Lake House Weddings & Family

I have four sisters. This past weekend, the fourth and youngest of them got married.

Instead of doing the traditional wedding, where you invite every Tom, Dick and Harry that you've met over the last twenty years and treat them to a night of dining, dancing, and drinking on your dime, my sister wanted to do something smaller and more intimate. She rented a large lake house outside of Charlotte and invited the immediate families on both sides down for the weekend. The wedding would be Saturday afternoon.

Everyone arrived on Thursday or Friday, we spent the day on the lake Friday, Friday night we BBQ'd and hung out at the house, Saturday we golfed (the guys) or lunched (the girls), and Saturday afternoon we had the wedding in the backyard. Afterwards, we had a catered dinner on the back patio overlooking the lake. The party went into the night, and then everyone went home on Sunday.

Aside from it being a great weekend, it also reminded me what really matters about a wedding, and why we do them in the first place.

The first reason, of course, is that marriage is a visible reminder to us of Christ's relationship with the church. It reminds us of the covenant that God makes with us, through Christ, that he is going to love us because he loves us, not based on the deservedness of the beloved, but simply because he has decided he will love us. It is unbreakable; it is unending. Marriage reminds us of this.

When we have a marriage ceremony, this is what we are commemorating. This solemn service is a reminder of the enormity of the commitment of marriage. It symbolizes far more than we typically think; more of us would do well to take it seriously.

The second reason we have a wedding, however, is so that the vows that we make are done in the presence of witnesses. If it were just about the solemn reminder of what we are doing, the ceremony could be done in my office. I could put the fear of God into the couple. Or, perhaps a judge, with black robe, hidden behind a large wooden desk, raised up so that the poor couple is put into a submissive position by design. Yet it's about more than the reminder; it's about the witnesses. And these witnesses to the vows aren't just witnesses, they are people who, ideally, will actually hold the couple accountable to the vows that they have seen them make. They will remind them of what they said they would do; they will help them keep those vows when life is difficult. They will be there for them, supporting them, so that when life or marriage gets hard, there are other people to lean on.

Whittle down the multitude of people at any given wedding to the handful of people who will actually take their "witnessing" seriously; who, when the hard part of the vows (the worse, the poorer, the sickness) becomes the reality of the vows, will actually be there to make sure that the having/holding and loving/cherishing will actually be maintained until death does the couple part; you might find that it's not much more than the immediate family anyway. 

Well-intentioned people want to celebrate with the couple getting married. They are genuinely joyful at the celebration the couple is experiencing; genuinely desiring to honor them and help them on in their marriage and in their life. But life is long. Memories fade. "Witnesses" forget what they saw. There are only so many commitments we can be a party to witnessing before it is beyond our ability to hold them all up when the difficulties come.

It's fun to have huge parties, but sometimes it can overshadow what it is that we are actually witnessing, and why we are even there to begin with. It was nice to know that as I looked at the faces of the people witnessing this couples vow, they were going to be with the couple long after the party ended...

Connecting the Discriminatory Dots

As Christians, we want our institutions like private, Christian colleges, to be able to set a standard of conduct for the employees of the organization that, as employees, they must agree to abide by. This includes both conduct related to the job (the employee may not teach heresy, as the organization defines it) and moral conduct unrelated to the job but which the institution assumes the employee either implicitly supports by their presence, or has agreed to support in their behavior even if it conflicts with their personal view. All are welcome to apply. All are welcome to disagree. But if an employee takes the job, there are certain mandates which they must adhere to. If they find that they can no longer adhere to them, the organization has the right to terminate the employee and the employee has the right to resign. As a result, Christians do not believe that this is discriminatory.

Our Government, as an institution, wants to set a standard for the conduct of it's employees that the employees must agree to abide by, which include conduct related to the job (the employee must issue marriage licenses, how the government defines them) as well as conduct unrelated to the job but which the government assumes the employee either implicitly supports by their presence, or have agreed to support in their behavior, even if it conflicts with their personal view (the employee will support President Obama, even if they didn't vote for him and hate his policies). All are welcome to apply. All are welcome to disagree. But if the employee takes the job, there are certain mandates which they must adhere to. If they find that they can no longer adhere to them, the government has the right to terminate the employee and the employee has the right to resign. As a result, many Christians think the Government is being discriminatory.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that we should be more careful in calling something discriminatory when we want the right to be able to do ourselves, lest that (real and important) right be taken from us.

Three Keys to a Successful Marriage

A couple of days ago my wife and I celebrated our 14th anniversary. I made the wise decision to get married in the year 2000, so that every year forward it would be easy to calculate the number of years we'd been married. I figured that might be good for a few browny points later on in life. 

This time around, Christi asked me to come up with "three keys" to a successful marriage. She also asked me to keep it brief. I reminded her that "brief" is relative. A short story is brief in comparison to a novel.

