The definition of marriage

I was browsing in the book section of our local thrift store the other day, not because I needed anything but because you never know what might be there. I wound up not finding anything although I did flip through a few books and a couple of Bibles. While I was scanning titles on the shelf a book on being a wife caught my eye. I picked it up knowing I had no intention of buying it. Mostly I was just curious. I didn’t get past the front cover. There was nothing necessarily wrong with the book. I didn’t even read the back cover. All I read was the brief writing on the front. I don’t remember exactly what it said but it was something like ‘with this book you’ll learn to be happy and satisfied in your marriage’ or some such thing. Below that there was another sentence or two. I barely glanced at them as I replaced the book on the shelf.

I had lost all interest in the book. Without any intention on my part the thoughts running through my head were why not just pick up a Bible and see what it has to say on marriage. Then Ephesians five came to mind.

I know the unregenerate can’t see marriage in the way the Bible speaks of it. I know there was a time I couldn’t see it that way. I wasn’t raised to see marriage as anything special. In my family marriage was something people did until they didn’t want to do it anymore. I don’t think I ever heard any of my family members talk about marriage as something that should be forever.

I’m not sure how far into my extended family I’d have to go before I found a couple that weren’t divorced. That was just the way my family was. Marriage was never spoken of as something special. It was never seen as something that you committed to for life. When things got hard, divorce was waiting. That was pretty much the unspoken belief among my immediate family and among my extended family.

My grandmother was divorced multiple times. She had five children, all of which were divorced at least once. That lack of total commitment to marriage was passed down without anyone really trying to teach it. It was simply there.

Somewhere in all that I picked up a different way of looking at marriage. To me it was special, sacred, something that was meant to be forever. I remember even in my teens I believed marriage was to be honored, that you didn’t go into it lightly and you didn’t just give up on it and walk away.

Where that belief came from I didn’t know. I seemed to be the only one in my family that saw marriage that way.

Today my daughter said without any hesitation ‘then I’d get a divorce.’ This isn’t the first time this daughter has said something to that effect. She’s said it before when talking about habits that her future husband may have. She seems to have no compunction about divorcing her future spouse.

While I know that it’s easy to say you’ll do something when your heart isn’t involved, I can’t help being concerned about her statements. Or more precisely I can’t help being concerned over the feelings and beliefs that those statements stem from.

Despite my best efforts to teach my daughter that marriage is sacred, that it matters, that it’s a lifetime commitment, she has somehow managed to pick up on the thoughts and feelings of my extended family…on the beliefs of our culture.

In our society marriage is more like take-out food. Go through the drive thru and pick up whatever suits you at the time and when you get tired of whatever you picked just toss it out and get another order. There’s nothing special about it. Easy come, easy go.

That may be our culture’s way of seeing marriage but it isn’t the Lord’s way.

A quick look in a modern dictionary says marriage is the union between a person of the opposite sex as husband and wife. Unfortunately that same definition goes on to state that it’s a relationship recognized by the law and then gets even worse by saying marriage is also a similar relationship between two people of the same sex.

There is nothing in that modern definition that shows marriage to be anything special. I could have been reading about a partnership between two businesses for all the importance put on that definition. Marriage is the union between two people recognized by law. A business partnership is the union between two people recognized by the law…or whatever other type of merger happens between two people.

Where is the acknowledgement that marriage is something special, that it’s a relationship that goes above and beyond that of any other relationship you will ever have?

Not happy with that definition I dug a little deeper. I looked into a dictionary published in 1828. And found a very different definition for marriage, one that puts much more emphasis on the importance of what a marriage is.

MAR'RIAGE, n. [L.mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity,and for securing the maintenance and education of children.

Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled. Heb.13.

1. A feast made on the occasion of a marriage.

The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king, who made a marriage for his son. Matt.22.

2. In a scriptural sense, the union between Christ and his church by the covenant of grace. Rev.19.

 

In less than 200 years our country has gone from defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman for life, as something that was instituted by God to last till death, to seeing it as a legally recognized union between two people. Our country no longer even gives marriage the distinction of being only between a man and a woman.

In our country today marriage is now seen as a relationship between two people that is recognized by law. That’s it. That’s what it boils down to. There’s nothing special about it, it’s not sacred, it’s not holy, It’s not even endorsed by God. It’s simply recognized by the law.

What happened in those 200 years that dictionary makers would go from defining marriage based off Scriptural standards to defining it as little more than a business partnership? The problem isn’t in the dictionary or even in the minds of the people writing it. The problem is in our country, in our culture. It’s the same problem that ensured I grew up seeing marriage as nothing special. In reality the exposure I had to what marriage looked like should have taken all the faith I had in marriage and turned me away from it.

The best way I can describe my childhood experiences with married couples would be that marriage meant fighting. It was a struggle at best and outright violent at worst. It meant keeping secrets and trying to hide the choices you made from your spouse. That was the type of example that I grew up seeing.

Somewhere in my life the Lord planted a different kind of belief in marriage. One that went deep and ensured I would find happiness in being married. It took years before I understood that the deep beliefs I held in marriage and what it should be matched the Biblical teaching on marriage.

Quite honestly we’re given a very simple set of rules for what marriage should be.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matthew 19:4-6

In just a few sentences Jesus defined what marriage is.

 He created them male and female.

Man shall leave mother and father and hold fast to his wife.

The two shall become one flesh.

What God has joined together, let not man separate.

That’s a pretty simple definition. There was nothing in that about a legal union. Nothing about it being between anyone but a male and a female. And there was no ignoring the fact that man was not to end what God brought together.

But our society has forgotten that. Marriage is no longer defined in those terms. We’re rapidly approaching a time when marriage may not be defined on any terms. I read an article about a year ago about a couple that has what they call an open marriage. Both the husband and wife in that marriage were free to have relationships with anyone they wanted at any time. They were both okay with that and said that they could never be happy in a traditional marriage. That is only one example of what marriage has become in our society.

There are so many more and the majority of them look nothing like the definition Christ gave for it. Unfortunately that is a part of our modern society in this fallen world. Like so many other things in today’s world marriage holds little importance.

And it shows in everything from what we see when we go anywhere in public to the definition of marriage in today’s dictionary verses a dictionary written in the 1800’s.