Helen Rowland said, “Marriage is like twirling a baton or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.” So it does. But it’s not easy. The prevalence of divorce proves that. Al and Tipper Gore stunned many when they announced in June 2000 that after 40 years of marriage, they were calling it quits. Publicly they claimed that the decision was a mutual one and that the former Vice-President and Second Lady of the United States would remain friends even though they no longer wanted to be married. That kind of talk always leaves me scratching my head and remembering the joke about two cannibals who ate a clown. Afterwards one of them said to the other, “Did that taste funny to you?” Marriages that last a lifetime seem in danger of becoming very rare if not extinct. Once upon a time, the key word as it related to marriage was “commitment” – the “crazy” idea (as many in the world now see it) that a man and woman pledged to take each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and to love each other “until death do us part.” Jesus expressed the idea of lifelong commitment in Matthew 19:4-6 — “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Al Gore was famous for his movie about climate change entitled “An Inconvenient Truth.” In it he asserted the earth is becoming warmer due to irresponsible human activity and that failure to “go green” will prove catastrophic to our world. That “inconvenient truth” is still being debated by experts and denied by some. What is not debatable or deniable is that the Gores, and millions of other men and women, found Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce “inconvenient.” As a result, culture invented and practices a much more “convenient untruth,” insisting marriage is not primarily about commitment and mutual needs. Rather, many say, it is about “what best for me.” Not “till death do us part,” but “till desire and delight departs,” not “for better or worse,” but “till the good times are gone.” But if the marriage cools off, if I tire of my responsibilities, or find someone else who makes me “happy,” I am free to bail on my marriage vows — no matter who I hurt or how much — just so long as I am happy. That very convenient and self-centered but still wrong-headed and unbiblical view and practice of marriage has proven to be catastrophic for millions of America’s marriages and families.
Have you ever seen a marriage based on convenience and selfishness last very long, or be very happy? Brother Ken Joines (now deceased) once wrote that two people in a marriage “for what they can get out if it” is like having two ticks and no dog! Christians follow One who faced the inconvenient truth that doing God’s will meant denying Himself and dying on a cross. The Bible still says, “Love suffers long.” I don’t mean to oversimplify complex problems or painful situations, or to sound unkind. But I wonder if one thing behind so much marital failure and unhappiness today is that many simply find it too inconvenient to love the way God teaches us to. Inconvenient as it may be at times, the truth is marriage still requires commitment, every single day till death do us part. I pray you’ll think about it.
Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6)
By: Dan Gulley,
Smithville TN
