters all of these skills on his or her wedding day. Husband and wife are continually becoming more united, more unified, more intimate with each other.

Obviously, intimacy is hard work. Many couples, however, think that marital intimacy is a hormonal gift that bubbles them into ecstasy. It is easy for them to fall into despair when they are disillusioned by the necessary work (by the way, it is great to give up illusions that are untrue). But when a couple gets over the disappointment that intimacy is work, they can galvanize their resources to be a missionary to each other’s intimacy needs. This is what it means to be united.

Young people grow up looking for the “right one.” When our teenagers talk this way, I interrupt them with the terribly parental judgment, “How are you becoming the perfect person for your future mate?” They need to be converted from the idea that their future marital bliss is caught up in finding the perfect one. Rather, marital intimacy is the mutual commitment of being the right one for the other.

Marital sexuality. Sexual intimacy, and not just spiritual and emotional intimacy, is also hard work—though perhaps it was not for Adam. I can envision Adam running across plains and through rivers, brushing aside giraffes and pelicans in pursuit of his equal other, Eve. Along the way he utters the first hymn of praise in the Bible (“here at last”; Genesis 2:23 NRSV) and the first poem (“bone of my bones”; Genesis 2:23). Having seen all of creation designed for a partner, he discovered his own, and he did not need a course in sexual education to know what to do. Adam and Eve had no books, no illustrated dictionaries, no specially priced videocassettes. They enjoyed a naive integrity, absolutely without the experience or knowledge of sin, as the motif of nakedness suggests. They experienced no shame and felt no fear of rejection.

This is the hope of all young adults who decide to live together (see Cohabiting). They are desperately trying to get back to Eden. They want the simplicity and naiveté of the Adam and Eve who knew no sin. But unlike the Eden couple, they are cheating and lying to themselves. They have had imperfect parents, who have transmitted generations of fear, unhappiness and twistedness (along with much good) to them. They have developed conflictual personalities that make them suitable to be bachelors and spinsters but never to be husbands and wives. They have developed competing ambitions that place them at loggerheads with each other. They have laughed at Bart Simpson too long and sung Madonna’s lyrics too long and shopped in malls with perfectly bodied mannequins for too long. In short, they are not naive at all. They know too much. And their experience of sexual union is something less than full communion.

The idea of becoming one flesh expresses the complete personal community of one man and one woman as spiritual-physical-sexual-family unity. How do two become one? It is difficult, say the psychologists. It is impossible, say the realists. It is a miracle, say the religionists. And it is all three. I call it the “mystery of transfiguration.” When Jesus was on the mountain with his friends, he was transfigured in their view (Matthew 17:2-3). He acted the same, talked the same, but he was now seen in right relationship with all of eternity. A similar transfiguration occurs when a man becomes a husband and a woman becomes a wife. These are not role changes; this is the beginning of the process of becoming the other’s other. Two are becoming one in view of each other.

The Vows of Mystery

The wedding vows express the process of transfiguration. The wedding vows not only describe the commitments of marriage, but they obligate one to another. They are not merely descriptive; they carry the weight of the word spoken (see Promising). Just as God created life out of the spoken word, the vows powerfully implement the process of transfiguration. Carelessly spoken vows carry such carelessness throughout the duration of the marriage. Vows taken as if God sustains the covenant carry the sacredness throughout the couple’s journey. The marriage vows from The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada illustrate the mystery well.

“I take you . . .” suggests the activity of a freely disposed individual who entrusts himself or herself to another. It is the most profound ontology: to choose and to be chosen. Marital “taking” has great power. It is the power of acceptance. It is one of the needs of all human beings—to be accepted as we are. In marital taking we accept our spouse without the anticipation of changing. Too many spouses endeavor to create the spouse over into their own image. It takes many couples years to discover that a copy is a cheap imitation.

“To be . . .” speaks of the transition from one state of being into another. Marriage is not so much a role change as a profound transfiguration into being a husband or wife, not a mere man or woman. The marital transfiguration usually leads to parental transfiguration—the becoming of a father or a mother (see Parenting). These transfigurations are a continual process and therefore involve continual change. So the process of mutual acceptance is never a once-and-for-all event.

“My lawfully wedded wife/husband . . .” speaks of the community aspect of marriage. It is accepted and affirmed as good for society and is the covenental hope of the community for the future. Marriage always has this beyond-ourselves dimension. In the marriage ceremony the pastor may address to all present, “Will you do all in your power to support and uphold this marriage?” As the community answers in faith, “We will,” they echo the covenant of the couple to each other. Sometimes when a couple is remarrying, they quote the passage from Eccles. 4:12: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Their confession is that they were not together on their first try. Their hope is that with God empowering their marriage and with faith making it alive, their covenant will not be ruined. It is with great confidence that a minister marries a couple who depend fully on God. But there is another dependence: the believing community, who will be “God with skin on” when their marriage is straining.

