March 28, 2024

Chris Yiesla fills in on the show for Kurt to discuss the importance of marriage.

Listen to “Ep 103: Let’s Get Married!” on Spreaker.

Chris: Hey everyone. Not Kurt Jaros here. We have some video difficulties at the moment. We’re just going to head back to Veracity Hill intro. Just listen to me today. It’s all good, but I’m not definitely Kurt Jaros. I’m Chris Yiesla. I’m usually on the other side of the booth and today, Kurt is away for a time spending a much needed time kind of resting, taking care of some business, that is not Veracity Hill. I am filling in for him today and hopefully next week, unless you guys fire me. The thing we are talking about today is relevant for a couple of reasons that I will share with you here. 

First of all, as many of you may know, I just got married and got married about three weeks ago. I got married three weeks ago. We just got back recently and this is my first time back on the show on either side of the booth and I’m happy to be with you guys, but now having experienced the things I need to know about concerning marriage and thinking about concerning marriage and what marriage is, I wanted to in my three weeks of expertise, share that with you guys today. That’s what we’re going to be talking about. Many of you may have noticed, the episode title is called “Let’s get married. The importance of significance of two becoming one. I wanted to talk to you guys about that topic from both the Christian perspective and just kind of a general perspective. We all know what marriage is or we all know about marriage whether we are Christian, not Christian, whatever view we have. We know it exists in our society and many other societies, almost every society, there is marriage in some way, shape, and form, and I wanted to spend some time talking to you guys about what that is, why it’s important in America, and what it means. So just taking some time to get my notes up here. You guys, if you’re in the Chicagoland area, you know that’s an incredibly hot day today. We’re coming up at a heat index of 105, so so far it may not be the hottest day of this year, but it’s been the hottest day so far this year. We definitely felt it this morning. 

Before we get too deep in the episode, I want to remind you guys that we are hosting a conference on September 29th here in the Chicagoland area. We’ve had a couple of conferences at least once every year and they’re always a big hit. People love them. People love seeing them. People love hearing about them and we like dealing with important topics, big topics, and this year is no exception. We’re talking about genocide in Scripture. If you spend any time as a Christian or non-Christian in the Old Testament you know that there is a lot of stuff that goes on where other nations just seemingly get wiped out. They’re minding their own business and Israel shows up in the Promised Land and kills everyone, especially in the book of Joshua and a little bit in the books prior as well.

Sometimes it can raise an eyebrow, especially today, like why would God command genocide in Scripture of all places? Did He command genocide? Is that what actually happened and if it did is He allowed to? We’re going to be answering some of those questions September 28-29th here in the Chicagoland area. You can register, find out more about the conference, on Defendersmedia.com. You can see who’s going to be there, what we’ll be talking about, and that will kind of flesh out and take shape as we get more details in and present it to you guys so keep that pegged in your calendar this September. It’s going to be a good time and we love putting that on. We hope to see you guys all there.

As I said, I got married a few weeks ago. I have a picture here. Hopefully, I think we can get that up because we’re doing still images today. If we just put in that other input, there we go. That’s me and my lovely wife, seconds after getting married, other people were there. A lot of fun. We got married in southern Michigan. Some of you who know either me or my wife Laura may have gotten to see Kurt and I put our regular livestreaming skills to use which usually involve a moving picture and we were able to kind of get that guy put together. We put a livestream up of the wedding and lots of people watched. It was a lot of fun. It was a great wedding, great time. I’m now married, but I spent the last several months talking to people about marriage, getting counsel on marriage, hearing about things from married people and watching marriages and I thought, “This seems like an appropriate time to talk about marriage.” If you guys, even though the image is a little bit lacking today, if you guys have any comments or things to say or comments on what we’re talking about please participate here in the chat below and let’s have a conversation about marriage as we talk about some of these things.

I wanted to read something here that I thought was very interesting because marriage is a very interesting idea when you sit down and think about it for a very long time or any amount of time. Really, I wanted to see what the rest of the world thinks about it because I have a view about it and I want to share it with you guys, but I found this interesting article done by CBS and Vanity Fair in their sixty-minute segment. Back at the beginning of 2017, so it’s not too terribly old, and they’re talking about it here. I just want to read some excerpts from it here. 

They’re entering a new year and the beginning of the new year and they wanted to ask Americans everywhere what they thought about marriage. Here’s what they have to say. 

” As we enter a new year, we focus on an old institution: marriage. Marriage is mentioned in the Bible as being important in providing men and women with fellowship, companionship, comfort, mutual help and of course the blessing of having children. Matrimony also can bring significant benefits to a couple such as increased financial stability, better health, and longer lives. Their children often receive these same benefits and advantages. 

Now here we get to do some numbers. I love numbers. I love stats because they’re not biased. They’re really fun. 

In 1960, (This is 1960, so it’s about, let me do some math here, 58 years ago more or less) it was estimated that married couples made up 78 percent of American households. It is now estimated to be 48 percent. (So less than half of America is now married as opposed to fifty-some years ago when two-thirds, three-fourths, I can do math, three-fourths of America were married. Let’s keep reading here.) So what are some of the possible reasons for this drop in the percentage of married households in America? It may be because our society has become increasingly liberated (If that’s a word you can use) both morally and sexually. The stigma of divorce is not what it used to be and more and more women work and are the major breadwinners for their family. It has also been estimated that the rate of cohabitation (For those of you who don’t know, a couple living together who are not married) since 1960 has increased more than 1,000 percent. Aside from the liberalized moral standards, this may be due in part to the fact that college graduates are putting off marriage until they are older.

