Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to a young married couple, "It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love" (HT JP).
What did he mean?
He could have meant that you have made these promises to love one another, and by an act of will you will determine to love each other for the rest of your life. After all imagine the shame if you fail to keep your word, or the hurt you'll cause by disappointing your wife. I often hear Christians say something like "love is not a feeling, it is a decision" and admittedly that is better than the "love what you feel like", but ultimately it is self-produced and powered by fear.
Thankfully I think I see something more beautiful in my married friends...
Bonhoeffer could also have meant that with your marriage you have a new identity (something that sadly our culture only recognises in the change of the bride's name). Of course, people do deny that identity and live as if they have another identity even to the point of separating. But to friends of mine their marriage is now so intrinsic to who they are that to decide they no longer love each other is like denying the sky is blue.
That's not to say that the old identity of being two flesh is not constantly trying to reassert itself, but that is the value of the marriage covenant. The ceremony creates the reality as a speech-act, and then echoes down through the rest of life.
By hearing repeatedly in words and actions that you are one flesh, Mr and Mrs, husband and wife, the reality of an identity of love is sustained.
Similarly, but on a grander scale where union is not physical but Spiritual (with a big 'S'), we need the Gospel repeating to us constantly because we continually forget our new identity. Hearing it again and again, or eating it in the Lord's Supper, sustains us in reminding us of who we are, and makes us more like the people we already are.
No comments:
Post a Comment