It is as easy to fall out of love as it is to fall into it. Falling in love is an exhilarating adventure, whereas staying in love is like gardening. Neglect the garden, and it's hard to tell it ever was a garden. Being in love feels good from the start, and we're sure it is good for us. It has no calories, no cholesterol and is assuredly not carcinogenic. Those who have been there and done that know, however, that love is a fairly fragile condition and cannot be maintained for very long simply by subjectively savouring its pleasures.
The Pharisees who, in tomorrow's Gospel reading (Mark 10: 2-16), tried yet again to trap Jesus, had long forgotten their experience of that first fine careless rapture of being in love. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" they asked, seeking to embroil Jesus in a tiresome dispute between rabbis Hillel and Shammai, one lax on the permanence of marriage, the other strict. Jesus, frustratingly, refused to discuss divorce, preferring to endorse the permanence of marriage. He referred the Pharisees to Genesis 1 and 2 and asked incredulously if they had not read those chapters. Quoting 1:27 and 2:24, Jesus defined God as the creator of human sexuality and marriage as a divine ordinance. The same Creator who "at the beginning . . . made them male and female" also said: "for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
Jesus then added his own affirmation, familiar to everyone who has witnessed a church wedding: "Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate." This biblical teaching is unambiguous. The marriage bond is more than a human contract; it is a divine yoke laid upon couples by God. The marriage service reference to it as a mystical union is mystifying to most people, but God has given extensive practical information on how to make marriages work. It is very nitty, and can be decidedly gritty when put into practice! When asked what they believe to be the primary cause of their marriage breakdown, most partners say poor communication. That may be the obvious problem and can sound like a thoughtful response, but it ignores what the Bible teaches.
God's major objective is to develop the character of Christ in his people's lives, and our primary character defect is patently a failure to love. Love is the exact opposite of selfishness - which is the primary cause of marriage breakdown. Communication is a tool - it can be taught; but it takes more than education to deal with selfishness. The hallmark of a Christian is love: "All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another" (John's Gospel 13:35).
This love is objective, it looks at someone else, determines their need, and sets about meeting it. The ability of this kind of love to meet needs is not contingent on the object of that love but on the will and ability of the lover. "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son . . ." is the ultimate model, for God's love met the world's greatest need, that of forgiveness for sin.
The task of helping those who have fallen out of love to fall back into it is not for the fainthearted. Rather than aiming to create a greater desire for the partner, efforts centre on helping marriage partners to discover each other's longings and then to develop a pattern of meeting them. Rebuilding romance requires this kind of hard-nosed objectivity. In an Irish society which is institutionalising the demanding of rights, the Christian answer lies not in claiming rights, but in yielding them, for love focuses not on rights but on responsibility.
Too naive, too impractical, too religious, out of touch with reality? Not if it actually does touch earth by establishing trust in the God who made us and by working to his plan and principles. When even one partner begins to operate bravely from this baseline, there has to be hope of pulling back from the brink of divorce. When, by God's grace alone, husband and wife can agree that love is not getting what I want, but giving what my partner needs, the marriage will know a maturity and stability it never knew before.
Kirkegaard's observation on marriage will then be endearingly illustrated in the couple's kitchen, bedroom and living room: "A believer is surely a lover, yea, of all lovers the most in love!"
G.F.