Whereby Should a Christian Be Governed in Choosing a Spouse?
Not merely by love and attachment. Let men be guided by Proverbs 31:10-31, and women by Psalm 128.
1931 Carl Manthey-Zorn Northwestern Publishing House
The following is an excerpt from a chapter titled On Marriage from Questions on Christian Topics by Rev. Carl Manthey-Zorn, published by Northwestern Publishing House, the official publisher for the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
We cannot expect people that are "in love" — we purposely choose this expression — to believe it, but true it is, nevertheless: Love, even fervent love, and attachment, even strongest attachment, unless they rest upon the proper foundation and are borne up and supported by it, are but a pleasant dream and, as a general thing, of very short duration. They are mere bubbles.
No, we cannot expect people that are in love to accept this statement as true in their case. And yet it is voiced by a man who had nothing but human observation to guide him, by the poet Schiller, in his beautiful “Lay of the the Bell.” Schiller sings:
See … if, forever united,
The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted;
Illusion is brief, but Repentance is long.
Lovely, thither are they bringing
With her virgin wreath the bride.
To the love-feast clearly ringing,
Tolls the church-bell far and wide.
With that sweetest holyday
Must the May of life depart;
With the cestus loosed — away
Flies Illusion from the heart!
But Schiller continues:
Yet love lingers lonely,
When Passion is mute
And the blossoms may only
Give way to the fruit.
Hereupon the poet, in lines that are both beautiful and true — as far as human truth and human beauty go — points out the conditions under which love will abide when passion takes its inevitable flight: he tells how the husband and father must labor and strive to provide for his family, how the housewife and mother must train her children and perform her household duties with untiring zeal and devotion. Yes, indeed, these things are indispensable where love is to abide when passion, or let us say, "being in love," takes its flight; and not only to abide but to grow stout and strong and ever stouter and ever stronger. But love must grow so stout and so strong that the words will apply to it which the Holy Spirit sings concerning the love of the heavenly Bridegroom and of the Church, his bride, which love He likens to true conjugal love. The Spirit sings and says:
... Love is strong as death;
Jealousy is cruel as the grave:
The coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it.— Sol.'s Song, 8:6-7
Now, to make love thus strong and stout, something more is required than labor on the part of the husband and father and the training of the children and untiring zeal and devotion to her household duties on the part of the housewife and mother. Genuine fear of the Lord is required on the part of both. For where there is genuine fear of the Lord, there is the Holy Spirit, the true and living God. And where the Holy Spirit is He twines the hearts about with a bond of Heaven-born love, of His own weaving. And this bond is stout and strong and cannot be torn asunder, and every effort to loosen it and tear it asunder will only result in making it stouter and stronger. And oftentimes the things that seek to loosen this bond and tear it asunder are powers which that love which is based upon more fidelity in the performance of duty, on the part of both husband and wife, cannot resist and overcome. But the bond which we just referred to is a bond that holds and one that binds the hearts of man and wife together in such fashion that in the fear of the Lord each spouse lives solely for the other even unto death.
For this reason we say: In choosing a spouse let a Christian be governed not merely by love and attachment. Let men be guided by Prov. 31:10-31, and women by Ps. 128. Prov. 31: 10-31, gives an excellent description of a virtuous woman, while Ps. 128 describes a man who is signally blessed of the Lord. In both passages the tear of the Lord is mentioned as the all-controlling factor.
And both man and wile, when about to choose, or when about to decide to accept a spouse, should call upon God in the name of Jesus Christ and pray that He, the Author and Institutor of marriage, would help them, His children, to find a spouse after His heart.
Oh, what happy marriages there would be if this were done!
But oh, how carelessly people will enter the state of matrimony, even in Christian Churches! And how many unhappy marriages there are in consequence!
Just a word on mixed marriages.
By mixed marriages we mean marriages in which one spouse is either an unbeliever or a member of an unorthodox church. If we consider how intimate is the relation of married people to each other, if we bear in mind how they are to lead a joint life in every particular, how, above all, they ought to be of one mind with respect to the chief concerns of life - one must say that the contracting of a mixed marriage is a pretty sure sign of more or less indifference on the part of the orthodox spouse toward his or her most holy faith. And what will be the result? Either increased indifference or friction. If the marriage be blessed with children, in which faith shall they be brought up? In none at all? In the true faith? In the false one? Or the boys in the father's faith and the girls in the mother's? When sickness sets in and death draws nigh, shall the orthodox Christian see his spouse lie there and die with callous heart and void of comfort, or shall he see how some Roman Catholic priest gives him ungodly counsel and care, or how some sectarian preacher treats the poor soul with false comfort and goads it with merciless demands?
O my dear young Christian friends, in choosing a spouse have an eye to the faith, your own and your partner's faith, and choose a spouse who is one with you in the real, true faith.