At regular intervals
there come demands that old standards should be re-examined:
and that is good. For if the standards were sound, they will
not suffer from being tested again, and they may gain in
authority for being established anew in each succeeding
generation. And if they were not sound, not much is lost if
they do suffer: our business is to prove all things, and
hold fast that which is good. Standards are liable to be
forgotten if they are not re-affirmed, especially if there
is strong pressure against them from private emotions or
personal interests.
There is nothing of
which this is more true than marriage, and there are many
good reasons why the subject should be brought up again.
These include: (1) there are many more sisters than
brethren, within marriageable ages; (2) there is much more
encounter, on frank terms, with possible partners who do not
share our faith, than there used to be; (3) modern
educational trends, particularly in the United States, put
“dating”, dancing, courtship and marriage prominently in the
minds of young people from very early ages; (4) no
corresponding education from within our Sunday Schools or
Youth Circles seems (by and large) to be there with power to
redress the balance; (5) the obvious possibility of
insincerity in the established procedure for dealing with
“marriage out of the Truth”, is tending to bring that
practice into disrepute: and voices are sometimes heard to
say that it is better to accept alien-marriages with a good
grace (and without discipline), than to adopt a procedure
which invites the offenders to scoff at their impotent
correction; (6) there is perhaps a weakening recognition of
the likely consequences of such marriages.
More important than
the procedure for coping with aberrations is a discussion of
the fundamental problem which will show whether such things
are aberrations; and will help to encourage the frame of
mind which, if they are, seeks to avoid their occurrence.
First principles, human problems, and loyalty to the calling
wherewith we have been called, are the themes we have to
deal with here.
Let it not be
ignored, then, that hardheartedness is a poor qualification
for approaching this problem. Any elderly person, happily
married in the faith, who may be utterly unable to conceive
how anyone could be so foolish and blind as to consider an
alien-marriage, is not, perhaps, in the best position to win
a hearing from a young person, particularly a sister, to
whom the problem is a pressing reality, and who wants
guidance rather than shocked prohibitions.
On the human side of
this problem is the fact that young brethren and sisters,
and older Sunday School scholars, at a time when they think
perfectly naturally and properly of marriage, often find
themselves in circumstances where a Christadelphian partner
is not to hand, or where the necessary affection does not
exist, or where profound attraction is exercised from other
quarters. And there will be few who could look back to the
powerful influences which worked in them at the time of
their own courtship, who could regard this problem as
trivial. That minimum of sympathy and understanding, at
least, is called for at this stage.
But we must not
forget that there are many who have solved the problem for
themselves. There must be few of us who could not name a
dozen of his acquaintances who have simply answered the
challenge by not marrying at all: attraction from a proper
quarter did not arise; real affection from without did not,
unhappily, lead to the sincere conversion of the potential
husband or wife. The course of reasoning was obviously:
“Unless I can marry with a good conscience, I will not marry
at all”.
No one among whose
friends such sisters are included (for sisters they usually
are) can doubt with what conflicts and pains such decisions
were reached; and there could be no excuse for bringing
their struggles back to them, were it not that the earlier
paragraphs of this essay might be causing them to say to
themselves: “Were our struggles then in vain? Was our battle
for that which we thought was right a needless torture for
ourselves, when such sympathy is poured out for those who
are toying with the easier course? And is there, perhaps,
not a worthier subject for compassion in ourselves than in
those who would so easily compromise?”
It must be said at
once that their decision was noble and right, and will, we
are sure, not be forgotten by Him who knows that their
singleness came upon them for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven. They both deserve and have, in rich measure, the
affectionate gratitude of all who know they can look to them
as examples of godly self-denial; and they can be assured
that their decision is a powerful weapon in the hands of
those who seek the weal of our community. In such
circumstances, I believe they would all want the weight of
their virgin loyalties to be used to the full in this appeal
to the generation which follows them.
Now we must first
ask: is it true, as our forefathers have told us, that
“marriage out of the Truth” is contrary to the commandments
of Christ? This is not quite the spirit in which I want to
approach the subject, for hard and fast commandments are
after the pattern of the old covenant, and not of the new;
and under our present liberties we have much more
responsibility to think out the consequences of our actions
than Israel had, who could point to a straight “Thou shalt
not”. We should be just as sensitive to a negative answer to
the question, “Would this course please the Lord?” as we
would be to a precise commandment: and it might not,
therefore, matter very much if a “commandment of Christ”
could not be found in strict legal form.
Nevertheless, the
much-quoted passage about unequal yoking (2 Cor. 6:14–18),
which doubtless applies to other things besides marriage,
could scarcely apply to anything else quite so cogently: for
there is in Christian teaching no other yoking quite so
binding or so vital. And the liberty given to a widow to
marry whom she will, “only in the Lord” (7:39), can surely
not be supposed to be untrue of virgins. The plain fact is
that Paul takes it for granted that a believer will do no
other than marry another believer: and we are justified in
thinking of this as a commandment.