In any event, what follows are the three keys that I suggested. Take note, they aren't necessarily "Three practical tips for a better marriage." Maybe there is a post there waiting to happen. But these are three keys to a successful marriage, by which I mean a biblical marriage the way that God intended it. I'm convinced that if we get the purpose and meaning right, it'll be much easier to get to the behaviors (practical tips) that will make for an easier time in your marriage. If we skip the purpose and meaning and go right to the practical tips, however, we might be happy, but not necessarily successful, in the Biblical sense of marriage. So that's my disclaimer. And here are my three keys:

Understand the purpose of marriage: it's about Christ and his church. Marriage isn't a "right". It's not a convenience. It's deepest and most fulfilling purpose is to be a living parable of Christ's relationship with his bride, the church. Yes, the first marriage between Adam and Eve also fulfilled a longing for companionship. But it was always chiefly intended to point towards Jesus. Other relationships can meet our desire for companionship, but it's only marriage that was given this sacred purpose. If you go into your marriage with any other compass, you are going to be disappointed and you'll play into the cultural language of "marriage", almost all of which is talking about something completely unrelated to what Biblical marriage is actually intended to be.

Forge your own path. The Bible says "leave and cleave". That is, leave your parents. Cleave to your spouse. There's a fine line between relying on your parents for support (which can be a good thing) and tying your new identity into their identity (which is typically a really bad thing). God takes two people from two separate households, and unites them together into one new household. That new household will have elements from each of the previous households, but it will be completely unique and distinct in it's character (just like having a kid). And just like you shouldn't live your life vicariously through your kid, or force your kid to make the exact same choices that you made, you don't want that to happen with your marriage. Forge a new path. Create a new household. Appreciate the past, but don't cling to it. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to do things differently than you did growing up. If you're still clinging to the way your parents did things like it's "gospel", you're probably not ready to be married. It's great to have Mom & Dad involved in your life, especially when you have kids! It's not so great when they begin to get involved in your decision making process. It's almost always going to result in either a) undermining your spouse and his/her opinion or b) leaving you feeling bitter when the plans don't go how you want them to, since you'll often end up blaming the third party, if at all possible. So be willing to really leave and really cleave.

Be Content. It's always good advice to be content, but it's even more important in the 21st century. Everywhere you look (especially on the internet), you can find someone telling you that you are doing life wrong, or don't have the right stuff, but if you did it more like them or had what they have, then you'd be happy. Most–if not all–of it is BS. I'm not saying don't try to earn more, have a nicer house, a nicer car, more kids, or whatever. I am saying that the way to be happy in the process of attaining all that is to be content even if you never get it. Getting a sweet new ride would be cool, but you'll have a much better life, and marriage, if you don't need it to be happy. Stop always thinking that you'll have more fun at the next stage of life, and just enjoy this one. So what if you can't afford a cruise? Take a day off and go for a hike or borrow a tent and go camping. You'll have a heck of a lot more fun than you would sitting around wallowing in self pity, and you'll find out that the real fun wasn't about what you were doing, it was about who you were with.

Well, that's it. I'm no marriage expert, but I could give you a pretty long list of examples of marriages that ended up on the rocks as a result of ignoring one of those three things above. Hopefully they can help someone avoid that crash landing in the future.

Resurrection and What it Means for Marriage

I heard a quote recently from someone who was asked about what the Bible says about homosexuality and marriage. The person responded, “The first thing I ask is whether or not they believe that Jesus rose from the dead. If they say no, then I ask them why they care what he thinks about anything. If they say yes, then we can have a different type of discussion about what Jesus believed about issues like this.”

Most Christian’s don’t know what they believe about marriage, or why they believe it. Is there any reason to have confidence in what they think is true? For the Christian, the answer–and ultimately the place we find our confidence–stems from the core conviction of our faith. Did Jesus rise from the dead, or not?

Resurrection trumps dying, every time.

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead–or if someone doesn’t believe that he did–then there is no reason for us or them to be concerned with how he calls us to live. If Jesus was just a first century rabbi who taught about being a good person, but ultimately died like the rest of us, then his words have the equivalent authority of every other religious prophet or teacher who came before or after. They’re easy to dismiss; we should pay them the same mind as we might pay the instructions of Muhammad.

If, however, Jesus really did rise from the dead, then what was proved was that he was who he said he was: God in the flesh. That changes everything. If Jesus is God, then what he says about how we should live has real meaning; now it has authority. What Jesus believed about how God calls us to live should matter.

Jesus believed that the entirety of the Old Testament was God’s word. He consistently upheld it as having authority. He upheld the Old Testament Law of God when he claimed that not a single iota or a single dot would pass from the Law until all was accomplished, and his new Kingdom was in full force at the end of days. And what the law and the Old Testament as a whole affirm is that marriage is a God-ordained institution between one man and one woman. That is what Jesus believed; it’s part of the “will not pass away”.

The resurrection gives us a new view towards marriage that restores the original intention. Marriage in the Old Testament was a mess; most people couldn’t get it right, even when they tried. Christ’s life, death and resurrection reveal what Paul articulates in Ephesians 5: the real meaning behind marriage was actually always about Jesus and his church. When God gave Adam and Eve to one another in marriage back at the beginning of the Bible, the institution itself was a shadow of a greater reality, which was God’s relationship with his people.

