The Meaning of Marriage - Timothy Keller

Chapter 1. The Secret of Marriage

• This is a profound mystery.
• Like the relationship with God, coming to know and love your spouse is difficult and painful yet rewarding and wondrous. The most painful, the most wonderful.
• Chris Rock: "Do you want to be single and lonely or married and bored?"
• Widespread belief and misplaced assumption that most marriages are unhappy.
• Worldly cure (cohabitation) may be worse than the alleged disease
• Stats: if you are reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family and are religious, and marry after twenty-five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are low indeed
• Marriage provides a profound "shock absorber" that helps you navigate disappointments, illnesses, and other difficulties
• Spouses hold one another to greater levels of personal responsibility and self-discipline than friends or other family members- accountability
• Media focuses on the broken because there is drama
• Media do not focus on the happy, long-term marriages because there are no surprises - 'all happy couples are the same; they're just boring'
• Linda J Waite: "benefits of divorce have been oversold"
• general public "underestimate the prospects for a good marriage" 
• Stats: people who are married consistently show much higher degrees of satisfaction with their lives than those who are single, divorced, or living with a partner
• Children who grow up in married, two-parent families have two to three times more positive life outcomes than those who do not
• Listen to some successful people talk about their parents
• Paradoxically, pessimism comes from a new kind of unrealistic idealism about marriage
• John Witte Jr: "ideal of marriage as a permanent contractual union designed for the sake of mutual love, procreation, and protection is slowly giving way to a new reality of marriage as a 'terminal sexual contract' designed for the gratification of the individual parties
• Protestants taught: purpose of marriage was to create a framework for lifelong devotion and love between husband and a wife - sacrament of God's love and serve the common good - benefit the entirety of humanity - especially for children, for children thrive in stable environment
• Older cultures taught their members to find meaning in duty, by embracing their assigned social roles and carrying them out faithfully
• During the enlightenment - meaning of life came to be seen as the fruit of the freedom of the individual to choose the life that most fulfills him or her personally
• Marriage was redefined as a contract between two parties for mutual individual growth and satisfaction - from fulfilling broader good such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children
• Modern relationship: people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting who help each of them attain valued goals
• Marriage used to public institution for the common good - now it is private arrangement for the satisfaction of the individuals
• Marriage used to be about "us" - now it is about "me"
• Seek mental or emotional rewards through sexual gratification / sexual chemistry
• Individuals express resentment toward those who try to change them
• Traditionally, men married knowing it would mean a great deal of personal alteration
• Classic purposes of marriage was very definitely to "change" men and be a "school" in which they learned how to conduct new, more interdependent relationships
• Individuals are adamant that their relationship with another should not curtail their freedom at all
• Cohabitation gives men regular access to sexual ministrations while allowing them to lead a more independent life and continue to look around for a better partner
• Traditional purpose of marriage: to change their natural instincts, to reign in passions, to learn denial of one's own desires, and to serve others
• man who indulged in excess and failed to rule himself was considered unfit to rule his household, much less polity
• Simply: individuals want a marriage in which they can receive emotional and sexual satisfaction from someone who will simply let them be themselves
• Traditionally, sexual restraint rather than sexual prowess was once the measure of a man
• Looking for someone with very low maintenance: then you are searching for an ideal person - happy, healthy, interesting, content with life
• Oxymoron: Never before in history has there been a society filled with people so idealistic in what they are seeking in a spouse, yet they are not one
• Pornographic media culture may contribute to unrealistic expectations
• Extreme idealism leads to deep pessimism that you will never find the right person to marry
• Individuals are determined to get more than they deserve and to reject anyone remotely like themselves
• What people really want? "Wanted: To be alone"
• Marriage is a "haven in a heartless world"
• Christian answer: no two people are compatible - everyone is unique 
• Appreciate the unique incompatibility that unifies and magnifies in love and forgiveness.
• It is not the institution of marriage that is in trouble; we ourselves are.
• Give up. Sacrifice. 
• God's purpose: relationship between Christ and his redeemed people (church)
• Do for your spouse what God did for you in Jesus, and the rest will follow
• Choice is not binary
• We die to ourselves, first when we repent and believe the gospel, and later as we submit to his will day by day
• Marriage is a major vehicle for the gospel's remaking of your heart from the inside out and your life from the ground up
• Love without truth is sentimentality, it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws
• Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it
• Radical truthfulness and unconditional love - deeper and deeper in union - mystery of the gospel
• Good marriage will be a place where we experience more of this kind of transforming love at a human level

