The Biblical Foundations of Marriage
Marriage as a Classroom
by Jack Crabtree and Christine Barber
Excerpts from show #1

The radio show Christianity@Work features a dialogue between family therapist Christine Barber and Bible teacher Jack Crabtree. These excerpts are from their first show.

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J: I think it's the peculiar nature of marriage that makes it an extraordinary arena in which to learn wisdom.

C: What do you mean by "wisdom"?

J: I'm using that in the way I think the Bible uses it, as a broad term to describe somebody who "gets it".

C: "Gets it." Somebody who understands life? Understands how God wants us to see life?

J: Yes, and all of reality. Someone who really has come to terms with why we exist, why anything exists, who we are, who we are as creatures before a creator God who has a particular agenda, and what that agenda is. The person who is beginning to understand all of that is wise. Like I say, wisdom is not something that is inborn. We don't have a clue when we come into this world what our life is all about. In fact, if anything, we have a tendency to misinterpret, to misconstrue who we are and why we are here.

C: So, over the course of our life God has to teach us why we are here, what life is about, and over the course of our life we become wise people. So this life then is, in a sense, a classroom to become wise?

J: Yes.

C: And marriage is one of those classrooms?

J: Exactly. And it's a unique classroom, and a particularly especially effective classroom because of the nature of marriage itself. One of the principle elements of the eternal kingdom of God is going to be the virtue of love. We will be loving people. Love will reign, love will predominate, love will be the character of that kingdom that is to come. Well, we need to learn to appreciate the value of love if we are going to be prepared to live in that kingdom. Where better to learn that than in the arena of marriage? We can learn it elsewhere; we must learn it elsewhere; we will learn it elsewhere. But marriage is particularly suited to face us into the demands of love because of the peculiar nature of the marriage commitment. I am being asked in marriage to completely surrender my individual hopes and dreams and ambitions and goals and become one with another person who is profoundly and radically different than me.

C: Are you saying that I am to give up myself in marriage? That I only become a part of you and there is nothing of me that I bring to it? Is that what you're saying?

J: No. I suppose that would be a way of describing it in a sense, but we have to understand what we mean by that. I never really give up who I am as an individual. I couldn't. It wouldn't be possible to do that. I could kind of bury myself as an individual, but that's not really what marriage requires. What it requires of me is a commitment to become one, to share completely with another person. And that's not losing myself; that's really becoming myself, in a profound sense.

C: What do you mean by that? How is that "becoming myself"? When I am becoming one, or joining to another person?

J: Because to be truly a human being, to be truly a strong and significant human being in the way God created human beings to be, is to be supremely loving, is to be supremely one who is capable of serving another. So it's in my serving, it's in my sacrifice, it's in my kindness, it's in my compassion and my sharing with someone else that I am really becoming the person I was made to be. I am really gaining my individuality, I'm not losing it. I'm gaining my humanness, I'm not giving it away.

C: Can I just step back a minute? We've talked a little bit about oneness; I think to better understand what you are saying we need to understand what oneness is.

J: Okay. Genesis 2:24 says that, "The two will become one flesh". There are really two options, it seems to me, for how to interpret that, and they are both viable options. I prefer one, but let me share both of them because I think they are both possible. In the New Testament Paul talks about a husband loving his wife and taking care of his wife as his own body. It could be that the Genesis account is an allusion to that kind of attitude. We very naturally, instinctively want to take care of ourselves. If we are sick, we nurse ourselves to health, we feed ourselves, we give ourselves sleep, we are concerned about our own well-being very naturally and instinctually. In marriage, Paul says, a husband should love his wife just as surely—in other words, he should want to care for his wife just as surely as he is willing to care for himself.

C: Perhaps in marriage it should become as instinctual to care about my husband as I care about myself?

J: Yes—not that it literally becomes instinctual, because I think we really always have to work at it. But we need to take on a moral responsibility to care in that way, the way that kind of matches the instinctual caring that I have for myself. I think that's what he has in mind. Becoming one flesh may be an allusion to the kind of attitude toward one another in marriage where we are that committed to one another's well-being, we are that committed to caring for one another in that way.

C: And that could be becoming one.

J: Yes, becoming one as if we were one body, as if my wife were a very part of my own body and therefore I care for her as if she were. That's one possibility. There is a second possibility. The word we translate as "flesh" in English, both in Greek and in Hebrew is not uncommonly used to describe just a physical existence. So if you talk about "the days of one's flesh" that's the time of their physical existence here on earth.

C: The years of our life.

J: Yes. So when he talks about the two becoming "one flesh" one possibility is that he means two joining into a partnership where they live out one life existence or one life experience together as partners rather than living on parallel tracks, living two independent life existences isolated from one another. They are going to live one life experience together. It's a metaphor or picture of the degree of intimate partnership that they are committing themselves to. I am inclined toward that, personally. That's what I think the Genesis account is describing.

