What Is Marriage?

“The Kansas City Royals have been referred to as the laughingstock of baseball, and used as a punch-line in the movie Fever Pitch, but this was probably the first time in Royals’ history that they’d been referred to as an orgasm.”

— Sex and Baseball - Marriage Partnership

Tim Hawkins - “Things you don’t say to your wife”

“Marriage then is not so much about us and what we seek to do as it is about Jesus and what he has done and is still doing. As a man going through the process of discerning a call to ordination in the Church of England this wasn’t ever an issue for me, even though as one attracted to those of the same sex as myself I never thought that I would ever enter into that matrimonial state. Despite this, my homosexuality was never a bar to ordination and never a hindrance to being a fully baptised member of the church and one privileged to administer its sacraments. Very early on in the ordination process I realised from the Scriptures like countless men and women for generations before me that I had absolutely no God given right to have sex, or even to enter into an erotic relationship of my choosing. Even today a decade later, as I have seen God do amazing things in my life taking me from avowed celibacy to being married and having a young son, many gay and lesbian friends and colleagues who were trained and ordained alongside me but are still single have never once felt either rejected or denied some sense of natural justice just because they are not in any kind of committed relationship. Instead some of those same friends are at the most spiritually satisfied points of their lives, because by refusing to let their bodies speak sexually of anything but the union of Christ and the Church in the only way that Scripture calls us to, they have discovered new truths about how we are all called to make our chief intimacy with Jesus.”

— Marriage is not about Justice, but Jesus

“New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse’s death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry. And in terms of health, it’s not better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Middle-age people who never married have fewer chronic health problems than those who were divorced or widowed.”

—

Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill - NYT

via Breakpoint, which comments:

The Times is quick to claim that staying in a bad marriage can lead to physical problems, too. But it’s good news that major news outlets are writing articles like this. For decades, they have trumpeted the idea that divorce harms nobody, that children do just fine without fathers, and that we should all just do whatever makes us happy, maritally speaking, that is. But now the problems of marital breakdown—and failure to form families in the first place—have become so severe that not even news outlets hostile to Christian teachings can deny it.

What's Wrong with Happiness: When marriage fails to satisfy, check your expectations

The second secret weapon is to turn our obsession to satisfy ourselves into love for others. Rather than focus on others, too many Christians have bought into the cultural value of individualism. We think personal independence is so great that we no longer recognize the beauty and blessing of shared life. But Christianity is concerned with interdependence. God doesn’t tell us to live for our own convenience. One reason he puts us in marriages is to help us find real satisfaction and real joy in serving others. Marriage is the first place where we get to live out God’s many commands for serving, accepting, encouraging, forgiving and submitting to one another.

Weighty Words on the Meaning of a Husband’s Headship

onesixsix:

August 5, 2009 | By: John Piper
What follows is one of the greatest reasons for a man to get married and stay married: not the rapturous flame of eros, but the refining fires of holiness.

No relationship is more clearly commanded to model the death of Christ. No relationship is more costly—in both senses of that word (painful and precious).

This quote comes from one of C. S. Lewis’s last books, published in 1960, The Four Loves. In it we hear the wise fruit of a lifetime.

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the church—read on—and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25).

This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is—in her own mere nature—least lovable. For the church has no beauty but what the bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism [anointing, consecration] of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of the bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence.

As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labors to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears. (105-106)

peacenotwar:

Driscoll goes nuts at worldy boys and challenges them to be godly men.

“Whether mentioned in Scripture or not, the transgender movement clashes with traditional Christian theology that teaches the only God-given expression of human sexuality is between a man and woman who are married. ‘Transgender impulses are strong, but they don’t match up with the Christian sexual ethic,’ says Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. ‘Desires must be brought into alignment with biblical teachings, but it will be inconvenient and distressful.’ Throckmorton, past president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, says he has advised transgendered people who are in absolute agony over their state. Typically, such individuals are desperately in search of hope and acceptance, he says. It may be uncomfortable to tell transgendered individuals that their desires don’t align with the Bible, Throckmorton says, but pastors must do so. ‘Even if science does determine differentiation in the brain at birth,’ Throckmorton says, ‘even if there are prenatal influences, we can’t set aside teachings of the Bible because of research findings.’”

— The Transgender Moment | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

On Valentine’s Day 2000, right after I found an apartment, I was ready to tell Allen our marriage was over. Allen took me to a nice restaurant, then we drove to a beautiful place where stars lit the sky. Coldly, I informed Allen I didn’t love him anymore. He broke down in tears saying this wasn’t what he wanted, that he still loved me.

I wasn’t expecting his heartbroken reaction. How could he still care for me after all I’d done? He was supposed to say he didn’t love me either. Then we could separate.

But he didn’t.

Neither of us spoke about what to do next.

In the middle of the night after Allen tossed and turned in bed, he touched my arm and asked, “Is there someone else?”

I didn’t answer, so he asked again. I told him there was someone, but I’d broken off the relationship. In my heart, though, I knew that was only partially true. That’s when the yelling started. He questioned how I could do this to him and the kids. What was I thinking? Didn’t our vows mean anything? I listened as all the hurt poured from him. When he could yell no more, he went for a walk while I laid in bed and cried. All the yelling and pain snapped me back to reality. The consequences of my actions were settling in, and it became clear what I’d done. To save my marriage, I was determined to end the other relationship at work the next day.

That evening, armed with hope, I asked Allen again for forgiveness and asked if we should try to work out our marriage or separate. With conviction he said, “I made a commitment to this marriage and I’m not going anywhere. If you want to leave, go ahead, but I’m not giving up.” I was stunned that he wanted to stay. I told him I was willing to work it out as well. Then Allen said, “You’re a great person. I guess I didn’t think you had moral flaws. You made a mistake and I forgive you.”

I stood listening to his grace and began to weep. At that moment I felt renewed love toward Allen and I wrapped my arms around him.

“I’ll work hard to earn back your trust. I promise.”

Had an Affair - My husband wasn’t making me happy. So why not look elsewhere for intimacy?

Irreconcilable Differences—So?

But Barbara and I are compatible on one thing: divorce isn’t an option. So we simply decided we were going to make this thing work in spite of the fact that we were so incompatible. We didn’t decide it in a day, and we didn’t decide it with gusto and optimism. We simply felt we had no choice but to learn how to live with a person so utterly alien to us.

And it was in that period that we began to learn about martyrdom, about the death of the self, about giving up the desire for compatibility. If marriage wasn’t about how my spouse could make me happier, we each concluded, then it must be about each of us trying to make the other happier. […]

These are simple, ordinary acts of martyrdom, the giving way of self for the sake of the other. Every marriage has plenty of such moments. They can be resisted with complaints—”Why don’t you ever do what I want to do?” and “Why don’t you consider my feelings?” Or they can be submitted to with grace.

This forsaking of compatibility is slow and painful to learn. At the end of the day, Barb and I each feel a sense of regret at not having done more for the other. But every morning there’s a new vow to give it another shot.

(source)