Fidelity

In his latest book, In Search of the Common Good, Jake Meador writes:

Love also must be faithful because when we love we do not simply will the person’s good a single time and then stop. We see this in marriage and parenting, of course, but friendship should be faithful as well. In the aftermath of my father’s injury, one of the qualities we most appreciated in many of my parents’ friends was their fidelity. One woman from the church is still mowing their yard once a week over three years after Dad’s injury. We could depend on them not simply on the day of the injury but a month later, a year later, three years later.

Author Jake Meador writes:

Love also must be faithful because when we love we do not simply will the person’s good a single time and then stop. We see this in marriage and parenting, of course, but friendship should be faithful as well. In the aftermath of my father’s injury, one of the qualities we most appreciated in many of my parents’ friends was their fidelity. One woman from the church is still mowing their yard once a week over three years after Dad’s injury. We could depend on them not simply on the day of the injury but a month later, a year later, three years later.

Scientific American magazine reports a lot of confusion and disagreement as to exactly what is genuine authenticity. We are taught to be ourselves and to get in touch with our "real self." In recent years a science of authenticity has arisen in order to discover what the authentic self truly is. As Scientific American reports it “Turns out, authenticity is a real mess.”

The writer asks the perplexing questions:

- Are you being most authentic when you are being consistent with your emotions?

- Or are you being most authentic when you are consistent with your beliefs?

- Which is the real authenticity? Was it the time you really gave that waiter a piece of your mind? Or that time you didn't tell the waiter how you really felt about their dismal performance because you value kindness?

The famous psychotherapist Carl Rogers observed that many people are asking “Who am I, really?” The latest research finds that … many people report authenticity when they … express compassion toward others or are living for something bigger than themselves.

Possible Preaching Angle: As Christians we recognize our truest authenticity as we follow God and become more conformed to Christ. It is when we follow our beliefs and not our emotions that we are most genuine.

When scientists studied the brain chemistry of the newly love struck they found that certain chemicals are elevated when love is new. Researchers at the University of Pavia, for instance, found that levels of nerve growth factor (NGF)—a protein that maintains the health of neurons—were higher in people who had reported just falling in love when compared to single people or those in long-term relationships. After about a year, though, the subjects' NGF levels fell back to a normal level.

But after the first years of wedded bliss, some discontentment seems to follow. A poll of 5,000 married couples found that men and women begin to take their marriage for granted after two and a half years. Half the couples surveyed for the 2008 study reported that they felt undervalued at the 2.5 year mark. The majority of the men said they stopped picking up after themselves, while the women were no longer making an effort to look nice for their spouse. A 2011 survey of married couples found that irritation peaks at the 3-year mark. More than two-thirds of all of those surveyed said that little quirks, which were seemingly harmless and often endearing during the first flushes of love, became major annoyances at 36 months.

Time magazine recently featured an article that asked, "Is monogamy over?" The article offered various opinions, including "monogamy is a charade" that leads to "institutionalizing dishonesty," and "[monogamy] is just an option, not the default," and "There's no right, there's no wrong." Time also featured Pastor Andy Stanley who offered this biblical view:

Monogamy is more like an endangered species. Rare. Valuable. Something to be fed and protected. Perhaps an armed guard should be assigned to every monogamous couple to ward off poachers. Perhaps not.

The value a culture places on monogamy determines the welfare of its women and children. Women and children do not fare well in societies that embrace polygamy or promiscuity. In the majority of cases, sexual freedom undermines the financial freedom of women. Sexual freedom eventually undermines the financial and emotional security of children.

If we are only biology, none of the above really matters … If we are only biology, monogamy was probably a flawed concept from the start. But very few of us live as if we are only biology … As a pastor, I've officiated my share of weddings and I've done my share of premarital counseling. I always ask couples why they are getting married. Survival of the species never makes the list.

The "I" and "You" that inhabit our bodies desire more than another body. We desire intimacy—to know and to be fully known without fear. Intimacy is fragile. Intimacy is powerful. Intimacy is fueled by exclusivity. So, no, monogamy is not obsolete. It's endangered.

