Our debts have been paid and our guilt eradicated; we no longer have to exist split off from God. All of the petty thoughts we entertain in the privacy of our minds, and the less-than-gracious acts we occasionally engage in, are forgiven.
Or, we might conceive of the gospel as having released us from a kind of enslavement, from our inclination to exist egocentrically, according to what has been called the sin principle.6 I take this principle to mean instinctively inclined to ignore or rebel against the One True God. We are now free to live as God intended all along, united with him through his Spirit.
A third way to view the gospel is as having allowed us to triumph over death. We will live eternally in the presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
But, here’s still another way to think of the Good News: God loves you.7 The gospel is not just that God loves you, however, but that He loves you anyway.8 He loves you in spite of yourself. The idea behind a great marriage is to love your spouse anyway.
This implies that you will not exile your spouse, that he or she will not have to exist in a state of alienation from you, and that to the best of your ability you will accept the person you married as is. We come to each other just as we are. A friend is someone who believes in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself, and in marriage more than in any other relationship we are called to be our spouse’s closest friend.
Will you be able to do this consistently? Of course not! Remember. You’re flawed. You make mistakes and do uncharitable things. So do I and everyone else.
Marriage As Achievement
Regardless of how impressive an athlete’s abilities, without the drive to apply them diligently, there will be little or no peak performance. So it is with marriage. Genuine marriage entails abilities and motivations not everyone has. It reflects the gospel in at least three major ways:
First, it shows the willingness of a person to make a commitment to a life in common, with its implications for assets and liabilities. When you marry, you take on legal obligations. Anything you earn from then on, as long as you remain married, is in many states community property. The same applies to debts. Your spouse’s debts become your debts.
Second, there is public proclamation. Civil law requires that you proclaim this commitment before witnesses who become stand-ins for society at large. You must publicly declare your loyalty to the person you marry, and as with the willingness to commit, not everyone will sincerely do this. Some couples run off for the weekend and get married by a justice of the peace in a wedding chapel, but from Monday morning on, one of them acts ashamed of the person he or she just married—in which case you have to question the basis of the marriage. Those in genuine marriages are eager to announce them to the world.
Third, marriage requires choreography, working out the steps to the dance. You have to learn to live together, and if you cannot do this, the marriage will fail. The two of you must settle into the serious business of fine-tuning the moves, countermoves, and accommodations required in marriage, and learn how to negotiate everything from which shows to watch on TV to how best to squeeze the toothpaste (we decided to use two tubes). Learning these steps can be challenging. It often involves the awkward and potentially painful process of stepping on each other’s toes. You have to be willing to stick with it.
What, for example, will the rules be in each area of your marriage? Will you go to sleep at 9:00, 10:00, or 11:00? Will your cuisine be carnivorous or vegetarian? And, how about church—which one will you attend? Next, who makes these rules? Are you or your spouse going to decide where you live? Or, how much you save versus spend? Finally, who determines who makes the rules? Will you or your spouse decide which of you casts the controlling vote on whether or not to have children?
All three—commitment, proclamation, and choreography—come together to make true marriage an achievement.
Marriage As Opportunity
Marriage is also a singular opportunity to live out the gospel. It allows you to develop and enjoy a sacred and unshared community of two. In marriage, you have the chance to get to know another person thoroughly, with a depth that is otherwise unattainable. You can also be known the same way in return—fully known, in a way that no one else on earth can or will ever know you. Your relationship, therefore, will be unique.9
If you have successfully worked out the steps to your particular dance, the level of emotional and sexual intimacy the two of you enjoy can prove immensely satisfying. And, if you are Christians, you may also experience an extraordinary level of spiritual intimacy, one in which both of you can express your deepest hopes, fears, and doubts without having to worry about being renounced or condemned.
All of us, including your spouse, need at least one friend who will accept us in our craziness. I don’t mean this literally; it’s merely a way of suggesting that, to be complete persons, we need to experience something resembling unconditional acceptance. No one on earth is in a better position to provide such acceptance than a spouse. By fully accepting your spouse, you act as Christ’s ambassador. You enjoy the privilege of listening, offering support, and refraining from making him or her feel stupid, foolish, or incompetent.
Whomever you marry is in the best position to correct your misperceptions of the world “out there.” As we grow up, friends play this role, sometimes by telling us bluntly that our perceptions are a bit off. Marriage, therefore, provides you not only with the chance to feel understood and accepted, but also with the opportunity to see the world more realistically.
Marriage carries with it at least one other opportunity. It can be a wonderful antidote to loneliness. As they age, people seem to be increasingly aware of this benefit. Not everyone is cut out to live alone. Though many people do it and don’t feel lonely, others thrive on the companionship and camaraderie of living with and loving another person.
Fraudulent Marriages and Their Redemption
I’m presupposing in this book that both you and your spouse have entered into, or will enter, marriage honestly. I mean by this that neither of you is pretending or has pretended to have feelings you don’t.
This is not always the case. I know several people who married each other without much in the way of love or romance. In one instance, the husband wanted the status of marrying the prom queen, but from the beginning he found her uninteresting. But he never gave her even a hint of this. As the years passed and her beauty faded, they had less and less to talk about, and so they too joined the relationally dead. In another instance, the wife wanted to get married when her friends did, but the man who asked first was superficial and two-dimensional. He had economic promise but completely lacked charm, style, and grace. She married him anyway and, as you might predict, their marriage also turned out badly.
In a fraudulent or quasi-fraudulent marriage, at least one person will carry a mental burden about which he or she may remain silent. That person will live in undeclared turmoil, which is likely to come out in other ways such as chronic irritability. The two of them are married according to the state, but perhaps only in that way.
The good news is that it is possible for love to develop in just about any marriage. It certainly does in many arranged marriages. It just takes cultivation.
Romantic Love
In the West, where arranged marriages are unusual and freedom of choice is the norm, people typically marry in the glow of romance. Cynics tend to treat romance as a psychophysiological
