Orthodox Implications of Marriage

I recently purchased a book on marriage called Preserve Them O Lord by Fr. John Mack.

During my time of learning about Orthodoxy, I came across the Orthodox belief that our marriages have an eternal dimension to them. Such a belief offers many implications for our earthly lives.

As a Protestant, I was taught that human marriage ceases after death. This is probably also a common Roman Catholic belief. But in Eastern Orthodoxy, your marriage continues into eternity! How that works is yet unclear to me as a recent convert, but you don't have to be completely clear about it in order to realize some implications.

Now this Orthodox Christian belief should not be confused with the Mormon belief in "celestial marriage" or the Muslim belief in the 70 virgins! After all, Christ did tell the skeptic Sadducees that in heaven men neither marry nor are women given in marriage but are as the angels in heaven. But Jesus was speaking to the ancient Jewish belief that the primary role of marriage was procreation. Christianity exalted marriage to the status of Icon of the mystical bond between Christ and his Bride, the church.

And as such an icon, marriage must therefore be eternal in some way! The relationship between Christ and his Bride is eternal, so our marriages must reflect that or the icon is defaced.

But more to the point and down to brass tacks, what does the Orthodox belief in the eternality of our marriages mean for us as Christians?

I intend to expand on this topic very soon, but suffice it to say at the moment that such a belief can actually offer people hope when they reason out the implications.

For many people, the thought that their present miserable or disappointing marriage might continue forever is akin to a sentence of eternal damnation! But such a view is short-sighted.

In Orthodoxy, a marriage absolutely doesn't have to stay miserable but can be tranformed into something heavenly. If we allowed this Orthodox perspective to really sink in, we might realize the following things:

First, if we carry our marriage cross faithfully throughout this life, we will be rewarded for it in the life to come. Any imperfections in our marriages and any imperfections in us can be totally redeemed in the life to come.

Think about it! That person you are married to might become, to quote C.S. Lewis, a creature in heaven that if you were to see him or her now, you might be tempted to worship!

Anything we are deeply dissapointed in will be resolved in eternity, provided that we remain faithful and obedient.

If God has promised to wipe away the tears from all faces, well, you do the math if you are currently in a marriage that is painful or a present source of sorrow.

The promise is there: In Orthodoxy the person you are married to RIGHT NOW can be someone you will be ETERNALLY happy with.

The deepest love, joy and contentment IN YOUR PRESENT CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE can and will happen in the world to come. This provides a strong motivation to hang in there with your marriage.

"And they lived happily ever after."

In Orthodoxy, this is really a promise. It might not happen right now, in this temporal life, but it can and will happen in the world to come.

There is only one condition, although it is a tough one:

We must completely lay down our earthly lives for Christ and our marriage partner. But in this requirement, there is also the good news that Christ has provided his Church and the Sacraments to assist us in this journey.

Perhaps many people would quit searching for "the one person I was meant for" if they realized that the person they married is precisely that. The myth of "the Golden Person" has caused the death of many marriages. People in our day and age go from partner to partner and never find the person they are looking for when the first person they married could have been that person if they had made the decision to live the Orthodox Christian life in its fulness.

This Orthodox teaching, properly understood and communicated to others actually has the potential to strenghten the resolve of Christians of all types to stick with their first marriages.

More on this subject very soon. Count on some C.S. Lewis and John Eldredge quotes thrown in for good measure!

Columba Siluoan