Healing the Gender War through Christian Marriage

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.” – G. K. Chesterton

There is something rotten in the state of the relation between the sexes. The statistics are consistently bleak. Young people are not getting married, or they are getting married much later; birth rates in the developed world are plummeting; a new political divergence between the sexes is emerging, with women predominantly leaning progressive and men increasingly drawn to the right; dating moved from the analog world to the internet, from the internet to dating apps, and now the conclusion seems to be that dating apps have made romance worst, not better.

Even the romantic comedy movie genre seems like an artifact from a previous, more innocent era. It feels like, as a society, we have quite forgotten how to fall in love. We have lost romance, and I almost feel nostalgic for the problems we had with the excess of romance. What killed romance? I don’t pretend to know the full answer to such a question, but clearly pornography has played a leading role. With young men (and women) typically being exposed to violent pornography in early adolescence, what chance does friendship really have to flower into attraction or romance?

Pornography takes the sacred consummation of covenantal love, the apogee of romance between two human persons, and desecrates it, reducing it to mere animal urges. By this defiling of the marriage bed the entire chain of romance is broken. If love is meant to grow organically and naturally between a young man and a young maiden, it’s difficult to come up with anything that could so deeply derail that enchanted procession as the mixture of dating apps and pornography that characterizes the modern mating market.

But there is good news, because I am convinced the church of Christ has an important role to play in preserving and modeling a healthy culture of romance and marriage for a watching world that has so completely lost its way. The culture is disillusioned and exhausted, tired of the cynicism and the failed promises of ever-more-freedom, one-more-hookup, the-transgression-of-one-more-sexual-taboo as the answer to all our problems. Into this dysfunction, the church has an opportunity to show a better way: marriages that reveal a complementarity in harmony with the created order and that manifest genuine friendship, romance, and selfless love.

It’s in Genesis that we find the original blueprint for the relations between the sexes as well as the defining characteristics of how sin has marred this blueprint ever since the fall. When I was a campus student leader at Bible College, I started to notice something troubling percolating among the student body. What I noticed was a spirit of division growing up between the young men and young women, fueled by a narrative of grievances between the two groups. It resembled the kinds of attitudes that are sadly all too common in the public square whenever discussion turns to the relations between the sexes. I also started noticing that the harmony that had existed between the men and women began to be frayed and strained as both sides were pressured to find solidarity primarily within their own gender grouping.

As a student leader this was very concerning to me because one of the most wholesome aspects to on-campus student life had been precisely the absence of these divisions. Indeed there was a healthy amount of brotherly and sisterly affection which was openly expressed between the hundred or so 18-25 year-olds who made up our little community.

It was to Genesis that we turned to find language to describe the problem we were facing. An honest reading of Genesis 3 made the nature of the perennial problem clear: men tended to be too passive or to dominate selfishly and women tended to usurp or undermine the men. Each side can always feel smug and satisfied by focusing on the sins and failures of the other group. And as long as this is what we do, we can be sure we’ll never get anywhere good. Part of the answer was just laying out this deep-rooted dynamic for all to see. These conversations were illuminating and convicting, and many humbled themselves in repentance when they identified how they had been contributing to the division.

The next step was giving them a vision of an alternative to the mutual suspicion and division that we see so much of. The New Testament provides the blueprint: that of the redeemed household, with brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. In a healthy family, siblings genuinely want the best for one another. I do think there are natural limits on what kinds of personal friendships can exist between men and women before the inevitable complications arise, but that’s a topic for another time. For now, we can simply assert that the brotherly love Christians are to have for one another includes everyone, male and female.

That addresses, if partially, the division and hostility between the sexes, but what about romance?

Here we find more to work with in the Old Testament than in the New. We have a number of narratives that seem to be more than merely descriptive, even if they are tainted by sin: Jacob and Leah, Ruth and Boaz, but especially the love poetry par excellence, the Song of Songs. Add to that this enigmatic Proverb:

“There are three things that are too amazing for me,

four that I do not understand:

the way of an eagle in the sky,

the way of a snake on a rock,

the way of a ship on the high seas,

and the way of a man with a young woman” (Prov 30:18-19).

Pondering these Scriptural depictions of romance will go a long way to correcting some of the worst confusions and distortions of our day. One of the things that becomes clear from these passages is that the experience of falling in love is a great good gift. Yes, it needs to be informed by wisdom and protected from the predations of sin, but it is good.

