Marriage

Ten years ago, I had an email exchange with my friend Bethany Greenoe, in which she offered some marital advice to me. I wasn’t even dating anyone seriously at the time, but her words were so meaningful that I saved the message in my “Memorable Emails” folder.

While I vividly remember many moments from my wedding day, there’s one moment that still moves me, and I hope it always does.

There’s a couple I know who I have a really hard time being around. We used to live nearby then a few years ago, and my drama radar would always be on high alert when we spent time together.

Whenever we were around them, I always noticed that their relationship consisted of bantering, badgering, and criticism toward one another.

The old saying ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ rings true for very many Christians who met their life partner online.

When I first started dating my wife, we were eating dinner one night and she asked a question that I didn’t think was very controversial: “What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”

In my response, I mentioned that I wanted to return to my home state of Mississippi and run for Attorney General, and I also said I wanted four or five children. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to announce that I was joking. I wasn’t.

A significant number of Christians remain single against their wishes because they have not met a suitable Christian partner. For them the command that Christians should only marry Christians can be one of the hardest in the Bible. Others marry non-Christians and can face criticism from fellow-believers because of this.

Many Christians desire to find a life partner who shares their Christian faith. For some, this is rooted in Biblical teaching. For others it is the desire to share life with a partner who is rooted in the same beliefs, values and traditions. But many Christians will find themselves in marriages where faith may not be shared by their spouses.

Is it possible to maintain one’s faith in the face of opposition from one’s spouse? How will it affect any children of the marriage?

I recently came across a thought provoking paragraph on marriage in Tim Keller’s new book, Preaching. Here’s what the New York pastor had to say on how many in our culture view marriage:

‘A late-modern person…wants a spouse who “accepts me as I am” and neither demands that you change nor requires you to sacrifice any of your own substantial desires, interests, and dreams. This kind of marriage is a fiction – it doesn’t exist.”