In fact, that’s pretty true. Back then in the 1950’s, 60’s, the average marriage age was lower 20’s and nowadays it’s upper 20’s or early 30’s which is right where I sit with my own wife. 

“Another factor that was recently reported on by CBS News is that 40 percent of young Americans aged 18-34 are back living at home or with relatives. This is the highest percentage in 75 years since the Great Depression ended and has been attributed in part to mounting school debts as well as the high cost of housing. Despite these cultural and economic factors, marriage remains a goal and a dream for a great many people, a testament to the power of love. 

So just from that early viewpoint there, we can see that marriage still has a significant place in society and that even though the numbers are dropping people still seem to have an idea of what it is and they want it badly. Let’s keep reading for a second here, before I read off some more stats from my own research here. 

In the view of a majority of Americans (53 percent) the main purpose of marriage today (This is regardless of viewpoint) is to mark a commitment between two people in love. Nearly one in four see it as providing the best environment for raising children (Which is very arguable and good) and one out of five do not think it has much of a purpose today. 

 So 20% of America is saying marriage has no purpose. 53% of Americans think it’s a pretty good mark of commitment who are in a relationship who are in love, and then we have another stat that apparently nine out of ten Americans still agree with. Even if you think marriage has no purpose, some people think, wow, this is pretty cool.

Finally something that more than nine out of 10 Americans can agree on. Americans resoundingly believe that it is an inspiring accomplishment to stay the course with your spouse for more than a half century. According to one study by the Census Bureau, only six percent of married couples make it to their 50th anniversary. (Remember that stat. 6% of married couples make it to their 50th anniversary) Let’s face it, a lot of things have to go right. According to some who have reached their “Golden Anniversary,” some of the biggest keys to success are communicating well, supporting each other no matter what, having a sense of humor and of course, loving, respecting and being kind to one another.  

So we have this interesting shift culturally in marriage that it’s gone from being to 3/4 of people who are being married to being less than 1/2 of people today are married, but everyone still sees it as an ideal that they should strive for, especially if you are in love. Half people who are married, not married in America, think that marriage is a mark of commitment, and everyone, nine out of ten Americans agree that when people reach their 50th anniversary in marriage it’s pretty darn impressive. I want to read some stats today about relationships in general. If you guys think about this, let me see if I can find this stat here. Kurt, our beloved host, who is watching from the wings asks why we think Americans are waiting longer to get married. Theirs a couple of reasons that CBS/Vanity Fair said here. One of them is that possible school debt is a pain in the butt. Housing is a pain in the butt. Where is that other bit? Graduates are putting off marriage. A lot of them are just wanting to keep their independence I think. You can move around a little bit more. If any of you have paid taxes while you’re married in certain circumstances under current tax codes or past tax codes, I guess tax codes are getting ready to change, sometimes there’s penalties for being married and sometimes it’s a pain in the butt and sometimes if you sign a marriage license it’s really hard to get that out of that relationship. That’ll come into its own in a second, so maybe, Kurt, we can find some answers to why people are waiting a little bit longer to get married. 

Let’s see here. Okay. I’m going to pull up my laptop here and it’s in a really bad position. There you go. Can you guys hear me better? Great. I want you to think about how relationships work in America. You all are in America except, of course, if you’re in New Zealand. Hey, by the way, did you know that we are the #1 internationally broadcast apologetic podcast in West Chicago? Tell that to your friends. Share and like on Facebook, but if you’re listening in New Zealand right now, hi there. Good morning. It’s really early. It’s like three in the morning in New Zealand right now. Maybe four. Four in the morning. God bless you for working the third shift and staying up late to listen to us. Thank you. We really appreciate it, but on this podcast today, in America, we’re talking about American relationships here. If you’re in New Zealand and they work the same way, leave a comment. Let me know in chat. Think about the way we conduct relationships today, we conduct any kind of relationships. Finding a mate or finding a person to be with, to be in love with, the way we go about seeking those relationships, we got a couple different ways that we like to do it in America regardless of the way people like to do it in an old school or I like to do it. In America, we have several ways we like to do it.

We like to date and that really came into its own in the 1950’s, when people, high schoolers, specifically, could en masse get a car and could pick up Susie from school and go to the soda fountain and they didn’t need to get the parents involved, and that means you could do that more often, more frequently. You could date. You could date one girl. You could be going steady. Regardless of what I think about it, that’s how we do it. That’s how we’ve done it, and it’s evolved in America over the last couple of decades, and now in this era, what we are doing is we’ve kind of got the internet involved. Remember when the internet became a thing? We got the internet involved and what happened with that is we like using the internet to make things convenient for all resources, whether those resources are good or bad for the economy. Good for our moral health or bad for our moral health. The internet became a place where we can conduct relationships and we ended up with stuff like Eharmony and Match.com and more recently, Zoosk. These are all sites based on taking your info and compatibility and making it so you can find someone whom you’re quote, unquote, compatible with. That’s how we like conducting relationships. It takes away a lot of uncertainty. It feels like it takes a lot of time. My absolute personal favorite, Christianmingle.com. I think that is very very interesting and I spent a lot of time in my downtime criticizing such sites. If you found your significant other on such sites, may you have a long happy life, but I think there are better ways to do it. 

