A Different Angle

Leading up to Christmas I also read a book called "Beyond One," written by a woman about her families' transition from one kid to two. My wife read it first and asked me to read it, it's got sort of an Ann-Lamott-ish feel to it: funny, insightful, honest.

The woman is not a Christian and while it offered Kelly and I some good tips on the challenges we'd soon be facing, it was a side-note that has stuck with me the most. Three-fourths of the way through it, she talks about the man she lives with asking to her to marry him. She writes that she didn't want to get married until she was sure it was going to stick.

This is not going to be some rant decrying the state of marriage in our country. But there are a couple interesting issues this raises.

One is that in a culture where promises, particularly marriage promises, have been broken so often, there's very little trust in any promise. This makes life particularly difficult for people in my line of work, where so much of what we're talking about is about faith, about trusting in the promises of God. When this woman's kids get to my campus in 18 years, what will they think about the promises that God has extended to them?

Secondly, marriage plays a particularly significant role in witnessing to the love of God. In the Scriptures, marriage is said to be a sign of Christ's love for his church. The reason why God hates all marital unfaithfulness (and divorce is usually the last painful step in a web of unfaithfulness, not the root cause) is that all marriage is supposed to bear witness to how much God loves his people--even marriages that aren't based on Christ. Whenever marital unfaithfulness occurs, it bears false witness: it says that God could possibly be unfaithful to his church. This, of course, isn't true, but I feel it's effects as I talk with 18-22 year olds who live in the wake this lie.