The Transactional Marriage, Part I

What would you think of a book for the poor, explaining what they need to do in order to get people to give them money? A book that recommended, for example, that the poor person be sure to dress up in raggedy clothes? That he fall on his knees when he receives alms and pray aloud a prayer thanking God for his benefactor? "A person is more inclined to give of his hard-earned dollars," such a book might instruct, "if he sees that he's going to get some genuine thanks out of it."

Or what about a book explaining to husbands what they need to do to get their wives to respect them? A book that tells husbands to make sure they always act as if they have no doubts, and to be sure not to knuckle under to anyone when their wives are watching? "Wear a tie around the house," it might advise, "so you look more authoritative. And never admit that you are afraid. It's harder to respect someone who is fearful, after all."

What would you say, further, if you learned that such books were marketed as guides for Christian behavior?

You wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry, would you? Yet this is a trend in advice books for Christian women. Consider Gary Thomas' Sacred Influence: How God Uses Wives to Shape the Souls of Their Husbands, for example, which advises the Christian wife to think like an adulteress:

"If you've stopped caring whether you're 'good in bed,' then you're giving less effort to your marriage than many a mistress would give to her adultery. Does that attitude honor God?"

I don't think I've ever seen, in an ostensibly Christian book, a statement more theologically errant, more offensive to logic, more contemptuous of women, or more reprehensible in its characterization of marriage and God. Stop scheming for better sex techniques, it says, and you are worse than a whore. The logic is positively Orwellian. I'm sure that's not what Thomas believes about wives who have not been attentive to their sexual prowess, but that's what his words mean.

Another book on the shelf in your local Christian lifestyle store advises the wife to reach into her husband's pants for change, and to linger awhile. Others admonish wives, in less graphically repugnant detail but with the same spirit, to work overtime at being seductive so that their husbands won't commit adultery.

It's a sickening state we've reached, when adultery is not only so common, but when much of what passes for Christian counsel effectively blames the victim.

One might object that many such books don't pitch their advice as a means of warding off adultery, but simply as guides to help wives keep their husbands engaged in the marriage. That has the same ring of truth as when tobacco companies insist that they don't want teenagers getting hooked on nicotine, but even if true, it misses the mark entirely.

It misses the mark because a godly marriage is not transactional. If we allow into our thinking a calculus that says: I must do so-and-so to get such-and-such in return, then we have become hopelessly pagan in our thinking. And we should not be surprised when divorce rates in churches mirror that of their surrounding communities.

Later this week I'll offer some thoughts on what ought to replace the Transactional Marriage model. In between, perhaps we should all spend some time praying for every betrayed or fearful woman who has felt salt poured into her wounds by one of these books.