The Lost Story of Marriage: Saying "I Do" to a New Love Story

by David John Seel, Jr., Ph.D.

Commissioned by the Marriage Initiative

If you are reading a book and you lose the plot, nothing you read will make any sense. You'll see the words, but not understand the meaning.

Likewise, marriage has lost its story and as such no longer makes any sense. We can either abandon the book or recover the plot. There is much in society that tells another story about marriage. It doesn't make sense. It isn't working. We have a choice, walk away, or say "I do" to another story that recovers the lost plot.

Marriages based on the wrong story will not stand the storms of life. Today our views of love, relationships, and marriage are shaped by reality TV. Fantasy is defining life...to our loss.

Dating Reality TV Shows

Shawn Robinson writes, "Dating reality TV shows are more than just a guilty pleasure; they have become a cultural phenomenon that transcends entertainment. These shows, which often feature contestants navigating complex relationships under the watchful eye of cameras, provide a fascinating insight into human behavior, desires, and societal norms around dating and relationships."1 For better or worse, dating reality TV shows become what we discuss and how we imagine marriage to be. They frame our social imaginary on marriage. There are now seventeen different dating shows such as "The Courtship," "Sexy Beasts," "5 Guys a Week," "The Bachelor," "Cosmic Love," "Back in the Groove," "The Ultimatum," "Love Island USA," "Too Hot to Handle," "The Bachelorette," "Are You the One?", "Love Is Blind," "Bachelor in Paradise," "Indian Matchmaking," "Love Island UK," "Married at First Sight," "Love on the Spectrum," and "The Golden Bachelor." It is from these social experiments in coupling that our ideas toward marriage are being formed. They come to shape our deepest longings, our anticipated wedding plans, and our marital expectations. A study published in the Journal of Relationship Psychology in 2019 found that regular viewers of dating reality TV shows were more likely to adopt attitudes and behaviors depicted on the shows. This influence extends to various aspects of relationships, from communication styles to expectations around commitment. The concept of dating multiple people simultaneously, as seen in shows like "The Bachelor," has increased the acceptance of polyamory. Today we narrate the news of celebrity romances in the terms of these shows whether Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, or Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. The fantasy of reality TV dating consistently morphs into our lived experience. These shows influence real life relational realities.

These shows should also provide a personal warning that supersedes our clickbait voyeurism. Reality TV relationships do not last. Less than 50% of relationships stay together after the cameras stop rolling. And for some shows the relational success rate is as low as 3.5%. These shows consistently fail to produce lasting love. The most recent iteration of this genre, "The Golden Batchelor," first marriage ended in divorce within three months.

There is ample reason why these relationships fail. Contestants on these shows are often looking for something other than true love. Heavily mixed into the ingredients of dating reality TV shows, and so curated by the showrunners, are the audience's desire for drama stemming from a high-octane competitive combustible mix of fame, money, and sex. These shows are launch pads for potential social media influencers. Contestants recognize that they gain public recognition, a social media following, and career opportunities from their appearance on these shows. A 2019 survey for Entertainment Insights found that a third of participants were primarily involved for these reasons.2 The relational intersectionality and mixed motives of these contestants are about more than finding love.

These programs only work because of the inevitable drama, the commodified emotions stemming from a toxic combination of competition, recognition, wealth, and lust. It is a NASCAR race designed for watching relational wrecks not crowning marital winners. The tears and betrayal are the point of the show, not its subplot. If the drama continues after the show ends, then the show enters its unpaid bonus round with a voyeuristic analysis of the impending break up or divorce—keeping the show in the public's eye as a public relations bonanza.

Viewers of these shows internalize its drama, often experiencing heightened anxiety and stress in their own relationships. This might be comical if it were not so tragic, as we pimp emotional drama for entertainment, and then play the same games within the dynamics of our own loves. Reality consistently pops this fantasy bubble on TV and in our lives. The story told by dating reality TV shows has been found wanting. In life it is revealed as based on a lie.

Toward a Reframed Understanding of Marriage

Here we will argue for a larger story in which marriage begins to make sense.

We will suggest that to ensure the success of a marriage, marriage must be aligned with the unyielding truth of reality, which holds the ultimate authority. Most people today do not consider the Bible as talking about reality. For them quoting Bible verses does not get traction in their relationships. Reality encompasses both challenges and blessings, capable of delivering harsh truths or unexpected joys. Aligning marriage with reality necessitates a redefinition of marriage, a new story about marriage, as the actual experience of married life dispels the illusions portrayed on television. Marriage is akin to metaphysical forces like gravity. It cannot be a do-it-yourself project. A DIY marriage is a gamble not worth taking.

Moreover, marriage is not the conclusion to the story but a critical component of the story. Marriage is finally not about marriage at all. However, the modern emphasis on individualism, feelings, and authenticity often muddles the essence of marriage, fostering disillusionment and disdain for the institution of marriage. On this basis marriage and from our life experience this doesn't work so we abandon it. This should be no surprise as marriage was never intended to work based on the story being told about it. Marriage must be reframed, realigned to reality. Marriage requires a new story.

Marriage must narrate a new tale, rejecting contemporary chaos and embrace a reimagined reality. Here we will present an alternative framing as a kingdom-oriented or calling- empowered marriage. A kingdom marriage is rooted in a shared purpose or calling, transcends conventional dichotomies, satisfying our deepest yearnings for security and significance through its distinctive story. Unpacking this alternative story of marriage is the purpose of this essay.

Marriage only makes sense when it is first embedded in a larger spiritual story. Apart from this larger spiritual story marriage should be abandoned because it makes no sense, and it doesn't work. This essay is the basic script of this new story.