It works sometimes, but that’s the way I’m saying regardless of my opinion. Those are the ways that we conduct those things in America today until about the last decade and then, we had smartphones show up, little bit over a decade ago I feel like, and recently, apps showed up that made dating even easier. You think websites are easy. Apps. All you have to do is touch with your finger. Swipe right. We end up with things like Bumble and Tinder and people have multiple dates a week. In fact, Tinder has unfortunately earned a reputation of being a little something other than that. You need a significant other. People use it to get really quick weekend encounters in their relationships. Even though that’s not the way Tinder advertises, that’s what we use it for, so that’s how we find relationships, how we find encounters with significant others in America, is through websites, through apps, through common interests we find in work or in school and that has been the main way we’ve done things. We’re going to take a minute off to the side and see if you can get the video back up for you guys but I’m going to keep talking in the meantime.

I want to read some stats to you guys about relationships in general. These come from various sources which you can check their credibility or not credibility. Some of them I think are credible and some of them are not, but they are the ones who did the research and polled the people and did the numbers. The average millennial relationship, a millennial being just a little bit on the other side any direction, the average millennial relationship married or no lasts 2.75-4 years. Hey. Guys. There we go. There we go. Let’s get this moving. Let’s get this moving and shaking. There we go. That’s fantastic. I can see you guys and I’m moving around the screen a little bit but that’s okay, that’s okay. Let me just, how you guys doing? Thanks for being patient. You guys are amazing people. That’s much better. There we go. Veracity Hill, where we figure it out as we go, just like life. Let’s go back to our stats, human relationships, millennial relationships in America today, last on average 2.75-4 years. 

Usually from the time you start a relationship to even if you include marriage in that. 2.5-4 years for simplicity. Those are the stats I found on average. The relationship will last that long. The average American male will be in six relationships in his lifetime. The average female will be in five relationships in her lifetime. You’ve got these really short relationships in high frequency. 5-6 relationships in their lifetime. Let’s look at those numbers. Let’s think about that for a second. If I want to get married, right. Let’s say that both you and the other person have a good idea how you feel about marriage. You’re in a relationship now. You’re in one of those 5-6 average relationships. Maybe, hopefully, you have fewer. Maybe you have more, but this means, if you think about those numbers, you want to get married, there’s six relationships. Let’s say you’re doing six relationships. Right? That means 5-6 relationships in your lifetime, let’s say one of them ends in marriage. That means that you have about roughly 16-20% chance that the relationship you’re in now, if you’re both thinking about marriage in the future, has a chance of ending in marriage, if you do things the way we’re doing things now in America. 

There’s a 20% chance that the person you’re currently with, you’ll marry. I don’t need to tell you guys that divorce rates that right now, nowadays, are like 50%. We said a minute ago that 40, what did I say, 40% of people are married. Where is that number? 48% of people are married right now in America, but half of them are going to end their marriage in divorce or actually less. Listen to this. Divorce rate is 50% and then it’s actually, this actually was one of the most discouraging things I found. Divorce sucks. It’s a horrible thing for anyone involved. Sorry, if you’ve been divorced, my heart goes out to you. I know it’s really hard. Divorce rate is 50% and that rate for you if you get divorced goes subsequently higher with each successive marriage. If you have three marriages unfortunately, the first marriage ends in divorce. The second marriage has a higher chance of ending in divorce, and the next marriage has an even higher chance of ending in divorce, so on and so forth if you go that far. That means that if you, let’s say you get married, you want to be married, you want to stay married, and you’re in that 20% relationship like we’re going to do it. We’re going to get married. That means, these are extremely left numbers because my probability is not what it used to be in high school. I was top of my class. Following these cultural trends, if we conduct relationships the way they’re being conducted today and if we get married to that 20%, that one relationship out of six, and then divorce rate is 50% for our first marriage, that means that the marriage, if you get married in a relationship, you have, according to today’s standards, a 10-20% chance that your marriage will last the entire term of your lifelong commitment, that you will get in a relationship, stay in a relationship, get married, stay married, until one of you drops dead, 10-20%. Those numbers are horrible. I don’t like those at all. Do you like those numbers? I don’t like those numbers.

There’s got to be a different way and I’ve spent actually the last couple of years. A lot of my friends are getting married cause I’m in those upper 20’s, I was in those mid-20’s. That’s when people are starting to think about getting married. Right? They get married. They find somebody they want to spend the rest of their life way. They get married and they don’t stay married. I’ve seen a lot of people I knew, some close, some not, who are my age get married and then one-three years later, they’re calling it quits. That’s it. They’re done. The thing that’s supposed to be a lifelong commitment, they want to get to their golden anniversary, 50 years. They’re done already before they even gotten out of the date. They’ve decided we can’t do this anymore. It’s too hard, for different reasons. Sometimes there’s jealousy. Sometimes it’s financial reasons. If you’ve been in a relationship that has ended or a marriage ended, you know why, there’s a problem of some kind and it was hard. It broke my heart to see these people get into these marriages and they’re getting out and at least once or twice over the last couple of years, I’ve seen a friend of mine end a marriage and I was like, “Wow. I didn’t expect that.” Here’s something even more discouraging. We all know that we change as people. Every 5-7 years you change as a person. The person you are today is going to be different from the person you are later in five years, seven years, even if you don’t ever get married, you just change. You grow. Layers get added on you. If you’re in a relationship with someone, that means they’re going to be a different person in 5-7 years and you’re wanting to make that relationship last a lifetime, so you have to find a way to stay with them for all the changes. 

