Tag: Marriage

Marriage, Thriving, and Character

Wedding SeatsThis past week, Trish Regan, writing for USA Today, sounded the alarm over what has become an infamous decline in U.S. marriage rates:

According to the Pew Research Center, the American marriage rate hit a rock bottom of 50.3% in 2013, down from 50.5% the previous year. Compare that to 1960, when 72.2% of Americans married. Meanwhile, a new finding by the forecasting firm Demographic Intelligence, suggests marriage rates will continue falling into next year as Millennials choose to opt out of traditional relationships.

Marriage is going out of style and that’s a problem. An economic one.[1]

Regan is concerned about declining marriage rates. Why? Because declining marriage rates lead to increasing economic volatility:

Historically, a rising household formation rate has contributed to America’s financial success. People meet, they marry, they buy a home, they have children and they buy more things. One new household adds an estimated $145,000 to the U.S. economy thanks to the ripple effect of construction spending, home improvements and repairs …

According to an American Enterprise Institute study by economists Robert Lerman and Brad Wilcox, young married men, ages 28-30 make, on average, $15,900 more than their single peers, while married men ages 33-46 make $18,800 more than unmarried men.

Marriage, it turns out, is not only good for love, it’s also good for your pocketbook. Therefore, Regan argues, we need more of it.

But at the same time marriage may be good for your financial situation, Sarah Knapton, science editor for The Telegraph, points out that marriage may not be so good for a woman’s health – at least not as good as we once thought:

Marriage has long been cited as a health booster, with couples living in wedded bliss more likely to live longer and have fewer emotional problems.

Yet a new study suggests that women hardly benefit from tying the knot.

Landmark research by University College London, the London School of Economics and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that single women do not suffer the same negative health effects as unmarried men.

In fact, middle aged women who had never married had virtually the same chance of developing metabolic syndrome – a combination of diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity – as married women.

And although they showed slightly higher levels of a biomarker which signifies an increased risk of breathing problems, it was far lower than the risk of illness for unmarried men. The same was true of a biomarker for heart problems which was raised 14 per cent in men but was barely noticeable in women.[2]

To marry or not to marry? It turns out that for a woman, it doesn’t really matter all that much.

Many of the arguments I have read in support of marriage at a time when marriage rates are on a precipitous decline are rooted in how this staid institution leads to human thriving. Marriage, it is argued, leads to greater economic stability. Marriage, at least for men, and in some studies even for women, does have certain health benefits. These arguments for marriage are well and good. But if the benefits of marriage are attenuated to only those things which lead to human thriving, when a person feels as though they are no longer thriving in a marriage, they may be tempted to check out and give up. Or, if marriage doesn’t have certain demonstrable and quantifiable benefits, as is the case with the health benefits study from the University College London, it can be all too easy just to opt out of getting married in the first place.

As Christians, we must never forget that as important as human thriving may be, human character is even more critical. And marriage most definitely shapes a person’s character. Over my nine years of marriage, I have learned invaluable lessons about selflessness, commitment, love, advocacy, confidentiality, service, compassion, kindness, and a whole host of other important character traits.

In a marriage, human thriving may help us do well for ourselves.   Human character, however, even when such character is forged through difficult and daunting marital circumstances, compels us to do good for our world. And good is something our broken world needs.

Which is just another reason to get – and to stay – married.

___________________________________

[1] Trish Regan, “Regan: Marriage is going out of style, and that could hurt,” USA Today (6.1.2015).

[2] Sarah Knapton, “Marriage is more beneficial for men than women, study shows,” The Telegraph (6.11.2015).

Why Fifty Shades of Grey is Black and White

Movie TheatreComing to a theatre near you this Friday, just in time for Valentine’s Day: 110 minutes of expectation and titillation wrapped in the package of a movie based on a best-selling novel. E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey has been widely panned by literary critics. Jesse Kornbluth, writing for the Huffington Post, admits, “As a reading experience, Fifty Shades of Grey is a sad joke, puny of plot, padded with conversations that are repeated five or six times and email exchanges that are neither romantic nor witty.”[1] A quick tour through a few of the novel’s more infamous lines quickly reveals just how bad the writing really is:

  • His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel…or something.
  • My subconscious is furious, medusa-like in her anger, hair flying, her hands clenched around her face like Edvard Munch’s Scream.
  • Finally, my medulla oblongata recalls its purpose. I breathe.[2]

If you think the line, “Finally, my medulla oblongata recalls its purpose, I breathe” makes for a good novel, in the timeless words of the professor from Waterboy, “There’s something wrong with your medulla oblongata.” I’ve never read either of these authors, but something tells me E.L. James makes Danielle Steele look downright Shakespearean. Something also tells me that when James was writing her novel, clicks on Thesaurus.com went through the roof. Yet, over 10 million copies of this stilted, silly prose have been sold worldwide.

