Fighting Within Marriage

I did it.  I came down to the beach for a very short vacation and I didn’t bring any books.  How foolish of me.  Fortunately, I carry a list of “books I’m willing to read” as a note in my iPhone and I was able to pick some up at the local “Books A Million” outlet.  I’m now enjoying one of them.  And wouldn’t you know it, it is “fiction” – a very rare pursuit of mine.  When one of the serious magazines I read (yes, there are a few still out there) recommends it as must reading for its readers, I try to find it when a need arises as it did this week.

Such is the case with the American 1885 classic The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells, Penguin Classics, 1986.  Howells was a contemporary of Mark Twain.  I won’t try and sell you on Howells ability as a writer – it’s quite impressive – but I wanted to share some of his thinking and wisdom that he injects into his work so well.  Let me begin with some of his thoughts on fighting within marriage.

He concludes chapter III of his book with a real affecting fight between his main character, Silas Lapham, and his wife.   He commences chapter IV with this paragraph:

THE silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without lesion; and sometimes the strength that knits society together might appear to the eye of faltering faith the curse of those immediately bound by it.  Two people by no means reckless of each other’s rights and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at each other’s heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; though if they were any other two they would not speak or look at each other again after the outrages they exchange.  It is certainly a curious spectacle, and doubtless it ought to convince an observer of the divinity of the institution.  If the husband and wife are blunt, outspoken people like the Laphams, they do not weigh their words; if they are more refined, they weigh them very carefully, and know accurately just how far they will carry, and in what most sensitive spot they may be planted with most effect.

How true.  If you’ve been married for a while, think back at some of the whopper fights that you have had with your spouse and see if Howells is not exactly right.  A strong marriage can withstand such an interchange like no other relationship.  In my experience, even the blood-bond between parent and child is not that capable.

And is it not also correct that for some crazy reason, two people that otherwise may love each other very deeply, can, as a result of some triggered emotion or memory caused by something done afresh, something seen anew, and something said again, start tearing each other apart verbally, emotionally, and god-forbid, sometime physically?

In this day and age when so much is being said about what is and what is not a marriage relationship, I found it interesting that Howells writing 125 years ago gives us a new reason to consider its divine origin – the very fact it was built to withstand such storms and be able to successfully forget them.

Finally, Howells manages to work in yet one more clever observation and that is the two main different styles couples use when engaging in such battles – the one, like the Laphams that allows them to be perfectly blunt with each other, and the one that employs careful calculations to disguise the sending of the missiles but not the hurts that result.  Although we can never be too sure, because he is author who does not impose on his readers, he seems to me to be recommending the former as a much more honorable approach and one that allows both players to remain whole in every respect.

Perhaps it’s time for all of us to rethink how we approach doing battle with our spouses.  A healthy domestic fight can and should often strengthen the marriage, not scar it.

Where we may part company with Howells is how he describes the end of fights between the Laphams a few pages later:

With those two there was never anything like an explicit reconciliation.  They simply ignored a quarrel . . .

While the key is to come to a point of peace and start to re-engage with each other positively, there is, I believe, a better way than simply calling a truce.  To call a truce especially by ignoring to continue quarreling leaves the parties with no lessons learned, no reason to do anything different, and perhaps nothing settled with respect to what may have given rise to the dispute in the first place.  Yet sadly enough this is exactly how many couples, if not the majority, seem to handle their clashes.  They never talk about the conflict itself and how it impacted them or how it could have been handled different.  And before they know it, they repeat the performance soon thereafter – with either a different issue or sometimes, even the same one.

Can that change?  I believe so.  Let’s start with being aware of how we fight.  Let’s admit that Howells has got a pretty good front row seat by our marriage’s ‘boxing ring’ that enables him to peg us oh so well.  Then let’s commit to doing something different, something better, something that will bring about more lasting change in our approach to handling the wrangles in our relationships.

For those of us who are people of faith, our relationship with our Heavenly Father, His Son our Savior, and Holy Scriptures, provides us each with additional resources for success in this regard.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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Jacob Claims Joseph’s First Two Sons - Genesis 48:5-7

And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are.  But your offspring that have been born after them shall be yours; they shall be called by the names of their brothers in their inheritance.  Now as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow, in the land of Canaan on the journey, when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).”

As Jacob is dying, he tells Joseph that his two sons born to him in Egypt are now his (Jacob’s), just as Reuben and Simeon, Joseph’s brothers, are his.

This is an incredible act of love by Jacob bestowed on his son Joseph.  Jacob is adopting his first two grandsons born to Joseph in Egypt as if they were his own children and as such giving them full rights to Jacob’s inheritance as his own sons.  And that includes inheritance in the land that God promised.  In essence then, Joseph, the 11^th son of Jacob, gets a double portion of the inheritance – an honor that is usually afforded to the oldest son who in this case would have been Reuben, Leah’s first-born – one part going to Ephraim and one to Manasseh.  They too will become tribes and inherit land as tribes.

Some believe that Jacob’s eyes were failing him by this age and that as he spoke these words, he only saw the shadowy figure of Ephraim and Manassah.  Of course they were not young children any more and more likely in their twenties, as Joseph would have been in his fifties.  The reference in the text to Reuben and Simeon is to his first and second born sons and now Joseph’s first and second born sons are adopted by Jacob as if they were his own first and second born.  David Guzik suggests that perhaps they were ‘replacements’ for Reuben and Simeon, “who were in a sense disqualified from positions of status and leadership in Israel’s family because of both their sin” of treachery against Shechem and Hamor in Genesis 34 and Reuben’s sin of sleeping with his father’s concubine, Bilhah in Genesis 35:22.  There is no evidence one way or another on that view.

