Marriage

Note: The following essay is the fruit of research I've done on the history of marriage ceremonies, specifically their liturgy. I've asked the question "How can my work as a pastor officiating at marriage ceremonies be used by God to strengthen the commitment within our congregation to God's Truth in the area of the meaning and purpose of sexuality?"

I've been to too many weddings in which the presiding pastor didn't bother "improving" the time, by which I mean that the very areas of biblical doctrine our culture hates were carefully (or maybe even thoughtlessly) excised from the liturgy--the three purposes of marriage, the warning of the seriousness of vows, the word 'obey' in the woman's vow, any mention of the wife's duty to submit to her husband, and so on.

So this essay is my effort to think through this aspect of pastoral ministry biblically, and to record my new commitments concerning how I will preside at the weddings of our congregation. The essay is published in a collection of essays offered by...

Some of you have wondered where Tim has disappeared to in recent days. Well, part of the reason for his absence from the blog recently is due to an event we celebrated in Nashville, IN, last Saturday afternoon when Tim's third child, Michal, was married.

Michal Louise follows older siblings Heather and Joseph in marriage. Michal married Ben Crum, son of PCA pastor David Crum. The wedding was beautifully simple, with traditional vows and a bluegrass band at the reception.

Members of the family were disappointed that Michal's maternal grandfather, Ken Taylor, was not able to attend the wedding. Mr. Taylor's ill health kept him home--the first of his grandchildren's weddings he has been forced to miss. Tim took Mr. Taylor's place by pronouncing the father's blessing, a Taylor family tradition.

May God add His blessing to Michal and Ben's life together.

Also, pray for God's grace for Mr. and Mrs. Taylor in these difficult days. Mr. Taylor is one of the truly great men of the evangelical movement and his departure to eternity will be all our loss.

(Note from Tim Bayly: I've been rightly corrected by "Thomas C." in the comments below for calling Jeremy Taylor a Puritan. Taylor did, in fact, suffer quite a bit at the hands of the Puritans so he'd be shocked to read me labelling him one himself. Although no excuse, I think of two Anglican Bishops, Taylor and Ryle, as Puritans only because of the content and character of their writing. In that vein I commend them to our readers with the highest praise.)

Years back I ran across an essay by Anglican Divine Jeremy Taylor titled something like, "The Christian Mother's Duty to Nurse Her Own Infant." Taylor, author of one of the most popular works of private devotion during Puritan times, Holy Living And Dying With Prayers Containing the Whole Duty of a Christian And the Parts of Devotion Fitted to All Occasions And Furnished for All Necessities, also said this about marriage:

Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and Heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world. (From his sermon, The Mysteriousness of Marriage, on Ephesians 5:32.)

This week my dear wife, Mary Lee, had a birthday. How I praise God and luxuriate daily in the blessings God has given me and many others through her, not the least of which are our five children and their (so far) three spouses and two grandchildren.

Years after Mary Lee and I were married, I was reading Proverbs and came across this verse I'd never noticed before:

House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, But a prudent wife is from the LORD. (Proverbs 19:14).

Reading it for what seemed the first time, it hit me that in His kindness and mercy God had given me a prudent wife even though at the time my choice seemed entirely carnal.

Now, like my wife's father before me, I regularly pray for my children, that if they're to marry God will bless them as He blessed me, giving them husbands and wives who will lead them in godliness.

Over ten years ago Tim and I spent several days with Philip Jensen, currently pastor of St. Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney.

Jensen's bold orthodoxy was refreshing--especially in the setting at which we first met him, a small preaching conference at Parkside Church near Cleveland addressed by Jensen and London Anglican pastor Dick Lucas.

During the course of the conference Jensen was asked how his church dealt with new Christians living with members of the opposite sex.

"We ask them if they are doing this for pleasure or convenience--or if they are committed to each other," Jensen said, "If they have made no commitment we tell them they must separate. If they have made a commitment we view them as married."

Alistair Begg, host of the conference, responded vehemently, "I believe that is a shameful accommodation to the spirit of the age."

