Marriage: It's not about you

Last Sunday our pastor referred to a book's title to make a larger point about Christianity. The book is by Gary Thomas, titled: Sacred Marriage. It's the subtitle that grabs you, however: What if God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?

That subtitle flies in the face of what the world teaches about love and marriage, which is that it is a matter of finding that special someone who was fashioned by non-judgmental cherubs to be your lifelong friend, supporter, and satisfying lover, all without requiring you to change anything about the wonder that is You. This is what prompts single people in their forties to announce at cocktail parties that they just haven't found the right person, and which requires the rest of us to refrain from laughing out loud.

The truth is, of course, that so long as your own happiness is paramount, and so long as you remain in the temple of the Self, there will never be anyone who qualifies to be your soulmate but, well, you. And so we see the spectacle of aging adults who have gone through a string of relationships with partners who didn't abuse or betray them, but who in the end "just weren't a good fit." This is frequently code, in my experience, for: "the neuro-chemicals began to fade, he/she stopped putting me on a pedestal, and I began to wonder if my fairy tale prince/princess wasn't just around the next corner."

The reality is that there is no prince or princess for any of us, because no royalty in his right mind would have anything to do with us. This prince/princess fantasy, in other words, is predicated on the assumption that we ourselves are princes and princesses. None of us are, we aren't even close, which is one reason the Gospels ought to make us weep and laugh all at once, at the mercy and outrageousness of Christ.

And as far as marriage is concerned, Rick Warren's admonition probably ought to be the first words uttered at every wedding ceremony -- and marriage counseling session -- in America. It's not about you. It really isn't, you know.

Which brings me back to the interesting angle my pastor was working, about how Thomas's subtitle has something to say about Christianity in general. But I'll leave that for next time.