To tell this new story, we must first define our terms and agree on assumptions made by these terms. Our underlying assumptions, moral logics, or framing is everything. If the facts don't fit the frame, the facts bounce off and the frame stays. Moreover, you cannot be argued into a new frame. A frame shift is the work of the imagination—catching a new vision of reality, embracing a new story. Marriage operates today within two competing frames. This is where we must begin.

A Crisis of Definition

The very word "marriage" is a contested term today. Few know what it means even as we fight for marriage equality and marital flourishing. Most young people reject traditional cis- gendered heteronormative assumptions about marriage. According to the research of the Thriving Center of Psychology 40% of young people believe marriage is outdated and more than one in six participants said they are not planning on getting married.3 Marriage means something different to them and is to be understood on an entirely different basis from the past. Before you can meaningfully talk about marriage, you must first establish the frame in which you are placing the concept. Otherwise, you are going to be talking past each other, assuming what can't be assumed. This is a common error made by churches and Christian ministries to marriage. Simply starting with the authority of biblical norms is not going to work for most young people—even Christian young people—because most young people do not believe that biblical norms are talking about their lived relational reality. They assume a different frame of reference when it comes to their dating and marriage.

This is an insight derived from Steven Seidman, professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Albany. An expert on the social construction of sexuality and the history of queer theory, he suggests that the cultural conflicts over sexuality and marriage stem from a difference in the moral and justificatory frame of sexuality. He writes, "Americans are divided with regard to the moral logics they deploy to authorize sexual norms, to delineate the moral boundaries of legitimate and illegitimate intimate arrangements, and therefore to establish hierarchies of sexual and intimate practices."4 He argues that there are two competing moral logics operating in American society: the morality of the sex act and the communicative sexual ethic. Where he uses the term "moral logics," I use the term "frame." I simplify his philosophical framing categories with these two words: "cosmos" and "consent." How you frame marriage makes all the difference in how you approach and understand marriage.

Contemporary Definition: Consent-Based Frame

The communicative sexual ethic (consent based) is the most common contemporary framing of sexuality and marriage. Here Seidman explains, "social agents make sex meaningful, and ethical judgment is to be determined by the moral qualities of the social exchange or communication between parties."5 The meaning of marriage is not inherent to marriage but is provided to marriage by those who are in the relationship. The parties in the relationship decide among themselves what their marriage means to them. This do-it-yourself approach obviously allows for a much greater variability in the way marriage is expressed. Marriage can mean whatever you choose for it to mean. Announcing your place in the family of things, poet Mary Oliver, echoes this frame writing poetically, "You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."6

This frame consequently permits a wide range of sexual choice, tolerance, and affirmation of intimate difference. Here the actors in the sexual exchange define the meaning of sexuality through their communication with one another. The meaning of sexuality is derived horizontally through mutual consent in conversation. Seidman concludes,

If sexual practices have no intrinsic meaning, if their moral sense involves understanding the contextualized meaning and social role of such practices and appealing to formal aspects of the communicative practice, then such an ethical standpoint legitimates a plurality of sexual practices and patterns of intimacy, including different kinds of families....This would be a culture where large stretches of social practice related to bodies and intimacies would lack moral and political weight. Indeed, this cultural logic implies a social logic anticipating the end of "sexuality"—that is, the end of a regime that enforces a uniform sexualization of bodies and selves, a tight alignment of sex, gender, and sexuality, and a normal/ abnormal moral binary.7

Indeed, the "end of sexuality" is what we are culturally living through.

Here the meaningful consideration is what is the meaning of mutual consent and what are the contexts in which it can be responsibly given. Whether this approach best protects women is being debated by feminists. 8 Such a framing is totally inclusive and nonjudgmental. Its authority is based on individual subjective feelings mutually agreed upon within a relationship. This frame is best captured in the meme "Love is love." It has been used for years to mean something like, "Romantic love between any two individuals is equally valid and beautiful." It's been a popular slogan used to express support for those in homosexual or other non- traditional relationships. When brilliant composer Lin-Manuel Miranda won a Tony Award for best original score for "Hamilton" his acceptance speech was a poem with the line, "And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love; / Cannot be killed or swept aside."9 From within this frame, to disagree with this framing is to introduce elements of hate and perhaps even violence into the social dynamics. This makes navigating these two contrary frames an emotionally laden terrain filled with cancel culture landmines. Consent framing allows for divergent arrangements, the cosmos framing does not. As such the cosmos framing is fundamentally out of alignment with many of the taken-for-granted assumptions of modern life. This is a point most churches ignore. If the facts don't fit the frame, the fact bounce off and the frame remains. For this reason, we must start with philosophical frames not biblical facts.

Historic Definition: Cosmos Framing

The alternative frame is the "morality of the sex act" frame (cosmos). Here Seidman explains "sexuality has an inherent meaning, social purpose, and moral status. To say it is cosmological is to say that its structure is tied to the nature of reality, or that it has an intrinsic design that is larger and other than whatever you might think or feel about it. The goal of marriage in this frame is to align your own feelings and actions to this design. Some sexual and intimate practices are said to be intrinsically right, good, normal, and healthy, whereas others are unnatural, abnormal, wrong, and immoral."10 Sexuality is here framed as a creational fact of nature, more akin to the objective reality of gravity. The intellectual justification for assuming this frame can be variously understood in the language of religion, natural law, or secular reason. It has historically not been explicitly or necessarily a Christian framing. This is how marriage has always been traditionally understood. Sexuality is not self-justifying but instead needs to be aligned to the way reality is designed to work. Here sexuality is decentered from the individual self and is place within the collective cosmos. While I believe that this framing is correct, I will not here argue for its correctness, simply engage your imagination with the alternative.