Nor must we be blind
to what was prescribed for Israel when precise commandments
were more numerous. Marriage with the alien inhabitants of
Palestine was forbidden: and that not merely because those
who were there when Joshua entered the land were condemned
to extermination, but because of the danger that the hearts
of the people would be turned away from their God to the
idols of the nations. The breach of this law was regarded as
gravely by Nehemiah as it was by Moses, even if the
punishment was less severe: and the pitiful condition of the
children who could speak neither parent’s language properly
leads us from consideration of commandments to thought of
consequences.
It can rightly be
said that few of our contemporaries are so far sunk in
idolatry and gross immorality as the heathen inhabitants of
Canaan. And although radical error disfigures the opinions
of even the religious in a great number of cases, it would
be difficult to compare a sincere worshipper in one of the
many denominations of Christendom with a follower of Molech
in the days of the Kings, or a Bacchanalian of later times.
“Unbeliever” may well be the right word to use of many
purely nominal Christians of our day, but it does not carry
in most cases the sharp criticism of their moral lives which
it would have done in Old Testament times. It is possible
that a brother or sister might contemplate a partner from
“the world” whose moral life yields nothing in excellence to
their own.
But it is still
proper to draw the parallel. However greatly modern
non-Christadelphian men and women may differ from the
heathens of old, two important points of comparison remain:
(i) that as partners they might turn away the heart of the
believer from his faith; and (ii) that as parents they may
impose upon their children the immense disability of
speaking neither of the parents’ religious tongues, but of
being torn from the start between divided opinions.
It may be answered
that the believer might turn the unbeliever towards the true
faith; and children should reach their convictions by being
able to maintain them against competition. But neither
answer is really tenable, and neither springs from real
conviction. The believer does not marry the unbeliever in
order to convert him, but because she wants him for her
husband. She would like to convert him other things being
equal, but she intends to marry him come what may. Children
of mixed marriages are not by design confronted with two
opinions from the start, so that their faith may be won out
of conflict. They inherit a situation forced upon them by
the parents’ action, which had nothing to do with the merits
or otherwise of such an education. It can be hazarded with
fair certainty that in both these cases the parent would (in
later life at least) admit that problems would have been
eased had there not existed this difference of religious
outlook between husband and wife.
A moment’s
examination will show that the perils vastly outweigh the
hypothetical benefits. It sometimes happens that the
unconverted partner is won to faith by the believer, and God
is to be thanked when this happy outcome follows the
unpropitious start. But it much more often happens that the
entire married life is lived in a state of strain, and all
the distractions from a godly life which Paul tells us come
in the wake of even the harmonious marriage become
multiplied and strengthened. The wife is deflected from the
things of the Lord, not merely to please a husband who also
loves the things of the Lord but must have his dinner as
well; but to please a husband whose spiritual interests are
not the same, and whose dinner may well be one of the few
matters in which she can please him while retaining her
faith. And the strain may prove too much: to have married in
this way in the first place does not argue any too great
strength in the Lord’s service, and the determined
opposition of the partner for whose sake the compromise was
made not infrequently brings in its train further
compromise, and then surrender.
With the children it
is at least equally bad. Those who have a longer experience
of child-guidance than the author assure him that the age in
which children become conscious of their waxing powers, of
their independence of thought and movement, and of the
weight which must be given to the opinions of their fellows,
is a supremely difficult age in which to present acceptably
the claims of the Truth. Anything so disruptive to their
untroubled contemplation of our faith as an evident lack of
unity amongst their parents cannot fail to make the task
more difficult. It is not so much that they will thus be
given opportunities of examining at first hand two points of
view, as that they will be obliged to conclude that neither
parent seems to think faith so important as marriage. And
that is not conductive to seriousness of purpose.
It would be well,
too, to look a generation ahead. Very few really doubt,
whether they have themselves been guilty of the act or not,
that marriage by a brother or sister with one not of our
faith is (to put it very gently) unwise and frought with
peril. It is always extenuating circumstances which seem to
justify an act which is, generally, recognized to be in
itself undesirable. The much disputed “admission of fault”
after this has been done may not always be as sincere as
could be wished, but a few years’ experience is usually
enough to provide proof that the fault was there: from a
practical standpoint at least. Those around see it in many
who have so married; and most of these feel it readily
enough for themselves. But imagine a situation in which the
practice became general (always, of course, with extenuating
circumstances), and suppose that the children of such
marriages are sufficiently convinced of the truth of our
faith to be baptized. When the question of their own
marriage approaches, and they go to their parents for
advice, what advice will they be given? Will it be: “Do it
if you like, for I did, and I cannot say you nay”?—which
would be honest, but quite evidently disastrous. Or will it
be, “Do it at your peril, but it is contrary to the
commandment of the Lord”? Any children at all given to be
headstrong will surely feel themselves entitled to reply,
“It would be no worse for me to do it than it was for
you!”—and so to carry on with their own plans without
hindrance.