In all honesty, though the awful writing really does bother me, there is a much more sinister side to Fifty Shades of Grey – something that deserves serious theological reflection. This novel unashamedly, unabashedly revels in its sexual depravity. It is a sick foray into all sorts of sexual sin. Some reviewers have gone so far as to call it “mommy porn.”[3] The overarching plot line explores the sexually abusive relationship between a wealthy 27-year old entrepreneur named Christian Grey and a 21-year old college senior named Ana Steele. Christian warns Ana that he is not “a hearts and flowers kind of guy” and introduces her to his room full of BDSM toys. It is their masochistic sexual encounters that form the meat of the novel. Indeed, reports indicate that in the 110-minute movie version, over 20 minutes are devoted to sex scenes.[4] And people have worked themselves into a flurry of anxious anticipation to see them.

Let me cut through the grey and be black and white for a moment: You should not go see this movie. You should not read the book. That’s the bottom line of this blog. You don’t need to encounter the explicit contents of this book and movie firsthand to know its implications are evil.  Allow me to give you three reasons why I believe this.

1. Fifty Shades of Grey robs people – and especially women – of their dignity.

I myself do not know all the illicit details of the sexual encounters between Christian and Ana, nor do I care to. But I do know that BDSM – whether it be in a novel, in a movie, or in real life – is an affront to basic human dignity. Tying up another person and calling them all sorts of nasty names, as is common in these types of sexual encounters, cannot be anywhere near what God had in mind when He designed sex so “two [could] become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). In fact, the description of the righteous woman in Proverbs 31 haunts me as I think about the relationship peddled by this book: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come” (Proverbs 31:25). Ana is robbed of both her strength and dignity in this story. May what is fiction never become what is reality.

One additional note on this topic: even if you are married and trust each other implicitly, BDSM still degrades the divine design for human sexuality. It simply does not square with what Paul writes concerning the marital relationship: “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them” (Colossians 3:19). Sex and marriage need tenderness.

2. Fifty Shades of Grey portrays people as little more than the sum of their desires.

Somehow, we have bought into this myth that if we do not indulge whatever sexual desires, fantasies, dreams, or fetishes we might have, we are not being true to ourselves. We are repressing ourselves. First, allow me to say a word about our feckless use of the word “repression.” Repression is when a person pushes something – usually a memory – out of their conscious awareness as a defense mechanism against the pain it causes. Repression often requires psychological help. Suppression, on the other hand, is when a person consciously chooses not to indulge a particular appetite. Repression is almost always dangerous. Suppression, on the other hand, can often be good. For example, I have often desired to try to take out the 72-ounce steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, but I have suppressed myself. Why? Because there is no way that would be good for me. I also sometimes desire to sleep in rather than to get up early to work out. But I suppress my sleep and get up. Why? Because I know working out is good for me.

Just because we desire something doesn’t make it good or good for us. This is why the apostle Peter warns: “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). You are more than the sum of your desires. And you are most true to yourself not when you’re following every whim and desire, but when you’re following Jesus.

3. Fifty Shades of Grey gives false hope for a happy ending.

Perhaps what disturbs me most about Fifty Shades of Grey is not its graphic descriptions of bizarre sexual encounters, but the arc of the broader plot line over the whole Fifty Shades trilogy. In volume two, Christian and Ana get married. By the end of volume three, the reader learns the couple has two children. Christian, it seems, has been tamed. And even though it’s left unspoken, the emotion of the ending is clear: “And they lived happily ever after.”

Here’s the problem with this ending: if the first part of the story is true, the last part cannot be. The Fifty Shades trilogy tells the story of light being born out of darkness. It tells the story of tender love emerging out of sadomasochism. In real life, however, this does not happen – at least not in the way Fifty Shades presents it. Evil does not wake up one morning and decide, “I’m going to birth something good.” No. Evil begets evil. If you don’t believe me, read up on the doctrine of original sin. The only way for good to emerge from evil is not by evil’s behest, but by evil’s demise. Jesus didn’t come and ask evil to be a little better. He came and nailed it to a cross. There’s where the hope for a “happily ever after” ending is. Not in some accidental stumbling of righteousness out of wickedness.

I hope this is enough – if you were thinking about seeing the movie or reading the book – to stop you. Researching the story and thinking through its repercussions is certainly enough for me.  And I also hope this is enough – if you’re trapped in a real-life abusive relationship – for you to get the help you need to get out. You’re too fearfully and wonderfully made not to.

