Faith is Like Marriage

Marital fidelity is not a challenge for me. I say that not to brag; I’m challenged enough and one more major psychic fight might tip the weight of torture in my soul to the point I’d have to consider a stint in a padded room. (Well, this might be an exaggeration. I'm not quite that tortured; a better description might be overwound. But on some days...)

I don’t know why conjugal constancy seems such a light burden in my life compared to what I see and hear from so many others. I suppose that successful parental brainwashing and an inherited stubborn streak both play a large part in the wiring of that region of my psyche which influences this behavior. In my youth, I wasn’t always sure that I wanted to get married, but I made a decision back then that if I did marry, it would be like the traditional vows say, "until death do us part." This was no romantic ideal on my part, but my simple conviction about the way things must be done.

During a combined 30 years of two marriages (the first was "until death do us part"), I’ve learned that being a faithful partner manifests not just through the don’ts, but that the do’s are equally important: of course don’t cheat; but concentrate on making it easy for your spouse to remain loyal as well. What that takes depends on who you married. In what ways does your spouse most like to be appreciated and attended to?

Both spiritual faith and marital faith have a lot to do with being a witness to the worth of the faith object. My witness (meaning my attitude toward, and my words about said object) glorifies both the object of my faithfulness (for example, Christ in the spiritual case, or my husband in the marital case) and the institution formed around my relationship with Christ (the Church) or around my relationship with my husband (marriage).

Here’s the shame: Why does witnessing to the worth of my husband come so much more naturally to me than witnessing to the worth of my Savior? I'm not saying I either imagine or voice greater attributes in my mate than in my Christ. I understand the greatness of God, to the extent one can understand such a thing. But somehow anxiety seems to creep into my thoughts about God with alarming alacrity compared to the relative resolve and assurance with which I relate to my husband.

Why?

Until the night before last, I was clueless to resolve this perplexity and therefore powerless to complete this post. Then God gave me the answer through my new acquaintance, Bradley J. Moore, who writes a brilliant blog called "Shrinking the Camel" on mixing faith and business. Recently, Bradley wrote a four part post called "Meditation for (Christian) Dummies". You really should enjoy this short but oh-so-delicious series for yourself, preferably now, because my next paragraph may spoil it for you a little.

During an experiment with meditation, Bradley received the revelation that "surrender doesn’t mean giving up. It means engaging completely and fully in your life."

When I read that, I celebrated for Bradley. About four hours later, it dawned on me why God had led me to this idea. I had been living with the idea that faith is like marriage, but I had not surrendered in my faith the way I had in my marriage (at least not lately).

Surrender in both faith and marriage has to be in the spirit of "engaging completely and fully", freely and joyously expressing my identity, and not just in the duty bound terms of turning myself in. If I am "married" to Christ as I am to Pastor Benjamin W. Harris, Jr., I don’t have to agonize over what to say, when to say it, whether to click my heels three times before I say it, and I don’t have to wonder whether or not God is amenable to continuing the relationship if I do something wrong. Moreover, I should be freer in my Christian faith than in my marriage because Christ’s love is eternal and unconditional whether my husband and I can reach that plane or not.

The problem, I think, is that, while God’s nature takes more study to learn, it’s easier to focus on a warm-blooded person whom you see every day and from whom you hear their likes and dislikes whether you ask or not. Since I’ve made up my mind that Benjamin and I are WE, it is easy to think about OUR welfare in decision-making, and OUR pleasure or peace of mind in so many small daily ways. I am his wife and therefore I live fully as his wife; there is no reason to hold back. The great gift I received Monday night is the realization that God and I are WE too. I am His child and therefore I can live fully as His child. God loves me no matter what, so there is never a reason to hold back from living my life as His.