Damon Linker, a writer for The Week, claims that our culture is waging a battle over "two competing, largely incompatible visions of the proper place of sex in a good human life." Linker rejects traditional views of sexuality and marriage, but he argues that those traditional (and biblical) views have a lot of merit. Linker writes: "Western civilization upheld the old sexual standards for the better part of two millennia. We broke from them in the blink of an eye, figuratively speaking. The gains are pretty clear—It's fun! It feels good!"

But Linker also admits that there's a price for our sexual "progress":

[We've] witnessed the rapid-fire mainstreaming of homosexuality and the transformation of the institution of marriage to accommodate it … Thanks to the internet, pornography has never been so freely available and easily accessible. Websites … facilitate extramarital affairs … Smart-phone apps put people in touch with each other for no-strings-attached hook-ups. Then there's the push to normalize polyamorous ("open") relationships and marriages, a movement that seeks to remove the stigma from adultery and even positively affirm the goodness of infidelity.

Linker concludes with some probing questions:

Is the ethic of individual consent sufficient to keep people (mostly men) from acting violently on their sexual desires? What will become of childhood if our culture continues down the road of pervasive sexualization? … [Will children be raised by] three, four, five, or more people in a constantly evolving polyamorous arrangement? Can the institution of marriage survive without the ideals of fidelity and monogamy? What kind of sexual temptations and experiences will technology present us [in the future]? Will people be able to think of reasons or conjure up the will to resist those temptations? Will they even try? Does it even matter?

I have no idea how to answer these questions. What I do know is that the questions are important, and that I respect those who are troubled by them. And maybe you should, too.

Every episode the Food Network TV show Chopped features a competition between very experienced chefs. They're each given a "mystery basket" containing a seemingly random list of ingredients. But whatever is there, they must use it to create a delicious meal that impresses the judges. On one episode, for instance, the basket included pound cake, a calf's liver, an unusually bitter vegetable, and a small game bird. Now these chefs are all very well trained. They can make an appetizer. They can whip up a great dessert. But when they open up a basket to discover they have to make an appetizer with mussels and waffles, or a dessert with tomatoes and tofu—that's when things get real interesting.

It's easy to study marriage in theory. But when you get married you'll open up your "mystery basket" and discover the ingredients you've been given to work with. And based on the ingredients, what you've learned in theory may or may not actually apply to what you've got to work with. And ask anyone who's been married very long and they'll tell you, there's always a surprise in each basket. An unexpected illness. An unknown wound or insecurity. An in-law who was only supposed to stay for 2 weeks. The basket is full of surprises. But no matter what you find in there, you've still have the task to create a Christian marriage and home.

At a men's retreat, a group of 30-40 men of all ages sat in a room sharing joys and deep aches of the soul. A young man named Jason sat in his chair, his face buried in his hand, his head occasionally rising to gasp a breath as he sobbed, Why didn't he want me? I don't understand why my dad didn't want me. Why didn't he want me, man? What's wrong with me?" None of the other men in the room had the answer to his question. But most of us knew the problem: young Jason was crying out for the acceptance and affirmation of his father. He was saying, "Am I such a defect that I am unlovable as a son and as a man?"

What happened next was absolutely beautiful and unscripted. Phil, an older man in the group, got out of his seat and walked straight over to Jason. He embraced him and in a loud voice said to him, "Jason, I'll be your dad and you're my son!"

From that day forward, Phil was involved in Jason's life as a surrogate father. Their relationship with one another deepened as the years passed. Although Phil didn't pay for Jason's college tuition or his room and board, he was present to pray with Jason, take him to lunch, listen to his struggles, and share his life wisdom with him. During one of my last conversations with Phil before he died, we talked about his relationship with Jason. At one point, he lifted his head and with a passionate conviction and said, "You know Jason is my son!" I nodded in the affirmative and said, "I know."

Phil became a tangible expression of our Heavenly Father's love for a young man who felt unwanted and unworthy of his natural father's love.

Possible Preaching Angle: Although this story is about two men, the principle of becoming a "father" to a lost "son" applies to a woman becoming a "mother" to a lost "daughter." This is what we should do for each other in the body of Christ.

Croatia's capital city of Zagreb is the home for an unusual museum. The Museum of Failed Relationships was founded by two Zagreb artists after the end of their four-year romantic relationship. The pair laughed about setting up a museum to showcase the many shared objects from their life together that now held complicated memories.

