Christian Marriage Today: The Promise

It is little wonder that the institution of marriage, even among Christians, is in trouble these days. Too many people want too many good things out of marriage relationships, whether in their first, second, or however many. And too many people put too little of themselves into any of them.

When neither partner is contributing, an end to marital frustrations is often just around the corner, at the courthouse. When one partner is contributing and the other isn't, an end to the misery may not be in sight at all. The one won't get out, and the other won't get in.

A lot marriage counselors insist that whatever happens in a marriage happens because of what both partners do and do not do, not just one or the other. I've never thought much of this dogma. Consider adultery, for example, or abuse, by one partner and not the other. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know: the victimized partner usually can do at least something to de-motivate the other's wayward behaviors. But does this mean that the victimized partner should somehow share the blame? I know a lot of genuine victims of bad marriages who continue to think so. I don't agree with them. And neither should their victimizing spouses, the best of whom are now former spouses.

Most marital problems start with at least one partner's selfishness, disguised adroitly during courtship. Unless, of course, the mating rituals are public affairs on "Reality TV." (This latter should become the primary definition of "oxymoron.") The unstated Declaration of Intent goes like this: I want what I want when I want it, and I am marrying you to give it to me. What begins in selfishness ends in hopelessness --- I will never get what I want from you and I will never be able to give you what you want from me. To love and to cherish? To crave and to criticize is more like it.

Over against this rather curmudgeonly assessment of marriage today still stands, proudly, a Christian perspective that continues to offer a great deal of encouragement --- realistic encouragement --- about the future of marriage, on the far side of premature commitments made in the absence of either maturity, character, or both. Here are three encouragers that I think are worth every genuinely committed couple's taking to the altar.

(1) From a Christian perspective, it makes sense for couples to keep on trusting that each partner in marriage can and will receive acceptance and support as an individual with needs and wants that are worthy of both partners' respect. Why? Because the cherishing of individuality is at the very center of God's love. We only have to experience just a little of it coming from God to want to give a lot of it to our partners, whom he loves more perfectly than we ever can.

(2) From a Christian perspective, it makes sense for couples to keep on risking that faithful and warm companionship is a better bet than fleeting and hot adventure, no matter what society says about always keeping our fires burning, at home and everywhere else. Why? Because the kind of life that our excitement-centered, in-the-present society offers its adrenalin-addicted members can only be an affront to God's call to partnership with him in tending the creation caringly. Keeping the juices flowing in the privacy of our bedrooms is good. Breaking bread around our family tables, and with strangers beyond our doors, is even better.

(3) From a Christian perspective, it makes sense for couples to keep on planning for a meaningful future that will outlast them, through their children, their contributions, and their prayers. Why? Because the future that is finally in God's hands is also a future which God invites us to help him bring about, joyfully. The real "War on Terrorism" is indeed jihad, in the Q'uran's major use of the word as an inner struggle of the soul. It is a struggle against the terror of the future that self-centeredness never fails to enflame, and other-centeredness never fails to extinguish.

Traditionally understood, marriage bears humanity's hopes for the continuity of the generations and the stability of society. Today, the marriage relationship revolves more around the happiness of the partners in it. Both understandings are valid and important. To them we can add a third. Hearth and home, and the bedroom at their center, are places to practice grateful love in a way that leads to a greater lovingkindness toward and in all. More even than children, the real "fruits" of marriage are the qualities of character by which couples give of themselves not only to each other, but also and especially to God's least and lost.

Christian Marriage Today: The Reality

It's quite a privilege to stand at a chancel rail or altar and watch the couple you've just married walk jauntily down the aisle toward the joy-filled reception that awaits only the completion of the picture-taking. And there I was again, standing, listening to the recessional music and watching the exiting, musing some more about where the church has come in its understanding of marriage, and of how that understanding is so fully embodied in the liturgy I just read. What got to me especially that time was how important the Declaration of Intent now is in all our wedding services --- the "Will you…I will" --- after which alone the ceremonies get under way in earnest.

Today, the foundation of any marriage relationship under Christian auspices is understood to be the informed consent of the couple. Bonds arranged, forged, or coerced by someone else --- parents, tribes, overlords, or whomever --- may be legal, binding, permanent, satisfying, and fruitful, but they simply aren't marriages. When in the marriage service itself I ask my couples to declare publicly their intention "to enter into union with one another," I am also lifting up for all of us to see what transforms just a relationship into a marriage. It isn't what I say or do (e.g. "I pronounce/announce that…"), or what anyone else says or does (e.g., "Who gives this woman to be married…"). It's what the intended themselves do. The couple creates the marriage; except for the legalities, the rest of us are only supportive witnesses.

What a man and a woman join together all on their own, however, that same man and woman can "put asunder" just about anytime they please. And they do. Though it is misleading to keep on purveying the apocalyptic message that half of all marriages will end in divorce, it is certainly true that too many of them will. And one of the big reasons why they will is that we put the whole burden of making it in marriage upon the couples themselves. If it feels good, we seem to be saying to them, do it; and if it doesn't, don't do it any longer.

For all of the re-writing of its liturgies that the church is so fond of doing, traditional meanings still seem to have a way of surviving the best intentions of with-it revisionists to get everything into up-to-date, easy-to-understand language. Thank God we still have these words, for example, invading the otherwise too-precious moments of the exchange of rings: "these rings are the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, signifying to us the union between Christ and his Church." They are not just a sign of the couple's mutual promises to each other, and they are not just a sign of the marriage relation itself. They are a sign of a more perfect union than any we on earth can create, to which our marriages are intended to be a witness.

Pretty heady stuff. For people with pretty strong hearts, full of love not just for their spouses, but for all "to whom love is a stranger." (Sometimes, liturgical re-writes get it right!) I think what this means is that much more is involved in every marriage relationship than only the couple's fulfillment and only the production and nurture of offspring. Intimacy, mutual happiness, and fruitfulness are not ends in themselves. Pauline theology got the idea, but put it very badly. For Paul and a lot of church tradition, the primary purpose of marriage is to contain our lustful preoccupations in this life so that we can go about the proper business of preparing ourselves for the next. Or in other words, according to the (unmarried) saint: Better to marry than to burn. Actually, it is this idea itself that makes me burn. Far better to put it this way, as our current liturgy does: in our marriages, we learn how to become "generous friends" to all of God's creatures.

By this time in the festivities, the ushers were returning to the front pews to begin escorting parents and grandparents out. Before lining up for my picture with my newly married friends, I had just enough time to pay quiet lip service to the thoroughly but exclusively modern notion that marriage is one more of the many voluntary associations that will enhance my couple's quality of life together. I'm glad they came together, not just eagerly, but willingly. What I continue to hope for them is that they also experience the wonder of being in a truly sacramental relationship, one which makes present to others not only their own love, but God's.