The question keeps getting raised by people who challenge traditional marriage:Is it a failure? There are even people who suggest that we should do away with legal marriages all together and just let people do what they want. Given some of the Recent headlines with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Weiner as well as the 50% divorce rate, there seems to be ammo with this. Why not just call traditional marriage a wash and let people live in any arrangement they want?
Firstly, I reject the notion that the institute of traditional marriage is a failure. Things may fail but there is always a human reason why they fail. When a building collapses, we don't sue the building but the people who designed it, built it and said it was OK. In traditional marriage, the idea is sound, in fact it really stands at the only true way to have the highest form of intimacy between a man and a woman. The issue is not the institution of traditional marriage but the people who say "I do".
Secondly, as much as we want to show marriage failures as evidence there are also couples who succeed. I have been to 60 year, 50 year, 40 year and 25 year anniversary celebrations. I myself just celebrated 22 years with the same woman just yesterday. The truth is that for every failure there is a success.
Ultimately, I would conclude that those who want to talk about the failure of traditional marriage are people who have an unfortunate wrong understanding about what traditional marriage is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about a spiritual covenant with God and a member of the opposite sex that runs as an example of what the relationship between Christ and the Church is supposed to be. Traditional Marriage then ultimately fails because people fail to understand this. This is reflected in many thing I have seen over the years:
1. People going into marriage purely for selfish self interest. If all you talk about before you get married is what the marriage is going to do for you and you never think about what your responsibilities are toward the other person are and how you can make them a better person, you have a problem.
2. Failure to understand God's role in the covenant. Going into a marriage without God automatically reduces marriage to a contract. Contracts break.
3. Viewing marriage as a manipulative tool to get what you want done from your spouse. The main thing to remember about marriage vows is to make sure your fulfilling your end of them. I see so many people who complain about their spouse's not fulfilling what they expect, but are completely oblivious to their own failures.
4. Failing to be your spouse's best friend. Viewing a spouse as an attachment and not a friend is the first step to divorce.
5. Failing to engage in the things that bring intimacy. Worshiping, communicating, loving and sexual expression all have their place to do this when done a a couple.
In short, when a person starts viewing their spouse as a thing that should just do what they want without concern for their person hood or what they are needing, you are viewing your marriage as a contract.
In a sense, I too believe traditional marriage should go. It should go, if all people are going to use it for is a contract to keep the other person obligated. It should be returned to its real role of a covenant expression of love between to people and God. That is probably the difference in most marriages as far as success or failure.
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