My buddy, Bill Shakespeare, right? I call him Bill. Good guy. He wrote a lot of cool plays, sonnets, and one of those sonnets about love says, “Love alters not when it alteration finds”, meaning that when love sees something that has changed in the other person, it doesn’t change. We all want to know how to find that love. Right? If you think about those things, think about all the stats we have right now that we just said. 60 Minutes Vanity Fair said everyone kind of has an idea with marriage. They think it’s healthy for kids. It’s healthy relationships. It gives you better stability if it goes well, but not as many people are getting married. The stats you just read says if you follow the way the culture conducts relationships on the whole in America or New Zealand, wherever you’re at, your chances of getting to a marriage that lasts a lifetime is 10=20% and that’s abysmally low. So why get married? It seems hard. Those numbers seem horrible. I’m an odds man. I like playing by the odds. I’m not Han Solo. I need to be told the odds, and if you tell me my chances are 10-20% of finding a life partner and staying with them forever until I die, I don’t want to get married. We have to figure out what’s going on with marriage here.

I’m going to read some things from the Christian worldview as to why one should get married and I want to share some books with you. How are we doing on time? We’re doing great on time. Where did all my books go? Here we go. Okay. I’m just going to read some verses from the Bible. All of you have probably heard some of these before, but CBS/Vanity Fair/60 Minutes references the Bible within the first two sentences. Marriage is mentioned in the Bible as being important in providing men and women fellowship, companionship, etc. etc. It thinks the Bible has something to say about this and I agree, surprise, so let’s take a look here at these verses that I’ve laid out. I’m just going to read a couple of them. From Genesis 2, this is how marriage showed up, whether you believe Genesis is a literal account, figurative account, young-Earth, old-Earth. Don’t care. This happened, this conversation happened in some way.

 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 

 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 

 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 

 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 

 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 

 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 

 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 

Now that sounds similar to, people say it all the time, they usually say it at weddings, they said it at my wedding. Jesus quoted it later, several thousand years later, in Matthew, the book of Matthew and I think in Mark as well, but the Pharisees or religious leaders at the time, I’m just going to jump straight to Matthew 19. 

Here we go. Jesus was saying some stuff and large crowds and followed Him an Pharisees came to Him to test Him. 

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

 Should we, can we divorce our wives if we want to. Is that okay? This is what Jesus, this is how Jesus, the Son of God according to the Bible and the Christian worldview, says about marriage. 

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?”

That’s the end of the Genesis quote and then He goes on and adds His own stuff. He continues on. 

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

So they ask the same question. Whoa. Wait a minute. Marriage is hard. If we don’t have an out, why are we getting married. Jesus is telling them, this is what I think about marriage. Marriage is where I take a male and a female, specifically in this worldview, and I combine them into one flesh. They’re united together. They leave their respective families from which they came and they come together to form a flesh, one flesh and so Jesus revisits that and says they’re no longer two people. They’re now one flesh. In the Greek Bible, which you don’t need to understand in order to appreciate the Bible, the Greek says they are no longer two fleshes, but one flesh so God has brought them before all of creation, has changed their makeup, their way of thinking, their way of being. They’re now one person in two separate entities. What God has joined together let no one separate. He’s saying “I take marriage very seriously. Don’t screw around with it. I don’t want you guys getting divorced please, because I worked really hard to take the two of you and make you one being that has never existed before. If you look back in Genesis 2, maybe 1, Genesis 1, He said male and female He created them. He made mankind in the image of God male and female. I’m going to come back to that in a second.

Jesus takes marriage very seriously. I want to read something to you guys. Running short on time. How did this happen? I wanted to read something that I wrote to you guys, nah. I didn’t write to you guys. I didn’t write anything to you guys. I wrote to my wife before we were married, because I want to let you know what you’re getting into and what I think about marriage and what I want us to think about marriage and I did some research based on books that I will recommend to you all at the end if you want a happy marriage, if you want a good viewpoint on marriage, these are good books that helped me a ton. I want to recommend them to you, but I collaborated all together and I made my own definition of what I think marriage is according to what I pulled from some verses, my time in the church, and how I’ve watched marriage play out and what I want a successful marriage to look like. Here it is. Some of this may sound familiar and I want you guys to post your thoughts in the comments, put it in chat. What do you think? Okay?

Marriage is a lifelong covenant joining one male and one female into a brand new entity with the purpose of fully representing the image of God within humanity. Their bodies, minds, and souls, are melded together into one being, yet with each person retaining their individual identity. Sounds a little bit like God doesn’t it? This melding is traditionally referred to as one flesh and can only be enacted by God. We have the state, we have the legal side, that legally says you’re married, but in terms of your souls and bodies being one, that’s God’s business, and He takes that very seriously. Once performed it is irreversible. That’s why God, Jesus, Son of God, all of them are saying “Don’t get divorced. It’s really messy.” Those of you have been through divorce know it’s hard. I’ve watched a lot of you go through divorces. It is messy. It’s never easy. It’s messy. You know this from experience. I’ve watched it. You’ve been through it. Husband and wife are drawn into intimacy through their complete love and vulnerability to one another, willfully choosing to accept the full person of the other as their mate for life. They each seek to be devoted to the good of the other at the cost of their own desires, no matter what hardships may come. This is probably the easiest way to avoid marriages that only last 1-3 years and may explain why the divorce rate is truly high, because in our society, we have been trained for better or worse that we are a consumer nation. You want it? Put it on your phone. You can buy it. You can have it. Just reach out and take it. It’s yours. What do you want? You want that coke? Supersize it. Get a fries. Get a coke. Eat healthy if you want to. What do you want? Do you want that sandwich? Do you want it delivered? We can deliver that sandwich to you?

