Marriage is a major and indispensable step toward knowing God.
Marriage is holy because it partakes and mirrors God’s true nature and the creative process.
Marriage is an ordained blessing and an eternal covenant with God. Therefore, it should be treated as a sacred institution. Marriage should be undertaken with seriousness, binding vows and promises.
Divorce, infidelity, sex without the commitment of marriage are frowned upon and profanes the sacred grounds of holy marriage.
Marriage propels people into a whole new realm of spiritual/physical being—the spouse’s realm of heart.
In the realm of heart within marriage, a couple can transcend toward resembling the heart of God and love more than in any other relationship before.
To try to live in the spouse’s realm of heart without God’s blessing and laws is risky and the relationship will be fraught with difficulties.
Such relationships of love without God bring incredible pain upon each other in the relationship. This is evidenced by the high divorce rate in developed countries.
Marriages do best centered upon God, connected to the very Source of love.
Without the foundation of God, these relationships erode easily.
God’s love empowers couples with His true love which men and women need to get through all the difficulties of life together.
If women and men do not tap into this Source of love, they come up short to give and forgive, serve and stay steadfast and faithful to one another throughout the years.
Loving as God Loves
Marriage calls a couple to love just as God loves His children and mature the growth of our heart.
Traditional marriage vows echo the unconditional aspirations of marital love:
“To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
A couple who can love the other day in and day out when conditions are good or bad, and in all aspects of the other’s being, this love resembles the unconditional love of God.
Psychologist Lori Gordon describes conjugal love as “to feel that you can trust another person with your whole being, your laughter, your tears, your rage, your joy . . . . Its essence lies in total certainty that your partner is . . . open to you in body, heart and mind—and knowing that you are accepted and loved for what you really are, and knowing that you don’t have to pretend.”
Loving a spouse in good times and bad stretches a person’s character and capacity to love.
One husband in a long-term marriage puts it:
“You’ve seen each other in every possible light, the very ugliest and worst and the most evil as well as the most divine and compassionate.”
We can say that marriage is a metaphor for God’s relationship to humanity.
Marriage means to “be open to the call of another without qualification.” It calls for love that is ”the steady gaze on another that does not withdraw simply because they fail to please . . . .”
This mimics the heart of God toward saving humankind.
God likens His relations with His people to the marriage of Hosea.
St. Paul said that Christ relates to the church as a husband to his wife. The history of salvation in Christianity is to be a marriage - the Marriage of the Lamb.
Loving as God loves is crucial in the close quarters of marriage.
Marriage unleashes strong emotional and psychological forces.
Because such high emotions are experienced in marriage, the spouse may seem like one’s worst enemy.
One’s deepest needs may feel left unfulfilled by the very one whom he or she had high hopes. Therefore, each should forgive one another 70 times 7 and be faithful when it seems impossible to go on.
When a couple going through difficulty can act lovingly when love is nowhere to be found, be kind and merciful to evoke kindness and mercy - all of these traits school a person in the qualities of divine love.
This is an example of how God love us vulnerable, flawed human beings.
God is always seeking to restore us with His love and set our feet on solid ground. He continues to encourage us forward toward the realization that we have full potential as His children.
True Love Is Built, Not Born
This love is a far cry from the romantic love experienced in the Western world.
Western society sees love as a force that is out of one’s control and outside of oneself. They see it as a mysterious, grand and is illogical. It is seen as an overpowering visitation upon two people by forces outside of themselves.
Marriage Encompasses All Family Relationships
Other cultures maintain that love is not born, but built and depends on the sacrifice, commitment and faithfulness of the couple involved.
Marital love, in these views, has a strong moral component.
It is believed that if a husband and wife maintain their moral and religious beliefs that they will naturally grow together in love.
The Jewish and Hindu faiths are strong on this point.
They advocate that love is built in an arranged marriage through the husband and wife’s virtues.
Modern marital therapists such as Stephen Wolin recommend that society take a second look at arranged marriages. Wolin believes that the process of building love into a marriage is needed in order to improve people’s chances at marital satisfaction.
His research shows that in resilient marriages, a strong spiritual element is always presence in successful marriages.
Sometimes, a couple may play the role of the following to his or her spouse at any given time:
Wife
Mother
Elder Sister
Younger Sister
Daughter
Husband
Father
Elder Brother
Younger Brother
Son
The Bible describes the perfect wife in Proverbs as a woman of virtue.
