June is the traditional month for weddings. Marriage expectations are high. Most brides and grooms expect to have all their hopes and needs met by the other. Is this possible?
In God’s perfect world, yes. In a fallen and sin-filled world, no.
Marriage was instituted by God. It is a union of two completely different people — male and female — for the benefit of children and society. It is a relationship that models the agape love of patience, kindness, selflessness, and faithfulness. It builds family and community. It mentors the vibrant and compatible roles of manhood and womanhood for generations to come.
History explains. After God created man, He said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). God wanted man to know that he was not yet complete. He had no mate appropriate for him and he had no means of procreation.
“Fit for him” literally means “like his opposite.” Imagine that. She fit perfectly with him, yet they were not the same — anatomically, hormonally, or psychologically. With God, they would procreate new life. She would be the vessel for the young one he would protect.
Equal, but different, the man and woman would unite in a partnership. Their unique character traits and personalities would harmonize. In God’s order of creation, a “helper” (Hebrew: ezer) would be an “assistant” and “ally.” The ezerwoman would not be dissimilar from the “Helper” sent by Jesus to the disciples. That Helper, the Holy Spirit, was called a “comforter,” “advocate,” and “encourager.”
The woman would know joy and contentment in her role of “helper.” She would find limitless possibilities in her multi-faceted vocation. She would help man to be a better steward over all creation. She would help nurture all the living. The man would rejoice in his completeness. He would love the woman built from his rib and guard her life as if it were his own. He would serve not his own glory, but the glory of God (to her benefit).
In the first marriage, there was no fear. Resentment. Envy. Frustration. Anger. Heartache. Disappointment.
Everything changed when the first husband and wife sinned against God. They were equally guilty, yet the consequences of their sins were as different as their natures.
Today’s bride and groom may expect to have all their needs met. But, in a fallen and imperfect world, no person can do that for another. Only God can and will fulfill our deepest needs. At the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Bishop of London noted, “As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great of burden.”
Let us ease the burden with encouragement. Sin distorts God’s perfect plan, but the original design is still in place. It serves well when trusted.
- A woman “fit for him” remains a husband’s opposite. She is made to think, act, and love differently. Sin complicates those differences. Not only are they male and female, they have contrasting personality traits, quirks, familial histories, and experiences that may threaten to tear the marriage apart. But, there is another choice. With forgiveness and practice, husband and wife can merge their best qualities for the benefit of a stronger marriage. They can stop playing “me against you” and become “we.” They can unite as a team for the sake of their children.
- A woman’s role still complements the man’s. She is his “helper.” Regardless of sin and circumstances, she has a choice: to help him be a good or poor steward; to encourage or discourage; to build up or tear down; to connect him to children or disconnect. He has the choice to use God’s Word for life, warn against death, and cover his wife and children with his faithfulness — or not.
Equal, yet different, husband and wife have an example to follow.
Jesus is equal to God. He is God yet, in His role as the Son, He submitted to His Father’s will in order to be the Savior of the world. A wife who respects her husband and submits to his appropriate leadership is really submitting to God. A man who loves his wife as Christ loved the Church is submitting himself to God.
Marriage expectations? On this earth, husband and wife won’t make each other completely happy. Won’t meet each others every need. Warm fuzzies will fade. But, Jesus in a marriage makes two “better than one.” Opposites who glorify God rather than self change the environment. Root deeper. Build stronger. Persist against every foe.
A threefold cord (God, man and woman) is not quickly broken” (Eccl. 4:12).
Ezerwoman's Blog 
The Church Has Failed the Culture
Posted in Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, Parenting & Education, tagged " homosexuality, Biblical worldview, Christianity, church, environment, hymns, Jesus Christ, judgment, millennials, religion, sexuality, sin, social justice, the Cross, worship on August 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Recently, the Presbyterian Church (USA) dropped the hugely popular hymn, “In Christ Alone,” from its hymnal after its authors, Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, refused to omit a reference to Jesus satisfying the wrath of God.
In a powerful response over at First Things, which we’ll link to at BreakPoint.org, Colson Center chairman Timothy George quotes Richard Niebuhr who, back in the 1930s, described this kind of revisionist Protestantism as a religion in which “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
The response from the PCUSA, that their problem was not with God’s wrath but with the idea that Christ’s death satisfied God’s wrath, doesn’t change the fundamental problem of what George calls “squishy” theology. Theology is supposed to be true, not palatable.
Along these lines, maybe you’ve seen the recent viral opinion piece on CNN by
my friend, Christian blogger and author Rachel Held Evans. In it, Evans offers her answers to the truly important question, “why are millennials leaving the Church?”
To counter the exodus of young people from American churches, Evans says it’s time to own up to our shortcomings and give millennials what they really want—not a change in style but a change in substance. The answer to attracting millennials, she writes, is NOT “hipper worship bands” or handing out “lattés,” but actually helping them find Jesus.
Amen. I couldn’t agree more.
Then she goes on, “[the Church is] too political, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to [LGBT] people.” Well, okay—anytime political programs co-opt our faith, or we ignore the needy and fail to love those with whom we disagree, we do the Gospel of Christ great harm.
But when she writes that attracting millennials to Jesus involves “an end to the culture wars,” “a truce between science and faith,” being less “exclusive” with less emphasis on sex, without “predetermined answers” to life’s questions, now I want to ask–are we still talking about the Jesus of biblical Christianity?
The attempt to re-make Jesus to be more palatable to modern scientific and especially sexual sensibilities has been tried before. In fact, it’s the reason Niebuhr said that brilliant line that I quoted earlier.
He watched as the redefining “Jesus Project” gave us mainline Protestantism, which promotes virtually everything on Evans’ list for millennials. The acceptance of homosexuality, a passion for the environment, prioritizing so-called “social justice” over transformational truth are all embodied in denominations like the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
But religious millennials aren’t flocking to mainline Protestant congregations. Mainline churches as a whole have suffered withering declines in the last few decades—especially among the young. What gives?
Well, in an another essay which appeared in First Things over twenty years ago, a trio of Christian researchers offered their theory on what’s behind the long, slow hemorrhage of mainline Protestant churches:
“In our study,” they wrote, “the single best predictor of church participation turned out
to be belief—orthodox Christian belief, and especially the teaching that a person can be saved only through Jesus Christ.” This, said the researchers, was not (and I add, is still not) a teaching of mainline Protestantism. As a dwindling denomination rejects a hymn which proclaims salvation “in Christ alone,” this research sounds prophetic.
Evans is right that evangelical Christianity is responsible in many ways for the exodus of millennials. But ditching the Church’s unpalatable “old-fashioned” beliefs to become more “relevant” to the young won’t bring them back.
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