The joke snowballed, and the artists (collecting items from friends and visitors to their growing number of gallery shows) soon had over 1,000 items—each with a story—on their hands. "We might say it's a love museum, just upside down" says Drazen Grubisic, one of the founding pair. Their collection includes a shiny new axe (used to splinter the furniture of an ex-lover one item per day), pink fur-covered handcuffs (no description given or needed), and scarred and partially crushed lawn gnome (hurled at the car of a departing husband).

A kitschy wooden box (made from matchsticks) frames a little picture of a couple named Jelka and Valdo. Valdo made it for his wife Jelka on their wedding day. The description on the box reads:

After 18 years of marriage he left me for another woman; we officially divorced after our 25th wedding anniversary … [For our anniversary] I ordered a cake with the number 25 written on it and the pastry shop cut it in half. I sent him the half with the 25. Our sons celebrated our anniversary first with me and then with their father. He and his girlfriend were very shocked but they ate the cake anyway. The cake is gone and so is our marriage. I still have the box, two sons and a lot of memories …

While the items are personal, the feelings that come when love fails are universal. Each item is an intimate peek into how we strive for and often lose love. "Some [people who come to the museum] are laughing" Grubsic says. "But some … some are really thinking."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Divorce; Marriage; Commitment; Vows—Our love (and our failed love) for others; (2) God, love of; Christ, love of; Covenant—God's committed love for us. We're all hungering for a kind of love that won't ever let us down. That love is found in Christ.

Elizabeth Edwards, the former wife of vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards, described the agony she experienced when she learned of her husband's infidelities:

After I cried, and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up. And the next day John and I spoke. He wasn't coy, but it turned out he wasn't forthright either I felt that the ground underneath me had been pulled away.

I spent months learning to live with a single incidence of infidelity. And I would like to say that a single incidence is easy to overcome, but it is not. I am who I am. I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful. I had asked for fidelity, begged for it, really, when we married. I never need flowers or jewelry. I don't care about vacations or a nice car. But I need you to be faithful. Leave me, if you must, but be faithful to me if you are with me.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Marriage—of course the pain of infidelity applies to both men and women; (2) Spiritual Unfaithfulness—It's no coincidence that God often uses the analogy of marital infidelity to describe our unfaithfulness. God doesn't react exactly like Elizabeth Edwards, but Scriptures does reveal God's intense anger and even grief when we are unfaithful and idolatrous.

Editor's Note: The following illustration was adapted from a German pastor who wrote a meditation for a couple's 50th wedding anniversary service.

Germans sometimes use a culinary metaphor for marriage, comparing the lifelong journey of marriage to a formal French or German dinner menu—except the courses are served in reverse order.

According to this analogy, marriage actually begins with the last course—dessert. There's a season of sweetness. But, sadly, the sweetness doesn't always last. Temptations and distractions often follow this dessert-like honeymoon phase. In a formal French dinner, the second course includes a seductive selection of cheeses. At times there are so many cheese selections that diners get focused on flirting from one plate to the next. The third course consists of a beautifully prepared salad that adds freshness and vitamins to the meal. The fourth and main dish is the red meat course, the long, substantial, satisfying and nutritious body of any good dinner or marriage. The fifth course consists of a light fish or seafood dish that can be fraught with dangerous bones. Finally, the menu of a marriage ends with an enjoyable tray of hors d'oeuvres. After decades of commitment, mastering all the earlier courses of marriage, a husband and wife are rewarded with the delight of remaining committed throughout the entire journey of life.

In the end, they've truly become one.

In June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son Michael got married, future-U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent him the following letter of advice.

Dear Mike:

You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it ….

There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out …..

It [takes] quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick, and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.

Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

Love, Dad

P.S. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.

Gary Thomas tells the following story about a friend of his who was on a business trip:

After the sessions an attractive young woman knocked on his hotel door …. When he opened the door, she pushed through and walked right into his room.

"You can't be in here," he said.

"Why not?" she asked teasingly. "Are you scared?"

The woman started acting seductively. She made it very clear that she was available for any sexual favor of his choosing. When he insisted that she leave, she finally did something … [that] was over-the top provocative.