Chapter 2. The Power of Marriage

• Be filled with the Holy Spirit
• "Spirit of Truth" - remind and remember what Jesus said
• "Make known" 
• "the eyes of your heart be enlightened" that they might "have power to grasp how wide, long, high, deep is the love of Christ"
• Life of Joy, sometimes quiet, sometimes towering
• Each spouse should already have settled the big questions of life 
• Worship of God with assurance of his love - "run on" in marathon
• Radical change - in humility consider others better than yourself - Phil 2:2-3
• means to please others than please ourselves
• Christ did not please himself
• self interest < other's interest
• Serve with joy; not coldness, resentment, or selfish insistence
• Also, "serving" to be in control is not serving at all; it is heart of wanting to "earn" everything
• Refusing service of others is refusing to live life on the basis of grace
• Freely give and freely receive; head < heart
• "Self-centeredness" - barrier to development of relationship 
• Matt 16:25 - if you seek happiness you will lose it; if you seek God you will have both"
• Theory of everything: you must be willing to give something up before it can be truly yours
• Christian view: selfishness is not caused by mistreatment but magnified and shaped by it
• Don't set people up for failure: help them to love God and love people
• Don't spiral into unspoken agreement: tit-for-tat bargaining
• Christian principle: not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less
• Taking your mind off yourself 
• Liberation: small mindedness to big mindedness
• "Fear of the Lord" means authority: to be overwhelmed with wonder before the greatness of God: to bow down in amazement at his glory and beauty
• Only God can fill God-sized hole
• William Blake "Songs of Experience"
• "We love - because he first loved us"

Chapter 3 The Essence of Marriage

• World: "Why do we need a piece of paper in order to love one another? I don't need a piece of paper to love you! It only complicates things."
• Bible: Love is measured by how much you are willing to give and sacrifice (to lose, to forsake, to invest)
• World: I love you, but I don't want to close off all my options. I don't love you enough to give myself to you under binding contract. My love for you has not reached that level.
• Bible: Love is both emotional and passionate AND active and committed in service and duty
• World: Love is overly subjective
• People find "love" outside of marriage; it has become a thrill and/or a game
• In marriage, sex has become frustrating (boring): frustration of an artist who has in his head a picture or a story but lacks "X" to express it
• Some mistakenly equate sexual stimulation and love: dangerous sex, fetish, etc
• Best sex makes you want to weep tears of joy, not bask in the glow of a good performance
• It is so easy for parents to give to child no matter their mood or emotional attachment; why is it so hard for husband and wife to give to each other 
• Because we view such relationship in economical term - we want something back in return when we do something
• Think of the Covenant of God and what he has done for us no matter our mood or situation - grace, mercy, and love
• Become one flesh - be united to = cleave = unite to someone through a covenant, a binding promise, or oath
• It is a covenant with God also - so to break faith with spouse is to break faith with God
• Covenant is where duty and passion - love and law - is compatible and blended
• Consumer relationship is driven by impressing and enticing, promotion and marketing, and breaking up and move on to new relationship that excites
• Real love is secured in permanence 
• Song of Solomon 8:6-7
• Jesus said we get divorced become our hearts. have become "hard"
• Lewis Smedes: "....feelings are flickering flames that fade after every fitful stimulus. ....the things we accomplish always leave a core of character unrevealed. ...visions can only tell us what we want to be, not what we are."
• Smedes answers that we are largely who we become through making wise promises and keeping them
• Promising is the key to identity = stable identity and relationship
• When you are seventy-five, which would you rather have: years of steady if occasionally strained devotion, or something that looks a little bit like the Iraqi city of Fallujah, cratered with spent artillery?
• You are more free when you do what you promise 
• "You have created a small sanctuary of trust within the jungle of unpredictability"
• Only humans can make a promise
• Romantic fling is intoxicating and addicting because the person is actually in love with a fantasy rather than a real human being
• Ego-gratification
• Soren Kierkegaard: aesthetic, ethical, and religious outlook on life
• the person dominated by aesthetic sensibility is controlled by circumstances
• Is not master of himself at all - leads accidental life
• Aesthete loves feelings, thrills, ego rush, and experiences
• Ethics and religion enable stability and longevity
• CS Lewis: Greatest secrets: When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. You can change your heart over the long haul through your actions.
• True: Actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love
• Feelings of love does not go on forever
• Essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love
• Let the thrill go, let it die away: keep doing acts of love in ordinary ways
• Parents are very generous with children's needs
• Husbands and wives are not very generous with each other's needs: sometimes think of it as a bargain or business
• Look to Jesus: Jesus loved us no matter our actions or emotions

