My family and friends and I have a long-running joke about the close relationship my husband and parents share. I tell people that my parents secretly like my husband more than me. For instance, my mom calls me every time my husband e-mails her (“Oh, I just received the sweetest note from Ike! He is just sooo wonderful!”), and if there were ever a dispute between the two of us, I am quite sure my parents would choose his side. Not only do my parents believe he is an absolute prince, they love him like their own son.
Of course, these jokes are mostly tongue-in-cheek. I know that my parents love us equally, and am delighted that they adore my husband. It is a gift when your parents are so close to your spouse, and it is a gift I do not take for granted.
Not every in-law relationship is that natural and easy. The whole concept of joining families in marriage can be downright awkward. When my brother first married his wife, I did not know her well and we are very different, so it was funny to have a “sister” with whom I had little relational history. Likewise, I had almost no relationship with my husband’s sister when we married. At the time, she was living on the other side of the country, so the transition probably felt clumsy to her as well.
Marriages produce new family members who may not feel like family at all. I was reminded of this awkward dynamic upon learning of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries’s divorce. The media circus has been preoccupied with the reasons for their divorce, but I was more interested in the Kardashian family’s response. Like any good family, each member came forward to express their full support of Kim. They were behind Kim and her decisions “unconditionally.”
What I didn’t hear from any of the Kardashian family was a word of support for their son- and brother-in-law, Kris.
Although, in theory, marriage symbolizes the joining of two families, marital woes often test that unity. At the first sign of trouble, it is easy to revert back to old family allegiances. This kind of protection is understandable when an in-law hurts your blood relative, but this natural response isn’t necessarily Christian.
For nearly every couple that divorces, there was a day when they stood before family and friends who witnessed their marital vows. In today’s culture, this congregational presence is mostly ceremonial or sentimental, but according to theologian Stanley Hauerwas, it is this community presence that makes marriage inherently Christian.
In his essay “The Radical Hope in the Annunciation: Why Both Single and Married Christians Welcome Children,” Hauerwas re-envisions the Christian family, beginning with a critique of traditional understandings of marriage. He challenges the romantic notion that “a couple falls in love and comes to the church to have their love publicly acknowledged.” The congregation is not a passive on-looker while the couple independently embarks on this new journey. Instead, the congregation of family and friends makes that journey tenable in the first place. Hauwerwas explains,
“the church rightly understands that we no more know the person we marry than we know ourselves. However, that we lack such knowledge in no way renders marriage problematic, at least not marriage between Christians; for to be married as Christians is possible because we understand that we are members of a community more determinative than marriage.
“That the church is a more determinative community than a marriage is evidenced by the fact that it requires Christian marriage vows to be made with the church as witness. This is a reminder that we as a church rightfully will hold you to promises you made when you did not and could not fully comprehend what you were promising. How could anyone know what it means to promise life-long monogamous fidelity? From the church’s perspective the question is not whether you know what you are promising; rather, the question is whether you are the kind of person who can be held to a promise you made when you did not know what you were promising. We believe, of course, that baptism creates the condition that makes possible the presumption that we might just be such a people.”
If Hauerwas is right, then the Christian response to marital trouble and tenuous family dynamics must be altogether different from the world’s. We are not about taking sides or redrawing old lines, because we, too, made a commitment on that wedding day. It’s therefore the task of every Christian family and church to help couples live out their vows. Even when in-law relationships are tough, we violate our own “marital” commitment when we choose sides.
Instances of domestic abuse are an important exception to this call, but the general principle is one of advocacy for the covenant of marriage rather than one particular spouse. As Hauerwas said, none of us truly understands what lies beyond our wedding day. If marital trouble is navigated in isolation or further irritated by partisan family members, then Christian marriages have little advantage over any other. What makes Christian marriage inherently Christian is that it is birthed out of and sustained by Christ’s body, the church.