_______________________________

[1] Jesse Kornbluth, “‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’: Is The Hottest-Selling Book In America Really Just ‘S&M For Dummies?’” Huffington Post (3.12.2012)

[2] Brenton Dickieson, “50 Shades of Bad Writing,” A Pilgrim in Narnia (9.21.2012).

[3] Julie Bosman, “Discreetly Digital, Erotic Novel Sets American Women Abuzz,” The New York Times (3.9.2012).

[4] Jess Denham, “Fifty Shades of Grey movie banned in Malaysia for being ‘more like pornography than a film,’” The Independent (2.5.2015).

The Waning of Marriage

Marriage 1Right now at the church where I serve, we are in a series on marriage called “We Do.” As I see it, this series is important not only because many marriages are in trouble and in need of help, but because many marriages are not even getting started in the first place. The precipitous decline of marriage in this country is well documented. Take, for instance, the recent alarm sounded by Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post:

In 1960, only 12 percent of adults ages 25 to 34 had never married; by the time they were 45 to 54, the never-married share had dropped to 5 percent. Now fast forward. In 2010, 47 percent of Americans 25 to 34 had never married.[1]

Marriage rates are in a free-fall. But Samuelson’s explanation as to why marriage rates are tumbling is especially fascinating to me:

The stranglehold that marriage had on middle-class thinking and behavior began to weaken in the 1960s with birth control pills, publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique — an assault on women’s traditional housecleaning and child-rearing roles — and the gradual liberalization of divorce laws.

The resulting expansion of personal choice has been breathtaking. Those liberalized divorce laws have freed millions of women and men from unsatisfying or abusive marriages. (From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate rose nearly 150 percent; it has since reversed about half that gain.) Taboos against premarital sex and cohabitation have virtually vanished. So has the stigma of out-of-wedlock birth or, for married couples, of not having children. With more job opportunities, women flooded the labor market.

Samuelson connects the decline of marriage to the “expansion of personal choice.” In other words, the more choices a person has – from the choice of pre-marital sex to birth control to cohabitation to divorce – the lower the chance a person will choose to marry or, as the case may be, stay married.

Sadly, the “expansion of personal choice” does not insure against the unintended and often painful consequences of personal choice. Samuelson cites Isabell Sawhill, author of Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage:

“New choices for adults,” Sawhill writes, “have not generally been helpful to the well-being of children.” Single-parent families have exploded. In 1950, they were 7 percent of families with children under 18; by 2013, they were 31 percent. Nor was the shift isolated. The share was 27 percent for whites, 34 percent for Hispanics and 62 percent for African Americans. By harming children’s emotional and intellectual development, the expansion of adult choices may have reduced society’s collective welfare.

It is not (as Sawhill repeatedly says) that all single-parent households are bad or that all two-parent families are good. But the advantage lies with the approach that can provide children more financial support and personal attention. Two low-income paychecks, or two good listeners, are better than one. With a colleague, Sawhill simulated the effect today if the marriage rates of 1970 still prevailed. The result: The child poverty rate would drop by about 20 percent — a “huge effect” compared with most government programs.

Our emancipation from marriage comes with a price – a price born by the children of those who have emancipated themselves from marriage. A higher poverty rate is the price most easily measured, but other things, such as the lack of “two listening ears” Sawhill refers to, are also among the prices our children must pay.

I am well aware, of course, that there are certain situations where a person should not get married or cannot stay married. But these situations are far fewer and farther between than our culture makes them out to be.

At the heart of our marriage-phobia is the fact that marriage calls on us to think beyond ourselves, which is not easy when we have all the freedom in the world to make decisions for ourselves. It turns out that when we are given unrestrained freedom to make decisions, we make selfish ones.

But this is where the Church has much to offer. We do, after all, worship a Savior who not only thought beyond Himself, but lived beyond Himself and died by Himself so we could be a family in God.

Ultimately, as followers of Christ, our hope is for a marriage on the Last Day when it will be sung: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:6-7).

If this is what we’re preparing and hoping for, we might as well get a little practice for our marriage on the Last Day by being married in this day. And that’s why marriage is good – even if it isn’t always easy.

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[1] Robert J. Samuelson, “The family deficit,” The Washington Post (10.26.2014).

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Lives!

Marriage 3Apparently, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” didn’t die in our Armed Forces, it just moved to our marriages.    Recently, Redbook published a part-confessional, part-apologetic exposé titled, “How Affairs Make My Marriage Stronger.”  The author, who, not surprisingly, chose to remain anonymous, opens salaciously:

It’s a Wednesday night, and my boyfriend and I are drinking wine and making out in the back booth of a dimly lit bar. It feels like nothing else in the world exists…until my phone vibrates.

