Okay…here I go with the long awaited marriage blog, I’m currently sat on a train on my way to Sheffield enjoying the luxury of free wireless internet on the National Express East Coast trains and so thought I’d finally get down to business of this blog on marriage, and to be honest, I know it’s long awaited and it’s also a subject I want to blog on and explore, however at this current state in time I have absolutely no idea where it’s going…
Firstly a few truths…
1 - I believe marriage is a good God-given thing
2 - I think people getting married is a good idea
3 - In turn I also agree that sex within a marriage and not before is the best idea
Now onto the blog….
Blink 182’s music video for the song ‘Stay together for the kids’ begins by flashing up the statistic that ‘50% of America’s households are broken up by divorce’…the shocking statistic introduces the song nicely, written by Tom Delonge about his parents divorce when he was 16, he described the song as being about the moment when he sat in a car on their drive coming to terms with what was going on.
Looking up other statistics it appears that America has a slightly higher divorce rate than Britain, Britains divorce rate from resources I can find appears to be similar to those of america with several sites also quoting 50% of marriages in Britain ending in divorce.
It seems that people’s view of marriage seems to be getting more and more negative, with more couple choosing to just live together in a long term committed relationship and with high profile divorce cases such as Paul McCartney and Heather Mills the general opinion of marriage seems to me to only have the ability to go down hill…thinking of divorce I can name a lot of famous couple’s who have got divorced (Britney, Pamela Anderson etc.) yet trying to think of a couple who’s marriage seems to have lasted only brings the Beckhams to mind.
If I look more locally it seems that many of the young people I work with, in particular on the Prince’s Trust teams come from broken homes…we seem to be surrounded by divorce and unsuccessful marriage…
However at the risk of doing a divorce blog this is where I stop because I know a lot of happily married couples, my parents have been married for over 30 years (I think!), Mike and Yvonne who I live with in Peterborough have been married over 25 years, Joel and Vicki have been married over a year and a half, Ben and Laura (who’s wedding I had the pleasure of attending in september) are also happily married…Ben’s facebook status yesterday stated that he was in love with La (his wife!).
So it’s not all bad…and to add to the joys of married couples I know several people getting married this year…Esther and Steve, Stuart and Steph, Rebecca and John and Shane and Rachel.
Writing this however I realise that the list of married or soon to be married couples I have compiled all have one common characteristic…they’re all Christians…now I’m by no means stating that Christian marriages never end because some do…merely observing that many married people I know are Christians.
As a Christian myself I think the marriage idea is embedded into me as something good, and from my experiences of marriage (couples stated above) I have no doubt that marriage is a good thing, all of the people above show no bad points for marriage and do nothing but remind me that it’s a good idea.
The Bible’s View
Of course as a Christian blogger it would be silly to blog on marriage without looking into what the bible has to say…however because I want to focus on my view’s and ideals for marriage I shall do this briefly!
Okay well right at the beginning of the bible God makes Adam, decides it’s not good for man to be alone and as if by magic using only a rib Eve is born into the world…randomly I think perhaps Eve and Jesus are the only people in the bible to have been born without sex!
So Adam and Eve are married, they have children…as we continue to zoom through the bible lots of people get married and marriage is shown to be a fairly good thing, some couples fall out and want divorce and reluctantly they’re given it…shoot into the New Testament and Jesus briefly covers a bit on divorce, discusses how it’s not good to look at a woman lustfully etc. In Paul’s letters we read something like ‘it’s better to get married than burn with lust’ at the same time Paul describes the calling to be single as a high calling but still in my opinion on the whole in the bible marriage is a good thing.
So what is marriage? In bible days marriage sex was what finalised the marriage so to speak…now days perhaps we have more of a ceremony and legal stuff etc and perhaps in our secular society sex is becoming less and less of a marriage thing and more of a fun thing which most couple do before marriage.
That’s not to say people don’t wait (both Christian and non-Christian), I tend to go with the view that sex before marriage isn’t really the best idea in the world and waiting is best…however I also believe in a forgiving and loving God should people mess up.
For me I think marriage is a little similar to baptism (of the very wet variety), the same way baptism is about standing up in front of friends and family and declaring your faith in Jesus, love for Him and stating your commitment and showing all this through a very public act I think marriage is similar. Marriage, for me, is about committing yourself to the person you love most in the world (of course Jesus is still number 1!) in a very public way, it’s about promising to love them and stick with them through thick and thin in front of your friends, family and importantly God, and I think sex is God’s wedding present to a couple…and also a way for married couples to worship! (roll on marriage!!!)
More than meets the eye…
The thing with marriage though is that it’s much more of a commitment than meets the eye, in the bible the relationship between Jesus and the Church is described as that of a bride and groom (Jesus being the groom, bride being the church), now if we think of the commitment Jesus has to the church there are huge implications for the groom/husband. Jesus loved the church (God’s people) that he was prepared to give up anything to save them even when that meant death. A husband therefore (in my opinion) should be willing to do the same and not out of duty but out of love (like Jesus did).
Of course this means that a marriage (and indeed any relationship) needs to be one where both parties are selfless…remembering to put each other first in all situations, perhaps the reason so many marriages end in divorce is because people just won’t submit to each other, they get stuck being selfish not selfless (Of course I apreciate this isn’t the reason for all marriages ending).
Much as I could probably ramble quite easily for a lot longer on marriage I think this is where I shall call it a day…I think I’ve only begun to explore the values in marriage, the way married couples should act towards each other and also what the bible says. I also appreciate that perhaps this will be seen as quite a naive post particually as I’m not married…I also suspect that if I come back to this blog in years to come when perhaps I will be married (I hope I will be) that I may have more to add or at the very least have more of a sense of what it means to be selfless completely…as I’m sure the majority of that comes with living with someone/being married to someone.
Comments from readers married, unmarried and unsure of which they are are always good!
Today my itunes tour has me on the letter H (one of my shorter letters) and currently I am being played some ‘Hawk Nelson’. Everytime I hear them I seem to have forgotton how good they are…smile it’s the end of the world is such a great punk rock album…and Hawk Nelson are Christian so it’s all good!
On her blog 