Jensen gently defended his position, explaining that what constitutes marriage Biblically is simple commitment to each other combined with the marital act. Over the years since I've become convinced Jensen was right. The following is a recent sermon on this theme.

Tim and I usually refrain from placing answers to questions raised in comments to our posts on the main page of this blog, preferring the give and take of the comment section for such interaction. But questions posed by a reader in a recent comment anticipated a post I was planning and for that reason I place my answer here as well....

Objections to my previous post defining marriage as a covenantal commitment leading to one-flesh union have centered on my contention that Scripture defines marriage objectively as hinging upon the one-flesh union of a man and woman.

This good comment on early marriages by Benjamin Franklin, forwarded by our happily married firstborn, Mrs. Doug Ummel:

I am rather inclined to think that early [marriages] stand the best chance for happiness. The tempers and habits of the young are not yet become so stiff and uncomplying as when more advanced in life; they form more easily to each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed. And if youth has less of that prudence which is necessary to manage a family, yet the parents and elder friends of young married persons are generally at hand, to afford their advice, which amply supplies that defect; and by early marriage youth is sooner formed to regular and useful life; and possibly some of those accidents or connections that might have injured the constitution or reputation, or both, are thereby happily prevented. -Benjamin Franklin

Today's New York Times has an article on heterosexual couples who refuse to marry until homosexuals are granted the "right" to marry as well.

The Times would have us believe it's a burgeoning movement. In fact, as the article itself makes clear, it amounts to a few celebrity couples, several cohabiting engaged couples and a UCC minister, her two-decade boyfriend and their 18-year-old son in Massachusetts.

Interestingly, as the article continues, its fundamental conceit of couples' sacrificial-devotion-to-civil-rights-leading-to-delayed-marriage implodes before our eyes. The husband-to-be of one engaged couple says he'd rather go ahead and marry his fiance--leaving us wondering why his bride-to-be really refuses the formal ceremony. Meanwhile, the UCC minister and her man still refuse formal marriage despite Massachusetts legalizing homosexual marriage two years ago.

The obvious truth, folks, is that marriage has become an effete concept in American culture--an affectation, even a political statement rather than a one-flesh union. And Christians are as guilty of bringing things to this sorry pass as anyone. We have diminished the institution of marriage even as we've sought to aggrandize our individual unions. By delaying our own (and our children's) weddings until bride and groom are finished schooling, financially stable and established in careers, we make marriage out to be a valedictory, a statement of accomplishment rather than merely the first really adult act of most married couples' young lives; the start of life's hard work rather than its end; matriculation rather than graduation.

Even more fundamentally, we have diminished marriage by refusing to acknowledge the truth of God's Word that marriage is not a grand and complex thing uniquely tailored by each married couple to their own desires and circumstances, but instead, a Divinely-established monolith, a foundational institution established at creation by God through which those who marry submit to the will of God by conforming to the wisdom of the ages.

Finally, the insanity of a couple who have made commitments to each other and engaged in carnal union claiming they're not man and wife should be clear to all. That it's not is a serious indictment of the Church which is charged with being the pillar and foundation of God's Truth in this world. God's Truth says that these couples by engaging in sex and making promises have established a one-flesh union in His sight. Whether we call them married or not, God deems them man and wife. They will give an account to Him should they break their union as surely as all other adulterers. We are not promoting marriage by making it something more than it is Scripturally, we are diminishing the reality and danger of adultery.

Three things are too wonderful for me;
        four I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
        the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
        and the way of a man with a virgin.

(David) The way of a man with a woman is one of life’s great mysteries. From every perspective the process is mysterious, resembling a blindfolded sabre dance on uneven ground. The young man who pursues marriage enters a foreign land where he wages war. On the hinges of that battle lie happiness or shame.

