A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend an undergraduate chapel service at the school where I work. The speaker is an alumna of my Grad School alma mater who has a younger brother who was pretty big here in Denver a few years ago. (He is also a Florida Gator, so you can process of elimination who that was pretty quickly). Regardless, in his intro, it was announced that he had been married two months; that statement received several “whoo!” and “yeah!” calls, as well as applause from the audience. Now I know that I live in a Christian sub-culture bubble where things like this get applause. Anytime someone mentions marriage in a Christian setting, they get applause. It could be 50 years, 10 years, or 2 months, people applaud marriage.
I do not think that this is simply a conservative or religious thing. In our society today, we applaud lots of things – people doing the right thing, the kindness of strangers, Kid President providing inspirational words - marriage is no different.
Marriage seems to be a strange thing, if you think about it. Like one day, you meet a person and you spend time with them. Then you decide (eventually for some, very quickly for others) “Yep. This is the person I’m going to spend forever with.” And then you… do. All of the sudden lives get meshed, things get messy, families intertwine and there you have it.
People who are way smarter than I am could tell you biological reasons for attraction. You can find hundreds of TED talks on physiological attraction, dating, finding "the one." Algorithms exist to identify probability of attraction and success in relationships. It happens all over the world every day. So why is it worthy of applause?
I am sure the answers range from the sarcastic to the desperate. I would like to think that we applaud because it is good. Because deep down inside, we recognize that marriage is an intricate bond between a man and a woman. And not just any man and woman, but the helper and complement to each other.
Genesis gives Eve to Adam declaring her his "ezer kenedgo," translated as "help-meet." This doesn't imply ownership or dictatorship, it implies an intricate and intimate connection that nothing else can satisfy. The ultimate depth of relationship in scripture is friendship, and while I’m not married, I think that this is probably an excellent beginning to what that ought to be. Since we are created by God, he knows the vulnerability of our hearts. In building friendships, John 15 tells us that there is nothing greater than the man who would lay down his life for his friend. Paul shows us in Ephesians that husbands and wives are supposed to submit to one another, and man’s example is the love that Christ had for the church: He laid down his life for it. He emulated the example of great love.
Marriage isn’t for everyone - it isn’t for the weak or the selfish or the proud or the lonely. When relationships are built on those things, they become self-serving and draw people away from light, life, truth, and Christ. There are people who cannot handle that kind of pressure. There are people who crumble, and relationships that suffer and disintegrate because of it. So we applaud marriage because marriage is the outward sign of an inward commitment to love and submit to one another, and that is hard business. I’m not there yet, so I applaud those who are. I trust that God is preparing me for what is to come: relationships, jobs, and a family. Many of you are further along that road than I am, and I pray that you hear my applause for the hard thing you are doing.
So whether you've been married 30 years or 30 minutes, thanks. Keep pursuing the hard things. The rewards, I hear, are pretty worth it.
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