Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make me a Match
from the Video Lecture series Marriage a Pathway to Salvation, by Fr. John Mack:
"...marriage has been sold to us westerners as an institution along utilitarian lines..."
Now think about this for a minute, like I did last night during the class: What exactly is Marriage and why do we enter into the instituion? To what extent are our answers to these questions centered around utilitarian prinicples? Do we find ourselves basically answering that marriage exists to meet our natural human needs? And is there something wrong with this perspective?
What happens when our needs are no longer being met? What happens when the utilitarian principle isn't there anymore? And note also the personal passivity that prevails in people's attitudes in regards to divorce: "my marriage didn't work." I mean, how long are we likely to stay engaged in any utilitarian activity that has apparently lost its utilitarian appeal?
So, if marriage isn't a legal contract granted by the state for the meeting of our needs and witnessed by Pastor Bob, the wedding party, and God...what is it?
Naturally as I metioned in the previous Marriage post a week or so ago, the Orthodox Church upholds marriage as a Holy Mystery of the Church...but in specific detail: marriage is a mystery of the Kingdom of God. It is an entering into eternal life and those who participate in the mystery share also in the union between Christ and His Church. It is Holy, it is sacred, it is salvific, and it is Transformational. It does not exist to satisfy your need for sex or companionship, it exists to heal and save your soul.
Marriage is to married couples, what a cell is to a monastic hermit. It is their path to salvation.
Marriages fail when one or both of the persons in the relationship forgets (or never knew at all) all of this and returns to the mindset that marriage is intended to fulfill personal needs.
AND, consider that all of this throws quite a wrench into our culture's dating habits in which we seek out people who will seemingly meet our marital needs, and though I am not neccesarily advocating it, one might also take a moment to consider why arranged marriages in other cultures are so much more succesful than our American marriages? I am sure all sorts of answers could be posited (oppressed women etc etc) but what about the possibility that the key factor is in actually their underlying understanding of what marriage is to begin with?
And one other thing that struck me during last night's discussion: all of the arguments offered in order to justify "shacking up" or pre-marital sex in general are rendered totally moot by the Orthodox understanding of marriage. Whereas from the utilitarian perspective one is forced to engage the arguments.
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Comments
The truth is that deep down a *very very* few want a marriage that is about sacrifice and combating self-will, just as few Orthodox Christian really want the blessing of many children that permeates the betrothal and crowning services. So we date long, marry late and often go childless years and years after crowning.
I cannot speak for ALL Orthodox Christians, but I can certainly see your point for some and to some degree for myself.