A Call for Change in Marital Ethics

A Call for Change in Marital Ethics
(In honor of a succeeding marriage of my friends Ndidi Olamide Adekunle and Olamide Sunny Adekunle, it's their wedding anniversary)

God led us at Grace Missions International Teaching Centre to give priority attention to ministering to marriages this year 2016. It's been a glorious ongoing journey.

We can't sincerely accurately say the number of families and homes we have been able to reach and help but we have tried by the grace given and through the available platforms to reach as many as care as faithfully as we can.

It's of great joy to also know that fathers in the Lord are being moved to do same. It's a sign of  confirmation of the heart cry of God at the moment and we all must take heed.

The attack on the home is enormous. We can mildly put it by saying Jerusalem is on fire. When armies attack walled cities, one strategy is to lay ambush. This often involves two lines of attack. One is frontal, which pulls out the army of the city. The other is the ambush which sneaked behind the opposing army into the city to set it on fire. The fire distracts the army and are turned between two fronts. When the strategy succeeds, the victory is always swift and devastating.

More and more issues of life are drawing people away from paying attention to the home front. The quest for money, enjoyments of life and pleasure seeking are producing that sense of selfish ambitions in people driving them to put their marriages far below the top on their priority lists.

This is opening the back door for the devil to hit at the home from behind.

When the institution of marriage fails, the home scatters. Marriage is the binding factor of the home. When it's not ok, the vehicle of the home won't move as expected. Children suffer. While I have no blame for single parenting which may be none of the fault of the single parent, I believe nature teaches us that it takes a man and a woman to make a child and it should take the two to also bring the child up perfectly. Which is one reason why we need to give all the support possible to single parents and the children they are raising instead of adding salt to injury by vilifying, judging and stigmatizing them.

Failed and irresponsible marital structure is a major cause of single parenting, a situation that can be helped by proper and practical marriage education. When there is no peace in the home, especially when physical and psychological abuses aggravate, common sense require that while peace is being sought, security of the victim is priority. This makes separation inevitable no matter what we believe concerning divorce. The most non yielding conservative beliefs against divorce hasn't been able to stop separations, it is something we daily have to deal with and to manage properly and pragmatically. But if we so hate divorce which is fast becoming a necessary evil, we will have to invest more time, effort and resources to making available the education and understanding needed to keep peace at home.

This marital ethical education would have to start long before the decisions about marriage are made and not after. And they have to be as  practical and relevant as possible. Education about who to marry, how to make choices, what works and what doesn't, blending, cooperation, oneness, team building, purpose synchronization, conflict management, communication, romance, children upbringing and so on...will have to be researched and taught with vigor and lots of zest on all platforms as cheaply as possible no matter the cost.

It is unfortunate that we all have to go into marriage without experience and the burden of choice is always on the young man and woman who hasn't learned much in life but often think they had known it all...until experience began to teach life's lessons without giving a second chance to remake past faulty not-well-thought-about decisions.

But those lessons are always available from those who had gone ahead and young men and women can access them. By observation, tutelage and mentoring we normally have access to those materials from other people's experiences and research from where we glean answers to our own mysteries.

The problem most times is that we don't often see reasons in those observations without discipline. It takes discipline to read, listen, take advice that don't look like normal or convenient, it takes discipline to agree with an experience of others that don't make relevant sense at present. Without that discipline, the young man and woman go their ways with unguided expectations from their vain fairy tale imaginations and would have to painfully experience what others had wanted to teach him and her to avoid. He and her may in future have to try to teach the younger generation the same things with the same results.

A young man and woman planning to Wed these days would spend more time, money and resources on preparation for the wedding day without any investment in preparing for the marriage. Even before then, they spend long hours in prayer asking for a marriage partner without studying and praying to prepare themselves for the marriage itself. It takes discipline to think outside the box. And so they get who to marry, work towards the wedding day, make a huge success of the wedding event but enter into marriage unprepared with problems beyond what they'd imagined popping up as soon as the euphoria of the event wears out, making a huge failure of the marriage, the main essence of it all.

We need to change that. And you, able to read this write up to this point is already part of that change. That's part of the price for peace in marriage we are paying. Many won't read. They haven't attended a marriage seminar beyond the advises of parents and in-laws at the traditional wedding ceremony and the twenty minutes admonitions during the church service none of which he or she paid any serious attention to, we hardly remember even the topic of the message after the wedding.

Yet we have materials, cheap but of good quality that can make a difference but they aren't in nuggets, they are long and would require discipline to read and learn.

We have ministries hosting seminars where we can go and glean some wisdom to help us develop great marriages and home but it takes discipline to suspend partying for a weekend to attend a session or two...

We had a poll recently that showed clearly that people won't go for marriage counselling even if their marriages are in serious distress. Ordinary counselling to help out in time of trouble is difficult for people to attend but it's easier to go drinking and shopping with heavy marital burdens on the heart. And of course it's easier to turn aggressive and stage a show for neighbors to watch in home conflicts. That shouldn't be.

We need an ethical change to help the marriage institutions and reduce the stress people go into trying to find fulfilment in marriage.

And we can by God's grace and it starts with you. You can do something about it. Make it a cause to follow by helping a young man or woman to rethink.

You can share this or recommend someone to attend a seminar read a book or materials which are many online in preparation for marriage.

Encourage someone going through marital distress to visit someone who can counsel without bias, help is available somewhere and we can help someone get it right!

Good Morning.

Join us tomorrow Friday 5th August 10am
@GMI Teaching Centre Ministers' Conference

Paying the Price of Peace in Marriage

@ Havila Place
#46 DF Street
Mosan Road
Opposite Bobcat hotel
By D Mama's Pride supermarket
Shagari Federal Estate
Iyana Ipaja
Lagos

Pray along for homes, refer someone to come  and support in any way possible. God's blessings to you.

If you need personal counselling you are welcome to my inbox. It's free!