5. Covenantal Marriage
13. WHAT SORT OF MARRIAGE?
A no fault marriage or a covenantal marriage. Covenantal marriage is a Christian backed, "tough it out" situation where, after counselling, two people need the same commitment, with a two year separation clause for divorce, unless provable adultery has taken place, or habitual intemperate or cruel behaviour by one spouse. The other option is a more liberal approach where there is a no fault separation of six months. So, unchastity is made respectable, and infidelity of the heart soon leads to infidelity of the body. The propaganda around us in our cultural setting with the added dash of pornography, adds little cement to an unchristian marriage.
Jesus celebrated two things about marriage, firstly that one flesh can be a site of spiritual growth, as well as all the other ways for spiritual growth, and could be a means of encountering God. Our longing for one another is not just an analogy of our longing for God, but an honouring of Him in the fierce exclusivity of a Jealous God. Our significant other, our marriage partner, becomes together with us a binding of passionate emotion, cherished companionship, intellectual exploration and willing submission. So it is all bound with a spiritual dimension. This high standard, which really is the envy of many of the permissive society today, could hardly result from an arranged marriage, of the patriarchal society.
The second thing that Jesus celebrated was that the relationship within that unit cannot be dictated by one or the other, that abstinence or practice decisions had to be mutual. This again, was against the Jewish patriarchal pattern of the time and would also have been a cause for consternation among his Jewish followers. The Greeks and Romans gave the highest value to marital concord, and there was affection and agreement between those spouses. When Jesus asked his Jewish followers to leave their families and form new family groups where they could worship, it meant that the women left the family enclosures and security of the patriarchal system, a fact which we rarely take into consideration when we consider the lives of the new followers. Of course, it would have worked well for the forgiven prostitutes who had no family or enclosure to support them, and who had had to earn their living from the pimps who employed them. They were now free.
But the church has, from the second century, declared that sexuality was a lower part of the self, and had to be repressed to in order to cultivate the higher moral and intellectual facilities. This two tiered system of holiness has now been challenged, and now it is agreed that it is an integral part of our personhood, and we cannot disown the sexuality of ourselves without damaging our psychic health. In addition we cannot pervert our sexuality with adultery, incest, or sexual abuses, without damaging our own and the health of others. These recent views can only benefit our own community.
Certainly, Paul counselled chastity as a way of dealing with pagan practices, just as today people counsel chastity as one of the ways of dealing with AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases. Chastity, in or out of marriage, is not just a curb on spontaneity or pleasure. It is a Christian ideal which gives moral resources on which to purchase freedom in Christ, wholesomeness and life in abundance even everlasting life. There is integrity here, but this ideal has to be redeemed from the struggle for power and dominance by either partner. Male dominance has been characterised by physical abuse by fathers and brothers and husbands and now is the time when we say STOP for there is no excuse, maybe reasons, but never excuses.
Indian culture is severe and complicated with a still present version of the mother/whore syndrome. The Aryan invaders about 1500 B.C. brought the Vedic texts, a form of Hindu, identifying women as the source of pollution. We know that women are still held in this low esteem in India. Apart from those few well educated families, the lowering numbers of women in the population, due to killing or aborting girl babies, and the debilitating dowry rate, and consequential wife murder, indicate that the girl child continues to be an enemy in India. In Japan we observe women walking behind men as an indication in their country of male superiority. Now many Japanese women decline to be married at all, rather than into such an unbalanced gender relationship. We see today the dilemma for China in “the one child policy” where girls are forsaken, and boys are more valued. That policy has now caused another male gender unbalanced population with all its attendant problems. It is not the minority Christian elements in these populations which agitate for change, but the women’s movements themselves, and we would wish them well.