Immediately afterward, my friend wisely told two business associates exactly what happened …. My friend is a godly man, but he's human. He admits he slept very little that night …. He couldn't get this woman's words or related images out of his mind. He tossed and turned, thankful he hadn't fallen but exhausted from being so provoked.

Two months later, he returned to that city, working with the same company he had worked with on his previous visit—when the [same] young woman pulled him aside.

"We have to talk," she said.

My friend's heart started racing as he feared the worst …. Her first words put him at ease.

"I can't thank you enough for being the first man who has ever cared about me more than my breasts."

My friend learned that this woman had been abused earlier in life. She had been promiscuous ever since her early teen years, and because of her physical appearance no man had ever been willing to walk away from her advances. And so she kept reliving the moments of her deepest hurt.

"I'm going back to church," she told him. "I need to get my life back together. When I finally met a man like you who was more interested in me than in my body, it showed me how messed up I had become."

When you experience conflict or pain in a church setting, don't run away to another church. It's often better to stay put and work through it. That's the advice from two early Christian sources.

An anonymous 4th century Christian leader wrote:

If a trial [with other people] comes upon you in the place where you live, do not leave that place when the trial comes. Wherever you go, you will find that what you are running from is ahead of you. So stay until the trial is over, so that if you end up leaving, no offense will be caused, and you will not bring distress to others who live in the same neighborhood.

In the 12th century, Anselm of Canterbury compared a restless believer to a tree that can't thrive because it's "frequently transplanted or often disturbed." Anselm warns: "If he often moves from place to place at his own whim, or remaining in one place is frequently agitated by hatred of it, [he] never achieves stability with roots of love."

Gary Thomas reminds Christians that if you're married, God is your "spiritual Father-in-law." He writes:

When I realized that I was married to God's daughter, everything changed in the way I viewed marriage. It was no longer about just me and one other person; it was very much a relationship with a passionately interested third partner.

Most of us fail to grasp just how fully God loves the person to whom we are married. As the father of three children, I fervently pray that each one will marry a spouse who will love them generously, respect them, and enjoy them. I realize that each of my children has certain quirks or limitations that may test a future spouse's patience, but I pray that their spouses will be kind in these areas rather than use them to belittle my children. I hope with all my heart that each will find a partner who will encourage them with a gracious spirit…. I know my kids aren't perfect—but I want them to have spouses who will love them despite their weaknesses.

In the same way, God is fully aware of our spouse's limitations—and he is just as eager for us to be kind and generous with these faults as we are for our kids' future spouses to be kind to them. By looking at my spouse through God's eyes, I invite God into my marriage.

In his book The Future of Marriage , David Blankenhorn has culled the following contemporary attempts to define marriage:

• "Marriage is, more than anything else, the expression of love" (George Easterbrook of the New Republic).
• "The essence of a good marriage is not breeding [i.e. having children] or even romantic love … [but] a unique and profound friendship" (Andrew Sullivan).
• "Now marriage is seen by most people as love, intimacy, happiness" (Barbara Risman, professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago).
• "The real nature of marriage" is a commitment "between two people to take on special obligations to one another" (from the editors of the Economist).
• "A marriage is a private arrangement between parties committed to love" (Crispan Sartwell, syndicated columnist).
• "To 'marry' means to join together in a close personal commitment … [that] is intended to be permanent" (Judge William L. Downing, superior court judge for the state of Washington).
• "Marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family" (Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts).
• Marriage is "a unique expression of a private bond between a couple" (Justice Doris Ling-Cohen, Supreme Court of the State of New York).

For a number of reasons, Blankenhorn calls these (and most contemporary definitions of marriage) "radically insubstantial." First, they fail to clarify that marriage is between one man and one woman. Secondly, Blankenhorn also writes, "One searches in vain for any recognition of the fact that marriage might be something more than a private close relationship between two people." Third. he also notes that there's something glaringly absent from these "private" and "personal" definitions of marriage—children. "Marriage and children are now basically disconnected," he writes, "with marriage as a close personal relationship over here and children's well-being as a social priority over there. Does any child out there really want to sign on to this proposition?"