The Ultimate Relationship

(Part 3 of 3) I will recap my points from the previous posts, then in my blog I will move on to other topics.

Marriage, perhaps because it is under attack, has been promoted by well-meaning groups as a kind of Ultimate Relationship that fulfills all needs, has no limitations, and reaches all possibilities of human excellence. It has been promoted as a kind of Rosetta Stone to unlock the meaning of every aspect of Reality, a medicine to cure every spiritual and societal illness. I believe that this is an immoderate viewpoint.

A moderate assessment shows that marriage is good and holy and essential to human society and flourishing, but that it also places impediments and limitations on a relationship, by its very nature. To be a good husband to a woman means I cannot be a certain kind of friend for her. She must go to someone else for that kind of friendship. Being married to a woman means I should not be in a spiritual relationship with her. She must go to someone else for a spiritual relationship. The contrary is true also. To be a certain kind of friend for someone means that I cannot also be in the role of spouse or partner for that person.

We already intuit this in the case of kindred. Being a brother for my sister means I cannot be her husband. That would be Gross. But, in our time, we have lost the distinctions of marriage, spiritual affinity, and friendship. Our culture tries to force sexual relationships to fulfill the roles of all three at once. We are looking for one person to be our rock, our everything. We seek it because the movies, songs, and poems tell us to, and our peers and relatives say so.

What is the point of all of this? I find that the overvaluation of marriage, especially among the single, who don't see the reality from the inside, has lead to a kind of idolization resulting in envy and verging on despair. This sort of idolization causes some to grasp for (potential) spouses with an unhealthy attachment, meanwhile neglecting the other persons with whom God might be calling them to practice total self-gift. The (moderate) truth is that we are forced, in this short life, to practice total self-gift within the confines of limited relationships that cannot completely fulfill us, and marriage (like the relations of friends and kindred) is one of these limited relationships. To view it otherwise is to place it in a position that can only justly be occupied by our relationship with Christ, who is the only One with whom we can be in the Ultimate Relationship on either side of eternity.

In Scripture, Christ speaks to us in the language of all three: brother, friend, spouse. This is not insignificant. Each of these limited relationships gives us a glimpse into the reality of our relationship with Him.