“To have . . .” speaks of the delight and pleasure of the marital covenant. To have is to be thrilled with the discovery that now the spouse has what he or she has waited for. It is a my-beloved-is-mine experience. Having also includes tragedies as well as joys. Problems and challenges are not interruptions in the marriage. Embracing the complexities, disappointments and genuine hurts is as much a part of marital having as relishing the excitements.

“And to hold from this day forward . . .” speaks of the permanence of the having. Holding your spouse speaks of sustaining the power of the vows throughout the marriage. How do you hold your spouse? Ask yourself these questions: How do you talk about your mate when he or she is not there to hear? Do you hold him to be valuable to your children or when jesting with friends? Is it your plan every day to discover more of her giftedness, to empower and not to limit your spouse? A couple in conflict described their problems: “I try to hold her back. She gets so emotional. I just wish that I had married someone who would not be so demanding.” Are you trying to hold her back out of fear? Or are you holding to empower her? The Bible frees me from the responsibility of controlling my spouse, whom I can now hold with open hands.

“For better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health . . .” is a reality statement. There will be many highs and lows, and the covenant is sufficient for all of them. If a couple has not significantly suffered, it is probably because they are still young in their marital journey. James tells us to “consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). There is an inevitability about these trials—they will come—but they can be appropriated for the good of the marriage and for the blessing of the couple. Some couples do not think that trials produce a good marital crop. When struggles inevitably materialize, they think that they have married the wrong one. Challenges are reminders to become the right one.

“To love . . .” emphasizes the emotion (eros) and the motivation (agapē) of the covenant. This kind of love is both vertical (from ecstasy to sadness) and horizontal (from now to eternity). Much is said in popular marriage books about the various kinds of love. There is friendship love, erotic love, steadfast love and dependency love. The list is quite exhaustive. At different times of the couple’s journey, different loves are required. The love of middle-aged spouses is quite different from the love of aged grandparents preparing to move into a retirement village, where their grandchildren can come for lunch on Sundays. Newlywed love is unique and quite unrepeatable (thankfully). Marital permanence and satisfaction have to do with reading the stages of your marriage as to the kind of love that is best.

“And to cherish . . .” speaks of the attitude of prizing the chosen other. Cherishing is to put the right value on the marriage and the one loved. Cherishing is the penicillin to the sickness of coveting, coveting another or another’s marriage. Coveting was Eden’s first sin. Adam and Eve disbelieved that God would provide what was necessary for them to live life to the full. They thought they needed something more than God had provided. They did not love God enough to be content—so searing the first marriage. The remedy for coveting—in relation to both God and one’s spouse—is cherishing: receiving and valuing fully what has been given. This is the everyday plea of marital therapy clients the world around: “Cherish me. Value me. Love me.”

“Until death do us part . . .” is also a reality statement of marriage. In the midst of the teary happiness of the wedding vows, reality enters in. This covenant will be broken by death. In the birth of marriage intimacies, the d word is spoken not so much as an interruption but as a reminder of reality. This aspect of the vow reminds the couple of the permanence of the covenant. As Mason writes,

One thing very important to know in marriage is that there is always a way out. And the way out is not divorce! No, the way out in marriage (no matter how bad things may get) is simply to put everything we have back on the line, our whole hearts and lives, just as we did the moment we took our vows. We must return to an attitude of total abandonment, of throwing all of our natural cautiousness and defensiveness to the winds and putting ourselves entirely in the hands of love by an act of the will. Instead of falling in love, we may now have to march into it. (p. 125)

“According to God’s holy ordinance . . .” speaks of the One who enacts and empowers the covenant. It is God’s ordinance because it is God who “holds the paper.” While the registrations of our marriages are filed in the appropriate governmental offices, God holds and sustains the covenant that is the marriage itself. It God who transfigures man to husband and woman to wife. It is God who empowers this union. What vows! But what a God! And what a mystery marriage is!

A Picture of Christian Marriage

Richard Selzer in his book Mortal Lessons wonderfully pictures what marriage is.

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wrymouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says. “It is kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. (pp. 45-46)

» See also: Conflict Resolution

» See also: Divorce

» See also: Love

» See also: Sexuality

References and Resources

H. Clinebell and C. Clinebell, The Intimate Marriage (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); B. Farrel et al., Pure Pleasure: Making Your Marriage a Great Affair (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994); M. Mason, The Mystery of Marriage (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1985); J. H. Olthius, I Pledge You My Troth: A Christian View of Marriage, Family, Friendship (New York: Harper & Row, 1975); R. Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976); R. P. Stevens, Married for Good (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986); R. P. Stevens, Marriage Spirituality (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1989); E. Wheat, Love Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980); N. Wright, Communication: Key to Your Marriage (Glendale, Calif.: Gospel Light, 1979).

—Paddy Ducklow