Nicole and I have started up a discipleship group for the late summer and early fall with our friends from Tech, Chris and Sam Cassidy. (And my brother and his fiance will hopefully be joining us.) We wanted to do something on marriage. I have never done such a d-group. Therefore, we talked over some prospective books, and we landed on "The Meaning of Marriage" by Tim Keller. If you have followed my blog, you will know that Keller is one of the number that I trust because I believe he has a heart to be Gospel-centered, and he is quick to point people to Jesus in ways that help us fall more deeply in love with him on the spot. He also, as a disciple of CS Lewis, is a keen observer of the human heart and situation. I look forward to hearing his wisdom on marriage, and I pray we will be able to digest it well and apply it, and your prayers would be appreciated toward this end.
I have used this blog for different purposes at different times. I started out wanting to write down things that Nicole and close friends and family might read. Then, I enjoyed writing, so I have used at as an outlet simply to glorify God through learning the craft of writing. And having my readers in mind, I also have tried to point people to books and videos that I think are good. My purpose over the coming months is to digest this book publicly and give a sort of Spark Notes of the chapters. Specifically, I think this will be helpful to members of my d-group as a quick review of past material, but as always, I want to make it public to you in case God might be pleased to use it in your life, too. So let us begin....
Chapter 1 - The Secret of Marriage
"Marriage is glorious but hard." Talks on marriage tend to be sentimental, but the reality shows it to be at times very confusing and difficult. No real marriage is simply a fairy tell come true. But marriage is important to God, since he created it. Knowing another in marriage is like knowing God - it is difficult but rewarding. It is worth it.
Statistics show "an increasing wariness and pessimism about marriage in our culture", especially in young adults. Chris Rock captures this generation's perceived predicament: "Do you want to be single and lonely or married and bored?" This predicament lead many to the poor solution of cohabitation with a sexual partner. Why? Society assumes that 1) most marriages are unhappy, and 2) living together improves the chance of making a good marriage choice. We must find someone we have chemistry with. Keller wants to challenge these assumptions and point to a better and Biblical view of marriage.
Research runs counter to some commonly held assumptions. Cohabitation prior to marriage actually increases the likelihood of divorce - it does not seem to be the solution. Though the divorce rate is high for our society, it is quite low for well-educated, religious people coming from intact families who marry after 25 without first having a baby. Marriage also helps people financially in the long run. It provides stability through life's obstacles and accountability to be wiser and less selfish with money and other things. Marriage matures character. The research agrees with the Bible that marriage is good, even very good.
In spite of this evidence, young adults believe most married people are unhappy. Filmmaker Dana Alan Shapiro created a film about couples who had broken up and understandably reached a grim view of relationships: "it is extraordinarily hard though not completely impossible for two modern persons to love each other without stifling one another's individuality and freedom." This pessimistic feeling is pervasive.
Nevertheless "... surveys tell us that the number of married people who say they are 'very happy' in their marriages is high - about 61-62 percent - and there has been little decrease in this figure during the last decade... two thirds of those unhappy marriages out there will become happy within five years if people stay married and do not get divorced." In our society the benefits of divorce have been oversold and the benefits of marriage undervalued.
To sum up everything so far: modern society has a low view of marriage and its ability to bring happiness, though evidence shows it to be good, even if it is hard.
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Where does our pessimism about marriage, in spite of the evidence, come from? Keller answers... "from a new kind of unrealistic idealism about marriage, born of significant shift in our culture's understanding of the purpose of marriage." The first two views about marriage's purpose were the Catholic and Protestant views. "Though different in many particulars, they both taught that the purpose of marriage was to create a framework for lifelong devotion and love between a husband and wife. It was a solemn bond, designed to help each party subordinate individual impulses and interests in favor of the relationship, to be a sacrament of God's love (the Catholic emphasis) and serve the common good (the Protestant emphasis)." Marriage creates character, creates social stability, and creates the best environment for raising children. How, then, does modern society's view of marriage differ from these original emphases?
