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I’ve been asked by many of you to offer a series on marriage and I’m pleased to do so. I’ve now been married for more than twenty-seven years and I have officiated over numerous marriages, performed hundreds of hours of pre-marital counseling, and I have counseled and coached numerous couples as they navigate the challenges of marriage. When I speak to couples, I’m told I have a unique perspective, and unlike anything they have heard from psychology chairs, self-help books, and popular podcasts. For this reason, I am sharing this content in the hope that any comer can take this wisdom and apply as needed.

I want to make it clear that I will be promoting a marriage based upon the principles of the Bible, but don’t check out just yet. I understand that the Bible makes many people skeptical or twitchy, especially if your assumption is based on those toxic cultish hierarchies. Not only does this fictional flow chart evaporate with a careful exposition of scripture, but the cultural conditioning behind it remains as toxic and unbiblical as it ever was. My work over the last decade has been to liberate the wisdom of the Bible from fundamentalism, where it has been obscured and manipulated for power and oppression. Rejecting the toxic vapor emitted in the name of religion is understandable and I will not stop you from that endeavor. However, throwing the baby out with the bathwater has meant that we now live in a world where men and women have embraced the world’s pathetically low view of marriage. To the point that young people are asking: “What is the point of marriage?”

This series will seek to restore a high-view of marriage and liberate the world by repatriating the design authored by the designer. You are free to reject this if you’d like, but I ask that you do so after hearing me out, not prior. We have nothing to lose by learning how true healing can be restored, and everything to gain.

“And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:22-25)

Fear not, I’m not going to take a Hebrew poem from thousands of years ago and make war with science as so many have done in the creation debate. I have elected to start here because this is the first mention that Adam and Eve were married, and I believe the missing ingredients for a healthy marriage are reflected in this historic wisdom literature. In just three verses there are at least five watershed principles that if ignored, will create the pain of a living divorce. For example:

1. “God made…” and “Flesh of my flesh“, Men and women are comprised of exactly the same underpinnings, though designed as “like-opposites“. We are equal but different and the differences are necessary and not arbitrary, and this is purposely designed by God which means the marriage comprises both parties as well as God himself. This marriage of three is both horizontal and vertical. Thus as the two grow toward their vertical, they essentially grow toward each other in the horizontal. The fastest path toward your spouse is toward God.
2. Women are beautiful, required, and vital derivatives “taken out” of men. The design is mutual completion, not emulation. Interdependence not independence or codependence. Modern feminism hates this because it’s philosophy is birthed out of the curse which comes later in chapter 3:16 “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”. Understanding this principle will liberate women not oppress them. The angrier the woman, the more she hates this aspect of reality, and some will go to extreme lengths in vain to prove it wrong.
3. “Leaving and cleaving” (hold fast) is vital to a successful marriage. The subversion of our families of origin and their “hold” on us is vital or the marriage will be forever toxic.
4. “One Flesh” is clearly a reference to the importance and intimacy of sexual union, but it goes much farther. A marriage is the end of the individual and the beginning of a new-shared-entity. My wife calls this “being on the same page.” Few marriages ever really understand this, especially in the modern world where this wisdom is ignored.
5. “Naked and Unashamed” is that freedom of having no secrets, history or even potential liabilities that are covered over. The free marriage is one where spouses let each other into those most vulnerable aspects of life, sharing all things together, both good and bad. There are no illusions about the fact we are marrying sinners who live in a fallen world, and God’s redemptive grace is extended to each other through the marriage.

We’ll be revisiting these themes as I weave them (and others) into this series. I hope you can see immediately that even among the devout, very few of us can appreciate yet alone successfully apply this biblical framework for marriage. This brief snapshot of revealed wisdom establishes my premise for this series, namely: There are very few actual marriages in the world. Most people are experiencing a divorce to which they are legally bonded, and not experiencing marriage.

When I point this out in my counseling sessions, nearly everyone who hears this is shocked and immediately disagrees with my assessment. It takes some time for this reality to sink in. This is because most couples are operating on an inaccurate definition of marriage, which means they are living in a delusion. The marriage that most people refer to is the legal pair bond established by the State. For most, marriage has everything to do with the ceremony and the signature. We think, If a ceremony happened, one is considered married, if it didn’t happen, one is considered unmarried. That definition is incomplete.

This means the definition of divorce is similarly conflated. If a judge signs off on the divorce papers, then the marriage is over and a couple is considered divorced. Now I want to point out that this legal, societal definition is extremely important. I am not claiming that the “paper” means nothing because it absolutely does. However, the couple who uses this incomplete, legal definition, upholds a very low view of marriage and lives in an illusion of security, fidelity, and trust, none of which are affected by this legal definition. The deeper marriage is presupposed by the external codification. Society is healthier with these legal pair bonds, children are healthier with these legal pair bonds, and the added layer of “legality” makes abandonment slightly less convenient and can afford couples enough of a deterrent that they focus upon the health of the relationship and make necessary changes to improve it.

Throughout this series I will be deepening the definition of marriage with the goal of bringing both healing and liberation to our marriages. The first question we must ask ourselves is this:

Am I in a marriage or in a living divorce?

Let me offer some lenses through which you can gain a line of sight. We are in a marriage if we are facing our spouses and moving toward union with them. A million things bring two people together and another million things can move us apart. The conscious act of the will to “close the gap” between people is the practice of marriage or joining. Marriage is a VERB more than it is a NOUN. Any action, thought, emotion, or experience, unconscious or conscious, that creates a gap of any size, between spouses, is the practice of divorce. If this is surprising to us, or if we are incredulous toward this definition, then we need know that we will never have a marriage that is better than how we think. The common experience is not that of a marriage, but the experience of lacking self awareness, the will and discipline to be anything but comfortable or upset that we are not comfortable. 

We frame this as ‘happiness.”

The good news for us is that if we want things to be otherwise, all we need is a willing partner and we can have the beginning experiences of marriage in moments. We don’t need years in therapy, we don’t have to solve every childhood pain or life question, we can simply begin to face one another again and the healing will take us to the next thing. Like driving at night, we only need to see the next 100 feet or so. If you do not have a willing participant. The only option you have is to focus on your own transformation and every genuine change will create a corresponding shift in how the relationship functions and sometimes, that can be winsome for a disintegrated spouse.

If you or a loved one are in a living divorce and don’t desire to be, invite them to listen to this post or podcast and then open up a discussion. Share your desire to go deeper in your marriage. Gaining your GPS coordinates will be profoundly helpful, and perhaps things will change. On the spiritual or vertical front, may I invite you to consider that you may also be living another form of divorce…that where a “perceived” gap remains between you and Maker. I can offer very little help in the horizontal when the vertical is ignored. Self awareness is the byproduct of spiritual asking, seeking, and knocking. There is no other way to find our true self which is grounded in God. Skip this consideration, and only a pseudonym can exist and fake relationships are what we all despise. Start with your most pressing question.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

I’m convinced that if our world could see more real marriages, we would desire them more than all the other things of life, and as a result, we would train our children how to hold and uphold a high view of marriage. The result would transform not just our marriages, but our lives, and our entire world. Our inability to be successful in marriage is hallmark of a society in perel.