Sexuality is an essential aspect of the cosmos—ground in the material universe. Philosopher Peter Kreeft writes,

Did it ever occur to you that...human sexuality is derived from cosmic sexuality and not vice versa, that we are a local application of a universal principle? If not, please seriously consider the idea now, for it is one of the oldest and most widely held ideas in our history, and one of the happiest. If is a happy idea because it puts humanity into a more human universe. We fit: we are not freaks. What we are, everything else is also, though in different degrees. We are, to use the medieval image, a microcosm, a little cosmos: the universe is the macrocosm, that same pattern written large.... [And this] means that sexuality goes all the way up and all the way down the cosmic ladder.11

Whether it is the seashore, yin and yang, Korean bibimbap, or the eclipse of the sun by the moon, we are attracted to those places where the masculine and feminine principles in nature are united. It is nature's sexual divinity code. This is why we give flowers. 12 The sexual is a sacramental depiction of the nature of deep reality. All points to the fact that God wants to marry his creation. Even more, Christopher West writes, "Not only does God love us, not only does he want to 'marry' us, God wants to fill us full with his own divine life."13 Marriage is not about sex, and sex is not about marriage, both point to its divine creational purpose which is union with Christ. Theosis is being impregnated with divine life. Marriage is cosmological because reality is cosmological. All reality is so aligned. All reality tells this same story.14

Sadly, we have lost sight of the cosmological meaning of reality. In fact, in contemporary society we are losing a sense of objective reality itself as it is being overshadowed by cyberspace and the virtual. We have instead a distorted and weakened sense of the real. This serves to strengthen the illusion of our autonomy and the plasticity of reality. In cyberspace, we can make up all the rule. Reality conforms to the dictates of our will. Not so in the actual real world. This is a major theme of the 2023 movie, Barbie, as it relates to identity. Dating reality TV must be understood within the ubiquitous presence and assumed authority of cyberspace. Here relational reality is assumed to morph to the dictates of subjective feelings and love. Its cosmological design and intention are lost to the whim of individual subjective feelings. Life becomes a reality game show, "giving out a rose," a relational meme. Disconnected from its metaphysical cosmological intent, marriage becomes little more than an arbitrary personal consumer choice. And this is how moderns are acting.

The cosmos frame flies in the face of all of this. It is a challenge to many accepted aspects of our contemporary social imaginary. It challenges individualism, libertarian freedom, consumer choice, and therapeutic authenticity. In addition, a cosmos framed marriage is perceived by its detractors as necessarily judgmental, hateful, and violent. Altogether, the cosmological frame is beyond what many young people can tolerate.

More Than Marriage

In the cosmological framing, the meaning of sex and marriage is not sex and marriage but something more than sex and marriage. The moral basis of sexuality is inherently vertical. When we say that sexuality and marriage is "sacred" we are implying this larger cosmological or spiritual context. This is why historically most marriages took place within a church and with a clerical blessing. Marriage was traditionally an inherently sacred rite because its reality is an inherently sacred covenant. Marriage is a sacred microcosm of the cosmic macrocosm.

Not so today. If there is this much framing confusion surrounding marriage, then it means that you cannot use normal survey research to indicate what constitutes marital or familial flourishing. Regardless of the sample size, the meaning of the words in the questions will reflect divergent frames. And if not all the frames are aligned to reality, then you have pile of data of the blind leading the blind. If sexuality is like gravity, then it makes little sense to try to build a plane of marriage with those who deny the reality of gravity.

What is also true is that reality always wins in the end and if marriage is an objective creational norm, then to deny its structures in the actual living of life is ultimately impossible. It can be attempted, but not with flourishing. Marriage must be aligned cosmologically. That dating reality TV shows, based on the assumptions of the consent frame rooted as well in the philosophical commitments of expressive individualism, fail should come as no surprise. This is what you should expect. Denying gravity in flight, you will crash and burn. This is not how planes were meant to fly.

But what of failed traditional marriages? There are many traditional marriages that also end in divorce. How can going back to the patrimony of Jane Austen's Victorianism, or hierarchical aristocratic sentiments of Edwardian Downton Abbey, or the post-war cis gender heteronormative misogynistic suburbia of the American 1950s be an improvement? These were terrible times for many in traditional marriages, particularly so for women, who were systematically disempowered, stereotyped, objectified, and abused. Merely going back is not an option, despite the TikTok sentiments of the Trad Wife movement, which is itself ironically based on the premises of expressive individualism.

A Crisis of Meaning

Also lost in the definition of marriage is its intrinsic purpose. Neither support for patriarchy nor family are its true aim. To make these the end of marriage is itself a self-defeating crippling failure. Moreover, church debates over complementarity and equalitarianism fail to address these deeper questions of framing. We have witnessed this failure in our parent's marriages as well as our own to the degree that these marriages have been influenced by a quasi-traditional male-dominated and domineering view of marriage. The reframing being suggested here is not an argument for "going back," which I deem as impossible. You cannot erase the history of the pill, feminism, the Internet, and Obergefell. To go forward we will need to adopt a newly patterned reality aligned to a cosmological frame. It might be traditional in its framing, but not historically traditional in its expression. There is a new way forward for the coming generation that doesn't deny reality.

Dating reality TV assumes that marriage is the result of finding your "soulmate," based on the premise of "love at first sight." Premised on expressive individualism, it is a failed strategy for marriage as illustrated in the life of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Feminists and other progressives assume that marriage should be entered into if its serves to further one's personal psychological fulfillment or career aspirations. Otherwise, we are told to fly solo. This too is a myth and a failed strategy. Traditionalist are told to base their marriage not on career but family. What happens to the marriage when the children leave the home? All these approaches have some degree of truth associated with them; but they fall short of the true purpose of marriage.

As with the definition of marriage, so too the purpose of marriage today is generally premised on the assumptions of expressive individualism, which make individual subjective feelings the normative core reality and the ultimate authority in life. Historian Carl Trueman writes that in expressive individualism, humans are "defined by their individual psychological core, and that the purpose of life is allowing that core to find social expression in relationships. Anything that challenges [the self's desires] is deemed oppressive."15 This self-orientation is the opposite of the true purpose of marriage, which is to serve a God-orientation and the expansion of his kingdom purposes.