But though a potential bride may be deeply loved, she’s also at some level the foe. To achieve victory the young man must not only win her, he must defeat her and her family, snatching her from their bosom, converting her to himself, breaking her natural bonds with father and mother, brother and sister, nurse and friend, dog and home. There’s little that’s tender about it. At funerals we cloak harsh reality in kind words and soft colors. So too, at weddings soft words and vibrant colors disguise a bloody truth. The wedding ceremony is really a mini-Versailles, an Appomattox-in-a-nutshell of capitulation and triumph, the surrender of one woman to one man, the victory song of groom over both bride and family.

(David) Okay, a couple assumptions at the outset.

First, a father has authority over the marriage of a daughter living in his home. This is demonstrated in Scripture by the father’s right to negate a marriage occasioned by a man’s seduction of his virgin daughter.

Second, nowhere ever is sex permitted outside marriage. However, it’s also the case that sex between unmarried adults establishes marriage when promises are exchanged and a father doesn’t veto.

Third, respect for authority is vital. But respect doesn’t require agreement. Nor does it necessitate absolute, unwavering, slavish obedience. Abigail respected Nabal by going to David with her caravan of goods, thus saving Nabal’s life—though he may not have seen it as respectful submission in the midst of his drunken stupor. Authentic authority is not always wise or godly authority. And just as we seek to change the hearts and minds of earthly rulers, so a suitor’s attempts to win a wife don’t necessarily have to come to a clanging stop at a father’s no, though the heart of the father’s authority over his daughter’s marriage must be respected.

(This from our Denver correspondent, with a link to Relient K's Sadie Hawkins Dance)   In the English speaking world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap years. While it has been argued that the tradition was initiated by Saint Patrick or Brigid of Kildare in fifth century Ireland, it is dubious as the tradition has not been attested before the 19th century.

Supposedly, a 1288 law by Queen Margaret of Scotland (then age five and living in Norway), required that fines be levied if a marriage proposal was refused by the man; compensation ranged from a kiss to £1 to a silk gown, in order to soften the blow. Because men felt that put them at too great a risk, the tradition was in some places tightened to restricting female proposals to the modern leap day, 29 February, or to the medieval leap day, 24 February. According to Felten: "A play from the turn of the 17th century, 'The Maydes Metamorphosis,' has it that 'this is leape year/women wear breeches.' A few hundred years later, breeches wouldn't do at all: Women looking to take advantage of their opportunity to pitch woo were expected to wear a scarlet petticoat -- fair warning, if you will."

As I was in the prime of my days, When the friendship of God was over my tent; When the Almighty was yet with me, And my children were around me; When my steps were bathed in butter, And the rock poured out for me streams of oil! (Job 29:4-6)

(Tim) Lord willing, in a few hours our third daughter, Hannah Marie, will be married to Lucas Dee Weeks, son of Ron and Doris Weeks. This will leave Mary Lee and me with one child still living at home--Taylor, our fifteen year old son.

As I sit here writing the wedding sermon, it occurs to me that the joyful sadness Mary Lee and I feel as our Hannah departs is a graceful sadness...

(Tim) I received a poem by e-mail this past week and asked its author if she would allow me to post it. Here we have a short summary, wonderfully conceived, of the two paths women choose today, one which ends in death and the other in life.

The last few days, our home has been graced by my mother-in-law, Margaret West Taylor, who's visiting for the week. As I think about her sacrificial life, I also look around at other women of my own family and church and I praise God for their godliness! It's hard to conceive of the full spectrum of leadership these women exert among the sons, brothers, pastors, elders, deacons, and husbands, let alone children and other women, as we watch them lose their lives.

Here, then, is the text I received:

* * *

I Think You Want a Wife

Written by, to, and for a woman who thinks far too much of herself to surrender her life for her husband; but ultimately, to God.

I think you want a wife, not a husband.
Someone to join with
you, to make
you into your true self, to follow
you wherever
your heart leads.

A man to validate
your feelings, make
you sure of who
you are.

You realize your full potential.

I think you want a wife, not a husband.
 

(Tim, w/thanks to Anne) With some slight editing, here are entries to a Washington Post competition asking for a two-line rhyme with the most romantic line first, the least second:

My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife: Marrying you screwed up my life.

