All this talk of “the collapse of my marriage and the ensuing divorce” deliberately ignores the fact that we have two consenting adults, presumably both Christians, who took an oath before God and the assembled witnesses, to love, honor and cherish each other so long as they both shall live.
“Marriages” don’t collapse. The event that tied two together, the wedding, is a completed event, an historical fact. The documentation is still on that piece of paper, the marriage license. However, the two people in that marriage choose to stop “bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things”. Yes, there are some few cases where divorce seems to be unavoidable. But, “incompatibility”, or “we just fell out of love” are not among them. Love is not a matter of loosing one’s balance, i.e., “We fell in love”; “we fell out of love”. Love is a matter of consciously choosing, daily, to place the NEEDS of another ahead of my own WANTS.
Todd Fitchette asks, “When did Christian community become obsolete?” The Christian community in it’s simplest form is a husband and a wife being true to their commitments to each other before God. This makes up the “bricks” with which we can build a larger Christian community.
Commitment.
It is not always Convenient nor Comfortable, but it is Essential.
If you build a building with lousy bricks, bricks in which each grain of sand is “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse. This is what has happened to the larger Christian community.
/rant
One of the finest responses I have ever seen on FR. Well done.
So true!
"bricks in which each grain of sand is “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse."
should read
"bricks in which each grain of sand is NOT “committed” (firmly adhering) to the other, then that building will collapse."
Good post.