Marriage is not an end, but a means to a spiritual end—union with God. Marriage is a spiritual icon pointing to the deeper reality that God wants to marry us. It is for this reason that there is no marriage in heaven, for in heaven that to which marriage points is fulfilled. 16 Thus, marriage is no longer needed as a signpost to point to the something more. If marriage is used for or aims for anything other than worship of God and expanding the reach of his kingdom, then that anything is and will become an idol. As an idol it will fail to fulfill your heart's longing, which is design to only be fulfilled when marriage is aligned to its singular creational purpose.

In today's world marriage is being pursued in manners that only serve to heighten relational woundedness and the likelihood of relational failure. Dating and courtship has given way to hooking up via dating sites such as Tinder. A series of failures leads to the reduced expectations and experience of serial monogamy. Enough of this and you downshift to cohabitation or polyamory. If you have enough experience with misogyny and betrayal, you'll give up completely on the marriage project itself. Many become angry and resentful incels if they are young men or join the scorched-earth Korean feminist 4B movement if they are young women (no sex with men, no child-rearing, no dating men, no marriage with men).

This widespread confusion about marriage has added to the tarnished perception of marriage.

Today unmarried and married people alike hate marriage. It is viewed as a failed institution, associated with abuse and psychological wounds, economic liabilities, and unnecessary legal entanglements. The Gen Z eschew drama. For relational protection many now insist upon a prenuptial requirement. Distrust, betrayal, and divorce are now woven into the very fabric of marital expectations. This confusion has bred contempt for marriage. It is a sad day for traditional marriage as culturally understood. But there is a better way.

A Lost Story

There is a reason marriage no longer makes sense today. We've lost the plot. Marriage only makes sense when it is part of a larger story. Taken in isolation, it implodes on itself.

While this better way may well seem like a bridge too far for young people—too removed from the lived experience of Internet dating, gender confusion, and contemporary patterns of hooking up. But if it is a bridge back to reality, then it is a bridge worth taking. In a Nietzschean world where the horizon has been wiped away, it is necessary to reestablish marriage within a larger story, the story of its purpose and design. It cannot be understood correctly in isolation from this narrative. Let's recalibrate the lost horizon of marriage for the twenty-first century.

For starters, we must assume that there is a cosmic story in which it fits. It is not a story that you make up on the fly, but one that is based in reality to which you must align yourself and your longings if you are to find genuine flourishing for your life.

If you insist on assuming that marriage is a DIY project dictated by your own individual subjective feelings and relational whims, then this framing will make no sense. If this is the case, then you've got the best you can hope for now: the end of sexuality, the failure of fantasy, and a threat of civilizational collapse from declining birthrates.

This is not the only story. This better way is worth listening to as an approach to make sense of your longings for belonging. It at least deserves the level of attention given to the bogus assumptions of dating reality TV. Here are the contours of this better story.

Script for a New Story

Our longings have a design. They only make sense and are protected within this larger narrative. When it comes to marriage philosopher Alasdair McIntyre's observation is prescient: "I can't answer the question 'What ought I do?' until I first answer the question, 'What story am I in?'"17

Here in a nutshell is this alternative story.

We are each created with a spiritual and creational purpose. Our identity is ideally derived from a spiritual relationship with our Creator. This relationship defines, empowers, and directs a divinely given personal assignment within the wider creational purpose. Our lives are to have power and purpose. The aim of this divine relationship is not to take you out of this world, but to direct and empower you in this world. Heaven is the personal reality of God's immediate presence in and around all things. Dallas Willard warns,

The damage done to our practical faith in Christ and in his government-at-hand by confusing heaven with a place in distant or outer space, to even beyond space, is incalculable. Of course, God is there too. But instead of heaven and God also being always present with as, as Jesus show them to be, we invariably take them to be located far away and, most likely, at a much later time—not here and not now. 18

His kingdom is not of this world, but it is for this world, right here and right now.

Just as all living things are dependent on a world that is other-than and larger-than itself, heaven is the other-than and larger-than world on which our lives are designed to depend. The aim is to live life in dynamic ongoing connection to this personal spiritual reality and relationship. The aim of this story is not to get you into heaven, but to get heaven into you and your world. Marriage, then, is designed to serves as an illustration of this relationship and as a partnership in a shared spiritual assignment. Marriage is designed to reflect our union with God and accelerate our personal ability to fulfill our divine assignment. Every aspect of all our lives public and private is to be shaped in the posture of dependence, worship, and celebration. This is spiritual flourishing fully embodied in and through our lives and our marriages right here, right now.

This is not the story often told in church. Consequently, this story needs some further unpacking. Here are its six main features: cosmic design, a four-chapter gospel, a spiritually derived identity, a personal calling or assignment, a relational accelerator or marriage, and a kingdom purpose or worship.

We've already explained the significance of our lives reflecting a cosmic design. This is not a relational reflection of my own spiritual choice, rather it is an alignment with a spiritual and relational reality that has been baked into the fabric of the universe. This is the story which nature reveals and about which the birds sing in the morning.

The gospel involves much more than getting into heaven, it is about the restoration of all things to God's original intent at creation. Theologian N.T. Wright adds, "The whole point of Jesus's work was to bring heaven to earth and join them together forever, to bring God's future into the present and make it stick there."19 The big story or metanarrative is not simply or even primarily about getting into heaven; but getting heaven into earth—the "on earth as it is in heaven" from the Lord's Prayer.