There are better
cases, of course, and this outcome may not be inevitable.
But it would be difficult to deny that it is very likely,
and the writer seems to know of meetings which in bro.
Roberts’s days were very strong, which unfortunately found
themselves cut off from the society of brethren of the
soundest principles, and which fell to pieces in the course
of a couple of generations through indulgence in this very
practice.
A situation has
arisen recently in the writer’s experience which seems to
demand mention. It appears to arise from a recognition that
to “marry out of the Truth” is not a good thing, and that to
seek reconciliation with the ecclesias after discipline has
fallen is not a good thing either. “Very good”, runs the
argument: “it is wrong to marry out of the faith, but if I
marry before I am baptized I have not been guilty of that.
And since all sins are forgiven at baptism I then cease to
be guilty at all. Is not this the obvious solution?” This is
not imagination. A parent gave this advice to a child in my
hearing; and a young man who told me that he thought of
marrying first, and accepting the truth in due course—he was
not at the time courting as far as I know—may well have been
pursuing the same policy.
Only the sternest
words are adequate for the case. If it arises from guile it
is one of the most perverse pieces of diplomacy in matters
of faith which it is possible to imagine. If it arises from
thoughtlessness, it is high time that the matter was thought
out thoroughly. It amounts to saying, in the former case, “I
know of a way in which ecclesial discipline can be
completely circumvented: I will therefore pursue that way
and laugh at the provisions for preventing mixed marriages”.
It amounts, in the latter, to supposing that God can be made
the victim of our convenience, and that we can choose the
moment of our repentance to suit ourselves. It may well be
that those responsible for interviewing candidates for
baptism will find themselves confronted with a difficult
task if such a case comes before them: but what matters far
more than the interviewers’ dilemma is the conscience of the
interviewed.
It must be very
difficult with a clear conscience to feel repentance of an
act which has been done with a view to this very situation:
and we perhaps remember less than we ought that baptism is
“the answer of a good conscience towards God”. It may be a
light matter to deceive a brother, but God is not lightly
mocked.
The plain fact is,
of course, that a person who desires baptism in the only
acceptable spirit, could never put it off out of
considerations of convenience; and a person who did put off
baptism with a view to committing what he or she knows would
afterwards be a sin, is guilty of that sin already: and a
much more searching repentance is called for, when a sin is
committed in this fashion, than of those deeds done in the
days of our ignorance before the knowledge of the Truth
blossomed in us.
What remains to be
done in this essay on principles, is to point out two
decisive factors: the first, that God does not leave his
servants defenceless in the moment of their trial, nor in
the days of their human loneliness, if their desire is to do
his will. “He (or she) shall receive an hundredfold”, is not
spoken in vain of those who forsake wife or husband for the
Lord’s sake and the Gospel’s. There is a fulfilment of our
purpose of life which, on Paul’s distinct statement, is
greater for the unmarried than for the married, and if
circumstances require that, having no possible partner in
the faith, we will have none of any kind, then God is not
unrighteous to forget our devotion.
The second goes back
to the problem of young sisters in particular, and touches
on another matter which also presents its problems. In the
matter of adornment, demeanour, and habits, it is often said
that one is excluded from the society which makes for a
happy time before marriage, and good prospects of securing a
partner in due course, if our garb and make-up, ease of
society manners, and willingness to go to the world’s
entertainments, are not like those of others. In a worldly
sense this is doubtless true: the number of entanglements
which lead to marriage with a worldly person will be kept
down by keeping away from such associations: that is one of
the virtues of such abstinence. But there are men in the
world who do not respect the kind of young women among whom
they move; there are those who would look with a new kind of
affection on a person who could be lovely without being
painted—and it is splendidly possible; happy without being
drugged and diverted; and friendly without being forward:
the person who could say in effect when overtures were made:
“Come with me, and see the things, read the things, hear the
things which I like. If you like them, too, that may be
splendid for both of us”. Surely this also comes within the
scope of Peter’s “won by the quiet conversation of the
wives”? And perhaps this is a better way of seeking the
solution of disparity of numbers between our brethren and
sisters: better than compromising with the world, and better
than losing our grip of the Bible’s wonderful conception of
marriage as a picture of the union between the Lord and his
Church. Cannot the sisters teaching our senior classes take
up this matter in earnest?