Marriage As A Call To Holiness More Than Happiness
There are countless titles on the shelves of Christian bookstores that focus on marriage from the Christian viewpoint. Yet a cursory perusal brings us to a surprising conclusion - most if not all of them are personal revelries in pop psychology and communication theories.
Communication skills and a basic grasp in psychology do help in building better marriages - all the knowing about boundaries, love languages, and gender differences, needs, and wants - do make a difference in the marriage. But as a Christian, we might want to know the "more" of Christian marriage - that "hallmark," that one elusive ideology that distinguishes a Christian marriage from a non-Christian one.
Sacred Marriage is one such book.
The very first chapter grabs you by the throat. Okay, maybe not yours - but it did mine. Author Gary Thomas states it so lucidly in the subtitle, "A call to holiness more than happiness." Isn't that what the Christian life is all about in the first place - to be holy as God is holy? We're not called to find fulfillment, to seek our purposes and accomplish them or even to do God's specific will for our lives, important as they are. The primary vision of the spiritual life is holiness.
The marriage covenant helps us in this primary call; it is designed by God to make us holy more than to make us happy. Gary Thomas makes a radical claim that the purpose of his book is not to make us love our spouses more, but to make us love God more!
It was a "harder" read than I thought. With Sacred Marriage in my hands and a wife who was already in dreamland with my two children, it was going to be a long night...
Chapter after chapter I was surfing on turbulent waves. I did not learn how to express my love more effectively to my wife via her love language or to be the consummate Romeo in our marriage bed. In fact, what I learnt in this book is the "wholly-other" aspect of marriage.
Marriage is a "signpost pointing to His own eternal, spiritual existence." It is a sacrament that points us to the divine relationship. In chapter two, Gary Thomas starts the ball rolling with the premise that marriage is an analogy to the eternal truths about God - that we can indeed learn more of His nature and attributes through the human institution of marriage.
Marriage also teaches us how to love. Mind you, it is not Hollywood's definition of love that is often enmeshed with romance, sensationalism, and sleaze. It is not even your typical understanding of love as an emotion and a feeling. Love is difficult. Christian love is a conscious, Christ-centered and Christ-practiced spiritual discipline that is epitomized uniquely in the Christian religion. "The beauty of Christianity is in learning to love, and few life situations test that so radically as does a marriage," says Gary Thomas.
Marriage also engages us to practice the virtue of respect. "We're married in the midst of many responsibilities that compete for our energy. This new understanding has ushered in a stronger empathy for each other in our weaknesses and peculiarities."
I almost skipped the chapter on prayer (chapter five), if not for these few enlightening and interesting statements:
Prayer is how we make sense of our lives in the light of eternity. It pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant.
Not only are my sexual desires and my spiritual needs not competitive, they are mutually supportive.
More chapters followed - touching on sin, perseverance, character-building, forgiveness, servanthood, and sensitivity to God's presence. The scarlet thread that runs through these biblical and personal commentaries is the sweet presence of the sacred and the fervent hammering of the concept of holiness into the matrimonial psyche.
As I swallowed the last few paragraphs, I wondered if we could ever attain such spiritual equilibrium in this crazy world of ours. Yes, it is possible. In spite of the daily grind and bind, marriage is the crucible of experience that burns us into more complete and mature followers of Christ.
Benjamin Chew handles marketing communications in SKS Books Warehouse, a Christian bookstore in Singapore. He attends and serves at Church of God (Evangelical). Married with two children, Benjamin is a voracious reader, passionate about writing, and enjoys watching movies.