Establishing Lasting Marriages

Many Christians lament divorce, yet, in their blind zeal to pressure people into not ending marriages, do not place anywhere near enough emphasis on the correct formation of relationships.  If marital relationships will last, and, more importantly, thrive, because of anything other than mere chance, they must form and develop properly.  There are many things Christians might neglect at the beginning of a relationship--ensuring that a couple has truly compatible personalities and matching people with similar libidos are just two examples--but a key matter that they often do not place appropriate emphasis on is the overlap of worldviews.

The way that they go about encouraging marriages, ironically, shows a disregard for the goal of securing lasting, strong marriages.  If Christians are convinced that a couple "loves Jesus"--whatever the hell they mean by that in a particular instance, since it is often undefined and vague--they sometimes trivialize other things needed for an effective relationship.  What about rationality, without which one has no knowledge and no basis for any element of any worldview?  What about a thoroughly sound, Biblical ethical system that is shared between spouses, without which a couple will hold to conflicting values?  These things can get pushed aside by well-meaning but incredibly ignorant Christians.  Anyone who cares more about a relationship than about truth trivializes one of the only things that could possibly be intrinsically significant in order to pursue a sense of subjective fulfillment.

As if "loving Jesus" is all there is to the Christian worldview and reality, and as if people can love Jesus without knowing and obeying him--which requires intellectual capacity and moral character!  There is much more to life than just claiming to love God.  There is much more to a correct worldview or strong marriage than a feeling of closeness to God.  The way to establish a lasting marriage is to ensure that both partners (or more than two, since, as I have explained elsewhere, polyamory is not sinful) share the same correct values, a thoroughly rational mindset, compatible personalities, strong communication skills, and a bond of transparency.  To remove any of these things weakens a marriage dramatically, but the presence of each allows for the deepest marital intimacy.

There are many benefits to marrying someone with an identical or near-identical worldview--a shared sense of intellectual peace that results from being able to honestly talk about matters of importance, an eagerness to leave nothing about one's worldview hidden from a spouse, and greater relational unity--but no benefits whatsoever to marrying someone who does not have a shared worldview.  That such an obvious truth with such great marital consequences is so often ignored is a travesty.