There is a bunch of good material written about marriage and it must generate a lot of money for some. People seem to collect books about it and I have noticed some excellent books on the shelves of people who are less than successful at the game and needing help. Always the story seems familiar: “my situation is unique” they seem to be saying. I have heard the same from people who have severe illnesses in words like, “the doctor tells me my condition is very rare” etc. We all believe we are unique and largely this is true but marriages fail for a very ordinary even ancient reason: Broken commitment.
The good news is there is such a thing as “restored commitment” but more about that later. Right now we have an urgent question to address in this age of NO commitment: Why do people marry when all around are examples of quiet failure? We have ‘partners’, common law, de facto, significant others and “the person I live with…For the sake of the kids” etc. Society is pretty good at hiding the ugly truth rather like the subject of death. All these less-than-married status titles mean that people have no anchor and are drifting on a sea of ultimate disaster.
We come up with an amazing array of excuses for failure in relationships: Too young, non-Christian spouse, in-laws interference, he/she wouldn’t change, sexual dysfunction, unfaithfulness and the favorite nowadays: Incompatibility, (a word that cloaks many other things). Every excuse sounds so legitimate when rehearsed over and over and of course both parties are absolutely right! Pity they couldn’t give the same effort justifying their relationship while it was alive. While I admit there are circumstances that do qualify for a break of a relationship, these should be a rare exception among believers since we have access to divine help
The biggest myth that many seem to give much credence to is that marriage is a 50/50 relationship. They need to re-do the math. It’s 100/100! The 50/50 folks say “I’ll give as much as you do”. The hundred percent folk say “I’ll give anyway.”
Divorce is a bible concept. Matthew 5:31-32 "It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce' but I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulterer, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. It seems they had a problem of casual commitment going-on back then. The word Jesus chose for divorce was derived from the Greek word “apostasy!” (a very scary word). He put the concept of divorce on a whole new footing, away from the secular and legal sense into a spiritual dimension.
He referred to adultery (marital unfaithfulness) in spiritual terms by using the word porneia, a Greek word meaning continued devotion to an Idol (fantasy.) This was a really big spiritual issue for the Jews. So effectively Jesus brought a paradigm shift to the issue of marriage and divorce by elevating matters into the relevant ‘now’ away from the traditional view. He changed the way people thought about marriage: Matthew 19:6: “Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Jesus did not mean the legal conclusion but the state of the heart. He exposed the selfish sin that precipitates the legal conclusion. Some Christians live in a state of divorce for years, maybe it is time the Church did not condone such sinful behavior.
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