Historically marriage has looked like a surrender of the wife to the husband. The man’s dreams, vision, and talents were of chief importance and a wife got to be along for the ride. This is a generalization, but over the course of history it is also a very generous description of the lives of most wives. However, in our present American culture there is another tendency I find to be just as destructive to the original design of marriage. This is the tendency for husband and wife to more or less continue living their same lives, just married. I have actually heard pastors make statements such as, “You shouldn’t have to leave anything behind in marriage,” and I have had arguments with friends about whether marriage is a death. I believe it should be. Before you get on my back for speaking doom and gloom, let me explain. I like to think of it in terms of business.
When two businesses come into contact with each other and determine in one way or another to take up business together, there are three different ways this can happen:
The first is a hostile takeover, or buy out, where one business gets absorbed into the larger. It loses it’s name, and simply becomes an addition to the other entity. An example of such a takeover with names you might recognize is the AT&T’s acquisition of Bellsouth. Bellsouth now ceases to exist, and its customers, employees etc. are now AT&T. Bellsouth had a culture which is now gone. It had methods for doing things, which are now discarded. It is AT&T. This happens in some marriages. In marriage the more powerful partner can absorb the weaker one into their life, their future, their trajectory. Traditionally this leaves a wife submitting her all to the future of the husband. She takes the husband’s name, and the marriage becomes primarily about him and his interests. Unfortunately, the Bible still has a nasty habit of insisting, “Man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”
The second model in business as in marriage is the cohabitation model. It is the partnership of grocery stores with Holiday gas stations. If you get gas with us, you will get cheaper groceries there, and if you get groceries there, you will get cheaper gas with us. The two are partners, but they remain in separate businesses. One thinks gas, and the other thinks groceries, and neither needs to change their DNA to live together. Many folks go into marriage with this assumption, and many marriages actually function for years, and even decades under such a model. Person A cares deeply for person B. They aid them in every way possible in their journey, because they are in fact partners. And the inverse is also true. But such a couple never becomes one. They never become a “we” which is singular. And the Bible, again with that nasty habit insists, “The two shall become one flesh.”
The final model is a merger. Exxon and Mobil get together and say we have both been very successful apart from each other, but imagine what we could do together, and they become ExxonMobil. There is a name change, and by necessity a practice and policy and culture change from both sides. Exxon can still do what it does best, and Mobil likewise, but they can no longer do it separately. They cannot be separated. They are one. They need to figure out what life together looks like, and in this sense both must die. In order to undergo a successful merger. They must both check themselves at the door, and together ask the question, “Who are we going to be?” “What does it mean to be Exxonmobil?” “What does it mean to be the Wiens Family?” In such a situation, I have no rights as an individual anymore because I don’t exist anymore. I am not entitled to my way, my dreams, or even my particular gifts. Exxon and Mobil chose to become ExxonMobil and inevitably they will bring much of their original DNA into the partnership, but it cannot be expected. Likewise in marriage. A + B must always = C, not AB, not BA, but C. A gives up his “A-ness,” and B gives up her “B-ness”, so they can together determine what the “ness” of C is. When this doesn’t happen, marriage doesn’t happen.
The new company, and the healthy marriage may have and should have a division of labor, but marriage cannot be done in silos. I speak here specifically to Christians. The Christian couple must merge. They must show the world what unity looks like, what shared vision and mission look like.
They must become a new creation greater than their individual parts and they must do so because such is what Christ is doing with the world.
We are His ambassadors. He is bringing all things together as one in Him. The new has come, the old has gone. There is a new creation. The Christ is marrying the world and He will not check Himself or us at the door. God will make his Home with man, and it will be good. Jesus + the world = a new name, and it is called Heaven!
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