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).

---

[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.

Our Good Things

In the story of the Rich Man in Mark 10: 17-27, the rich man asked, “What should I do to get eternal life?”  After quoting the second half of the Ten Commandments, the rich man said, “Teacher, I’ve obeyed all these commandments since was a child.” In verse 21, Mark said, “Jesus felt genuine love for this man as he looked at him. ‘You lack only one thing,’ he told him. ‘Go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’”

Jesus reveals two levels of religious commitment. The first level is one’s own religiosity. We obey the laws and avoid all sin. It sounds rigid. But it’s easy to follow. It doesn’t lead to life, though. It’s dead orthodoxy. The second level is one’s commitment to Jesus himself. One’s agenda must be put aside, for He has a new priority implanted in us. He always wants us to go deeper. Perhaps, in the beginning of faith, the simple truth “obey all laws and avoid all sin” works for a while. As time goes by, Christian faith is not that linear. Jesus raises the bar a bit, saying “go, sell, come, and follow.” What Jesus is saying is that what you have becomes your god. That’s why Jesus doesn’t quote the first half of the Ten Commandments. You may live an ethical life, but you are far from getting into eternal life. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” (10:25) We can’t hold on to our god. And at the same time we want to enter the Kingdom of God. Not only do we “obey and avoid,” but also “go, sell, come, and follow.”

Tim Keller said:

In other words Jesus says: “If you want to follow me and to have eternal life, of course you shouldn’t commit adultery; you shouldn’t defraud people or murder them. You shouldn’t do bad things. But if you just repent of doing bad things, all it will do is make you a religious person. If you want eternal life, if you want intimacy with God, if you want to get over that nagging sense that there’s still something missing, if you can’t find a way to get the stain out, then you have to change how you relate to your gifts and your successes. You have to repent of how you’ve been using your good things.” [King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 2011), p. 131.]

Follow My Thread

I bought a book on Sunday. It’s Timothy Keller’s King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Dutton, 2011). The book is about the life of Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark. The first half of the book is about Jesus as the King; the second half, Jesus’ Cross. The way Tim Keller interprets the text is ok, but the way he communicates the story of Jesus to modern readers is very good. As I read, I realize that not only do I learn the life of Jesus according to Mark, but also Keller’s communication skill. The way he uses illustrations is amazing. However, most of the illustrations that he draws from are sophisticated. You have to pay attention to get it. Once you get it, you are hooked and start to think about it.

To illustrate what it means to us when Jesus said to the disciples: “Come, follow me.” Tim Keller said:

About 150 years ago George MacDonald wrote a children’s book called The Princess and the Goblin. Irene, the protagonist, is eight years old. She has found an attic room in her house, and every so often her fairy grandmother appears there. When Irene goes to look for her she’s often not there, so one day her grandmother gives her a ring with a thread tied to it, leading to a little ball of thread. She explains that she’ll keep the ball.

“But I can’t see it,” says Irene.

“No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it.” With this assurance, Irene tests the thread.

“Now, listen,” says the grandmother, “If ever you find yourself in any danger…you must take off your ring and put it under the pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your forefinger…upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you.”

“Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, Grandmother, I know!”

“Yes,” said the grandmother, “but, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.” A few days later Irene is in bed, and goblins get into the house. She hears them snarling out in the hallway, but she has the presence of mind to take off her ring and put it under the pillow. And she begins to feel the thread, knowing that it’s going to take her to her grandmother and to safety. But to her dismay, it takes her outside, and she realizes that it’s taking her right toward the cave of the goblins.

Inside the cave, the thread leads her up to a great heap of stones, a dead end. “The thought struck her, that at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out…But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her tough.” The grandmother’s thread only worked forward, but forward it led into a heap of stones. Irene “burst into a wailing cry,” but after crying she realizes that the only way to follow the thread is to tear down the wall of stones. She begins tearing it down, stone by stone. Though her fingers are soon bleeding, she pulls and pulls.

Suddenly she hears a voice. It’s her friend Curdie, how has been trapped in the goblin’s cave! Curdie is astounded and asks, “Why, however, did you come here?” 

Irene replies that her grandmother sent her, “and I think I’ve found out way.”

After Irene has followed the thread and removed enough rocks to create an opening, Curdie starts to climb up out of the cave—but Irene keeps going deeper into the cave. Curdie objects: “Where are you going there? That’s not the way out. That’s where I couldn’t get out.”

“I know that,” says Irene. “But this is the way my thread goes, and I must follow it.” And indeed the thread proves trustworthy, because her grandmother is trustworthy. (pp. 22-25)

This story is a bit long. But it makes you think about the phrase: “But this is my thread goes, and I must follow it.” Jesus is trustworthy. An hour ago, I was reading Psalms. I paused, mediated, and prayed to God when I was reading Ps. 84:11b-12:

“No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right.

O Lord Almighty, happy are those who trust in you.”

Exile-Homecoming

Good interpretation of the Bible requires us to grasp the biblical meta-narrative of creation, sin, exile, and redemption (or Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation). This CSER paradigm provides a framework for all of us to understand any sin-salvation stories in the Story. For example, the theme of homecoming-exile runs throughout the Bible. When Tim Keller expounds the story of Luke 15, he is able to use the biblical framework to interpret the lostness of both younger and older brothers.

In The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (New York: RiverHead Books, 2008), Tim Keller writes:

After Adam and Eve’s exile from the ultimate home, their son Cain was forced to restlessly wander the earth because he murdered his brother Abel. Later Jacob cheated his father and brother and fled into exile for years. After that, Jacob’s son Joseph and his family were taken from their homeland into Egypt because of a famine. There the Israelites were enslaved until, under Moses, they returned to their ancestral home. Centuries after this, David, before he became king, lived as a hunted fugitive. Finally the whole nation of Israel was exiled again, taken captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.

It is no coincidence that story after story contains the pattern of exile. The message of the Bible is that the human race is a band of exiles trying to come home. The parable of the prodigal son is about every one of us. (p. 109)

This is a very good biblical interpretation and theology. Keller places the story of Luke 15—The Story of Lost and Found—into the larger Story of the Bible. Due to the overall Story, it gives us more insights to look into this sin-salvation story. The theme of homecoming-exile enriches our understanding of the story and helps us apply into our contexts creatively.