Chapter 4 - The Mission of Marriage

• The purpose of marriage - God said it was good
• It was not good for man to be alone
• Make man in our image
• Man were made for relationship
• Helper-companion, a lover, a friend
• Iron sharpens iron, friend sharpens friend
• Constancy and transparency and sympathy: features of friendship
• Essence of friendship exclamation: "You too?!"
• Common passion and common vision will unite people together
• That is why you cannot want friend alone: you must have interest and passion that can draw other people to you 
• The purpose of marriage: sanctification, refinement, holiness, glory, transformation
• 2 Cor 4:16-18 - we are renewed everyday; fix our eyes on the unseen
• Worldly reasons and factors of marriage is just not durable
• Every single person is a work in progress
• Finished statute v block of fine marble
• God and Jesus: to make us lovely, to make us holy, to make us in the image of God
• Our culture overvalue beauty over common interest and friendship
• Beauty may fade, and because you don't share interest, you may lose interest in another: when your spouse is not first priority, marriage can fall apart
• Paul likens marriage to the health of your body

Chapter 5 - Loving the Stranger

• We think we married a person, but that person is a total stranger who will change
• We change with age, social circles, jobs, schools, people, day, night, rain, sunshine
• Of course, people are not naive - people believe they will reach an agreement
• Spiritual journey - grow up into Christ
• Power of truth, power of love, and the power of grace
• Soren Kierkegaard: take masks off at midnight hour - the real you is exposed
• Marriage is the closest, the most inescapable contact with another person possible 
• In such setting, everything is magnified
• Spouse does not create weakness, they reveal them - like a truck on defective bridge
• Like a treatment that is painful - you don't wish the doctor didn't find them - you are glad the doctor found them so it can be treated however painful 
• It makes us more thoughtful and empathetic; more gentle and gracious
• Marriage is a gift - free treatment
• "Perfect spouse" does not exist
• "Godly tantrum" - unrelenting insistence on being heard
• Wife was breaking one dish at a time, but was not angry; she was calm totally in control, intense and laser focused 
• Many people have a never-ending loop of self-talk that berates them for being foolish, stupid, a failure, a loser 
• World may look at you and see Clark Kent, but I look at you and see Superman 
• Spouse affirmation is profoundly comforting
• LOTR: "The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards." 
• To be highly esteemed by someone you highly esteem is the greatest thing in the world
• To know that the Lord of the universe loves you is the strongest foundation that any human being can have
• The world condemns us but God forgives and loves us despite them
• Family background difference - love expressed differently in each family
• Radio-frequency - one spouse may be sending a signal on one frequency, but the other spouse may be on different frequency
• Giver and receiver  
• Five different love languages, or more
• Greek language for love
• At first love sweeps you up involuntarily, but eventually, love is a deliberate choice - even mechanical
• Marriage difficulties can come from deep-seated patterns of idolatry, from semiconscious anger, and from fear that needs to be rooted out
• Love can be consciously expressed through: 
• eye contact
• sitting close
• caress
• holding hands
• walks
• scenic drives
• picnics
• signs
• gifts
• playfulness
• verbal affirmations
• encouragement
• messages
• praises
• appreciation
• thanks
• chores
• gardening
• entertainment
• common interest / hobby
• reading poems / books
• help
• pray
• Marriage has enormous potential for spiritual growth
• What we need: to feel so loved by our partners that when they criticize us, we have the security to admit our faults (even parent-child)
• Gospel humbles us into the dust and at the same time exalts us to the heavens, completely loved and accepted in Christ
• Completely knowledge of spouse's sin and forgiveness 
• 2 Cor 4:16-18 - outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day
• "As great as you look today, someday you will stand with me before God in such beauty that it will make these clothes look like rags."

Chapter 6 - Embracing the Other

• Gender roles is contentious and controversial
• In the beginning, God created man; male and female he created them
• God stamped very cell in our body with gender
• in the image of God, we are equally blessed, equally given dominion over the earth
• It is not good for man to be alone
• We are complementary - suitable - like puzzle
• After the fallout, gender roles become exploitative
• Dance of Trinity: each wishes to please the other; each wishes to exalt the other
• Female: interdependent, perceptive, nurturing
• Male: independent, look outward, they initiate
• Both can turn into hyper-femininity and hyper-masculinity - idolatry
• Sinful drive for self-justification - human heart's alienation from God - base on specialness, superiority, and performance
• Embracing another and embracing each other is really what makes the world go around
• Reciprocal self-surrender and self-giving
• Servant-leader means you gotta work on both - being a servant and being a leader at the same time - if you are lacking in one area, you should have the discipline to develop it
• There was perfect unity without anxiety, worry, doubt, sin before the fall - but when sin entered, everything disrupted the unity
• The only person over whom have control is yourself
• You can change no one's behavior but your own
• First, you must embrace yourself, love, and forgive yourself - pray
• See what God does next