Another way to express this is to answer, "What will we be doing in heaven?" Andy Crouch suggests that there is ideally a continuity between what we will be doing there and what we should have been doing here before heaven. He writes, "The most plausible answer is that our eternal life in God's recreated world will be the fulfillment of what God originally asked us to do: cultivating and creating in a full and lasting relationship with our Creator. This time, of course, we will not just be tending a garden; we will be sustaining the life of a city, a harmonious human society that has developed all the potentialities hidden in the original creation to their fullest. Culture—redeemed, transformed, and permeated by the presence of God—will be the activity of eternity."20

The reason this sounds strange to many Christians is that they have been taught, mainly since the Second Great Awakening a truncated "tw0-chapter gospel," that focuses narrowly on fall and redemption. As one evangelist said to me, "The gospel begins in Genesis Chapter 3." Not so. It begins in Genesis 1! This view is not false as much as woefully incomplete to border on heresy. It makes realities such marriage incomprehensible because it loses the larger story. A full understanding of the gospel is four-chapters: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Theologian Al Wolters summarizes, "Redemption is re-creation. If we look at this more closely, we can see that this basic affirmation really involves three fundamental dimensions: the original good creation, the perversion of that creation through sin, and the restoration of that creation in Christ. It is plain how central the doctrine of creation becomes in such a view since the whole point of salvation is then to salvage a sin-disrupted creation."21 To adopt a truncated gospel, what philosopher Dallas Willard calls the "gospel of sin management," is to narrow the mission of the church and to lose the story that makes sense of all of life, and in this case in particular, marriage.22 A life lived based on a four-chapter gospel mission statement looks like this.

We work together within our particular callings in order to understand God's good creation and the ways sin has distorted it so that, in Christ's power, we may bring healing to persons and the created order and as God's image-bearer, exercise responsible authority in our task of cultivating the sphere of our particular calling to the end that all people and all things may joyfully acknowledge and serve their Creator and King.

This is the larger story in which our lives find their place and meaning. It is only against this larger context that marriage finds its purpose.

Within this story, each person is given a specific assignment, a calling. Our calling is an externalization of who we are, empowered by Christ, in service to his kingdom mission, for the good of others. It incorporates our life experiences, our gifting, and our passions. It directs us to a particular aspect of the sin-disrupted world to make a distinctive difference through our presence, our witness, our love and sacrifice, and our cultivation of shalom by restoring that area of reality to which we are called and held responsible, to the degree possible, to an alignment to God's creational design.

Our identity is not designed or discovered; it is derived through an ongoing dependent relationship with the indwelling presence of Christ within our lives. Such a life dependent on Christ will be directed by Christ to a life's work. It may at times overlap with a particular job or career path, but it is far more than this. It is that arena of reality for which you have an accountable responsibility as a follower of Christ. It is not enough to simply follow Christ, though this is foundational, you must also follow Christ in this arena of reality to which you have been uniquely equipped and called. Alexandre Solzhenitsyn's calling as a writer emerged out of his experience in the gulag. His life's mission became telling the story of the lives lost there, exposing the Soviet genocide. This became the overarching mission of his life, shaping his marriage, his family life, and his work. He quotes V.V. Ivanov on how he came to appreciate his own calling. "Many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright: More often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless. The secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouched safe to him, understanding them, and so learning to walk in the truth path."23 Finding your calling is more than finding a career or getting a job, it is akin to finding a life mission and direction. A young Soren Kierkegaard put it this way in his journal, "There is something missing in my life, and it has to do with my need to understand what I must do, not what I must know—except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand my purpose in life, to see what God wants me to do, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, that I must find that idea for which I can live and die."24 The decision of who to marry or whether to marry is set against this life defining calling, that for which you are willing to live and die, your life mission.

The word "vocation" comes from the Latin vocatio, which is derived from the verb vocare, meaning "to call." The English equivalent of this word is the noun "call," or more precisely, "calling." Vocation is not to be confused with career or job. Os Guinness writes, "Call is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service."25 Paul says of King David, "For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep."26 God has a purpose for our lives. We have an assignment. We don't make up our own purpose in life. Paul writes, "We have become his poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny he has given each of us, for we are joined to Christ, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfill it!"27 We align our lives to God’s purpose with a specific assignment over which I have accountable responsibility. We all have various roles in our lives: son, husband, father, and employee, and the like. This calling cuts across all these roles and is not to be separated from them. Rather it defines these relationships. This calling establishes the boundaries of my life. To be faithful, I am not free to choose anything I want to do. Denis Haack writes, "Our calling from God defines what we should say Yes to, so we can also know what we can and should say No to—without feeling yanked around by guilt, or the expectations and needs of others."28 John Calvin describes calling as our "sentry post," the place we stand guard and take our stand in the fight.

The Lord bids each one of us in all life’s actions to look to his calling. For he knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, he has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And so that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, he has named these various kinds of living, "callings." Therefore, everyone has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. 29

How many of us are wandering around aimlessly in life? Callings, like the banks of a river, allow us to focus our abilities and energy in a controlled, principled manner. Likewise, the failure to stay within the boundaries of one’s calling forgoes God’s blessing. Calling is the surest place of our thriving. Theologian Gordon Smith concludes,

We must be both realistic and idealistic. We need to discern our vocations, and we must also discern how God would have us fulfill that vocation within the complexities and brokenness of this world. This means that if we are going to thrive in this world, in the social, economic, and ministry context in which we live, our only hope is to live a life that is congruent with who we are, with whom God has made us to be and how God has gifted us, graced us, and thus called us. If we are going to be all we are meant to be, this is where we must begin. Ultimately, we are only true and faithful to God our Creator when we seek this congruence. 30

It should be coming clear that combining the kingdom narrative, with a derived identity, and a personal calling are going to shape how we think about marriage. Marriage is only to be considered if it serves as a relational, spiritual, and practical accelerant to your calling because of its congruence.

