Webbijbel
Gert-Jan Van Zanten
Written by Joanne Beckley
Times were tough, the Vietnam War was escalating, my husband had
received call-up papers and we agonized about whether a Christian
should go to war. Our grocery bill was $10 a week and I was
pregnant, really pregnant. We did our share of adjusting to married
life and we dealt with the challenge of becoming new parents who had
different ideas about how to raise children. But there was one area
where we were absolutely committed–to stick with each other through
good times and bad.
Today, some 40 years later, we continue to face marital stressors,
as psychologists call them. Yes, today, all of us are dealing with
new kinds of external influences, circumstances, and events that are
capable of threatening our marriages, threatening to unravel the
very fabric of our lives. If couples have not yet learned to face
them together, these stressors will cause tension and strife that
will eventually destroy relationships. Some of these stressors will
actually cause a couple to drift into living parallel lives,
exclaiming, “We have a good marriage, we never argue, we are best
friends.” Are they?
When I think of common things that strain a marriage, I think of
financial troubles, unemployment, intimacy problems, disagreements
in parenting, chronic poor health, death of a child, in-law
clashes–and the list goes on. But these are not new problems that
marriages face so why do they seem to keep coming up?
When we stop talking together, pulling away and not facing a problem
together; when one or the other is not offering or accepting
affection, and sexual contact is absent; when one or the other (or
both) is not facing life’s challenges, opting out for “me first, me
only”, then that unconditional commitment to the marriage is going
to suffer and ultimately break down.
When a man and woman are totally committed to each other and remind
each other daily of this commitment by word and action; when they
strive to live by the biblical standard of marriage; when they put
each other’s needs ahead of their own; when the do not give up on
each other’s weaknesses; when they pray together and work together
through difficulties as a team; this is the kind of commitment that
will help a marriage weather any kind of stress that is handed out.
Life has really, really become frenetic. Schedules are overloaded,
more and more demands are being made by the schools, community,
churches, and our very own kids. Not only are both spouses working
outside the home, they are often working different schedules,
including night shifts. There is very little time left to just rest
and unwind, especially with each other.
Even as I post on Pleonast or read Facebook entries, I cannot ignore
what I am learning concerning families all around the world. I hear
of couples and family time together being consumed by computers,
iPods, iPhones, video games, etc, etc. These are a threat to a
marriage and therefore one of those “stressors.” Too much time spent
in this area leads to undermining the closeness and even subtly
building barriers between a husband and wife or parents and
children. What about the TV? Do we come home from work and sit
before it until we go to bed? There is certainly no family
interaction around the dinner table if this is the case. When do we
talk? We don’t. Loving one another fervently requires time and
face-to-face caring (1 Peter 1:22).
How did we come to such a pass? It wasn’t intentional. We have just
allowed ourselves to get into the habit of constantly plugging
ourselves in! We have more ways to communicate today than ever
before but they don’t create less distance in the home. We joke
about sending text messages instead of talking face to face. . . it
isn’t a joke anymore. (And I must ask, why are we allowing the same
habit to develop in our children???)
Unfortunately, the internet is destroying marriages as a source of
pornography, illicit relationships, and cyber-affairs. According to
the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, between 20
and 33 percent of Internet users in the United States go online for
sexual purposes. Most of these are married men. The Internet has
provided us with a lot more ways to violate our marriage vows.
Wives, consider the emotional feedback you are receiving from your
online male friends. What begins as seemingly innocent sharing of
thoughts is the very thing that began your friendship with your
sweetheart before you married him. . . Even if men and women never
arrange to meet in real life and engage in a “live” affair, it is
still a form of infidelity and a serious threat to a marriage. The
computer/Internet may not have been invented when Jesus condemned
looking at a woman to lust after her (Matthew 5:28), but we can
certainly see a similar danger.
I think what is threatening our marriages today more than any other
stressor is not so much the external troubles and detractions, but
what is going on internally. If the marriage begins to seem too
difficult to maintain or doesn’t come up to one’s expectations, too
many don’t seem to think twice about abdicating. Divorce used to be
seen as shameful, but today we only stay in the marriage as long as
we think we are getting more out of it than we have to put into it.
It seems the “me generation” has multiplied and created a
self-focussed world. Wrongful divorce is indeed fuelled by selfish,
unthankful, unforgiving, and headstrong people. Those who wrongfully
push for divorce are virtually named in 2 Timothy 3:1-4.
Just as marriages are being broken all around us, so it is affecting
our love for God. The apostle John wrote that if we love God we will
love one another (1 John 4:21). If we are not loving one another
then we cannot claim to love God. If we cannot abide by what a
marriage should or shouldn’t be according to God’s standards (Gen
2:24), then we leave the door wide open, with no absolutes, no
ability to determine right from wrong, no understanding of how to
love.
Commitment toward any goal is never easy and there will always be
detractors from our desire to have a strong marriage. It all boils
down to just how much effort we want to expend in order to have a
loving mutually supportive marriage. Let us take a careful look at
where the fabric of our marriage has been weakened and then
carefully darn the gaping hole. Surprisingly that carefully darned
hole will create a stronger bond in marriage.