Do you want a marriage? Do you want someone who makes you happy? We can set up a website so you can find someone who makes you happy, but then, and this is why I don’t like, forgive me if you’ve been on a dating website and you have a relationship that way. If it’s going well, props to you. If you got married through a dating website or app and it’s working well, props to you, but the weak spot, the downfall, the blind spot to those often times is that when you’re on there, you’re already there with the mindset, even if you find the perfect match, both of you are there with the intent of a person I find is going to make me happy. That’s why I’m here. I want to find someone to make me happy. It’ll work. You guys will be in a relationship. You guys are happy. You guys get married. You guys are happy. Maybe for a time, but you’re both looking to each other for your own happiness and that first paragraph I just read talks about willingly choosing to accept the full other person of the other as their mate for life. From the get-go, we’re going to be together for life. Divorce isn’t an option. They seek to be devoted to the good of the other at the cost of their desire no matter what hardships may come. You hear that phrase? For better or worse. For richer or poorer. Till death do us part. Going into, I had an elder once at a conference, one of the best marriage advice I ever got. If you want to have a better marriage, he’s talking to men who were in their 10, 15, 25th year of marriage. If you want to have a better marriage, go home and die some more. Die to your life. Die to your own desires and seek to please her. What does she need? What does she want? Please those things before you please yourself. It seems like it should be obvious, but a lot of times it seems like we’re saying I need my wife to make me happy. I would like my wife to make me dinner. I would like my wife to be there, like, all these things, I kind of want. I do. I have to fight those things. I want my wife to be there, but before I want those things, I really want to please my wife. I want to go do the dishes. I’m going to go make the rub. I’m going to give her a back rub. I’m going to do all these things I can to please my wife and successful marriages that I’ve seen continue have that in mind with the husband seeking to please the wife and the wife seeking to please the husband. There’s a bunch of biblical things that Paul says in the New Testament about this. Highly recommend that lifestyle. Kurt is married. He can probably tell you if he’s still in the chat that that’s a really good idea and any of you married folk, if you’re still in the chat right now and you have something to say about marriage toward that end, I recommend saying it please. 

We’re going to take a short break real quick. It’s already 1:47 PM. We got a little bit of a late start. We’re going to go a little bit later today. We’re going to take a short break and a word from our sponsors. When we get back, we’re going to talk about roles in marriage from my little definition which I know is sometimes controversial, especially in America today. Stay tuned. We will be back after the break.

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Chris: Alright. Hey. Welcome back to Veracity Hill. We’re striving for truth on faith, society, and the other thing that we strive for truth on. What do we strive for truth on? Oh my gosh! Politics! All the things that are important in life. Faith, politics, and society. We’re striving for truth in all these areas including marriage, especially today. Welcome back from the break. You can like, comment, and subscribe here on Veracityhill. You can catch us on YouTube. You can catch us here on Spreaker on our website if you want to become a donor. We appreciate that, especially with a lot of the incentives going on right now which I know Kurt has told you about and will be telling you about again in a few weeks when he’s back. Again, if you want to be part of the Defenders Conference happening in late September 28-29, the weekend of, we highly encourage you to sign up now, get interested, get going. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We always want to bring in a lot of good speakers and we’re excited to have you there. September 28-29 on genocide. Let’s continue on in marriage in the time we have left. We have maybe 10-20 minutes if I stretch it. I want to hear from you guys. What do you think? What’s going on with marriage? What do you guys think?

Let’s talk about roles in marriage. This is the next thing I wrote to my now wife about how I thought about marriage. I said the covenant, there’s a fun word that gets tossed around, a covenant is like a contract, but it’s really personal. Covenant says “I’m devoting all of myself to you for a purpose.” That’s a covenant. They’re really important. This covenant, which I think marriage is, and the Bible also thinks marriage is. The covenant is not symmetrical, but complementary. Men and women have different roles. What? Male and female have different roles in the marriage that fall in line with the wiring their creator placed in them. This is important this next part, because I know some of you are pretty getting a little upset. While the roles are different their value is not. There’s just a difference between a role someone plays and their value. Men and women’s value, especially in the eyes of Christ, is right here. It’s the same. It’s all good. Right? But the roles do not place any different values. It just means they’re complementary roles that work together. They’re not the same. They’re not symmetrical. They’re different. They work together. Let me tell you what I mean. They’re both equal parts with different functions. Husbands are to love their wives, leading them firmly, cherishing them tenderly, nurturing them spiritually, providing security emotionally, and protecting them zealously. Wives are to respect their husbands, submitting to them joyfully, following them thoughtfully, and supporting them fully. Men are naturally inclined to slip into a leadership role in the marriage and women are naturally inclined to slip into a supporting role in the marriage. While every human is created differently, reverses these roles completely almost always creates an unhealthy corrosion on the bond between husband and wife. These are things I have gathered by watching this happen in marriages that have been around for several decades, whether they are near me or far from me, I have watched them as the roles kind of switch and the marriage is not in a good shape. It’s not in a good place. Great man. Great woman. But they’re each trying to do the other role for whatever reason, for whatever circumstances doesn’t work out. It’s not good, Men are naturally inclined to be encouraged to lead and women are naturally inclined to be encouraged to support as wives in that marriage relationship. It works out really well that way. There’s not a different value to those roles. A lot of that comes as a straight pull from Ephesians 5 which you may be familiar with. Ephesians 5:23-33 which I’m not going to read because I essentially just paraphrased it. It talks about the roles of husband and wife from a Christian perspective. At the end, it really talks about what we need as men and women. 

