Face to Face

In Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), Gene Edward Veith Jr. and Mary J. Moerbe write:

A man and a woman become one flesh. In doing so, they engender a child, who is made from that flesh and who is part of the fleshly union that constitutes the family. The Bible uses ‘one flesh’ to describe both sex (1 Cor. 6:16) and marriage (Matt. 19:5-6). In God’s design, the two amount to the same thing. So then Children ‘share in flesh and blood’ with their parents (Heb. 2:14). (p. 104)

A man and a woman become one flesh and a child springs from that flesh. The union of a man and a woman within marriage is a fleshly connection. The birth of a child is a fleshly extension of the one-flesh union. A child begins with God’s gracious giving and results in a life-long reliance on God’s daily bread. The calling of God is very fleshly, for our Lord is the Lord of incarnation. He became flesh and dwelled among us (Jn. 1:14). He anticipated messiness before becoming flesh; he entered into messiness by being flesh; he handled messiness in flesh.

It is a great anticipation to see you face to face in flesh.

Sex, Selfish, Servant

In Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship and Life Together (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), Mark and Grace Driscoll talk about two types of couples in relation to sex. The first type is called selfish lovers; the second, servant lovers. Obviously, servant lovers put the interest of their spouses first; selfish lovers rarely look at the relationship from their spouses’ angle. According to them, there are various ways that we are considered as selfish lovers in this area (pp. 165-166):

An excerpt:

• Rarely have sex. We can simply decide to rarely, if ever, have sex. This is often done through simply and repeatedly denying our spouses’ advances, which shames and humiliates them, causing them to feel unloved, unwanted, and undesired. Eventually they will simply stop seeking to be intimate with us.

• Take too little time and too little effort. We can do as little as possible sexually. By exerting minimal effort, passion, or interest, we can be sure to discourage our spouses from seeking to be intimate with us frequently. People have explained this as a gross feeling, where their spouses simply lie there, looking away disinterested and disconnected, making them feel as if they are basically using their spouses’ bodies. Wives have explained this in terms of husbands who do not patiently take their time to prepare them for lovemaking, but instead lazily rush right into penetration, thereby causing their wives discomfort…

• Only have sex when we both feel like it at the same time. Can you imagine if everything in your marriage was governed by this same thinking, so that, for example, you only ate together or spoke together when you both felt like at the exact same time? Sadly, we have heard this illogic from even pastors and their wives. Servant lovers are willing to serve their spouses even when they are not in the mood, and know that on another occasion their servant lovers will do the same for them. Furthermore, humble servant lovers know that as they serve their spouses, God often awakens their desires, puts them in the mood, and blesses their obedience.

• Rarely initiate. In a contentious marriage one spouse is always on sexual offense and the other on sexual defense. This means that one person never initiates talk about sex or activities of sex and is continually on the defensive. The other spouse is then forced to always take the sexual initiative, which makes him or her feel controlled and manipulated in addition to neglected and unwanted, which is discouraging.

• Commit sexual sabotage. We can conveniently get out of the habit of going to bed at the same time. Or at bedtime we can pick a fight or present a displeasing attitude that makes it unlikely sex will ensue. If this happens often, you can probably assume it is not coincidence, but rather an intentional ploy to avoid sex.

• Make our spouses earn sex. We can control and manipulate our spouses with sex. If they do something we want, then we give them sex. If they do not do something we want, or do something we dislike, we punish them by withholding sex. This kind of sexual relationship is more akin to prostitution than marriage. In essence, our spouses have to earn sex and pay for it in some way.

Relational Sin of Omission

I bought a book at a local Christian bookstore last week, Mark and Grace Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship and Life Together (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), and finished it today. It is a pretty good book, filled with personal struggles, stories, and biblical principles that help couples deal with their marital issues. It is one of those books that is not stuffed up with theory and principle. Rather, what they say in the book is not without being practiced and constantly attempted. I believe that having a healthy marital relationship is much harder than it is.

We are usually content with being nice to one another in marriage. As long as we are nice to one another and do not argue and fight, we are fine. We are fine with getting along “fine” without tackling with many itchy issues in relationship. We are fine with what happens on the surface. We are satisfied with not making mistakes. Deep down, it could be shallow. We try to stay away from the sin of commission. But we often commit the sin of omission. We don’t do what we are not supposed to do; however, we don’t do what we are supposed to do. We don’t hate; nevertheless, we don’t love. We are together, but we don’t strive for intimacy in our togetherness. We have nothing to do with the sin of commission; we have everything to do with the sin of omission.

