The Word of Truth Ministries
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Marriages of
Hatred Disguised in Words of Love
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Many Christian marriages are destroyed by sheer foolishness and ignorance of supposedly saved-in-Christ individuals who do as Peter cautioned us not to do: they take the Word of God and misinterpret it, then wrest their destruction on a wrong division of God's Word. Tragically, they will not change from their wrong way of looking at God's Word, instead these individuals are fitted for marriages of struggle, pain, conflict, and hatred that are often disguised in words of love. I have seen that in far too many Holiness Churches, ignorance and stubbornness have been corrosive albeit deeply rooted as a social value and behavioral pattern that characterizes many believers' approach to salvation and marriage. I have heard a many testify that God gave them the wife or husband they have, and they don't want another, yet in their private lives they are tormented by their marriages, and wish to God they had never gotten married. Often that torment is because they assume that since they have met the requirements of scripture, or they, after meeting the requirements of scripture, have prayed and God has answered their prayer concerning a mate, that nothing further needs to be done to that union because God has given them the mate they have and all things are complete and entire therewith. That type of thinking defies the Word and common sense, and that leave-it-to-God stance is often taken by saints concerning God's Word and all the things that God has made. These saints are the same who vaunt ignorance as if it were godliness. It is not! I say over and over again: Ignorance is not a virtue that God approves of; why would God say seek wisdom and in all your getting get an understanding? [Prov.4] The New Testament (as well as the old) is replete with admonitions against ignorance. Any saint who can appreciate the magnitude of our great God will recognize that He has made all things, and a study of all things is a study of God. To discourage one from studying and enhancing his/her mind is to cripple and blind God's people. Solomon was bold when speaking of this love of ignorance: The fool hates knowledge. Jesus said they (fools) love darkness (that is ignorance) rather than light because their deeds are evil. Furthermore, he said that we shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Paul said that Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom as well as sanctification. We harm ourselves often through our an ignorance that need not exist; that ignorance pervades many of our marriages, making them and our families living hells because we know that we do not have the option of the world to divorce, if we want to stay with God. Instead, we have only the prescription of God concerning divorce, as uttered by Jesus. When things are going poorly month after month, year after years in a marriage, the conditions of Jesus seem harsh and hard to bear. Resultantly, many leave God's Word and divorce anyway because the pressures become too great for them. Allow God to assist you in saving your marriage, your family, and your soul, instead of leaving God's Word by actions unauthorized by the Word and then trying to twist the Word to make it fit your wrongful situation. There is something that you can do with a bad marriage if you truly want to walk in the Word of the Lord. First, American readers need to get rid of a concept that is so planted into American minds and harmful in many ways; that concept is this: Marriages are always to be happy and joyous. God never promised such an ideal situation in this life. Paul said, seeing how Christ has suffered in the fleshed, we should arm ourselves with the same mind. Only in America are people so TV-warped into thinking that marriage must be happy to be endured. The culture of assured happiness is almost ingrained in American minds so much so that most Americans will never be saved and obedient to God's Word. Americans, by and large, think that they are owed certain rights of happiness from God, but even this nation's philosophical foundational documents, the underpinning of this nation, only give us the right of the pursuit of happiness; they do not guarantee nor promise happiness. So we may want to dispense with the concept, "My marriage is not a happy one." Is it a miserable one? There is a vast range between happy and miserable--some things have to be endured. Marriage normally has a honeymoon period in which hot burning love allows us to overlook the shortcomings of our mates, but after about five-years that hot burning love cools. This cessation of verve does not mean that love has died; it has matured from the emotional state to the real meaning of love as it unsheathes itself and you then begin to know and experience the real aspects of active love. That is when the real work of love in that marriage is needed--the flaws that were always there, but only now are seen become painfully visible and irritating as time goes by. [1 Cor. 13] Those things that were once cute become annoying, and sometimes a couple will think to have children as a way to void out the annoyances, but children can present problems to a marriage that have been considered. Children hinder the free mobility of a couple, the intimacy of a couple, harm the shape of the wife that the husband once loved and the energy that was once there; they engender obligations and responsibilities; they present long range obligations of guidance and support; they transform the dynamics of the house from simply a marriage