Where is it? Each man must love his wife as he loves himself and the wife must respect her husband. If you do nothing else in that paragraph, the primary thing that a husband really needs from you wives is respect. That’s how he functions. It builds him up. Husbands, the primary thing your wife needs is love. Not more hours at the office. Not new cars. Not a bigger house. Security’s great, but she really wants your wife. She wants to know every day you love and cherish her. Your eyes and your mind are for her, and if you guys both do that and give, it’s a really refreshing, healing, building up cycle in a marriage. Why it’s really important, which is why I said the opposite almost always results in corrosion. Let’s see. Last paragraph that I wrote.


Together, the husband and wife create from the raw materials given to them, which is what Adam and Eve were doing. Remember? They were in Eden, they were in the garden, and God’s saying “It’s not good for man to be alone. I’m going to bring him a helper suitable for him. They took care of the garden. They took care of the animals. They took care of God’s creation as partner, as lifemates. They took care of things together. They worked together with the raw materials as gardeners to create something and so it continues today in marriages. They create from the raw materials given to them shifting their directions and goals as life changes and the Lord needs. God uses marriage to perpetuate His character throughout humanity, specifically through the family unit. As God in His persons created out of the outpouring of His love, husband and wife also create and give life out of the outpouring of their love. The result is a community that is blessed by their marriage and a household that may be blessed by children. While romance between one another is an essential part, it is not the end goal of marriage. That’s why one of the greatest pieces of my advice, advice that I received from my now father-in-law was this. A lot of people get married. We talked about the quote from the CBS/Vanity Fair poll. You can find it easily by searching that and searching marriage. That poll comes right up like the first thing. A lot of people talk about marriage and love. We see love in movies. We see I want to get to marriage. It’s all that is left. It’s great, but essentially, the advice that my father-in-law gave me was never get married for love. If you marry my daughter, do not marry her because you love her. Marry her because you two are suitable for one another. Romantic relationship in a marriage is incredibly important. It’s great. It’s a very great expression and building up of that tightness, of that unity, but it’s not the end goal and hopefully, it’s not the reason one gets married. There will be love there. There will be partnership there for people who want to get married, but I pass that advice on to you single people. If you want to get married, never get married for love. Always get married because you are suitable for each other. It’s a good thing.

Where that I stop. Oneness is not achieved through the acquiring of a spouse, but through their continued togetherness. That oneness, that one flesh is from their being together continually. Together they create the whole. Together they become part of one another. Like all things within creation, marriage begins with God and ends with God. Only God can create and sustain a healthy union between two humans and a thriving marriage will point right back to God’s character. Outside of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, man and woman coming together in this way is the most complete representation of God within the species of humanity. I firmly believe that. It is the most complete representation of God within the species of humanity, however, the inference from that is that, I’m not knocking people who are single, of which I was one a month ago. Not true. Not true. Humans have all shapes and sizes and stages of life are made in the image of God and if you are single you have a very important role, very important role, and you have great opportunities and flexibility and energy and time to go places and do things that you do not have when you are married. Those of you who went from being single to being married know this. Right? We even know this in society. That’s the whole point of having bachelor parties and bachelorette parties. No matter what you think of those, this is your last night to be single. Let’s revel in it. 

Being single has its advantages. Being married has its advantages. You have to weigh which of those things do I want. Being single is its own gift, its own reward, and you can do a lot of things that you can’t do when you’re married. You can also do a lot of things when you’re married that you can’t do when you’re single. They each have their own stages, their own functions, but neither of them are superior to stages of life and they’re not superior roles, even one typically precedes the other. They are equal roles. They’re good. They’re just different. I want you guys to think about that. I do revere marriage in the way that I just spoke, but I don’t do it in a way that knocks around singleness which is super cool. 

Let me see what else I have for you guys today. That’s what I think about marriage and really that’s what I want into my marriage with my wife thinking is from seeing all those marriages that weren’t working out, the people that were getting divorced in 1-5 years, the people around me who were getting to their 25 years, they’ve got all their assets in place, they’re rooted down 25 years, 35 years, 45 years, and they are in trouble because something is missing, something is wrong. I watch those and I wanted to avoid those pitfalls as well. I wanted to avoid the stats that I read you at the beginning of the top of the hour where only 48% of people are married and about half of those aren’t even making it to the end. Aren’t even making it to the end of the covenant which is for life and it’s only for life. Doesn’t go beyond that. 