The distinction between purpose and assignment is critical. Stewardship consultant Ron Frey asks, “What if God never intended you to own your life purpose?” He expands,

In our culture of individualism, many people live according to their own design. But the pursuit of my life’s mission, my purpose, my dreams, may have nothing to do with God’s actual purpose on this earth or his assignment for my life.... It’s way too easy for me to become the owner of my life purpose, and thus feel as if I must find it, fulfill it, and succeed. But this can lead to the bondage of ownership over a mission of my own making, a mission that God never intended for me to have or worry about. The alternative is to become a steward of my God-given assignment and learn how to steward that assignment well. 31

Then the larger question becomes “What is God’s purpose for my life and how can I fit into it?”

This then becomes the compelling "why" of my life, shaping and touching everything. This then becomes the central means through which I express my faith into the larger world. Everything is not my assignment, but this one area is. Like the entrepreneurial recipients of the talents in Jesus's parable in Matthew 25, whether five, two, or one, this is my assignment for which I will have to give an accounting when the master returns.

We thus participate as ambassadors of reconciliation and agents of shalom until Christ comes again to bring this reconciliation and shalom in its fullness. We are called to be co-creative creational caretakers in and through our callings. We are called to a selfless stewardship of all callings, cultures, and creation in a manner that is creative, life affirming, and God honoring. Journalist Ken Myers writes, "Following Christ is a matter first of inner transformation, and then of living faithfully in accord with the order of creation as he made and is redeeming it, in all of our cultural convictions and practices concerning a host of abstractions and concrete realities: food, sex, time, music, film, history, language, technology, family, justice, beauty, agriculture, and community."32

In many discussions about marriage the contrasting positions are between a family-first marriage and a career-first marriage. The tensions between them are about what constitutes the good life with the changing character of work and the changing technology of procreation looming as contributing factors in the analysis. Posited in this binary manner, these discussions are easily politicized between conservative and progressive values. This is unfortunate.

There are certainly issues regarding the changing nature of work that impact this discussion with the rise of the gig economy and the acceptance of post-pandemic hybrid work environments. 33 Technology is enabling, AI is perhaps demanding, a work environment that allows for a work reality not unlike the domestic economic system that existed prior to the rise of industrialism in the 19th century. The decline of the domestic system was a consequence of the industrial revolution. Growth in mass markets gave dominance to factory production. This is no longer the case in many fields and has changed the nature of work, a change which was highlighted by the pandemic. This is now going to change the way work and family balance is maintained in the future. A whole new range of possibilities have emerged for men and women as they contemplate balancing marriage and vocation.

The same is true for reproductive technologies. The relationship between marriage and contraception is largely an unfortunate taken-for-granted acceptance since the 1930s. There are now ethical questions that are forcing a reassessment of this uncritical acceptance both in terms of what it means for your understanding of marriage as well as the good of society.

Whatever form a new understanding of marriage has in the twenty-first century, it must consider both the changing economic dynamics in society as well as the expansion of reproductive technologies. Designer babies through gene-editing technologies coupled with transhumanism mean that we can no longer accept these technologies without careful reflection. Under these conditions, a naive return to Victorianism is clearly impossible. A new understanding of marriage will have to be developed.

Calling-Empowering Marriages

To avoid the latent idolatries of the family-first marriage and the career-first marriage, this larger narrative suggests the need for a kingdom-oriented or calling-empowering marriage. 34 Here the aim of the couple would be to integrate their congruent sense of personhood and identity with shared a shared sense of vocational calling and a collective family commitment. The emphasis here is "relational connectivity" and kingdom purpose, not relational satisfaction. 35 Researchers suggest that "Relational connectivity focuses on indicators of the strength of a couple's relationship, rather than simply an individual's sense of personal satisfaction from the relationship." This new analysis explicitly challenges the assumptions of expressive individualism—and by extension the soulmate model of marriage. "These new models emphasize how a shared history and the couple's identity make a marriage relationship an entity itself." Marriage here is not about itself but about something else that is shared together by the couple—namely an overlapping sense of calling. The most recent psychological and social science research suggest that it is these kinds of marriages that flourish because their lives are embedded in a larger narrative beyond that of the marriage itself.

The aim is to bridge the dualisms that pull on an individual life between the public and private, secular and sacred, and work and family. The aim is an integrated holism. Even with this holism, balancing the various priorities and relationships is still necessary. But even here this balancing leads not to further fragmentation but enhanced integration into the collective relational calling of the marriage and family.

These considerations should shape how you consider the person you marry. Love and chemistry are less a factor, not irrelevant but less than identity and calling. "Flourishing marriages are true partnerships in which spouses are devoted to creating a shared life together that is deeper than the emotional payoff of the marriage. This view of marriage gives us more than feelings of happiness; it helps make our lives rich and meaningful." 36

Marriage makes no sense when isolated from its central role within this larger story. If you lose the plot, you also lose the rationale for marriage. To summarize consider blending these two observations one by Parker Palmer on calling and the other by Richard Foster on the choice of a marriage partner.

Parker Palmer: Vocation does not come from a voice 'out there' calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice 'in here' calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selvood given me at birth by God. It is a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it....37

Richard Foster: The basis for getting married that conforms to the way of Christ is a regard for the wellbeing of others and ourselves and a regard for the advancement of the kingdom of God upon the earth…. Christian marriage is far more than a private undertaking or a way to personal fulfillment. Christians contemplating marriage must consider the larger question of vocation and calling, the good of others, and the wellbeing of the community of faith, and most of all, how their marriage would advance or hinder the work of the kingdom of God. 38

If our marriage is understood as a partnership in kingdom purposes, to a cause larger than the marriage, a cause shaped as an externalization of a derived identity, then the marriage serves something larger, is fueled by spiritual resources outside of itself, and fosters a practical catalytic congruence beyond one's individual capacity. God's collective work through the marriage is an externalization of the identity of the husband and wife together expressed as their calling or life mission, and subsequently the cause context of the entire family. The marriage is a partnership in purpose which defines the family.