The Enlightenment brought a shift from finding meaning in duty to finding meaning in personal fulfillment through freedom. It was a shift from self-denial for the sake of loving another to the maximization of emotional and sexual fulfillment. "In this view, married persons married for themselves, not to fulfill responsibilities to God or society." Again, "the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children." What was a public institution for the common good became a private arrangement for individual satisfaction. "Marriage used to be about us, but now it is about me."
With this more self-actualized view of marriage's purpose, the search for the perfect "soul-mate" has arisen. Men have generally been seen as commitment-phobic, and a 2002 studied confirmed this and listed reasons for why men delay marriage. The most important reason according to the study is that men are waiting to find the perfect soul mate, someone who is "compatible". There are different definitions of compatible. For instance, Keller would say that he and his wife share many common threads and passions and feel like "kindred spirits" - they are friends. But this is not exactly all that compatible means today.
Physical attractiveness and sexual chemistry are very important. First, we want a spouse who is hot and will meet our sexual needs and wants. But surprisingly, compatibility was even more important than this for guys, and it is basically defined as a "willingness to take them as they are and not change them." Guys want someone who will easily fit into their life. We do not want to be asked to change for someone.
In contrast to this definition of compatibility, traditionally marriage has helped to "civilize" men. It is the place where boys become men. This entails change. (I can attest to this.) Today, men would rather cohabit to have access to sex and retain the freedom to look for a better partner; there is generally less pressure to change. While the idea is popular that the most "masculine" men do not do well when hemmed in by marriage, traditionally marriage has been the place where men become truly masculine, where it is defined more along the lines of self-mastery. "Sexual restraint rather than sexual prowess was once the measure of a man."
It is not only men who have moved from their traditional view of marriage. Keller sums up the situation like so: "Both men and women today want a marriage in which they can recieve emotional and sexual satisfaction from someone who will simply let them 'be themselves'. They want a spouse who is fun, intellectually stimulating, sexually attractive, with many common interests, and who, on top of it all, is supportive of their personal goals and of the way they are living now." Yup. We want someone who is low maintenance, pulled together, and will supplement us quite nicely. We are idealistic.
Let's sum up where we are: Though marriage was traditionally about loving another, honoring God, and benefiting society, it has become an idealistic search for a basically perfect someone who will help us to find our own self-fulfillment with the least call to change.
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Keller points out the irony of how this idealism about finding our perfect soul mate has contributed significantly to the pervasive pessimism we see. Unrealistic expectations frustrate the searchers and the searched for. How can we hope to find such a person? and, How can I ever become such a person? Pornography and popular media contribute to the problem. Many guys delay marriage because they are looking for the combination "soul mate/ babe".
"Older views of marriage are considered to be traditional and oppressive, while the newer view of the "Me-Marriage" seems so liberating. And yet it is the newer view that has led to a steep decline in marriage and to an oppressive sense of hopelessness with regard to it."
Some people have become so adept at spotting flaws in their potential spouses that they continually delay marriage. John Tierney concludes that these people may have turned up their "flaw-o-matic"s in order to stay alone and therefore safe. We want too much out of a marriage partner, including someone who will demand basically nothing of us. Many are afraid of love; it means the loss of individual freedom, autonomy, and fulfillment my own way. But to love is better than to not love. In the end we are pessimistic about love because we are too idealistic (because we are basically selfish).
.... Okay, so I have shared several thoughts now into what has become a long post. I am skipping some stuff before the end of the chapter, but I wanted to end here. Suffice it to say, Ephesians 5 and the creation accounts give a strong Biblical view of marriage in contrast to what it has been made into by our society, and the rest of the book will spend time drawing out the implications of the Gospel for marriage. Marriage is an analogy of Christ and the Church, so the more we understand the Gospel we will understand marriage. The better we understand marriage, the better we will understand the Gospel.
Soli Deo gloria!
