The Entire Plan of God: Why Completely Christian Marriages Almost Never End in Divorce
How to stop a century-long plague of divorce dividing the family
Today is our 16th wedding anniversary — 5,844 days free from a plague that pounded the world (and our family) throughout the past century.
We found the antidote transforming relationships from good to great, the way to make a marriage matter.
As C.S. Lewis explained, “If individuals live only 70 years, then a state, or a nation, or a civilization, which may last for 1,000 years is more important than an individual.”
But if there’s life after death: “then the individual is not only more important but incomparably more important, for he is everlasting and the life of a state or civilization, compared with his is only a moment.”
First, we need to understand the true challenge of divided families (glossed over by an indifferent world). So here’s the real data our family (and our world) endured over the past century:
- Cora Jordan divorced in 1923, a year when there were just 1.5 divorces or annulments and 11 new marriages for every 1,000 Americans.
- The plague’s peak hit 40 years ago in 1981 when the number of divorces nearly quintupled to its all-time high: 5.3 divorces or annulments and 10 marriages for every 1,000 Americans.
- By 2010, the divorce rate dropped back to 2.8 per 1,000 Americans, but marriages per capita hit a new low of 6.8 marriages per 1,000 Americans.
- By 2018, America’s birth rate hit a new low (60.2 births per every 1,000 women of childbearing age). In Europe: 10 births per 1,000.
Why old Christians pray for you: The 1 in 4,000 stat you never hear
Everyone hears the impossible-to-verify claim about half of all marriages ending in divorce. Another study claims the “average marriage” lasts four years. Really?
Here’s the stat the world rarely mentions, the difficult but all-powerful cure to divorce: spouses who pray together daily face a mere 1 in 4,000 chance of divorce. Few can do that, of course.
My bride and I aren’t nearly holy enough to pray together each day as a couple. But we have learned (in our family and our culture) that the couples who attend church together weekly are far, far more likely to stay married than couples who don’t. One hour a week doesn’t sound like much to ask.
The simplest way to make your marriage last? Do this one thing
In every marriage I’ve known, the people who attended church together weekly had good marriages (not perfect, certainly). The people who seldom, if ever, got to church together were far more likely to divorce.
If you don’t believe that, put aside faith for one minute and consider this notion looking purely at math and psychology:
When two people marry, each has one vote, and it’s easy to get into divided 1/1 ties and endless battles over everything from the important decisions to the stupid minor ones. It’s also easy to “go your own way” and do what you please without consulting your spouse, but you pay the price.
If you put a third perfect person (who is love and truth itself) into your marriage, there are three votes to consider (with that wiser third party there to break the ties).
Your vote plus your spouse’s plus that third “what’s best for the marriage” vote changes a couple into a trinity.
Now add faith back into the equation:
What if you believe you’re a beloved child of the Author of the Universe who already wrote an amazing plan (and story) for you?
What if you believe that God gave you the gift of a perfect (for you) spouse and family? If you believe everything eventually works out? And everything happens for a reason?
Suddenly, you’re no longer isolated. Instead, you’re part of something bigger than you and your ego: a family of one billion-plus brothers and sisters (and many role models) you can turn to for help.
There’s an owner’s manual developed over thousands of years, teaching us how to make marriage and family work.
We beats me? №1 book is all about saving marriages and family?
The Bible, the best-selling book in history, starts and ends with marriage stories. After that, it’s all about families, the big family we are all descended from.
The most important marriage in that book? The marriage between Jesus and the Church.
The purpose of life — and Christianity — actually has everything to do with marriage and generating new creations.
The word “generation” comes from the word “generate,” to create something bigger than yourself. The Theology of the Body movement goes into great detail on how this all works.
The world (and we ourselves) forget that the church is a place we go to learn how to love each other and make marriage and family (and society itself) work better.
The misery of crusty, rock-hard bread breaking relationships apart
Most people don’t like to hear a particular Gospel anymore: Jesus is asked whether divorce is lawful, noting Moses said divorce was permissible “because of the hardness of your hearts.”
Jesus said divorce wasn’t how God intended marriage.
“God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.
“Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate… Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark:10–12, NABRE).
We don’t like to dwell on that passage, a visiting priest said, because our hearts remain hardened like the rock-tough crust of old bakery bread with the soft part buried deep inside.
When the crust gets too thick, the softness is nearly impossible to penetrate. Hardened pieces fly as we try to burrow into old bread. So we toss it all out.
Otherwise, we keep blaming the crusty people we love and the ones we can’t stand. The ones we don’t really care about receive our cold indifference.
The purpose of marriage? Your main job is to save your spouse’s soul
“Because we love each other” isn’t a good enough reason to get married.
“Two people can come together purely for physical pleasure, for economic reasons, or for psychological companionship,” Bishop Robert Barron argues. “And we might witness two people coming together out of authentic love. But none of these levels is what the Bible means by marriage.”
Marriage is designed as a sacred calling, a lifetime commitment and belief that we have joined a family as unique parts of one flesh.
“You come to church to be married before God and His people when you are convinced that your marriage is not, finally, about you,” Barron says. “It is about God and about serving God’s purposes.”
Christian pastor Chris Hodges, similarly, writes: “Truth without grace is mean. Grace without truth is meaningless. Truth and grace together are good medicine.”
Love triangles: Horrible — or Heavenly?
Our friend Patrick McDonald yesterday marked 49 years as a deacon. He and his beautiful wife, Peggy, have four sons and four daughters.
We say two is company and three is a crowd, he notes, but God keeps calling us to a Trinity like the Holy Family (father, mother, and child). Trinities repeat themselves throughout the Bible:
- The three kings seek the newborn Messiah.
- Jesus is tempted in the desert three times.
- His parables often include three figures, such as the Prodigal Son story focusing on a father and two sons.
- Jesus is denied three times.
- He falls three times on His way to be crucified.
- He is one of three men crucified at once.
- He is killed and returns on the third day.
- God is three in one: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, distinguishing Christians from all other believers and nonbelievers.
Put it all together by making your marriage a trinity: you, your spouse, and God. The JOY method of life priorities?
- Put Jesus first.
- Others second.
- Yourself third.