Such a perfect wife is trustworthy, benevolent, diligent, prudent and charitable. She will be kind, well spoken and is beloved by both her children and husband.
A husband’s good stature is due to his wife’s good offices. She becomes the reward and treasure of her man.
It is the fear of the Lord that keeps good marriages intact in fear that they will stray from His paths.
Buddhist scriptures also describe the good wife of virtue as her husbands “mother, a sister, a companion and a servant” (Anguttara Nikayaiv.91)
The Hindu author Ved Mehta points out, it is also the husband’s duty to earn his wife’s respect through his sacrifice and good character.
Virtues of character attract God and His love to a marriage.
“A noble man and woman are necessary for the sake of making a noble couple. We need a noble couple in order to achieve God’s noble love.”
Reverend Sun Myung Moon
Psychological research backs up the view that having virtue or good character is the bedrock of happy marriages.
A marital expert, Judith Wallerstein, agrees about virtue in happy marriages:
“For everyone, happiness in marriage meant feeling respected and cherished . . . Based on integrity. A partner was admired and loved for his or her honesty, compassion, generosity of spirit, decency, loyalty to the family, and fairness . . . . The value these couples place on the partner’s moral qualities . . . helps explain why many divorcing people speak so vehemently of losing respect for their former partners.”
Another highly respected marital theorist and therapist, Blaine Fowers, has said, “As I
have observed many different couples, I have become convinced that strong marriages are built on the virtues or character strengths of the spouses. In other words, the best way to have a good marriage is to be a good person.”
People who have failed in marriage were asked on a relationship website what they would have done to make their marriage better. People named improved traits of character:
“I would not have been unfaithful,” said one. “I would be more patient, loving and forgiving,” said another. Yet another said, “I would make more effort to be affectionate, supportive, loving, cheerful, and a better friend.”
Godly persons make good marriages
Ephesians shows that the love in a Christian marriage is described in terms of virtue of character is likened to the love of Christ for the church (5.25)
This love is a giving love, it is sacrificial that resembles the love of Jesus.
Author Michael G. Lawler characterizes Christian marital love: “It is a love that seeks to give way to the other whenever possible.”
Lawler continues to say that in Christian marriages, both are bound as servants to one another just as Christ served the people.
He says, “Marital love exists only inchoately on the wedding day . . . marital love, as mutual giving way, as mutual service, as mutual fidelity . . . is not a given in a Christian marriage but a task to be undertaken.”
Because traditional Christian values leads to successful marriages, theologian Stanley Hauerwas warns that Christians must not yield to the popular cultural non-moralistic notion that emotions and feelings are the measure of a marriage.
“What the church cares about,” he says, is not love per se, but “whether you are a person capable of sustaining the kind of fidelity that makes love, even in marriage, a possibility.”
Hauerwas underlines that the early church did not have an illusion about ‘love’ creating or legitimizing marriages.
They assumed that those entering marriage would develop the character strengths or virtues necessary for a loving marriage through following the traditions of the church faithfully.
Hauerwas notes the ongoing nature of virtue development: “I do not pretend that any of us ever have a character sufficient for marriage when we enter a marriage, but I am contending that at least some beginning has to have been made if we are to have the ability to grow into the kind of person capable of being called to undertake . . . the vocation of marriage.”
Psychologist Erik Erikson agrees with this religious view defining marital intimacy as, “ “the capacity to commit oneself to . . . partnership and to develop the ethical strength to abide by such commitments even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises.”
The Mormon faith and the Unificiation Church both recommend members to have a mission service prior to engagement or marriage.
There are three reasons: by serving others, sacrificing selfish means for other’s sakes, giving up entertainment and comforts and dedicate to the commandment to love God
Through this time period, the youth develop such a strong good character or virtues that will stand them in good stead when they embark into marriage which is spiritually demanding.
Theravada Buddhists in Thailand require a six month period of monastic life prior to marriage as well. This time for missions and service helps the young people make a good start at developing good virtues that are necessary to succeed in married life.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: Qualities of True Love in Marriage
This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook, "Educating for True Love" written by a team of writers to explain Reverend Sun Myung Moon's philosophy on love and marriage.