I see your face when I am dreaming. That's why I always wake up screaming.

(Tim) When Bill Mouser speaks, particularly on sexuality and marriage, I listen. So our first book recommendation for 2009 is Ellis Peters' An Excellent Mystery which Bill says, "is one of the best and most moving tributes to marriage I've ever read in my life."

(Tim, but written by Curt--an Evangelical Free pastor and dear friend of mine) I have noticed a trend that I find to be instructive and disturbing. Over the course of my pastoral ministry, I have been approached by a steady stream of women who are upset with the church and more specifically its men for not chastising their husbands for some spiritual problem or lack of spiritual qualities. Typically, I have taken such criticism to heart, admitting that we have not done enough to hold men accountable. Clearly, this has not been an area of strength in today's church.

But lately, my thinking has shifted. I have found myself being defensive about our church and its men. I see them as being faithful in modeling, and preaching, and teaching, and mentoring, and confronting, and offering assistance, and even hand holding when necessary. Time and again, they have given of themselves, often at the expense of their own families to help others. And yet, I've noticed that the criticism comes the next time as if no help had been provided or offered in the past.

(Tim) During four years in the late nineties and early two-thousands while pastoring Church of the Good Shepherd, I also led the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as its Executive Director. My brother, David, joined me in that work and was a great help, designing our first web site and providing invaluable counsel while also serving in the pastorate.

Part of my work was editing CBMW's journal. Periodically, we ran interviews--one being with my hero, Elisabeth Elliot. Naturally, I did the interview myself.

Growing up, the Bayly family had a long personal association with the Howards of Philadelphia--particularly Dave Howard and his sister, Elisabeth Elliot. A couple months ago, Elisabeth's husband, Lars, wrote me telling of a recent trip he and Elisabeth had taken to visit family down in South America. For those of you who know and love them, Lars and Elisabeth are doing well.

So then, here's the interview from CBMW's Journal, Volume 5, No. 1.

* * *

PLAIN AND SIMPLE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ELISABETH ELLIOT

JBMW: We are delighted to be able to speak with you. Why do you think you've been a lightning rod in the evangelical world on this particular issue?

EE: I didn't know I was! I have just proceeded the way I've tried all my life to proceed-by studying what the Bible says and living by it. If I'm asked to talk about it, of course I have a responsibility to talk about it. It is from this that I have learned that I'm not wanted in many circles...

(Tim) Kevin Offner is a longtime friend who does grad student and faculty ministry in the Washington D.C. area under Inter-Varsity. Recently, a Christian magazine known for its love for heterodoxy and its dabbling in heresy shocked the world by publishing a piece that promoted early marriage. Flying in the face of the magazine's egalitarian feminist commitments and subscribers, fur flew in the big kerfuffle.

Which brought Kevin to the defense of marriage, and what I thought a very sweet testimony to God's kindness in his own life leading him to repentance. He kindly allowed me to post his testimony here. (He's responding to one of the comments posted under aforesaid article.)

* * *

I’ve never met you but found your comments here good and helpful.

I don’t have much to add other than that I thought the author over-emphasized the sexual in the article (very good that this was discussed but a bit overkill, I thought).

But his general, somewhat radical, thesis is, I think, spot-on:  we really do need to be encouraging *earlier* marriages these days. Our churches should be intentionally counter-cultural here. In the 1950s this was all the rage, and perhaps the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s rightly reacted some to this. But the pendulum has swung way to the other side now. It should be rare, rather than the norm, for 30-somethings to be single.

My special concern here is with the 30-something single male...

(Tim) For the person who just arrived here from links provided the Google inquiry, "How can I tell if we are equally yolked," here's my suggestion. Eyeball the yellow parts and see if they look about the same. Simple as pie, actually.

PS: My wife, Mary Lee, thought this post was mean. I reassured her that, actually, it was written about four years ago, and I only just published it today. She was relieved that "equally yolked" isn't around any more.