I know that when my covenant ends, which it will end, marriage will end. If you’re married, your marriage will end in some way. Hopefully, the covenant says it ends when one of you passes away, leaves this mortal coil. The other person is left. If for some reason, for some reason, me and my wife will both die eventually, but if my wife dies first, I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m a single man again. I knew how I served the church as a single man and knew how I had that energy and I’m going to go back to doing that. That’s important. I was at a conference once in Colorado with one of my dear brothers in Christ. Shout out to my friend Josh. Hopefully, you’re listening today. I went out to put on a conference, helped him put on a conference. One of the pastors, elders, who was there said the same thing. If my lifemate dies first, I know exactly what I am doing because he had served the Lord as a single man in his early 20’s, late 20’s, and he knew exactly how to do that. He knew exactly how to serve the Lord and serve his brothers and sisters. If I’m still here when my marriage ends, which he would be if his spouse dies, then he knows exactly what he’s going back to. Don’t try and burn bridges to singleness too quickly because you will be coming back to it at some point and it’s good to remember how to do that. 

It’s good also to remember if you’re single and wanting to get married, be thinking “I”m not going to come back here for awhile.” Several decades hopefully, many, many decades. I hope that all of you who are married make it to your golden anniversary. That’s a huge accomplishment. Most of America is incredibly impressed by that and I want to be impressed with you and learn your secrets. It was a good idea for me to sit and ponder, “I need to really think about this because I’m not coming back here. If I marry this woman that I do love, I’m not coming back to single Chris possibly ever. I might, but I’m leaving this stage. I’m not coming back.” There’s a lot of gravity to think about, but I wanted to, sorry for the little soapbox tangent. These are things that I wanted to think about and I wanted to make sure we’re at the bedrock at our marriage because you want to build a good foundation. In the Bible, and I didn’t find this verse. I’m actually really mad. Wait. I’ve got my Bible right here. Maybe I can find it.

I just read it in my quiet time. If you’re not a Christian, a quiet time is basically a time when you sit down and read your Bible for a bit. There it is. It’s right here. I just read it. It’s in Luke 14. “Which of you”, He’s talking about following Jesus, but the same applies to marriage, “Which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ” He goes on and says the same thing about a king. I wanted to make sure before I got married to my wife, that I knew I was doing. I went away emotionally, spiritually, in my heart, and I went away to prepare a place for her. I needed to make sure my heart is a place where she will be safe, where we will have a good environment to do marriage. The habits and the things to be laid, the foundation, are what help us to survive at least 50 years in marriage. That’s what I want. I wanted to make sure that I took away all the things that I see from society that are bad and I throw them away and find how we avoid those together and how I serve how in a way that avoids that mentality together. I take the good things I view from society and I embrace those. I see the good things from marriages that succeeded and I take away the bad things that I’ve watched from marriages that are in trouble. Mid-life crisis country. I take away those things. I throw them away. I don’t want them in my marriage. I know that we will have hardships, all marriages have hardships. Things are hard as you take two selfish people and try to make them one, but the key to making sure your marriage lasts beyond year 3-4 and that your marriage doesn’t end in divorce is making sure that both of you are serving each other and hopefully, serving Christ. If you serve Christ, if you’re going to Him together as your source for energy, that gives you energy to serve one another. Let me explain.

If you love the Lord more than you love your spouse, that’s actually a really good thing, because you’re taking something, if you’re looking at each other to fulfill happiness, that’s a fuel that doesn’t last, because essentially from a human soul food standpoint, you are looking to this person, this spouse, to be a god and your wife or your husband probably makes a great spouse, I guarantee you they make you a horrible god, and a lot of marriages get caught on that whether people are religious or not, they’re worshiping their spouse or they want to to say “You are a god. Provide me my happiness.” That’s a pitfall to avoid. When me and my wife, keep God at the center of our marriage, and that’s not a statement. That’s not just a catchy bumper sticker to put on your car, you have to actually love the Lord and go to Him and say “I need strength to love my spouse today. I need help. I need wisdom. We need you.” You go together and you pray, “We need you, Lord.” That’s a really good thing to do because then you are being supplied an infinite amount of energy to do something which 50% of Americans think is impossible to do more than three years. You guys can do it together by loving the Lord. I want to pass that on to you guys. Really, you guys have to work together. You have to put each other before yourself. You die to yourself, completely die to yourself, and serve your spouse, and you can only do that if you have energy from the Lord. I want to really encourage you, I really, really want to encourage you with that. Dan. Kissing don’t last. Cooking do. That’s right. I like that. That’s great.

Kurt asks, “How do we help explain the Christian view of our marriage to our ever secular society today.” I think a good thing when I’m talking to people from the secular society is I ask them questions. Kurt, you probably know the way for arguing this way apologetically, philosophically, Kurt is very sharp when it comes to these things, but, it’s asking what do they want from a marriage. Do they really think this other person will make them happy for life? Do they want to get married? Then start explaining some of the things that I just said that I believe. You can love someone else with your entire being only if you have energy. Because if you’re thinking about stuff, if you’re not getting energy from another source. If I love my spouse with all of me, then I have all my energy left for me. I can’t function. All of my energy is gone. If I take all the gas out of my tiny 2012 Mazda3 and I put it in your car, my car doesn’t have any gas anymore. You both need to be getting your gas from the same source together so you can give it to each other. That analogy breaks down because everyone gets gas. If we’re the only two people on the planet, we need to have an infinite source of gas, of energy or something. Something needs to be infinite that isn’t from us cause we’re going to run out of steam at some point. That’s a good thing to remember. This is why I said and Dan brought this up, a good point, don’t get married for love, because the love will last, but the firework love you guys feel before you get married, in your relationship, in your courtship, while you’re dating, at the beginning of the honeymoon phase of marriage, while you’re newlywed, it’s not going to last because life happens. It just happens. It’s not because you guys fail. It’s not because the love is gone. It’s just you’re busy. Life happens. Kids happen. Work happens. Trials happen. Church happens. Growth happens. Medical things happen. It’s really hard to remember what that felt like, but underneath there’s a very serious, very strong foundation of true deep reach love that is sacrificial it says. I don’t care how hard things are, I’m going to sacrifice everything for you, because that’s what I signed up for when I put on this ring and that’s what I’m going to carry through with, but the rewards I’m told and I’ve seen for marriages that have lasted 40-50 years are great indeed. 

