More Than a Piece of Paper
Dave Faust
Is a marriage license "just a piece of paper," as some insist? Truth is, we consider some pieces of paper quite important—paychecks, diplomas, property deeds, letters from close friends—so why not value a document that makes our matrimonial vows a matter of public record? But the real issue revolves around a deeper question: What do we believe about marriage itself?
Marriage isn't buying a car, where you test-drive it first and trade it for a different model if you decide you don't like it.
It isn't a youthful chemistry experiment, where you casually combine different elements and hope they don't explode.
It isn't a game, where you bluff, tease, maneuver, and compete.
It isn't an antique—a quaint, fragile leftover from a bygone era.
It isn't just a contract to be negotiated or a consumer product to be used and tossed aside.
It's neither a constant party nor a grim prison sentence.
Marriage? It's a covenant promise rooted in the earliest chapter of earth's history and the earliest chapters of God's Word. Leaving father and mother, cleaving to a spouse, becoming one flesh—those are God's ideas, not merely the creations of human societies and governments—and Jesus reaffirmed the divine intention, saying, "What God has joined together, let man not separate" (Matthew 19:6).
Marriage? It's the turbulence created when two streams merge into one river and flow through new, uncharted territory of family, faith, and future. It's facing real problems and real joys with help from a very real God. It's learning to balance personalities, schedules, careers, and checkbooks. It's sharing anxious moments and private jokes. It's cherishing a partner through sickness and health, wealth and poverty, periods of depression and crises of faith.
It's "loving your neighbor" in the crucible of daily living. Are you patient, kind, and humble—not self-seeking or easily angered? Have you learned how to protect, trust, hope, and persevere? You'll find out in marriage (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
Marriage is a loving relationship, a mystery that pictures something even more profound: the relationship between Christ and his church (Ephesians 5:21-33).
More than a piece of paper? Indeed. That's why couples shouldn't live together before marriage. Although common today, cohabiting without marriage is Scripturally wrong (it violates the Bible's standard of sexual purity), statistically indefensible (40 percent of cohabiting couples break up before marriage, and another 40 percent divorce within 10 years of marrying), emotionally hazardous (it undermines a couple's commitment before they even start to build their life together), economically unjustifiable (a moral wrong isn't made right by saying, "It's more affordable for us to share one apartment"), and socially disruptive (anything that weakens families undermines our nation's strength).
At the same time, Christians must say more than just, "Don't live together before marriage." We need to help couples really live together after marriage! A healthy marriage takes careful preparation and hard work, but it beats the pain and disruption that occur when a marriage falls apart.
After all, a divorce decree isn't "just a piece of paper" either.
This column first appeared in The Lookout on May 31, 1998.
More Light, Less Heat
Some say it's hard to believe in God in a scientific age. I disagree. I think scientific discoveries illustrate God's wisdom and power, and show why it's reasonable to believe that "the universe was formed at God's command" (Hebrews 11:3).
More than Watchmen
It was like trying to sleep on a block of ice. On our way to Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park, my family had set up a tiny tent in a Montana campground. Since it was the middle of summer, we naively assumed the weather would stay comfortably warm, even at night. We were wrong.