The Marriage Puzzle

One day the church will come out and 
address the hypocrisy behind marriage.
I have worked with many pastors and I 
have been in the church all my life.
By church, I don't mean one denomination 
but many.
One of the most puzzling dilemmas I 
know every church is facing is on the issue
of marriage.
 
Everything God instituted is good.
Eternal life for example needed no augmentation 
or amendment
It was God's perfect plan of salvation that 
was executed by Jesus Christ.
No man had a hand in it.
The same with creation, it was entirely done 
by God.
Man only benefitted.
 
Marriage, however, the supposedly "Institution" 
of God didn't share the same characteristics.
It was flawed from the moment Adam ate the forbidden 
fruit and nothing was ever able to put that 
Humpty-Dumpty together since then.
Unlike Adam and Eve who were a perfect fit, there 
were no other examples cited in scripture who were 
a perfect fit in marriage.
 
Abraham had Sarah.
Sarah was taken from him twice.
The first time by Pharaoh, the second time 
by Abimelech.
Hagar was given to him by Sarah and he later 
married Keturah and had other concubines. 
Both the man and the woman in a marriage are 
susceptible to the attention of others and in 
some instances can be swept right off their 
feet by the tidal wave of power, money, 
influence, desire, and will.
Perhaps Sarah would have protested but her 
protest could cost Abraham his life.
Perhaps Abraham would have protested but his 
protest would have displeased his wife.
 
Marriage is a complex "Human", not a "Divine" 
arrangement.
It cannot be divine because divinity leaves 
no alternatives to perfection.
If you label anything as divine, it has 
to be flawless.
Marriage is not flawless.
It shared conspicuously one of the 
characteristics of everything made by man, 
one of which is imperfection.
 
Isaac and Rebecca didn't have a record of a 
third man or woman in the union and yet their 
home was the worst example of a home in the 
old testament.
Their marriage was far from ideal.
Esau married three or more wives,
Jacob married two and had two concubines.
I can go on and on.
 
I know couples who had not been intimate for 
ten years and neither of them was sick or old 
and yet neither cheated.
I know couples who are intimate thrice a week 
and both were still cheating.
I know faithful husbands whose wives are 
praying that they should cheat because they 
are too "uptight and needed a dose of humility",
I know faithful wives who are crying and 
longing every day for a husband who has gone 
on parol with another woman
 
Behind every good marriage, there seems to be 
a lot of endurance and tolerance from both 
parties.
A happy couple I know were making a joke one 
day and the wife said
"If there is marriage in heaven I will like 
to marry you again!"
The husband said "What offense would God say 
I have committed to make that happen"
 
We all laughed over it but the man meant it. 
He told me later that if he had a choice, he 
would walk out of the marriage without a 
second thought.
One of the reasons a Christian "Marriage" will 
not work as we all desire nowadays is that most 
people getting into it are not Christians.
Imagine the irony.
 
Boy and girl live by their will all their lives, 
then they get married in church and you expect 
the marriage to last forever
It makes no sense.
 
The Christian life and reality is a deliberate 
one.
It has its root and its fruits.
A million confessions do not make a marriage work, 
speaking in tongues too will fail miserably.
More often than not we desire that God should help us 
bend or shape our partners so that they can become 
our dummies.
 
The word "conform" applies both to us as we change 
into the image of Christ and walk together in 
marriage.
Not all men are husbands,
not all husbands are good fathers.
Not all women are wives,
not all wives are good mothers.
We all expect our spouses to be both good husbands 
or wives and good parents (If we choose to have 
children).
 
Elephants can swim but they would rather walk, 
that is how many spouses in marriages are coping 
today.
The church must do better.
We cannot just leave it as it is and label it 
the human condition.
We have to find a way to address the cracks in 
this institution.
We made it and it is bursting at the seams!
 
The other alternative to marriage offered by the 
world is "Partnership".
I have studied it and it seems only the logical 
can thrive in that system.
You cannot go into it with emotions only.
You must get a contract with a lawyer and state 
categorically the expectations of the partnership.
It is not marriage because marriage is an 
institution based on a lot of assumptions.
A partnership is pragmatic and both parties can 
benefit from it if they broker it with diligence.
 
Someone wrote to me stating that God did not 
institute partnership, I replied the person by 
asking if God instituted marriage. 
The person couldn't respond.
Marriage and society at large as we have it today 
is not following the original blueprint of God.
 
Our societies, like Israel of old, had chosen to 
be like other nations and elected to have human 
rulers and parliaments.
Most of us use God as a convenient excuse to do 
our will (You can argue all you want but it 
is a fact).
We have churches where God has no say in doctrine 
and policies.
All over the world, it is in these last days that 
some of us are coming out to say the leadership 
of the church should be restored to the 
Holy Spirit.
 
We are gaining ground but the dross is much globally. 
From the moment man took over the reins of his 
affairs, everything, especially marriage has 
been altered.
Young people need to know this and not build castles 
in the air by expecting faithfulness from people 
whose nature was not faithful.
 
It is a fact that both men and women are polygamous 
by nature. You can ask google, it will tell you 
man is a part of the primate family and a polygamous 
animal!
The hypocrisy is "Not leaving that nature by coming 
to Christ genuinely and believing that by getting 
married in a church, the man or woman would 
suddenly become monogamous by nature".
The term is "standing logic on its head".
 
Now for pastors and gospel artists who acted 
irresponsibly and are apologizing as a result,
 Do you notice that their apology was always 
addressed to their vows and responsibilities 
to their spouses and the "church" but never 
to their nature?
Nobody apologizes for his or her nature.
Excuses are given for everything else but 
not for nature.
 
 
DNA test proposal made many women cringe when 
it was announced recently.
If the primate nature is not addressed, the 
rest is a joke...
You can train animals to control their instincts 
all you want but when I watched Bolton's dog eat 
him in Game of Thrones, I realized that some 
innate primordial desires can disarm the most
self-controlled and trained beings.
 
We will still witness many scandals within 
the church.
Man must be true to his nature.
Those who have the nature of Christ will be 
true to it.
Others who have the nature of man will be 
true to it.
The apple doesn't fall far from its tree.
 
-GSW-