“It’s my husband. The kids are in bed,” I say, then put my phone in my purse and pull my boyfriend toward me.  I spend half a second staring at the diamond on my engagement ring before hiding my hand from my sight line.  It’s not a secret that I’m married, but it’s also not something I want to think about right now.

Am I a horrible person?  Without context, I know I sound horrible.  But in my marriage, having affairs works.  My husband and I don’t talk about it.  But I’m certain our don’t-ask-don’t-tell rule is what has allowed our marriage to last as long as it has.

Notice that I didn’t say we’re in an open marriage – we’re not.  An open marriage is transparent, with agreed-upon rules and an understanding of what both parties will and will not do with others.  My marriage is opaque.[1]

What a sham of a marriage – full of affairs and cover-ups.  It should be a soap opera.  Instead, it’s real life.

What I find most striking about this apologetic for adultery is how kitschy it is – even according to the author’s own admission.  In a telling line, she concedes, “The more I think about it, the less okay I am with our lifestyle, so I’ve become pretty good at shutting down that part of my brain.”  If there ever was a line that affirmed the inescapably reality of natural, moral law, this is it!  No matter what she may claim about she and her husband’s affairs, she can’t escape the feeling that something isn’t right.  As the apostle Paul explains: “The requirements of the law are written on [people’s] hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them” (Romans 2:15).

As much moral ire as this article raises in me, it raises even more sympathetic pain.  It’s hard to listen to this woman divulge her deeply held fears without having my heart broken:

Truth be told, I do worry that Dave might fall in love with someone else. That’s why when I see his secret smiles or notice him spending tons of time texting, I step it up on my end, asking him to be home on a certain night and initiating sex. I remind him how much I love him and how much our marriage means to me.

What’s the title of this article again?  “How Affairs Make My Marriage Stronger”?  What a lie.  So let’s try some truth:

I take you to be my wedded beloved, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy will; and I pledge to you my faithfulness.

You took the vow.  You made the promise.  So keep it.  You’ll be better for it.  Your heart will be filled with it.  And you’ll please God by it.

_______________________

[1] Anonymous, as told to Anna Davies, “How Affairs Make My Marriage Stronger,” Redbook (5.18.2014).

When Marriage Isn’t What You Expect

Marriage 1From the pages of the New York Times comes this startling statistic:

A half-century ago, only 2.8 percent of Americans older than 50 were divorced. By 2000, 11.8 percent were. In 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 15.4 percent were divorced and another 2.1 percent were separated. Some 13.5 percent were widowed.[1]

It turns out that for the first time in American history, more people over 50 are divorced than widowed.  Sam Roberts, the deliverer of this sobering statistic, puts the situation curtly:  “So much for ‘till death do us part.’”

Unsurprisingly, the reasons more and more couples are divorcing after they pass into their golden years are manifold and varied, but Stephanie Coontz’s analysis in this article of one of the reasons for the increasing divorce rate is especially insightful:

It’s still true that in general the longer you are married, the lower your chance of divorce, but it’s sure no guarantee anymore … Staying together until death do us part is a bigger challenge than it used to be because we expect so much more of marriage than we did in the past, and we have so many more options when a marriage doesn’t live up to those expectations.

Coontz’s analysis is sadly brilliant because it not only identifies a reason for marital breakdown – that people’s expectations from marriage are not being met – it also offers insight into what many believe about marital makeup.  People increasingly view marriage as a commodity to be consumed rather than a commitment to be kept.  This is why if the commodity of marriage does not live up to whatever arbitrary standards a particular spouse sets for the relationship, that spouse is willing to search elsewhere for a commodity that better meets their expectations.

Certainly there are – and should be – expectations for marriage.  The Bible itself lays out certain expectations, including faithfulness (cf. Matthew 19:4-9) and gentleness (cf. Colossians 3:19).  But a crassly consumer oriented view of marriage rooted in arbitrarily prescribed criteria is destined for failure.  One person cannot meet the wants – or, for that matter, even the needs – of another person all the time.  It is for these times, when disappointment with your spouse sets in, that commitment is needed.  It is for these times that God’s wisdom on marriage is necessary:  “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).  Marriage means holding fast to your spouse in spite of disappointments, frustrations, and hurts along the way.  This is what makes a marriage work.  This is what makes a marriage last.

Your spouse will not always meet all your wants and needs.  But your spouse can be devoted to you in love – even when you’re not all that fulfilling to be around.  And you can be devoted to your spouse in love – even when they’re not all that fulfilling to be around.  And such devotion can, in and of itself, be fulfilling.

[1] Sam Roberts, “Divorce After 50 Grows More Common,” New York Times (9.20.2013).