to a marriage and a family. (I have talked about this in other discussions of marriage.) Frustration and Irritations An irritation is some act, behavior, affectation, mannerism, etc., that is unpleasant to a person. It is usually temporal and can be endured without much effort, although one does not desire to endure it. Irritations are considered minor. On the other hand, a frustration is a failure to fulfill one's desires, goals, hopes, dreams, ambitions, etc. Frustration brings on an unsettled state that is hard to endure; it clouds the whole of one's personality much as a general sickness is distinguished from a mere affliction--a toe ach may be painful, but a severe case of the flu prostrates the whole of a man, making him immobile and unable to function. This is a comparative distinction between an irritation and a frustration. In a small book written by Sigmund Freud years ago called Civilization and Its Discontents, he argued that when a person has a possibility that he wanted to but does not meet, when he could have met it, he becomes frustrated. Writer Langston Hughes also developed that thought further.* Indeed, many books and research has shown this same truth. Frustration may result when a plethora of irritations are endured and are continuously unmitigated. This situation is present in many homes of saints and are un-discerned, even though the scriptures say that a man should examine himself to see if he is in the faith. We too seldom do self-examinations by the Word of God, and as a result, many things grow in our marriage that should be stamped out and would be if we honestly examined ourselves by God's Word instead of ourselves. [1 Cor. 11:28; 2 Cor. 10:12; 13:5] Tiny Pin-pricks that Kill The scripture is plain, wives submit to their own husbands. Some pastors have been so ungodly brazen to intrude into this God-ordained order and try to and often do instruct wives to the obedience to them and not to their own godly husbands. This behavior certainly reaches into the marriage as God never intended and as it should never occur. This action dishonors the marriage and the man, and that man feels that disrespect by his pastor and his wife. Such an action is unthinkable, but ungodly (I repeat for emphasis, UNGODLY MEN) have reached their hands into godly marriages. The marriage is a sacred institution I will show in the final installment of this series of messages, and no preacher, pastor, minister, or another should intrude in this institution in any ungodly way. This redirecting of the headship from the husband to a pastor grinds on the man and cuts into the passion he has for his wife; whether she understands it or not, it is a pin-prick that will work an untoward disposition in that marriage. Often there are things both parties do that cause tiny pin-pricks. When a husband or a wife bicker with each other and snipe in minor ways that seem insignificant, although they are indifferent to the feelings and concerns of the other party, those little irritations work into the psyche of the other person, especially if they are continuous. [Gal. 5:15] The length of time a couple has been married should help each one of those parties to discover the likes and dislikes of the parties. No one should live with a person 20 years and not know that person, what to expect, how to anticipate his/her action, etc. And if true love is involved and the parties are intelligent, they will use that knowledge wisely to please their mates. I cite this point below because I think it projects some of the foolishness that is conveyed over pulpits and to many of the people of God by ministers who should never be allowed to speak to God's people in any authoritative way until they have something edifying to say. One poor minister, totally ignorant of God's truth, the very nature of marriage and its symbolism, and totally void of proper pulpit and church protocol and etiquette stated over the pulpit to the congregation that he has never seen his wife naked and that a man should not see his wife naked because she is supposed to be a modest woman. This is the type of gross ignorance is disturbing and harmful. Has this man never read that they are one flesh? Has he not seen all of him? Medical doctors who are strangers to us look all over our bodies and throughout the ages of man, we have considered that custom proper, and is there such a person who would not look at that part of his body that is his wife's and she his? These types of foolish notions pepper the landscape of too many congregations and harm the marriage bed and life. Why should this man's ignorance become my standard of behavior? Yet, this is a practice of many ministers. Solomon asked: How long will the simple love simplicity... and fools hate knowledge? Indeed that is the question for these types of pronouncements, for they are pin-pricks in the fabric of the marriage. Often there are slights, prolonged arguments and disagreements that live beyond their natural duration and cause formations and scars in the behavior toward each other, even after the argument and discussion is over. There will be disagreements in a marriage, that is a fact of life. But those disagreements should never be wild and without bounds, regardless of how heated. There are things that should never be said in the hour of heated argument. Arguments are areas of disagreement on a point. Men/brothers must understand that their wives have opinions that they express about certain issues, and they are fervent as men sometimes are on those issues. Wives should understand that men are action oriented and dominant, and after the dialectics have ceased, even if there is no