Marriage is rooted in creation and restored in Christ. That’s why orthodox Christianity doesn’t believe in a progressive hermeneutic (the so-called telephone theory). This is the view that biblical truth changes over time as culture “progresses” and our understanding of things evolves and changes, similar to the old game of “telephone” that you’d play in grade school. Orthodox Christianity bases its view on God’s original intention and design, affirmed, supported, and restored in Christ, and not on what seems right to us, particularly those of us living 2000 years after the resurrection.

Christian people are called to view marriage through that lens as the chief understanding of what marriage is. One man, one woman, called to reflect the reality of Christ and his church. The resurrection gives them hope that they can, in some small way, pull it off, but only because Jesus has already pulled off the greatest marriage proposal in history by dying and rising from the dead. The resurrection gives single people hope, too, since we know that this life is just a blip on the radar of eternity, and marriage won’t be a relational institution in the kingdom of heaven, since we will all live in the reality of what it formerly represented.

The resurrection means new citizenship.

The resurrection is the catalyst for this view towards the new kingdom that is to come. When we are associated with Jesus through faith in his life, death, and resurrection for our salvation, we are made citizens of a new kingdom, where Jesus is king. Our allegiances have changed. We live in this world; but our citizenship is found in the next. We are called to live according to a different standard; a different set of rules.

The history of American Evangelicalism has revealed what biblical scholars usually refer to as an “over-realized eschatology”. Eschatology is the study of the “end times”, or in this case, the study of the Kingdom of God and what that is going to be like when Jesus returns. Over-realizing our eschatology means that we go overboard in assuming that this life–the American life–will look like the new kingdom of which we are citizens. In other words, we’ve drawn too close a parallel between the United States and the Kingdom of God, as if the former is called to reflect all of the values of the latter. Consequently, Christians have too often assumed that the government will promote their particular values, and they are shocked when they discover resistance. The resurrection reminds us that the United States is not the new kingdom.

As such, Christians must take care to discern the difference between the values they are called to live by as citizens of a new kingdom, and the values that everyone should hold by virtue of being a human, and more specifically, a citizen of the United States. Christians are called to the biblical view of marriage because of the resurrection of Christ. But not everyone will hold that view. In fact, the majority of people won’t. By allowing the government to define what marriage is, we’re also giving them the freedom to define it in a way that we disagree with. That’s why the Christian must define marriage based on the resurrection of our new King, according to the values of the new kingdom. Our confidence shouldn’t be in the government, or in those who don’t believe in the resurrection, to define it exactly as we see fit, and we won’t be disappointed when they inevitably don’t.

A far better approach for Christians in handling the marriage debates would have been to encourage the government to get out of the marriage definition bit altogether! The government’s question should be, what type of relationships will we grant benefits to, and which ones won’t we? So long as they are continuing to call those government recognized relationships “marriages”, then whatever the cultural definition of it is will win the day. We are seeing the implications of that now.

Failure to understand the resurrection.

The failure to recognize the authority that comes with the resurrection, and the new citizenship we have as a result is the reason that most Christians are confused about how they ought to respond. If they’re not confused, they’re angry. If they’re not angry, they’re depressed. How could this have happened? Jesus death reminds us that the new kingdom values are antithetical to the way that most of us want to live, but his resurrection gives us hope to press on.

The failure to recognize the authority that comes with the resurrection is also what leads Christians to reject the teaching of Scripture on marriage altogether, and to redefine it according to what will be popular in this life. It has always been the case that there will be a segment of the Christian population that sacrifices doctrine for the sake of acceptance, and history consistently repeats itself in the same manner: it never works. If there is no difference between the values of the Jesus of Christianity and the Jesus of culture (who is all about love, however we define that), then there really is no need for the Jesus of Christianity.

It’s also important to note, however, that the failure to recognize the authority that comes with the resurrection is also what leads to the horrendous track record that Christians have, even in their supposed biblical marriages. And the culture has noticed.

How should we respond?

Because of the resurrection, the Christian person can be confident that what Jesus believed is true, and they can be confident in living out the values of the new kingdom. Our covenant marriages between a man and a woman should reflect that reality. New kingdom marriages should stand out as examples of self-sacrificial love. They should mirror, as best they are able, the great love that Jesus has for his church, and that she has for her savior.

Because of the resurrection, the Christian person can love those who disagree. Religious people always want to know what someone believes about morality, or how they behave, before they can accept them. That’s why the religious leaders of Jesus day could never hang out with people who they considered to be “sinners”. True Christianity is not religion. Jesus knew that it was only once people knew that he loved them right where they were at that they could even have the possibility of being able to live according to the standards of the new kingdom. And even then, they’d probably fail miserably. It’s the reason that Christians are given the righteousness of Christ in full measure, not dependent on anything that we bring to the table.

Because of the resurrection, the Christian is free to not force their values on someone who believes differently. Instead, a Christian is free to live like the resurrection is really true, that Jesus is really who he said he was, and that the power of his life, death, and resurrection is sufficient to save.

This Good Friday and Easter, spend some time reflecting on the goodness of Jesus and the power of his life, death, and resurrection, to save sinners like all of us. Then live in the confidence of the new kingdom.