Almost everything about the marriage between a man and a woman is under frontal assault. Whether it concerns the ease of dissolving relationships, the gay movement’s war on the gender composition of marriage, the massive rise of co-habitation rates, the increasing frequency of infidelity, or even the issue of how the institution of marriage is defined in the first place, the marital union has never been more fragile than it is today.
In first century Judaism (the backdrop of the New Testament), the main issue of contention was the conditions under which divorce was permissible. It was for that reason that Jesus was confronted with the question of divorce by the Pharisees, hoping to trip him into exacerbating the tension between two camps: The Hillel School of Judaic thought which argued that a man could divorce his wife for almost any reason versus the Shammai School which argued only for the grounds of infidelity. The Pharisees figured that no matter how Jesus responded, he would be in trouble with one group or the other.
What was Jesus’ immediate response? To deliver a soliloquy on the purpose and unity of marriage (Matt. 19: 1-12). What he was saying, in effect, was that, if the Jews spent half as much energy working on their marriages as they did on trying to resolve the issue of divorce, their arguments over divorce would be rendered moot. Of course, the Pharisees were not interested in that. They didn’t want to hear that divorce was granted only because of the “hardness of their hearts”.
As dysfunctional as ancient Hebrew marriages had become, at least the conversation was limited to what they considered the legitimate conditions of divorce. Today, however, it centers on the very legitimacy of the institution of marriage itself. With the assault coming from so many quarters—including from the same governmental authority originally erected to protect the sanctity of marriage—it is hardly surprising that the marital union is now even more tenuous than ever. Few who marry today are prepared for the confluence of their own personal histories (many of which involve the legacies of their broken homes of origin) and the multi-pronged societal counteroffensive against the very norms of healthy marriage to which they aspire.
So, how do believers successfully navigate through this maze of destructive obstacles, both personal and cultural?
It begins with the acknowledgment that marriage is first and foremost a spiritual bond. What your walk with God looks like largely determines what your marriage will look like. When Christians ask me what’s the best thing they can do for their marriage, I typically tell them they must first examine their relationship with God, and that the thing to look for is whether they truly have a humble servant’s heart. Most of the conflicts that rage on among couples boil down to the self-centered demand that each spouse must see the world in the same way. Such self-absorption is usually the product of the fear that, if your spouse doesn’t think like you, it means that your differences somehow invalidate your value as a person. That’s why we often feel we don’t matter and, therefore, overwhelmingly take such differences so personally. We find ourselves believing that we are fighting for the very survival of our relevance in the relationship.
With such high stakes, it’s little wonder we fight tooth and nail to preserve what we think is the last shred of personal importance. It certainly doesn’t help matters any when we live in a society that eggs us into needless selfish confrontations on the pretext of “unfairness”—that is, perceptions of injustice that are, in part, shaped by the very fact that the culture has already marginalized what God’s Word has long taught us about humble service.
We tend to think that serving one another (which implies that we listen first in order that we might know which needs to serve) means either (1) ignoring our own needs, in which case they will never be met, or even considered relevant, or (2) weakly submitting to the attempts of our spouses to control us. Since neither of these options appears attractive, we abandon the idea altogether and, instead, pursue the dysfunctional notion that the most insistent voice wins. We can’t take the risk of acknowledging the inherent reciprocity of a mutually serving relationship; nor can we be so bold as to realize that making requests for change in a relationship is essential for healthy intimacy, not an invitation to rejection. So, we do anything to avoid what we think will lead to capitulating slavery.
When Jesus humbly washed the feet of his disciples, he was saying that such service was God’s idea of greatness in the Kingdom. It is also, as he pointed out, the essence of real and lasting love. While it may not sound flashy—and certainly isn’t self-aggrandizing—this principle is clearly grounded in the reality of God’s plan for successful loving relationships.
When Jesus addressed his followers’ aspirations for discipleship, he said, “Deny yourselves, take up your cross, and follow me”. He didn’t mean to deny your person (self-denial) as some believe, but rather to deny the free reign of your selfish desires in order to rightly follow him. Self-denial is, in effect, self-imposed deprivation (perhaps, because you don’t think you merit anything else), a rule of presumed piety that has been practiced for over 3,000 years in Eastern thought and behavior. The other name for it is self-hatred—that imprisoning mindset that denies any chance for genuine freedom and happiness.
What Jesus was saying, however, could not have been more different: It’s only when you let go of your selfish demands of others that you discover the true freedom of following the only One who gives purpose and meaning…and personal significance. And, in doing so, you will also find true intimacy—with God first and then with your spouse.
That’s why marriage is considered by God as fundamentally a spiritual relationship. Its sacred character begins and ends with his sanction, and is designed to display his all-encompassing grace and mercy.
Why else would he use it as the model of his relationship with the Church?
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