In September of 2024, The Owen Center hosted our annual community event. This year’s focus was on the biblical approach to marriage. Below is a transcript of Gary Spooner’s talk and the video from the Q&A panel discussion with the rest of our counselors.
Children flourish when marriages flourish. Cities flourish when families flourish.
A grandmother once shared this wisdom with her children:
“Marriage is like flies on a screen door. Half of them are waiting to get in, and the other half are waiting to get out.”
Let’s buzz around for a moment with one of the flies that got in – and find ourselves in the homes of marriages in our community. What do we see?
- In one, a young married couple sits on the apartment couch. He plays an online video game with two of his college buddies. She scours internet sites about fertility and childbearing.
- In another, it’s clear that fertility has not been a problem — three children under the age of five. She is somewhere between the kitchen and the laundry room. He is playing with and – sorta – getting the little ones ready for bed. They are too busy and too exhausted to speak. Oh, and his parents are coming to visit this weekend!
- In the last house, the fly on the wall sees empty-nesters living in the same house, but in separate rooms. She is on the phone with her daughter – a nightly 1-hour catch-up call. He is in the garage practicing his tee shot on the Wii.
These are not remote nor unfamiliar marriage scenes. They are all too typical. These marriages have lost their simplicity.
I know that in our community not everyone agrees with this, but it is my conviction that God created marriage, and He meant for it to be a really good thing and a really simple thing. And, it is so good because it is so simple. God, in His first wedding homily said this:
“For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to His wife and the two shall become one flesh.”
Later, Jesus applies these words in Matthew 19:6, saying, “So, they are no longer two, but one flesh.” The two are one. Jesus’ words don’t add up (maybe it’s some kind of higher math!), but they capture the mysterious simplicity of a healthy marriage.
The Exclusive Marriage
A healthy marriage is simple because it is an exclusive marriage. It is a leaving marriage. It is as the wedding vow says, “Forsaking all others and clings only to you!” Father and mother may be hardest to leave but scripture’s principle is that everyone and everything must be dismissed in favor of you and your spouse. Your marriage is your most important human relationship.
The healthy marriage is like a walled garden where no one can enter but a husband and his wife. The walls of exclusivity make a marriage a protected and precious place.
For most troubled couples, I talk to someone or something else in the marriage with them. Picture of it this way: You and your spouse hug, right in the middle of the kitchen. And one of your children barges between you both and wriggles in. Now, as cute and endearing as that action is, it pictures how marriages lose their simplicity, how the oneness is compromised.
For you, it might be parents barging in.
It might be your children barging in.
It might be your careers barging in.
It might be friends barging in.
It might be a hobby, a habit, or an addiction barging in.
It might be serving in your church barging in.
The sacred space reserved for one another alone does not exist. But someone or something else is demanding attention, demanding to be included in your marriage – intruders who have become the enemy of the simple, two-are-one nature of a great marriage. Marriage is designed for and only thrives when both husband and wife see each other as their most important human relationship. Whatever these intruders are, they rob your marriage of time and space. They steal away your words for one another, your attention for one another and your affection for one another. Ordinary life pressures us to compromise, to believe that your marriage does not need this undistracted of time and focus. So our marriages get complicated by other people and things that wriggle between the one-on-one, eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul exclusivity of a healthy marriage.
So, who else – what else – lives in your marriage? Where is the protected, precious space in your marriage where no one goes but you and your spouse?
It is the exclusive marriage where oneness is protected that becomes a safe place for all kinds of intimacy. After all it is a walled GARDEN. And marriage, like gardens, must be tended if they are to be enjoyed. Genesis 2:24 points also to the currents of personal connection that take place when a couple has made exclusive space for their marriage. A healthy marriage, it says, is a cleaving marriage. There, I safely can open myself to my spouse and give myself to my spouse. However, the second common factor in the troubled couples I talk to is this: the marriage is taken for granted. It is not nurtured. Nothing or little happens in the sacred space of the marriage. I’ve heard some say, “We’re married. Isn’t that enough!?”
Well, walled gardens are not made beautiful simply by building a wall. Gardens are made beautiful by planting beautiful things, watering, fertilizing and weeding. Marriages are made beautiful by planting all one’s life in your spouse: In a cleaving marriage, the couple freely gives to each other their life with God, their intellects, their emotions, their pleasures and their bodies. As these are prayed through, practiced and protected, the currents of connection grow a marriage into robust health and joy.
So, how beautiful can you make your marriage? How can you tend it?
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Most couples think they know each other well. They don’t. Become experts at listening, at asking questions – and waiting for an answer. Know one another.
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If loving your spouse were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you? We often assume that our spouses know that we love them. We think we show it. But “Make love your aim”, as the apostle Paul says. Prove your love with actions.
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You married a sinner, broken by the fall. Make a habit of confessing your sins to one another and praying for one another, so that you may be healed. Forgive.
The Impressive Marriage
The beauties of an exclusive marriage can’t be hidden. Marriage was created to have an impact. In a gray world, the healthy marriage is technicolor, especially to those who are most near. Not least of all, they produce the atmosphere in which our children breathe. A marriage with integrity settles the hearts of our children in security. A marriage with intimacy establishes a greenhouse for the soul in which our children thrive.
As one African proverb says:
“A good marriage is like a good roof that keeps the children warm and dry. But when the marriage is bad, the roof is open and the children get wet.”
We have said at the Owen Center for many years: When marriages flourish, children flourish. The beauty and the fruit of a healthy marriage feeds the lives of our children. What our marriages grow in the walled garden gets distributed. As one author describes it, our children get fat minds and souls by feasting on the fruit of their parents’ marriage.
And we can add: When families flourish cities flourish. The healthiest communities are filled with healthy marriages. And healthy marriages grow healthy families. And healthy families grow healthy communities. Thriving families impact neighbors, churches, schools, and businesses with a good life.
So, you see, the beauty and goodness of a healthy marriage ultimately flows everywhere – just as God planned.
When two are one, the whole world begins to flourish again.