The Biblical Foundations of Marriage
The Romantic Myth
by Jack Crabtree and Christine Barber
Excerpts from show #2

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

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J: Marriage is about doing the right thing, about doing what is good, about doing what is responsible, about keeping my promises, about obeying my God. That's what marriage is all about.

C: I think a lot of times we define love as feeling good. I think we particularly do that in marriage. If I'm feeling good about my spouse then I'm in love; if I'm not feeling good then I'm not in love, I'm out of love. What do you think about the whole concept of love as feeling good?

J: The love that is the essence of a marriage commitment has very little to do with how we feel. There is a phenomenon in human experience that has everything to do with feelings, and we do call that "love." But that love is not what makes a marriage go. That's part of the mythology of our culture, that there will be this person out there that makes me feel tender and caring and noble and giving and serving, and if I can just marry that person, then being kind and selfless will be the most natural thing in the world, and that will last forever, and that will be eternal.

C: Well, the interesting thing is, Jack, is that when we first get to know somebody— when we are courting somebody or dating somebody—we really do feel very noble. All the "feeling good" stuff really does bubble up in us, and we come to think, "Now it's going to last forever."

J: Exactly. But the problem is that universal human experience shows that the feeling does not last forever. It goes away. I'm inclined to think that the feeling we call "love" is a kind of God-given organic drug; it builds right into our feelings a vision for what a commitment to another person could be all about. But God never intended that feeling to persist. What he wants to take its place, and what must take its place if our marriage is to survive, is a moral commitment. I must take on of the task, the duty, of becoming one with that other person in a way that my feelings can only give me a vision of. But the actual becoming one with my spouse is going to be work. It's going to be something that I have to make an effort to do, and I have to make a commitment to do. That's love in another sense. That's the love that is going to make a marriage happen.

C: The love that makes a marriage happen, you're saying, is a commitment toward oneness with another person. A commitment toward understanding and valuing and caring about who another person is.

J: Right. Rather than this feeling that our mythology tells us is true love. If you listen to our music and look at our literature and movies, they are full of people longing for that love that will never die: "true love", "everlasting love", "real love". What we mean by that is, "For the last six relationships I have fallen in love with somebody, and I thought it was true love, but you know what? It wasn't really true love because after a while it died. I don't feel it any more."

C: So I've got to go out and look for this seventh relationship that will give me that high of feeling really good, and the feeling really good that is sustained.

J: Yeah, this time it won't go away.

C: Or I've got to keep dropping them until I find one that doesn't go away.

J: Right. Because our mythology says that person is out there, and if I just find that person, then I will live happily ever after. But, alas, poor me! I've been tricked into thinking these other relationships were true love until the love died.

C: I've just been a bad chooser. I've just got to become a better chooser to find the guy that is going to always love me, always make me feel good.

J: Exactly. All of that is mythology, all of that is illusion. It's a mythology that is deeply ingrained in our culture, and it's something that our imaginations, our hearts really respond to. We would love for that to be reality. But of all people, we as Christians need to be soberly realistic about that. Life doesn't work that way. There is no such thing as true love in that sense.

C: I can imagine myself, years ago hearing you say this and kind of having a tantrum, wanting to put my fist up against the wall and say, "No! You're wrong! That's not true!" And what comes to mind is that one of my favorite movies at the time was Camelot. And boy, talk about a mythology, the mythology that says "I really should look for true love that sustains me, that makes me feel good all the time. And that's really what marriage should look like." It's in that movie.

J: Yes, it's in that movie. It's in all the Walt Disney movies that we've ever seen. It was in most of the sitcoms that we watched, even way back in the 50's. It's deep, deep, deep in our culture. And our expectations have all been fed on that mythology. So much so, that in Camelot or in Dr. Zhivago, those movies manipulate us into applauding the adulterous relationship over the decent, solid, mundane marriage relationship.

C: Yes. As you're talking I am reminded that I, as a kid or a young adult, put Dr. Zhivago on a really high pedestal with his mistress, and really liked that and really wanted that, and would have put his wife in a place below. In my mind, she's below, and the same with Camelot. King Arthur is lower than, he's less than, he's not as good as the beauty and the joy and the delight of Lancelot.

J: Yes, they were the mistakes. They were the people that our heroes married before they found their true love, and too bad they didn't find their true love first and could be married to them. That's our way of thinking about it.

C: Yes, they goofed. They should have gone toward what was beautiful and wonderful and joyful.

J: We as Christians have too often only rejected that picture half-way. We realize that the adulterous relationship is not biblical, that there's something really wrong with that. But we don't discard the whole illusion altogether. We think that what we should do is make our marriages into that kind of relationship that Zhivago has with his mistress, or Guinevere had with Lancelot. So we might read books and go to seminars to try to teach us how to bring love into our marriages, and how to make our marriages romantic. As if that's really what the substance of marriage should be all about.