Marriage was once defined in political terms and later in economic terms. Of late marriage has been defined emotionally, by the feelings of being in love, a sense of "chemistry," or the prospect of finding one's soulmate. This is a proven failed strategy. Marriages following a soulmate model are twice as likely to divorce as other approaches. 39 Feelings are an inadequate basis for marriage. Marriages are designed to be an expression of a larger story that give it both its momentum and meaning.

Marriages based on a shared kingdom calling, which is in turn an externalization of the core identity of both the husband and the wife, are built on far stronger stuff. This is a couple that does more than stare into each other's eyes, rather they are walking side by side in partnership to have a redemptive influence within the specific sphere to which they have been uniquely called and equipped. This is eros tied to friendship. On this C.S. Lewis has much to add.

When the two people who thus discover that they are on the same secret road are of different sexes, the friendship which arises between them will very easily pass—may pass in the first half-hour—into erotic love. Indeed, unless they are physically repulsive to each other or unless one or both already loves elsewhere, it is almost certain to do so sooner or later. And conversely, erotic love may lead to friendship between the lovers. But this, so far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first, in the deep and full sense, your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as also your lover you will certainly not want to share the beloved's erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. Nothing so enriches an erotic love as the discovery that the beloved can deeply, truly, and spontaneously enter into friendship with the friends you already had: to feel that not only are we two united by erotic love but we three or four or five are all travelers on the same quest, have all a common vision. 40

Here is a vision of a marital eros combined with a shared common vision, which in turn is an externalization of my own identity in service to a larger spiritual purpose that also serves to empower this purpose. In Christ, I become all I can be, in marriage I become all I can do. In Christ, I'm most human; in marriage I'm most effective. In such a marriage the full giftedness of the other party is fully appreciated and needed. There is no sense of competition, only service to a mission larger than oneself, and a mission that ultimately leads to collective worship—"to the end that all people and all things may joyfully acknowledge and serve their Creator and King." If this doesn't engage your imagination with excitement, perhaps you have set the sites for your longing to belong too low.

How else do you understand the example of Hudson Taylor who left a wife and two children buried in China or Alexandre Solzhenitsyn who wrote of the danger his family faced while he was writing about the Gulag. His commitment to tell the story of the millions who were killed in the Soviet gulags bordered on the fanatical. He overcame imprisonment, cancer, and the ever- present threat of the KGB. He writes, "I could have enjoyed myself so much, breathing the fresh air, resting, stretching my cramped limbs, but my duty permitted no such self- indulgence. They are dead. You are alive. Do your duty. The world must know all about it. 41

Writing the Gulag was a family enterprise, as the entire family was in constant risk of torture, imprisonment, or death. He writes, "They could have taken my children hostage—posing as 'gangsters,' of course. They did not know that we had thought of this and made the superhuman decision: our children were no dearer to us than the memory of the millions done to death, and nothing could make us stop that book."42 The key here is his use of the word "we."

Such too was the example of my own parents: Dave and Mary Seel. Together they went as medical missionaries to war-torn Korea in 1953, he as a surgeon and she as a medical technologist. The teaching hospital ("Jesus Hospital") that they built together was the defining feature of our entire family life. At breakfast, we prayed for the cancer patients my father would operate on and if he came home for lunch, we knew that it was bad for the patient as it had been most likely an "open and shut case" with cancer spread too extensively for surgery to help. We went on rounds, we learn the names of the medical residents who frequented our home, we watched surgeries standing on a stool by the anesthesiologist. The smell of ether was smell of my father. Jesus Hospital was our shared family mission. There were certainly times when it seemed like the hospital took precedence over family time in ways that were felt negatively. These kinds of marriages are not without their sacrifices. They are not animated by "personal peace and affluence" but by a much tougher stuff. But that a shared calling shaped my parent's marriage was undeniable as was it leading to worship a regular occurrence. For this example, I am extremely blessed. Such marriages are unfortunately rare.

We don't have these kinds of marriages or these kinds of families today where a collective kingdom mission is the defining identity of all who belong to it. Perhaps the closest we get to it in terms of public service is the British Royal family. Here too modernity is playing havoc with the needed traditional marital mores. The crisis of the British monarchy is as much a crisis of modern marriage as anything else.

Ideally, the love between spouses is colored by an even larger passion than public service—a kingdom passion fueled by kingdom resources that leads to kingdom worship. These are the kinds of marriages that we need, the kind of marriages that will endure amid the deathwork dynamics of the twentieth-first century. This is a far cry from an anemic 1950s quasi-Victorian patriarchal marriage. This is a marriage of a different caliber, of tougher stuff, requiring a greater sacrifice, and not for the faint hearted or those used to follow the crowd.

First Things First

If the darkness of our moment calls forth marriages of this kind, then the future generations will be in far better stead than the acceptance of "personal peace and affluence" that marks the idolatry of family in contemporary religious circles. 43 The point of marriage is not merely love between spouses or the love of a family, but a shared kingdom influence catalyzed and galvanized by the combination of personal callings invested as husband and wife and experienced as family. With this in place as the priority, you typically get the rest as well. As Lewis advised, "Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things."44 If we lose the plot of the gospel, we lose sight of the purpose of our lives, and with that comes the loss of the meaning of the relationships in our lives. Marriage makes no sense unless it is folded into this larger metanarrative. Marriage is the master metaphor of the gospel. To lose both is to lose that which is essential to our personhood, a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging. In our lives significance, security, and story all flow together. To make marriage about power, or career, or sex, or even family, is to embed marriage in a false narrative. Such marriages will fail, wound, and disappoint. But there is a better way.

