Veronica Zundel believes that Christian marriage has become an idol for today’s Church

Satan is attacking Christian marriages.” Have you ever heard that stated as fact? I’ll bet if you have, you’ve never heard any biblical reference or justification for it – because there isn’t any. It’s just one of those pieces of what I call ‘evangelical folklore’. Yes, Christian marriages break down (although I did once hear a colleague observe plaintively: “mine broke up”) but this is just as likely to be down to good old human fallibility or poor decisions as it is to a spiritual attack. Why would Satan have a specific campaign to target Christian marriage? Surely he’s far too busy helping multinational corporations ruin the planet? 

While we’re on the subject of ideas with no biblical justification, what do you think is the most misused Bible verse of all time? I’d go for Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” I’ve lost count of how often I’ve heard this addressed to forlorn single Christian women hoping against hope for a husband from the limited supply available in churches. Yet in its original context it was addressed to a nation in exile, promising them that they would return one day to their native land – nothing to do with marriage at all.

The bottom line is I think Christian marriage has become an idol for today’s Church. We have this rose-tinted image of the Christian family, the couple preferably married in their early 20s to avoid sin, four children (two of each) to replenish the Church, and maybe a dog, some hens and a couple of foster children thrown in to make up the numbers. The trouble with this cosy ideal is that few families or indeed individuals actually match up to it. It makes single women (the majority), single men (the minority), the divorced, widowed and (heaven forbid) gay Christians feel second class and lacking in ability to fulfil God’s plan, which is apparently for everyone to enter heaven as the animals entered the Ark, neatly two by two.

Marriage in the early Church

It was very different in the early Church. In 1 Corinthians 7, the only danger Paul suggests Satan poses to Christian marriages is that their relationship might involve too little sex because of too much time spent in prayer! He goes on to tell the unmarried and widows that it is best for them to remain single, as he is, unless they are so desperate for sex that they need to be married. We’re a long way here from the ‘marriage at all costs’ attitude of today. Paul clearly did not forget, as we seem to have forgotten today, that Jesus himself appears to have been unmarried, a quite revolutionary choice in his society.

Why, we might ask, did Jesus choose to be single? Perhaps the answer lies in Paul again: “I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs – how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world – how he can please his wife – and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world – how she can please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). 

We need everyone

Single women in particular have been the backbone of the Church for centuries (as have gay men and women, but that’s another story). Without single women, the missionary movement of the 19th and 20th centuries would have collapsed long ago. Back home, if it weren’t for single women, who would babysit the children of the married woman as she does her important church and mission work? And now that almost all denominations are ordaining women, what would we do without the growing army of single women ministers?

So let’s not hold up marriage (and children) as the one goal in life for everyone, the foundation of the Church – it isn’t. Particularly, let’s not say “this church is a big family” when what we actually mean is that it’s a collection of small families. Marriage is good, but it’s not by any means the only good.