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We are being bombarded with propaganda that would have us believe that marriage and the husband-wife relationship have failed the tests of time and experience. True, divorce is rampant, but I deny that it is the God-ordained institution of marriage that has failed. When a marriage fails, it is because the people involved have failed in one or more important characteristics. Marriage works as God intended, only when both partners behave as God directs. A large percentage of marriages are entered into for very shallow reasons, often resulting in divorce for equally shallow reasons.
Marriage is not for babies, either physically or emotionally. We will do well to discuss some of the trademarks of immaturity that lead to marital disasters. I hope these thoughts will help those who are unhappy in their marriages. I write them also for those who are, or someday will be, contemplating marriage. I trust that even those who are happily married may profit from reviewing these thoughts. Consider these marriage destroyers:
- Babies are totally selfish, always seeking their own way. So are some adults. If one marriage partner is self-centered it is bad enough. When two selfish people marry, a powder keg is created that will eventually explode. This is the seed-trait of all the other traits of immaturity.
- Babies are not grateful for sacrifices their parents make. One who is never grateful to one’s mate for sacrifices and favors bestowed is asking for problems.
- A husband or wife who will not carry one’s share of the load, do one’s work, or fulfill one’s responsibilities places a strain on a marriage that often destroys it.
- Some people will not stay with a job more than a few weeks before quitting to jump to another. Some never finish the projects they start. This inconsistency causes much marital misery.
- Over-reaction. Some react to the inevitable problems and conflicts in marriage like children. Such a wife may run home to mother at the first disagreement with her husband. Such a husband may react to losing his job or to having an argument with his wife by drinking himself into a stupor. To avenge some slight (real or imagined), some commit adultery.
- Foolish standards of love. Whether a man takes his wife to see her parents at Christmastime or whether she cooks his favorite meal once a week does not necessarily indicate love or its absence, yet many marriages have been dissolved over such trivial “standards” of “love.”
- Forgetting the “Golden Rule”: “All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them…” (Mat. 7:12). Behavior based on this principle would forestall most problems in marriage and/or cure those that occur.
[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in The Lighthouse, weekly bulletin of Northpoint Church of Christ, Denton, TX, March 18, 2007, of which I was editor.]
Attribution: From TheScripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner, curator, and administrator.