(Tim) Taylor played varsity soccer this past year and this pic ran in the Bloomington paper. Am I proud of my son? Yes, I am. More for his heart than soccer, though. He submits to authority! Can you imagine that? No matter how normal it is to you, it's always amazing to me. After all, I was his age a few days ago, and submission wasn't ground zero in my character traits.

If your daughters are home schooled and you think he's handsome, just send me an e-mail with proposed dowry. We're building a house.

JK.

This particular issue's cover article details how, over the past thirty years, homemakers have been forced to subsidize the lives of privilege lived by other women who have forsaken marriage, the home, and childbearing for degrees and professions.

Professional women with salaries high enough to allow them to pay for day care and still turn a profit have not simply been content to leave their homemaking sisters behind, but have built their lifestyle on the backs of those sisters and their hardworking husbands. To anyone who matters, these homemakers are invisible.

Equal Employment Opportunity laws have piled up a legacy of systemic injustice throughout the wage earning world, leaving half the fairer and weaker sex to raise the children the other half will depend upon for their Medicare and Social Security payments when their life of childless privilege is drawing to an end. Meanwhile, the husbands of these housewives and mothers are in free-fall, trying to support the mother of their children as she gives herself to work that, despite those bright boys and girls in Economics Departments, still hasn't shown up on their gross domestic profit tally sheets...

(Tim) This from David Wegener who teaches church history, theology, and Scripture at the Theological College of Central Africa under the PCA's Mission to the World. Terri is David's wife and John his son.

* * *

Many days in our rainy season follow a pattern. It is very hot and sunny during the day but toward late afternoon, the sky clouds over and we will have an evening rainstorm. On December 10th it was a little different.

Terri came into my room around 5:30pm and asked if I wanted to let Mr. Robby go home early so he could beat the rain. As I walked outside, Robby was rushing around. I asked if he wanted to go home now and he said he thought he’d stay.

I could tell why. The rain had already started and something sounded like a train coming from over our back fence...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) From London's Daily Mail, this Valentine from Anglican Rector Angus MacLeay and Curate Mark Oden who both called for wives to submit to their husbands. How did their female parishioners respond?

One huffed: "How can they talk that way in the 21st Century?"

Another, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "We’re supposed to let our husbands talk for us and remain silent? What kind of medieval sermon is that?"

True.

Well-known feminist, Bishop N. T. Wright, has initiated disciplinary procedures against both men.

Not.

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla who gave me a heads-up and has done several good posts on the subject) Here's the setup. Mrs. Frank James (who prefers to be known as Carolyn Custis James), was teaching a group of pastors how better to utilize women in positions of authority when one pastor asked her, "If we work with women, won't we be tempted?"

Mrs. James wasn't pleased with the question or what followed. She writes:

What followed (the question was) a laundry list of precautions to safeguard oneself from moral hazards when working or dealing with women. Women find this kind of thinking offensive, and rightly so. This low view of women conflicts with the Bible's high redemptive view of us.

So now, a word for church planters and new pastors. When I took my first call, Dad forwarded an article about a youth pastor who had given a young woman a ride home after youth group. Later, he was sued by the young woman's parents for some sort of sexually predatory behavior--which he denied. At the top of the article, Dad had scrawled, "This is a warning. Never give a woman a ride in your car, alone. Never counsel a woman, alone. Have a woman present or keep your door open and stay within sight of your secretary."

When we built our church-house a couple years ago, we put lights (windows) in every door as protection for everyone, everywhere...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) The Canadian Medical Association Journal just published a study showing that, among women, "increasing parity is associated with decreasing rates of death from suicide." In other words, the birth of children causes women to be less likely to kill themselves.

Yesterday, Mary Lee and I visited two young mothers--one home with her day-old firstborn, and the other at about twenty weeks in her pregnancy, in the hospital fighting to stop premature contractions. Here's our observation: godly mothers love their children and live for them.

And although I'm a romantic who believes very much in conjugal love; generally speaking, married women who have no children would not take as much inspiration from their husbands.

Next month, CMAJ will be publishing a study documenting higher marital satisfaction among couples with no prior history of adultery.

Joke.