Helping Them: The Checklist
My wife, when we are going to go on a trip, makes a checklist of all of the things she needs to get done before we go. Now, I distrust these checklists because it seems to me that she adds things that she has been wanting to do for weeks, just to pressure herself into doing them (and me into helping), but they are a good idea. All sorts of professions use checklists when getting ready to do something.
When you are considering matchmaking, what should you look for? Physical looks? Spiritual growth? Wealth? Intelligence? A sense of humor?? What goes on your checklist?
The first thing that you should look for is actually whether or not they want to get married, and believe in marriage. In today’s perverse culture the very foundations of marriage are under attack… so much so that the word itself has become almost useless.
Introduction
This post is the sixth post in my ‘Helping Them’ series: a series of posts where I examine the problem that we are having with getting our unmarried people married, and propose the radical solution that we need to help them.
Helping Them: Them
In my first post I pointed out that in order for us to help them, they need to be willing to be helped. Indeed more than willing, they need to actively seek out help. To publicly admit that they want to be married, and are willing to have help getting there.
Helping Them: Fathers
The principal responsibility for helping our unmarried people get married lies in our fathers. The unmarried people’s fathers in specific, and also father’s in general.
Helping Them: Pastors
Upstream of fathers are pastors. Pastors, elders, theologians, authors, teachers… those who are not only responsible for teaching doctrine, but who also are part of a network of similar people, and thus can help with the matchmaking process.
Helping Them: The Plan
Taking a pause from blaming various people, I look at some aspects of the marriage process as it looks like from the perspective of ‘helping’.
Helping Them: The Mothers
What role should mothers play getting our unmarried people married?
In this post I wish to present a ‘checklist’ of sorts that I believe anyone helping with marriage should go through, to make sure they are helping and not hurting.
What is Marriage?
The following questions cover what I consider, from Scripture, to be the foundational definition of marriage. I would not participate in a marriage arrangement that fell flat in one of these areas.
A Man and A Woman
Any relationship other than that of a man and a woman is not marriage. It is blasphemy, and no Christian should have anything to do with it. Except perhaps to stand on a chair and pronounce judgement.
Sex
Do both of the people wanting to ‘get married’ understand that marriage involves sex? Not as an ‘extra for experts’ thing, still less as a ‘necessary evil’ thing; but as the very foundation of what the marriage is about? Lots of unprotected vaginal sex.
Not sex as a reward, or lack of sex as a punishment. Not sexual blackmail. Freely given, freely accepted sex.
Children
If a couple is not open to children, then they are going against God’s will for their marriage. It might even by said they aren’t married.
Leadership and Submission
Marriage is a relationship of leadership and submission. The husband is to lead, the wife is to submit to his leadership.
Permanence
A marriage is a permanent thing. Till death do us part and all that. If divorce is on the table, then you aren’t getting married, you’re just agreeing to have sex.
So, just to reiterate, I don’t believe that anything outside of what I mention above is actually marriage. All sorts of people can get married: rich people, poor people, smart people, dumb people, people in the first world, people in darkest jungle… they all can get married. But if they aren’t having sex, reject children, or are in it just for a couple of weekends… it isn’t marriage.
What Should Marriage Look Like?
There are some things that important in a marriage. Some things to agree on before getting there. There are others that, sure, should be talked about but, in a proper marriage, take care of themselves.
Doctrinal Agreement
One of the most talked about areas of necessary agreement in all of the ‘courtship’ books was that of doctrinal agreement. Some of them listed 37 indices of compatibility in the area of doctrine.
Scripture… not so much. What Scripture teaches is that the husband is to lead, and the wife submit. That does not mean she will necessarily agree, but it does mean she will submit. A Baptist can marry a Presbyterian, or a Charismatic an Amish… if the husband leads and the wife submits.
In fact, even unbelievers can marry. Outside of some extreme cases, however, a believer should seek another believer for a spouse, which means that you, as helper, should aid them in that search.
Church Attendance
In line with doctrinal agreement is church attendance. Yes, God says, ‘forsake not the assembling together’. But failing to marry because of a difference in whether you attend once a week or every time the doors are open… that’s not in there.
What is in there is the importance of marriage, and the importance of the wife submitting to her husband, who should be leading.
Household Management
Scripture is clear: the wife is to manage the home. She is to be the keeper at home, she is responsible for making sure the household is fed and clothed. So by all means talk about it. But don’t deny a marriage because the husband wants to do the dishes, or wants the wife to handle the finances.
Working Wife
Given the brain dead modern meaning of ‘working wife’ a wife shouldn’t ‘work’. But a woman should be married. So talk about it. Work it out. But don’t forbid a marriage on that basis.
Child Raising
If you aren’t open to having children, you aren’t married. Or, at the very least, you are blaspheming God’s design for marriage. But how are those children to be raised?
God’s Word is clear on several aspects of this… children should be beaten. Feel free to substitute your culture’s word for this. To fail to ‘beat’ your child is to show that you hate him.
Warning
I hope that I have been clear enough that the goal here is to get them married, not to find more and more reasons why they shouldn’t marry.
But I hope that it is also clear that, no matter how good a job you do with your checklist, you aren’t God. That perfect young man might turn out, in a few years, to be an apostate… I’ve seen it happen. That beautiful and submissive young woman might sue for divorce and take the children. I’ve seen it happen.
But, still, our goal should be to get them married.
Conclusion
In today’s society, with its dearth of marriages, our priority should always be to ‘get them married’. As a ‘helper’ in getting them married, that should be your priority. But you don’t have to be stupid about it. The best place to look for a spouse for your son/daughter/parishoner’s child/ etc will be in places where the best, most suitable, matches are to be found.
And it might involve a lot of work. A lot of actual getting off the couch and going looking, calling, emailing… even texting! A lot of networking and ‘getting it done’.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von