If the rationale for marriage is grounded cosmologically, linked to our deepest passions and gifting, serving something larger than the marriage itself for the sake of the common good, it becomes an exciting, fulfilling, and enhancing partnership in spiritual purpose. Squabbles about traditional roles and power dynamics are replaced by a mutual service to something larger than the marriage. As such the love in the marriage means more than love in a marriage. In this a given marriage begins to reflect the mutual self-giving of the Trinitarian godhead itself. It becomes an icon of that which is most real in the universe. We don't have to live in a made-up fantasy world of dating reality TV. Rather we can align that which is most precious to us—our loves—to that through which we live and move and have our being. 45 It is time to retell this wider story, which makes sense of our lives, loves, and longings. A calling-empowered marriage is a marriage that is sufficiently robust by all measures to the challenges of marriage in our time. We have a new story to tell. It is to this that we must level up. A kingdom marriage meets our deepest personal and relational longings for security and significance by telling the right story. The alternatives are bankrupt. A new way forward awaits us. It points us to a deeper love—to the aim of marriage—which is to a love that we cannot lose. This is the reality to which marriage points. With this confidence, Sara Groves sings,

You will lose your baby teeth.

At times, you'll lose your faith in me.

You will lose a lot of things,

But you cannot lose my love.

You may lose your appetite,

Your guiding sense of wrong and right.

You may lose your will to fight,

But you cannot lose my love.

You will lose your confidence.

In times of trial, your common sense.

You may lose your innocence,

But you cannot lose my love.

Many things can be misplaced;

Your very memories be erased.

No matter what the time or space,

You cannot lose my love.

You cannot lose,

You cannot lose,

You cannot lose my love. 46

This is a story of marriage worth singing about.

1 Steven Robinson, "How Dating Reality TV Shows [Re]Define Love and Relationships," August 16, 2023: https://www.enotalone.com/article/dating/how-dating-reality-tv-shows-redefine-love-relationships-r7545/.

2 Ibid.

3 Thriving Center of Psychology, August 1, 2023, "40% of Young Americans Think Marriage is Outdated": https://engoo.com/app/daily-news/article/40-of-young-americans-think-marriage-isoutdated/ ZjgDSCvIEe6TKbt2IleO5Q/.

4 Steven Seidman, "Contesting the Moral Boundaries of Eros: A Perspective on the Cultural Politics of Sexuality in the Late-Twentieth-Century United States," in Neil J. Smelser and Jeffrey C. Alexander, edited, Diversity and Its Discontents: Cultural Conflict and Common Ground (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 168.

5 Ibid.

6 Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Books 2020), p. 147.

7 Seidman, p. 184, 185.

8 See Christina Emba, Rethinking Sexuality: A Provocation (Sentinel, 2022) and Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (Polity, 2o22).

9 Lin-Manuel Miranda, "Tony Award Sonnet," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frkqULr008/.

10 Seidman, Ibid., p. 168.

11 Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven (Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 125.

12 Christopher West, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing (Image Books, 2012), p. 87. "A flower is one of nature's most beautiful reproductive organs."

13 Ibid., p. 92.

14 See Christopher West, Our Bodies Tell God's Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender (Brazos Press, 2020).

15 Carl Trueman, "How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society," Heritage Foundation, May 27, 2021. See also Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020) and Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2022).

16 Matthew 22:30.

17 Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame University Press, 1981), p. 216.

18 Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 71.

19 N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. 102.

20 Andy Crouch, Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (InterVarsity, 2013), p. 173.

21 Albert Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview (Eerdmans, 2005), p. 12.

22 Willard, "Gospels of Sin Management," Ibid., p. 35-59.

23 Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf (Harper & Row, 1980), p. 111.

24 Soren Kierkegaard, "An Entry for the Journal of the Young Kierkegaard," in Louis Pajman, Classics of Philosophy, Vol. 11, Modern and Contemporary (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 902.

25 Guinness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (W Publishing Group, 2003), p. 4.

26 Acts 13:36.

27 Ephesians 2:10, (The Passion Translation).

28 Denis Haack, "Book Review: Courage & Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential; and The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life." (www.ransomfellowship.org).

29 John Calvin, Institute of the Christian Religion (Westminster, 1973), p. 724.

30 Haack, Ibid.

31 Frey, Ron. “What If God Never Intended You to Own Your Life Purpose?” Ministry Fundraising Network, Blog, September 24, 2018, http://www.ministryfundraisingnetwork.org/blog/what-if-god-never-intended-you-to-have- a-life-purpose/.

32 Myers, Ken in Scott Allen, “What’s All the Fuss about a Biblical Worldview?” http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/2017/09/21/biblical-worldview-needed/.

33 Jessica Grose, "Does Everyone Want to be on the 'Mommy Track'?" The New York Times, March 16, 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/opinion/remote-work-mommy-track.html/.

34 That is a marriage for and dependent on the resources of the kingdom of heaven (Mark 2:15).

35 Adam M. Galovan, Jason S. Carroll, and David G. Schramm, "Flourishing Marriages are Made, Not Found," Institute of Family Studies, February 21, 2024: https://ifstudies.org/blog/flourishing-marriages-are-made-not- found/.

36 Ibid.

37 Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Josey-Bass, 1999), p. 22.

38 Foster, Richard. The Challenge of the Disciplined Life: Christian Reflections on Money, Sex, and Power (HarperOne, 1989), p. 134.

39 Brad Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (Broadside Books, 2024) p. 84.

40 C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (HBJ Book, 1988), p. 67.

41 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf (HarperCollins 1980), p. 218.

42 Ibid., p. 360.

43 Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Crossway, 2022).

44 C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. III, Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, 1950-1963, edited by Walter Hooper, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), p. 111.

45 Acts 17:28.

46 Sara Groves, "You Cannot Lose My Love," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEEuSUOmhy0/.