C: As if that's the goal. Now, is that a wrong thing to have? To feel good, or to have romance, or to have good feelings in my marriage?

J: Well, in the sense in which I am thinking of it, yes, because it is so totally unrealistic. It's not wrong to have feelings of genuine affection and tenderness and profound and deep joy in the presence of my spouse. In fact, that would be expected in a healthy marriage relationship. But there will not be this glittering, glamorous, intoxicating kind of romance that the movies are portraying. We have to make a distinction between them. That feeling that we have had where we are infatuated, completely infatuated with another person, and it was painful to be apart from them, and we couldn't get enough of them, we couldn't be in their presence too much, and everything they did was just absolutely amazing and everything I did was calculated to serve them and to meet their needs and so on (or at least that was my perception)—that's a very rare and unusual feeling to have toward another person. And it cannot, in real life, ever be sustained.

C: Yes. But when we see these movies, we don't see the end of the show. What we see is that Guinevere just got into this great relationship with Lancelot, and it ends there. What we are left to believe is that it continues on and on. They found it, they got it, they get to leave the old bugger of a husband or wife, and they get to be with this wonderful person forever and ever.

J: Exactly, and that feeds the illusion of our culture.

C: So you're saying it's a hurtful illusion. If I go into marriage thinking that what I really need to do is sustain this high feeling, then I have really done myself a disservice.

J: I have set myself up for complete defeat and disappointment.

C: Because what should I expect in marriage? Should I expect it to be dull? Should I expect it to be awful? What are you saying? We're saying what it is not; what is it?

J: We should expect it to be ordinary. And what I mean by that is, no, it's not boring, it's not dull, it doesn't have to be awful. It can be very rewarding and satisfyingly joyful. It can be all of that. But it's a much more muted, quiet, deeper emotion than the surface excitement and surface glitter of romance that our mythology tells us we should look for. But that profound joy that we can experience in marriage also doesn't come naturally the way love comes when we are infatuated. We earn it. We earn the joy. And how do we earn the joy? By taking upon myself to do right by my wife or do right by my husband. We keep our vows to them; we keep our promises to them. I think in a past conversation we talked about, for example, making a commitment to set my own values and my own interests and my own agenda aside and make room in my life for my wife's interests and values and agenda. I become one with her to that extent. Well, that doesn't come naturally to me. I am not naturally interested in what she is interested in. But by making myself interested in what she is interested in, I form a kind of connection and bond between us that ultimately is exceedingly rewarding. But I don't fall into it like tripping over a log. It just doesn't come naturally.

C: I think that's what we really think: it's like tripping over a log. Because when I initially meet someone, perhaps my future spouse, it does feel wonderful. I have tripped over this log and found this wonderful person. So I want to be able to go on just tripping over logs, and when I find out that it is really hard, ordinary, get your feet dirty kind of work -- that's a pretty foreign thing. So you're saying that the work of marriage is really trying to become a person who is interested in and values and cares about another person's interests and values. To become interested and see who they are. To really know them and to understand them. You also said that it's to set myself aside, and I know in a previous conversation we talked about that, but can you bring a little bit of balance? Because I think people could think what you're saying is that I leave myself aside to become married, and I only look at the other person. For example, I'm a counselor. Do I drop my interest in psychology if my husband is totally disinterested?

J: No, not necessarily. To the extent that it doesn't interfere with becoming one with my wife or husband, I don't have to drop anything. Fundamentally, the issue is, what is it really that makes me a fulfilled human being? Fundamentally, the biblical answer is that I was made to be a loving being in the way that my God, my creator, my father is a loving God. There are all kinds of interests that I might have that I could easily give up without throwing away my individuality and without throwing away my humanity. But I must never throw away my ability to sacrifice, to serve another person, to love another person. To do that would truly to throw myself away. Marriage is not about me denying the things that I want, the passions that I have, the interests that I have, and so on. I'm not making a commitment that I'm not going to be me. I will still feel what I fee; I will still like what I like; I will still desire what I desire. But I can consciously put my wife on a higher order of priority than anything else that I might have an interest in. And that's what the commitment is all about. I must be willing to abandon what I am genuinely interested in for the sake of my wife. I think it probably is the case—you would know better than I—that there are relationships where people feel like their spouse is expecting them to simply erase who they are. To not feel what they feel, to not be interested in what they are interested in, and so on. There is nothing in the marriage commitment that requires us to do that. However, sometimes I must, out of a kind of moral strength, take an interest that really is mine and say, "You know what. I'm not going to pursue it because what I want more than anything in the world is to become one with you, and my interest is going to interfere with that oneness, so I'm going to set that aside." But I don't do that out of weakness; I don't do that out of self-destruction and self-erasing. I do that voluntarily because I have a higher priority in my relationship with my wife.

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