I encourage you, encourage all people from a Christian or secular standpoint, you need to be looking to something to save you that’s higher than you and looking to something to provide marriage that energy. If the love feels like it’s fizzled out, it’s not. That firework love will, but the deep love is what needs to be worked on by both of you. Look to the other person and ask, “How can I serve them today? What can I do?” Marriage is really much a huge indicator of the image of God. It shows that love, that oneness, that twoness, that distinct separate but one entity and so when humanity is really really profound to see how that’s carried out. Husband and wife existing with each other in one entity, but two separate entities choosing to love each other and wanting to love each other perfectly. Me giving all of myself to my wife, my wife giving all herself to me. I could keep rambling and I will for a time. Just kidding. I’m running out of time. Before I go, I want to pass along some resources to you guys that have been really helpful to me. They’re all books. Me and my wife recently read while we were courting in our courtship. If you don’t know what courtship is, ask me personally on Facebook because we’re out of time on the show, This Momentary Marriage by our good friend Mr. John Piper. He wrote it. My wife had the opportunity to edit some of his works. He’s an editor. We read This Momentary Marriage together. It really helps to answer those. There are a lot of books that will tell you should you get married and how you have a successful marriage, but this is the first book I ever read that told me why I should get married in the first place. Why bother with all of this? John Piper does a good job of laying that out in a way that anyone can easily understand. He takes his time. He moves very slowly. I highly recommend it. This Momentary Marriage by John Piper. Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggericha, I think, was gifted to me a long time ago when I was just in college by my father. He loved it. I love it. I still use the principles today in my day-to-day with my wife, in my day-to-day when we were courting, when we were engaged. I used the principles of how do I attend my wife’s needs when she’s not my wife because I need to start practicing now. This tells you probably what’s going on if your marriage feels like it’s being corroded and you guys aren’t getting anywhere. It tells you here’s what probably’s going on. Here’s the need that’s not being met. Here’s how you guys fix it. Start today. You don’t need to go to counseling sessions. Here’s you start. Maybe some of you do. Love and Respect. Dr. Eggerichs.

For Men Only and For Women Only, two different books by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn. Amazing. The men only book is here’s how women think and I’m going to explain it in a way that you as a man can understand and you will no longer think the way that women think is silly and women, here’s the way men think and you’ll no longer think the way the men think is silly and it also anticipated me, it also has helped me to anticipate the needs for my wife before they show up and it has given me a beautiful appreciation for how women are wired. You ladies are amazing. You guys are great. Props to you all. I really respect the way that you guys happen. The things you have to deal with and the things you have to think through and the way your mind functions, I get it. It’s cool. I know it’s annoying sometimes. That’s a good one.

The most recent book I read was Love That Lasts by Jeff and Alyssa Bethke who together are a married couple that run a marriage ministry, highly recommended, it’s a different take on marriage, basically, it’s their testimony. They talk about a lot of foundational things. They run a lot of workshops. They are a really good set of people. I’ll post those books on the comments after the show is done so you guys can see them, link them, move on together and that is it. I think we’re all done. I could talk, I’m out of time, and you guys probably want to go get lunch. It’s 2 PM here in Chicago. Leave us comments. We answer them even if you’re not live. We answer phone calls if you can find our phone line. If you want to be part of our texting plan text VERACITY HILL to 555-888 and we’ll let you know when special days are coming, what the topic will be, and you can text us questions. You can Facebook us questions. We will read them. You can email Kurt questions @VeracityHill and we will answer them, live or no, if you ask us a question we will answer it because we want to strive for truth and help you guys strive for truth as well. It’s why we’re here. 

We’re going to end the show now. Thanks for being with us guys. If you can put the Defenders Conference, DefendersMedia.com, check out the genocide, why is genocide in the Bible conference. September 28-29, do that. Next week we will be talking about some political issues. I’m not going to give up away, but if you are hot into politics and what’s happening right now in our country in various aspects I encourage you to tune in cause I really want to hear, some of you guys are really good at talking about politics, and I want to have your voice on the show, so if you want to be in chat next week when we talk about a very heavy politically current hot potato of a topic, please be here. That’s next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel, and that’s it. I’m grateful for the continued support, we all are, can’t do the show without you guys, of our patrons, our sponsorships with our sponsors, Defenders Media, Consult Kevin, The Sky Floor, Rethinking Hell, The Illinois Family Institute, Fox Restoration, and Non-Profit Megaphone. Thank you to our tech team in the booth who saved our video today, and thank you for listening in and for striving for truth on faith, politics, and society. Have a great afternoon guys. 

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