Monday, July 28, 2008

A Marriage Made in Eden, Part 1 of 15

Guest: Gay Hubbard

IDEA: There are larger questions about marriage that we must ask before we get to some of the "how-to" books on marriage.

PURPOSE: To help listeners think beyond the "how-to" self-help books on having a successful marriage.

Discussion with Drs. Gay Hubbard and Alice Mathews about their book A Marriage Made In Eden.

Q: With so many books on marriage out there, why did you write this book?

A: A large number of the books out there on marriage are "how-to" books – how to fight fair, how to have intimacy in marriage, how to handle finances in marriage, how to have good sex in marriage, etc. But not many books ask some of the larger questions that come before the "micro" books zeroing in on particular aspects of daily living.

Q: What kind of "larger questions"?

A: Well, one "larger issue" is how we define marriage. The culture is grappling with this. What makes a marriage a marriage? What are the essentials of marriage which, by definition, make a relationship a marriage?

And crucial in this time of enormous social change is what characteristics of marriage can change without the marriage becoming a "non-marriage."

Of course, we also have to ask if marriage should have different meanings and goals for Christians from the meanings and goals of people who do not follow Jesus Christ. What is it that shapes our identity as God's people? And what difference should that make in our relationships?

Another "larger issue" question is whether our personal happiness is the first criterion of a successful marriage. That's a big one! Most of us assume that God designed marriage to make us happy. That's an assumption that needs to be explored.

These questions all take us back to the really big-issue question: what does GOD tell us about His purposes in creating us as male and female in His image and then creating a situation in which a man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh. As followers of Jesus Christ, we ought to be sure that we understand God's purposes for us in marriage. The answers to these questions form one of the larger themes of this book.

And out of that question also comes the important question: whether some of the structures we assume are biblical are, in fact, cultural artifacts which may or may not lead us in God's direction in our lives. We spend some time in the book trying to deconstruct myths that surround cultural ideas about marriage which come out of past efforts to deal with destructive cultural sea-changes like the Industrial Revolution.