Marriage and the Bible - Part 44 - How Spiritual Covenants Fail and Cultural Contracts Break.

There are a lot of things that are required to build and maintain a spiritual covenant marriage as well as a cultural contract marriage for that matter.  It is these things that also are what give both a fragile nature that has to be maintained by both parties to keep them strong. 

The Requirements of Spiritual Covenant Marriage:

1. Dedication to God - if both the husband and wife are not also dedicated to God the covenant will fall apart.  The thing with covenant marriage it involves three parties and three relationships. If a husband or a wife is not also concerned and gives time for their spouse to build and grow their relationship with God, then the covenant will start to break down.  One mistake people make about marriage is they think that the only thing that matters is their relationship to their spouse.  If that is the case then your not really engaged in a spiritual covenant, you have crossed the line to cultural contract.

2. Dedication to Intimate Friendship on All Levels: This intimacy must be marked all the elements of true intimacy: one flesh, naked and unashamed.  It covers all aspects of  the relationship: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical.  most of the time the crack in the armor of marriage starts when one of these areas or more begins to have a 'seperateness' lack of unity, or lack of openness or some shame because of past action.  The healing elements of  forgiveness, kindness and of course love (the real stuff) must always be there.

Given all the things that need to be maintained it is easy to see why things can start to go south.  All it takes is one person turning their back on God or an element of intimacy to be ignored or forgotten or a single unforgiveness offense for it to no longer be covenant. 

Cultural contracts provide a safety net for society as a rule, but they are in some ways more fragile than covenants.  While a cultural contract does not need either of the two elements above, it does require that both (or more) parties keep their end of what is expected of them.  One clause disregarded, one cultural rule violated and the contract invokes consequences.  Because a cultural contract is based more in selfishness and self interest, violation is going to be in some ways harder, but also easier.  Example: In a covenant adultery is defined as lust toward another person other than your spouse, in a cultural contract lust could exists but the marriage contract maintained, but the moment in a cultural contract that physical adultery takes place, contract dissolved.  The existence of lust in the contract type of arrangement is going to make such falls more of a possibility.

In modern marriage what I see, even in Christian marriages, is kind of mixed hybrid of both where some elements of covenant are there and other things have devolved to a contract.  You may for example see a couple who are each dedicated to God but their intimate friendship has dropped down to contract level.  Mixed marriages also have this problem as one spouse is dedicated to the ideas of relationship with God and their spouse, but the other spouse has no walk with God and views their marriage as a contract arrangement.  The Goal is to get both elements in place and growing, but that is not always possible.

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