clear agreement that has been reach, the husband is still the husband and God has given him headship to be used wisely, of course. You should be able to register your vehement disagreement and the reasons why, but tell your husband in love that you will submit to his wishes as unto the Lord. If that husband is really wrong on a matter of importance and God is in his life, that submission will work on him to consider your ideas. In that argument there should be certain bounds for arguing an issue for this reason: in a marriage the husband and the wife share intimate, secret and tender weaknesses and things about themselves that they share with no other persons. They have uncovered themselves (made themselves naked to each other in every way) to each other because they are one. This makes them especially sensitive to pain and hurt only they can inflict upon them. So the argument MUST be tame and avoid deep-seated inflictions of pain. Never forget, after the argument, the two of you must live with each other still. When those arguments go beyond a limit and inflict a lasting pain, that pain becomes another pin-prick. When these pin-pricks become so numerous and continuous, certain formations start setting into the minds and passions of the parties. Although the argument has ceased, the pain lingers and the parties look at each other with scars that they have inflicted. Those scars cause a distrust and an expectation that they have no surety of not being hurt again. This happens on both sides of the marriage. During these arguments, srexual and emotional intimacy stops; as the irritations mount and continue, the parties slow their intimacies. They start avoiding each other. And soon, frustration works its way into the marriage because of a thousand pin-pricks that have crept into the marriage and wedged a breach in their marriage. Many marriage parties go so far in avoiding one another until they move out of the same bed and same room. As this state lingers, it becomes the normal for that relationship. Many times because of the many hurts that have taken place and never dealt with successfully, normal men become psychologically impotent and cannot engage in the intimate act of love-making with their wives. Too many pin-pricks have come along in this marriage and alienated the wife from the husband and the reverse is also true. That alienation presents the best case scenario for Satan to work a third party into that marriage or for him to whisper divorce into the minds of this couple. Many years ago a preacher who became a bishop said to me that he and his wife had not had intimacy in 10-years. I was shocked with unbelief. He was a man in his 40's, and I had heard of no such things even among unsaved married people. Neither was was ill, but so many hurts had gone under their bridge that love and passion had died and they were doing nothing to rekindle it. Since the sex-drive is the second strongest within man, of course there were passions exhibited but not toward each other. What Can be Done? But when one has a wife and his plate is not full, or he has not a wifely plate at all, I can understand this type of disbelief. However, I do not, as the Word of God does not, condone intimacy outside of marriage. It is sin that may be worthy of severing the union itself! One of the things marriage couples must do to save and keep their marriages godly and intimate is engage in periodic and honest self/martial examinations to see the pain they have inflicted upon each other. They must be open and honest and tell each other how and why they are hurt so the other party can understand the full gravity of what they have done. Another thing they must do is forgive each other. As Christ has and does forgive us of our sins, we must forgive each other in our marriages and outside of our marriages. Peter asked how often such we give and Jesus said seven times seventy. Forgive as long as it takes to get the relationship back on a godly and an intimate footing again. Forgiving requires repentance of the discovered wrong/harm done to each other. Inherent in repentance to never go back to the behavior from which one is repenting. [Mat. 18:22] Another thing that the couple must do is learn to like each other again and laugh with each other. Laughter is healthy and godly for married couple. They must learn to play with each other; they must learn to sport each other. What it took to get that mate, it may also take to keep him/her happy. Go out together often-- just the two of you, and let the children know the importance of your marriage for that family and that family's well being. They will understand, and you will be modeling a behavior that they will take to their own marriages at adulthood. [Gen. 26:8] Another thing is to be kindly affected toward each other. Be passionate--hugging and kiss--before your children. Of course, this does not mean intimacy before your children. Foolish parents do those things and try to rationalize them. They cannot; the children are harmed by such behavior. Still another thing is have Bible class and prayer with your wife and with your family. Study the Word of God at home as well as at your assembly. And learn to ask questions and prove all things. Promote questioning of your knowledge and of the teacher. If the teacher/preacher gets angry, disturbed, upset, etc., with your questions, take a very close look at what he is teaching and him. If he cannot give you a credible answer to your questions you need to look at other options. [] _______________________________________________________________
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Copyright © 2002 by The Truth of God