In earlier verses in this chapter, Jacob says, “God blessed me” and he now wants that blessing (that is, to multiply greatly and to have Canaan as an inheritance) to be shared with, or to apply to, Joseph’s children.  As we consider our blessings from God, we clearly have this built-in or innate desire to have our children and grandchildren experience the same blessings.  That is especially true of salvation.

Here in verse five we also see expressed a very beautiful picture of a grandfather’s love for his grandchildren when Jacob tells Joseph that his sons are his own as well.  As a grandfather I know now what that means.  I have often heard my daughters say to their friends, “I trust my dad totally with our children, he loves them and he takes care of them as if they are his own, always on the lookout for their well-being and safety.”  That means so much to me, but at the same time, it is a description that has to be demonstrated and earned.  And in my case, as a loving father who values life from its conception to its end, earning it comes most naturally.

Also included in this section is reference to any children that Joseph had after these first two.  Basically, Jacob was saying that Joseph’s other children would not be considered separately in any inheritance, but rather they need to identify themselves with either Ephraim or Manasseh, or both.  That is, they would not develop into their own tribes as part of God’s covenant with Israel.  For some, the point becomes a moot one, as we have no record of Joseph having other children.  Yet, it was wise of Jacob to give this as an instruction to prevent any potential future arguments after his death should there have been any other children born to his son, especially given what Jacob did for the first two.  The lesson for us, perhaps, is to learn to make provisions for the ‘possible’ and not just the ‘what is now’.  That’s prudence at work.

A small diversion from our study:

The above thoughts, however, do allow us to consider an interesting topic that many Christians tend to avoid these days and that is the topic of “pre-marital agreements” or arrangements of what should happen in the case of separation or divorce, which, believe it or not, happens frequently between Christians.  Let me state at the outset that I do not believe in divorce.  I believe God intended for us to remain together with our spouse until one of us should die.  That’s the rule.  When one studies the New Testament one will find some exceptions that appear to be supported (e.g. adultery) and that’s fine as well.  However, the fact remains that people – Christian people – do get divorced.  Then what?

Let me share a situation with you.  Person A enters a marriage with lots of hard-earned money and no debt.  Person B enters that same marriage with no money and lots of debt.  After B’s debts are covered using A’s money, the couple then makes major capital (e.g. land, houses, investments) purchases using the balance of A’s hard-earned money.  The couple then divorces.  Person B now gets half of everything that Person A’s money bought.  Without getting into who was at fault, the issue being discussed is whether or not a “pre-marital or pre-nuptial agreement” should have been in place to prevent that situation, and if so, is that what a Christian should do?

There is agreement that the Bible does not provide explicit teachings in this matter.  Pre-nuptial agreements were not around in the days of the Old Testament or the New Testament.  Still, the Christian church, both Catholic and Protestant, tend to be against them, since in God’s eyes, marriage is “until death do us part”.  And I would agree with that view of marriage.  The problem is that in reality, Christian spouses, in numbers almost right up there with their non-Christian counterparts, are leaving each other before death parts them.  Since the Bible is silent on their appropriateness, I find that the position of the Church is idealistic at best and one that ignores the reality of what is happening.  I understand that changing our view of pre-nuptials is very difficult.  It implies that, as a young couple in love, our “Christian marriage” has a chance of failing. Many of us cannot fathom that possibility making it next to impossible to accept for many.  The truth is that in fact, while your Christian marriage and mine has every intention of staying in tact until death, we see the casualties all around us among our Christian friends and acquaintances, and some of them were even believed to have been pillars of the church.  That is undeniable evidence that divorce, as much as God hates it and we should hate it too, does occur among us.  None of us are guaranteed it will never happen to us.

I do not have a pre-nuptial with my wife of almost 41 years.  Neither do any of my three children with their spouses.  They wouldn’t hear of it.  Yet, I still wonder how wise a decision that is these days.  In fact, may I be so bold as to suggest that not only may having a pre-nuptial agreement not encourage divorce, but rather I believe it may well help discourage it, depending on which party was better off before the marriage and which party is thinking of exiting the marriage.  After I wrote this section, I read some research from Cornell University that said people in general are avoiding marriage and living together because they fear the ravages of divorce.  You can read the research here:

http://www.newswise.com/articles/why-young-couples-aren-t-getting-married-they-fear-the-ravages-of-divorce

My fear is that many of the young couples from our so-called Christian families who may not be well-grounded in the faith are doing the same thing and the idea of a pre-nuptial may well help offset that fear and help them to get married.

Returning to our scriptural text, we finally read of Jacob telling Joseph about the death of Rachel his mother who was Jacob’s best-cherished wife (see Genesis 35:19).  Perhaps Jacob, sensing his own dear death, felt he would ease his transition to the grave by remembering, with significant detail, the earlier death of his beloved wife.  As Christians, living after the ultimate sacrifice of God’s Son on the cross, when we become aware of our imminent death, we not only can find comfort in those that went before us but we can also look forward to joining them.  Jacob may not have had that benefit of knowledge, but he approached his own death as if he would have gleaned the same advantage.  I pray it will be so with you and me.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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More Data To Indicate Jews & Muslims Must Co-exist and Thus Another Reason Why Some Radical Islamists Hate America.

To our data-loving readers, here's an interesting article on some interesting research about Jews and Muslims inter-marrying in the United States. Not at a tipping point yet, but maybe if we all worked on it . . . although, I'm not recommending, just saying, what if the percentage were much higher?

How many Jewish Americans have Muslim spouses? | Jerusalem Post - Blogs

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