On about the third day after we first met, Seth and I were on our way to a little Italian restaurant in Memphis when he asked me, out of the blue: “So, Julie, if we got married, and God called me to live in a mud hut, would that be okay with you?”
For a few frenzied seconds, my poor teenage-girl brain was very confused. Seth had been very clear that he didn’t feel called to a foreign mission field, and so part of me was trying to figure out why God would call him to live in a mud hut in North America, and another part was thinking mud hut? Does he feel called to live in a mud hut? Why a mud hut? What would we do for a bathroom? I think I missed something here. But then I realized what he was really asking: are you the type of person who wants to live a good moral life, live in a house, have a family, try to live a righteous life, and be actively involved in a local church–or are you the kind of person who is happy to drop everything and lose everything for no reason beyond the fact that it’s the way God is leading us? And also: are you the type of person who would willfully give up the usefulness of a kitchen, a bathroom, and a floor, simply because your husband asks you?
So I answered. And I realized that his question was no less insightful into his character than my answer was to mine.
In the past six months or so, I’ve realized that a very large number of the people I knew in high school and college are starting to get married. Still lots of singles in the group, but a growing number of people who are “together,” engaged, or married. And–having been married for going on four years–I’m really terrified for the souls of many of these old friends of mine. Some of their prospective spouses’ salvation is in serious question, others are marrying into heretical denominations, and countless more seem to be spending their lives in pursuit of the American dream, Christian-style, which says let’s get married, have two kids, volunteer in VBS, go to the local MOPS, and tithe; we won’t cheat on our taxes and we’ll give to charity.
I hear phrases like “I’m so excited–I know God just made us for each other, we have so many interests in common and we just understand each other so much!” Because, you know, God’s main concern is that you can find a board game you both like to play. Or “he’s such a great guy; he has a really great job and our careers work together so perfectly, and he’s so sweet and sensitive–he makes great cappuccinos!” Personality equals greatness. And, my favorite of all: “we even want the same number of kids!” Since the whole kid thing is governed by wishes and not by, I don’t know, the multitude of Bible verses on the subject. Just once, I want one of my friends to pull me aside and tell me that they’re deliriously in love with their boyfriend/fiancé/husband because he makes it clear everyday that his top adoration is Christ, and constantly points her toward the truth of the Gospel, enough that it makes her uncomfortable, embarrassed, and aware of her own insufficiency.
One thing I’ve learned in the past four years is that it’s very easy for a husband and a wife to become alike spiritually. We can drag each other down, we can build each other up, and the effect is effortless. We have a huge impact on each other, even when we don’t want to. It’s hard for one of us to be in close fellowship with God when the other is spiritually depressed, and conversely easy for us to be lifted out of spiritual dimness when the other is passionate and fiery. Solomon is a prime example of this; 1 Kings 11:4 says that ” when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God” (ESV). Even with all his wisdom–and verbal communication with the Most High–Solomon still succumbed to his wives’ spiritual state.
Even more than our relationship with each other impacting our relationship with God, though, our relationship with God impacts our relationship with each other. Nothing brings us together like the feeling of catching Seth’s hand in mine in silent support during an intense theological discussion that’s going on, and nothing is quite as satisfying as curling up to each other to sleep after a spiritually harrowing night. Sometimes there’s no words, just togetherness: nothing can give one-ness on the same scale as pursing the Gospel together. There’s no comparison. Scripture doesn’t give us very many examples of couples where both are clearly strong believers, but it’s worth noticing that the couples who seem to have the most secure marriages–Abraham and Sarah, Boaz and Ruth, Joseph and Mary, Zechariah and Elizabeth–are the same couples where we can read both parties praising and praying to God. And I’d wager that Priscilla and Aquila were among the happiest people in the whole New Testament; they certainly seem to have been inseparable!
Nothing can make a marriage a success the way that a shared commitment to Christ will. Our love for each other–our capacity to love each other–increases as we draw nearer to God. Nonbelievers can never experience the most ultimate pleasure of marriage, and weaker believers cannot experience it as fully. There’s no earthly delight more agreeable than a godly spouse–and, I suspect, no earthly torment more horrible than a wayward or apathetic one. And on the other side of the coin, apart from the Gospel itself, I don’t think there’s anything that can change us, for better or for worse, than the person we live with day in and day out.
2 Corinthians 6:14-15 are the famous verses used to point out how wrong it is to marry a nonbeliever, but I think it’s useful to note the reasons Paul gives: “what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?” [ESV] No matter how many common interests two people may have, if one is righteous and one is lawless, they have nothing in common. No partnership, no fellowship, no accord; no shared portion.
And so, common interests, pleasant personalities, good jobs, even going to the same church or writing identical doctrinal statements: these things are not what we should be looking for. You can marry a seminary graduate with all the right words and excellent references, and still find out that he falls apart when his world falls down around him. Or you can marry somebody who obsesses over the proper method of courtship and reads every book Douglas Wilson, James Dobson, and Gary Smalley ever published, and learn what happens when he’s more concerned with his relationship with you than your relationship to God. It takes a lot more character to confront someone with their sin than to be a sensitive shoulder to cry on. It takes far greater maturity to look you in the eye and say, “if God takes you away from me then I will praise Him; He is all I need,” than to say, “darling, you’re my world and I couldn’t survive without you.”
That’s where the mud hut questions come in: Would you really abandon everything? Can you really smile when humanly everything is sorrow? Do you put your relationship with God above all, and regard your relationship with your wife/husband as only a tangent to that all-encompassing passion for Christ? Is your house going to stand strong when the rain starts to fall and all the sand washes away?
I pray that the marrying people of my generation would have greater vision, and that we all would be bold in confronting the horror of unequally yoked.
