Sacred Marriage : IV

Holy Honor: Marriage Teaches Us to Respect Others

I've somehow gotten off track with the Sacred Marriage posts, so I thought I'd try to get back on that topic today. If you're like Kristin and I, when you were first married you became acutely aware of some small differences. "This is a tea towel," Kristin would remind me, "and this towel is used for drying your hands, and it goes here." This made no sense to me whatsoever. A towel is a towel right? Apparently not, at least not at Kristin's parents house. Maybe it's where jackets and coats are stored, where dirty dishes go or where you keep the Tylenol. Maybe it's wearing shoes in the house or what drawer the cutlery goes in. Surely all of us married folk have had to endure these conversations.

If we have to endure long periods of time with these kind of conversations, we have a tendency to embrace, at first, a low level of contempt, which then breeds higher levels of contempt and resentment. That's the topic of this chapter.

The author, Gary Thomas, says,

"All of us have a visceral desire to be respected. When this desire isn't met, we are tempted to lapse into a self-defeating response. Rather than work to build our own life so that respect is granted to us, we work to tear down our spouse in a desperate attempt to convince ourselves that their lack of respect is meaningless. Spiritually, this becomes a vicious and debilitating cycle that is extremely difficult to break.
God has a solution that, if we adopt it, will revolutionize our relationships. While many people fight to receive respect, Christian marriage calls us to focus our efforts on giving respect. We are called to honor someone even when we know only too well their deepest character flaws. We are called to stretch ourselves, to find out how we can learn to respect this person with whom we've become so familiar. And in this exploration, we are urged to "have contempt for contempt.'"

I thought this was wise advice. I know that too often I've fallen into this trap - thinking that I am owed more respect, and tearing down my wife. For this I have often repented. Thomas wisely points out that we need to focus on giving respect and looking for those bright spots, just as Paul did many of the churches to whom he wrote (consider the church in Corinth - 1Cor. 1:4, "I always thank God for you..." - despite their flaws!).

Betsy and Gary Ricucci, in Love That Lasts, write,

"Honor isn't passive, it's active. We honor our wives by demonstrating our esteem and respect: complimenting them in public; affirming their gifts, abilities, and accomplishments; and declaring our appreciation for all they do. Honor not expressed is not honor."

One final comment from Thomas:

"Contempt is conceived with expectations. Respect is conceived with expressions of gratitude. We can choose which one we will obsess over - expectations, or thanksgivings. That choice will result in a birth - and the child will be named either contempt, or respect."

I pray that these words are of great encouragement to you - and to your marriage. May you seek, and find, thanksgiving and respect in your marriage.

Sacred Marriage : III

Learning to Love: How Marriage Teaches us to Love

Yes, it is difficult to love your spouse.

This chapter, while not quite as engaging at the first two, focuses on the inevitable challenges that we face in marriage, the biggest being love.

Thomas points out that God teaches us a lot through our marriages - we've already touched on that a little bit already in the first two chapters, but Thomas now focuses our attention toward love; teaching us to love, through our marriages.

We read about Matthew 22:34-40, where we are told that we are to 1) Love God, and 2) Love our neighbors. Thomas points out that there is an attitude (towards God), and an action (loving others). Jesus has connected the two ideas for a purpose; Thomas suggests that they are connected to demonstrate to us that if we love God, we must love others - even our spouse - even when we don't want to - even when they are nasty towards us - even when we disagree. Thomas says this:

We show our love for God in part by loving our spouses well. We can never love somebody "too much." Our problem is that typically we love God to little.

He continues:

If I can't love my wife, how can I love the homeless man...? How can I love the drug addict or the alcoholic? Yes, this spouse might be difficult to love at times, but that's what marriage is for - to teach us how to love.

And finally,

To fail to love my wife and kids rightly in the name of loving other people rightly is a sham.

If somebody tried to describe your love for God solely by how well you love your spouse, what would he or she conclude?

How much time do you spend thinking about how to make your spouse happy, compared to the amount of time you spend thinking about how well your spouse is pleasing you?

Sacred Marriage : II

Finding God in Marriage: Marital Analogies Teach Us Truths About God.