The relations between the sexes are fraught. In marriage, we find the reconciliation of the sexes that serves as a blueprint for peace. A happily married person, in view of their love and partnership with someone of the opposite sex, will necessarily be far slower to participate in broadsides against the other sex.

In Christian marriage, we find not only that, but a living picture of the gospel itself. Indeed, the Bible is clear that marriage, far from being an arbitrary arrangement that allows for the continuation of the species, is of cosmic significance, for it was designed from the very beginning to reveal something glorious about God: ”This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).

In our day of relational carnage, a thriving marriage is a beacon of light, a promise that there is a better way than what the world offers. May the church be a place that welcomes the many wounded refugees from the gender war, a place where such people can learn God’s good design for men and women and even, perhaps, a place where they can do what men and women have always done: fall in love and get hitched.

(Happy 16th anniversary to my lovely wife, Kaitlyn, God’s great good gift to me).

God’s Jealousy, Part 2

It is in the writings of Hosea (the entire book, but especially chapters 1-3) and Jeremiah (chapter 3) that the metaphor of spiritual adultery is developed and clarified. God is Israel’s husband; Israel is God’s bride. But while God is a good, loving, and faithful husband, Israel is described as an adulterous, wayward, promiscuous, whoring wife. Portions of Ezekiel (chapters 16, 23) are so graphic that I wonder how many churches could even stand to hear them read out loud. No wonder Ezekiel didn’t rank atop the podcast ratings… his message was not often pleasant. The language in these passages is jarring, profoundly unsettling, and offensive. And that is precisely the point.

We, like the Israelites before us, are far too adept at euphemising, excusing, minimizing, and denying sin. Needless to say, God seems to take a different view – judging the unfaithfulness of his covenant people to be heinous, evil, and personal. And perhaps that personal element of betrayal is what this metaphor of spiritual adultery really conveys like nothing else. It is one thing to sin in a judicial sense against the law of a good judge, and it is one thing to fall short of the standard of your benevolent master, but it is something quite different to blatantly cheat on your spouse with other lovers.

Just think about the relational dynamics of the first two pictures of sin in contrast with the third. As a lawbreaker and a stumbling servant, I could still look my Lord in the eye, admit my mistake, and vow to do better. But not so easily if my unfaithfulness is personal betrayal to such a jealous and faithful spouse. This is what makes the metaphor of spiritual adultery so powerful, and for the guilty party (that’s you and me, folks) so devastating.

But in that moment of terrible realization, when all the excuses and side-stepping is done, and you find yourself sitting slumped on a pile of ashes, a new light shines. That new light is the incredible promises of reconciliation, mercy, and restitution that we find in the very same passages that moments ago revealed the ugliness of our sin.

Consider Hosea 2:14-20

“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
    I will lead her into the wilderness
    and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
    and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
    as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

“In that day,” declares the Lord,
    “you will call me ‘my husband’;
    you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
    no longer will their names be invoked.
In that day I will make a covenant for them
    with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
    and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
    I will abolish from the land,
    so that all may lie down in safety.
I will betroth you to me forever;
    I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
    in love and compassion.
I will betroth you in faithfulness,
    and you will acknowledge the Lord.”

Or Jeremiah 3:14-15

“Return, faithless people,” declares the Lord, “for I am your husband. I will choose you—one from a town and two from a clan—and bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.”

Or lastly, Ezekiel 16:60, 62-63

“Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you… So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

The language of spiritual adultery is the nuclear weapon of sin-exposition. It’s God’s most potent form of argument, and to those with ears to hear, it is profoundly humbling. Embedded in the book of Hosea is this idea that God would come at his people with such severe denouncements so that they might realize their sickness and seek him.

We see this amazing interaction in Hosea 5:13-15, followed by 6:1-3.

“When Ephraim saw his sickness,
    and Judah his sores,
then Ephraim turned to Assyria,
    and sent to the great king for help.
But he is not able to cure you,
    not able to heal your sores.
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
    like a great lion to Judah.
I will tear them to pieces and go away;
    I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them.
Then I will return to my lair
    until they have borne their guilt
    and seek my face—
in their misery
    they will earnestly seek me.”