C: Toward the second one.

J: Yes.

C: Okay, since you are inclined toward that one, I wonder if you can unpack it a bit more. What does it mean that we live one life together?

J: It seems to me that what the Genesis account is describing is the fact that in marriage, two people will make a moral commitment to one another. And what I mean by "a moral commitment to one another" is that they will make a commitment that they both are morally bound to. They take it on as their duty, their responsibility, the task that they must not fail at, to so completely and utterly know, understand, connect with, and appreciate the other's life experience that it is as if they are taking it on as their own. Something like that, I think, is what he is describing as becoming one flesh.

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J: I don't want to be misunderstood here. I've been partly idealizing here, because I am a sinful, selfish, short-sighted individual, and in my own marriage I violate the ideal that I am describing here all the time and constantly. I am partly exaggerating the ideal for the sake of making a point. That's what my commitment should be, that's where I should end up, that's where I should head. I, in fact, fall far short of that. But that is in fact what marriage is. Marriage is a commitment that I need to have...

C: I need to have that as my goal, I need to be trying hard, recognizing I'm going to fall short, recognizing that's part of my humanness, but not using it as an excuse not to look, not to try.

J: Right. We all probably have a picture of the totally dysfunctional marriage. There are several ways it can go wrong, but in this regard—I picture a man (and it could go the other way round) who is so completely self-centered, so completely self-absorbed and closed in on himself that everything his wife wants, everything his wife desires, everything his wife values he belittles and mocks and scorns as beneath him. Because obviously, he's not interested, so it shouldn't be interesting to her either. Well, that's terrible. Not only is it just unkind, to start with, but in terms of a marriage it's a fundamental, profound violation of the very nature of the commitment that we are supposed to be making to each other. I am supposed to be saying to the other person when I am taking my vow, "I may not be naturally interested in everything that your life is all about, but I am committing myself to understand why it is interesting to you. I want your life experience to be my life experience. I want to become one with you. I want to see it through your eyes and ears, and I want you to see life through my eyes."

C: As you're saying that, I'm thinking, in our marriage ceremonies we ought to write that down and make it explicit.

J: That would not be a bad idea.

C: Because I think you're right. I think that most often in marriage—not just the man and not just the woman, but usually both—are in some way saying, "My life experience is really what is valuable. And I'm going to pull you in some way, control you in some way, whether it's through manipulation or guilt or sarcasm or humiliation or shame or yelling or screaming or crying or whatever, to become like me. Because I really am the standard and you should be like me." And there ensues the power struggle.

J: And I want you to serve me and serve my agenda and help me get to my goals.

C: Because my goals are the only ones that are important. So what we are talking about is, instead of me demanding my husband to become what I want him to be, his commitment to me is to choose to be interested in and value what I am interested in and what I value. And it is my responsibility to be interested in and value what he values. He should not be pulling me and making me go there. It needs to be an individual commitment on both our parts. What if, though Jack, we don't make that kind of commitment? What if you are committed to doing that for your wife, Jody, but Jody wasn't committed to doing that for you? Where does that leave you?…

J: …Well, in that situation the marriage is not going to be really what we might want it to be. It's not going to be as fulfilling as it could be, it's not going to be as whole and as healthy as it could be. That's when where we started becomes really important. Why did I get married? Did I get married to find fulfillment and to find life? Or did I get married before God in order to enter into that marriage and have that be the arena in which I learn to live obediently and righteously and wisely in this world? It had better be the latter.

C: It better be the place where I want to learn how to be loving. Or I need to change my mind, perhaps, about why I got married. Because most of us got married because we wanted to be fulfilled and we wanted our spouse to make us fulfilled. And so I think over time, maybe part of wisdom is learning that I'm not going to get fulfilled this way and I need to change my mind about what marriage is about. And in this kind of situation I really need to do that. Because I'm not getting what I want.

J: Exactly. And we can respond in one of two ways. We can either suck our thumb in ultimate despair...

C: Suck our thumb, sit in a corner, be victims...

J: Go deep into a well of self-pity because we didn't get what life seemed to have promised to us. Or we can figure out that there is more to existence than here and now, there is more to our existence than our marriage, there is more to our fulfillment than our marriage. Where is it to be found? It's to be found in rightly relating to God, and in allowing the experience of the pain and suffering that is real to teach us wisdom. We feel an incredible loss that we can legitimately grieve over if our marriage is not what it could have been—but what am I going to do with that grief? Am I going to sink into self-pity, or am I going to become wise over it? Will I learn that there is something bigger, something better, something grander out there that I need to put my hope in?

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