Chapter 2 of this book serves a few purposes; the first purpose is to evaluate the Scriptural analogies related to marriage (for example, Christ and the church). On this point, Thomas says: "Isaiah uses marital imagery to stress how God rejoices in his people: 'As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.' (Isaiah 62:5b)" (p. 29). The second purpose is to ask pointed questions that will help us view marriage in a God-centered way. Thomas asks this key question of the reader:

"Will we approach marriage from a God-centered view or a man-centered view? In a man-centered view, we will maintain our marriage as long as our earthly comforts, desires and expectations are met. In a God-centered view, we preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God and points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator." (p. 32).

Thomas uses two passages that I found to be incredibly challenging and encouraging, the first, an oft-quoted passage from Ephesians 5:25-27: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." The second, 2 Corinthians 5:9, "So we make it our goal to please him.".

The implications of those passages are staggering. Not only are we to love our wives, but our job, through love, is to "make her holy"! Our call in marriage is to come alongside our spouse, joining with them to make them pure (without stain), holy and blameless.

Why?

"...if the marriages are heavily watered with an unwavering commitment to please God above everything else ... our marriages can be platforms for evangelism" (p. 36 & 37). Evangelism? Our marriages can be a platform for evangelism? Thomas argues, rightly I think, that "in a society where relationships are discarded with a frightening regularity, Christians can command attention simply by staying married. And when asked why, we can offer the platform of God's message of reconciliation...".

As always, there is much more that could have been written on this chapter, but I'll leave you with those thoughts to meditate on. I'll take just a moment to note that these reflections are just a small slice of a bigger pie. I'd encourage all couples - married, and soon-to-be married, to pick up this book for further study. At the back of the book there are discussion and reflection questions for you and your spouse, as well.

Sacred Marriage : I

The Greatest Challenge in the World: A Call to Holiness more than Happiness.

The first chapter of this book, much like many others, is an introduction to the book's topic and basically sets the stage for the rest of the book. What stood out to me most in this chapter is our society's focus on the "quick fix" for marital or relationship problems. You've seen it - on magazine covers in the grocery store: "6 ways to have a better marriage", or on internet search engine's: "3 easy steps to a better relationship", etc. It occurred to me in this first chapter, that we are inundated with quick and easy steps - none of which seem to be long lasting or life changing. It struck me that God must have had something else in mind for marriage.

Thomas says,

"What if God didn't design marriage to be 'easier'? What if God had an end in mind that went beyond our happiness, our comfort, and our desire to be infatuated and happy as if the world were a perfect place? What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?"

In Christian circles the tendency is to encourage our family and friends to pray harder, or learn a few of those ever-helpful principles or techniques. This isn't to say that learning to communicate better or be more conscious of your spouse's needs; only to suggest that those things, ultimately, won't achieve the change that God wants for you, and for your marriage.

Well, I hope that you will consider thinking on those points; consider what God intends for your marriage (or impending marriage), and ask yourself this question, referring to your spouse:

"Are you going to fulfill me, or will God fulfill me?" For many, the answer will come quickly, but practically speaking, if you're like me, you'll often look for fulfillment from your spouse first. This was a challenging thought for me, I hope it is for you as well.

It's been a week....

...and I've successfully managed to avoid the "Merry Christmas" blog that always seems necessary. I DO hope that everyone had a very good, safe and relaxing Christmas (and boxing day).

I always look forward to getting books for Christmas, and I thought that I would list some of the authors that I'm excited to read this year. The first book is a book on marriage that Kristin and I are going to work through together, slowly reading and discussing (as it includes questions!) over the next few months. It's called "Sacred Marriage: What if God designed marriage to make us Holy more than to make us Happy?" by Gary Thomas.

This is not to imply that we're not happy (we are!), only to suggest that Kristin and I intend to always seek God in our lives - and we'd like to seek to honor and know God more fully through our marriage. As we work through this book, I'll be sure to drop quotes and thoughts for your encouragement.

Other authors that are "on deck" are DA Carson, CJ Mahaney, JI Packer, John Piper and RJ Foster. Should be a good year! I also hope to pick up some fiction from Dekker and/or Peretti. As always, I'll keep you posted.

I also hope to enjoy past and future editions of TableTalk and Christian Research Journal magazines!

What will you read this year?

I hope to post my reflections on Chapter 1 of Sacred Marriage in the next day or two, titled "The Greatest Challenge in the World: A Call to Holiness More Than Happiness", but in the meantime, here's a quote from WH Auden that appears at the beginning of the book.

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.