Often times, many couples just find a way to co-exist and work together, like paying bills, raising up kids, and helping others. They are co-workers or life partners, but not lovers and friends. They can be nice to each other, but love is missing in this niceness. Love is not making either. Or, love is rarely made. Even verbal intercourse seldom occurs. “Words passed between them with no greater purpose than passing on information and dividing tasks.”[1] A sense of politeness is accompanied with a sense of coldness. Marital responsibility comes along with a sense of bitterness.

“This is my beloved and this is my friend” (Song of Songs 5:16).

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[1] Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman III, Intimate Allies: Rediscovering God’s Design for Marriage and Becoming Soul Mates for Life (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1995), p. 72.

Flaws in Marriage

In The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), Timothy Keller writes:

What are the flaws that your spouse will see? You may be a fearful person, with a tendency toward great anxiety. You may be a proud person, with a tendency to be opinionated and selfish. You may be an inflexible person, with a tendency to be demanding and sulky if you don’t get your way. You may be an abrasive or harsh person, who people tend to respect more than they love. You may be an undisciplined person, with a tendency to be unreliable and disorganized. You may be an oblivious person, who tends to be distracted, insensitive, and unaware of how you come across to others. You may be a perfectionist, with a tendency to be judgmental and critical of others and also to get down on yourself. You may be an impatient, irritable person, with a tendency to hold grudges or to lose your temper too often. You may be a highly independent person, who does not like to be responsible for the needs of others, who dislikes having to make joint decisions, and who most definitely hates to ask for any help yourself. You may be a person who wants far too much to be liked, and so you tend to shade the truth, you can’t keep secrets, and you work too hard to please everyone. You may be thrifty but at the same time miserly with money, too unwilling to spend it on your own needs appropriately, and ungenerous to others.

Others have seen these flaws in you. Your parents certainly have, and others that have lived with you, such as siblings or college roommates or friends, have seen them, too. But if they spoke to you about them, you could either write them off as being biased or mistaken, or you could escape from the weight of the criticism by vaguely promising to do better in the future. However, your confronters didn’t keep up their confrontations, and you haven’t really admitted the severity of the problem. The reason was that the flaw did not pose the same kind of problem for them as it will for your spouse.

But while your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse and your marriage (138-139).

My Beloved, My Friend

She is the source of me feeling lucky in life. It does not mean that she brings me luck in a secular sense. Rather, to have her as my spouse who can also be my friend makes me feel that I am lucky in this life. In life, we spend most of our time to be with our spouse. The time that we spend together is definitely quantitative. Whether or not it is also qualitative, it is not so promising. However, it is not impossible. Having realized that I can luckily find friendship in marriage, a sense of luck, or a sense of being blessed, comes upon me. Marriage is a mystery (Eph. 5:32). Who can guarantee that two different individuals (two sinners) who promise to stay and live together can pull it off day in and day out? By luck or grace, at the end of the day, I can say: “This is my beloved and this is my friend” (Song of Songs 5:16). Marriage, indeed, is a mystery.

In the Genesis narrative, God makes it clear that “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (2:18 ESV). In Gen. 1:26 ESV, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” (also see 1:27). After creating man in God’s own image, this man is complete, but not yet complete. A vertical relationship with God is followed by a horizontal relationship. God’s “first no good” must be resolved by making a helper for this man. His aloneness makes it no good; her friendship and companionship makes a difference.

“What is the purpose of marriage? The Bible’s answer to this question starts with the principle that marriage is a friendship.”[1] In marriage, two friends journey towards the end with transparency, constancy, and promise. And the end is this: “what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we will be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2 ESV).

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[1] Timothy Keller (with Kathy Keller), The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), p. 110.