“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
    but he will heal us;
he has injured us
    but he will bind up our wounds.
After two days he will revive us;
    on the third day he will restore us,
    that we may live in his presence.
Let us know the Lord;
    let us press on to know him.
As surely as the sun rises,
    he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
    like the spring rains that water the earth.”

Here are five things I think we can take away from reflecting on God’s Jealousy.

1. Seeing God’s jealousy forces us to un-domesticate God.

There’s an element of unpredictability in God’s jealousy. He is merciful and patient, but woe to the one who experiences the heat of his holy desire! As C.S. Lewis put it so well, he is good, but he is not safe. This is such a needed remedy for us sleepy believers who have a strong tendency to domesticate God with our selective memory and reading. Even Psalm 23 underscores this when at the end David writes “surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The verb translated “follow” literally means “to pursue, chase, persecute.” There’s an intensity and an intentionality that is lost in translation. Instead of capturing the predatory spirit of the verb, we are left with the rather limp image of a puppy following a child.

2. Seeing God’s jealousy sobers us about our sin, and our redemption.

I touched on this earlier, so just a quick word. In light of all that we’ve seen, our sin is uglier than we thought. But the beauty of the gospel is that this ugliness only serves to humble us further (to remember and be ashamed and never again open our mouths, as in Ezekiel 16), and to underscore, highlight, and magnify the depth of the mercy and the sweetness of the grace that would so completely forgive such misdeeds.

3. Seeing God’s jealousy helps us realize the seriousness of God’s covenant with us.

Here’s one where the Scriptures really have to renew our typical way of thinking. We are so accustomed to the optional, leave it if you don’t like it, take it for a spin, no strings attached kind of deal that we can import that kind of thinking into our relationship with God. But the truth is that we are in a covenant with God, with covenant obligations to be faithful and to worship Him alone. This is not the typical we way we frame our Christianity, but that is probably more due to our cultural bias than to a balanced Biblical understanding.

4. Seeing God’s jealousy helps us understand some of the ways God works in our lives.

If God is a jealous God who, in the words of Zechariah 8, is “very jealous… burning with jealousy for” his people, then this might help explain how he deals with us. Looking back on my own life, I definitely see God’s jealousy as one of the reasons he allowed me to go through burnout in ministry. When ministry becomes a rival lover, it becomes very dispensable to God. I suddenly go from Very Important Leader to entirely replaceable. Indeed – for my soul’s sake, I must be replaced, rebuked, brought to repent, and then perhaps restored. Likewise, in all our lives, a function of God’s love is that he brooks no rivals. A redefinition of love for some of us, maybe, but love indeed.

5. Seeing God’s jealousy reminds us that we don’t get to pick and choose which attributes of God we like.

There is a counter-intuitive argument to be made that I first heard from Tim Keller. The argument rests simply on the nature of relationship. If we deny the authority of Scripture, and do away with the troublesome aspects of God’s deeds and character (as defined by our enlightened cultural moment, of course), what we are left with is inevitably a glorified reflection of ourselves. A deified mirror image of our own beliefs. But this is plainly not a God with whom you can have a real relationship, if by real relationship we mean, among other things, the ability to challenge, surprise, and rebuke. The God of orthodox Christianity is revealed to us, and we must change our minds and our beliefs to line up with that revelation; not change the revelation to line up with our own thoughts.

Five Years (and Counting…) of Love!

Five years ago today, after New Testament Survey class, I asked a really pretty girl if she wanted to go on a walk with me, and she said yes. It was at least 9:30pm by then and we walked up to the park by the local highschool, and I asked her if she wanted to sit on a bench with me, and she said yes. Then I rambled on for a little bit while I nervously kicked some gravel pebbles with my toe and eventually asked her if she would like to date me, and she said yes. Then we were really happy and I asked her if she wanted to walk all the way to Crabby Joe’s restaurant where a large group of students were hanging out, and she said yes. Then when we got there I asked her if she wanted to share a strawberry milkshake with me, and she said yes. Then I asked her if she wanted me to pay, and she said yes. .. !! .. Just kidding I didn’t ask her that.

Here’s to five wonderful years with a wonderful girl by my side who has made all the difference in my life.

Here’s an old slideshow – it needs serious updating! I’ll see if we can’t whip something up. But in the meantime here’s a folksy song with some pictures of our dating life.

And here are two more recent pics, with a notable addition in one of them.