Dishonorable

(Taken from http://dogmadoxa.blogspot.com/2011/08/one-reason-homosexual-desires-are.html)

I had never considered this insightful point in considering what is 'dishonorable' in homosexual 'passions' (Rom. 1:26). Our friends write in the ESV Study Bible--
Homosexual desires are 'dishonorable' both because they are contrary to God's purpose and because they treat a person's biological sex as only half of what it is. While the logic of a heterosexual bond is that of bringing together the two (and only two) different and complementary sexual halves into a sexual whole, the logic of a homosexual bond is that another person of the same sex complements, and fills what is lacking in, that same sex, implying that each participant is only half of his or her own sex: two half males making a full male or two half females making a full female.

In other words, the logic of sexual intercourse requires a sexual complement, and thus a same-sex bond is a self-devaluing of one's own gender inasmuch as one sees the need to complement structurally one's own sex with someone of the same sex. (p. 2548)

New York State: Same-Sex Marriage

(Taken from http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/06/27/the-empire-states-moral-revolution-new-york-state-legalizes-same-sex-marriage/)

The legal, social, moral, and political maps of America were redefined last Friday night as the New York State Senate voted 33-29 to legalize same-sex marriage in the state. The State Assembly had already approved the measure, leaving the Republican-controlled Senate the last battleground on the marriage issue. Shortly after the Senate approved the measure, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law. It will take effect in July, thirty days after the Governor’s signature was affixed.

It will be difficult to exaggerate the impact of New York’s move to legalize same-sex marriage. The statistics tell part of the story. New York State becomes the sixth state to recognize same-sex marriage, but its population is greater than that of the other five combined. When same-sex marriage is legal in New York next month, fully one in every nine Americans will live in a state or jurisdiction where same-sex marriage is legal. By any measure, this is a massive development in the nation’s legal and moral life.

Add to this the fact that California, the nation’s most populous state, is hanging in the balance as Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment passed by the state’s voters defining marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman, is now an issue before the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It arrived at the appellate court after a federal judge in California ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. If California is added (again) to the states with legal same-sex marriage, more than a third of the nation’s citizens will live where same-sex marriage is the law of the land.

Furthermore, gay rights groups are counting on their New York victory to serve as a momentum-builder for similar efforts across the nation. At present, 29 states have constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage, while another twelve have laws against it. Marriage is expected to be soon on the ballot in Minnesota and North Carolina, where similar constitutional amendments are in development. On the other hand, same-sex marriage advocates intend to focus on the states of Maine and Maryland for renewed efforts toward legalization.

One crucial aspect of the New York development is the fact that same-sex marriage was legalized by legislation, and not by order of a court. Eventually, an unusual coalition led by the Governor Andrew Cuomo and major Republican donors pushed the measure through the Senate, even though Republicans had prevented even a vote on such a measure in recent years. As dusk set in Albany on Friday, the fate of marriage appeared to rest on one Republican senator, whose crucial vote would determine the margin for or against the chamber taking the vote. In the end, the measure reached the floor, where it passed by a four-vote margin.

One of the lessons learned in this sad spectacle is the fact that enough Republican senators changed their positions on the issue under intense pressure, thus enabling the passage of the legislation. The same was true for the minority of Democratic senators who had previously voted against the measure. One of these, Carl Kruger, changed his vote because the nephew of the woman Kruger lives with was so outraged over the issue that he had cut the couple off from an ongoing relationship. “I don’t need this,” the Senator told a colleague, “It has gotten personal now.”

Well, of course it has. But what this statement really means is that many Americans, including many in the political class, simply fold their moral convictions when they conflict with the lifestyles or convictions of a friend or relative.

Thus far, whenever the people of a state have had their say, marriage has been defended as the union of a man and a woman. Same-sex marriage has been made legal by courts (such as in Iowa and Massachusetts) and by legislatures in some northeastern states. If current trends continue, the American map of marriage will reveal a deep and consequential division between states which recognize same-sex marriage and those who do not.

Given the central importance of marriage to our civilization and culture, it is hard to imagine how such a mixed moral landscape can last. Add to this the fact that President Obama has instructed his own Attorney General not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in courts.

In the end, it is difficult to know how one can exaggerate the importance of New York’s shift on marriage. New York is not merely a highly populous state — it also includes the nation’s most significant city in terms of economics, business, and cultural influence.

The legalization of same-sex marriage represents nothing less than a moral revolution, for what the law allows and recognizes, it also approves. Last Friday was a sad day for marriage and, if the advocates of same-sex marriage are right, it was also a sign of things to come.