It seemed like the much-anticipated moment had finally arrived.
Ben spied out of the corner of his eye a figure moving towards him. It didn’t take much for him to realise that it was Nina. She was a tall, dark haired young lady of much beauty. Ben speculated that it wouldn’t be long until she was married, and he had made his own hopes of who she might want to marry. Indeed, he had prayed many a time for and about her and had even attempted more than once to approach her and talk to her but to no avail. She constantly slipped through his fingers. It looked now though like things were going to be different.
Ben was standing next to the refreshment table as people mingled after the end of the church service. Ben wasn’t accustomed to doing much mingling, so he stood alone enjoying the atmosphere and waiting to help with clean up once people had enough of socialising and began leaving.
However, things were now changing and as a long-awaited moment approached. Ben had been unable to enter of his own initiation into a meaningful interaction with Nina, but now it appeared that after much prayer she herself was moving towards him. Ben allowed himself a brief glance as she came closer, lapping up a little of her considerable beauty, but the more he looked, the greater his heart began to pound. What would he actually say when she arrived in his presence?
This dilemma was though short lived. Nina came within a whisker of him, causing Ben’s emotions to reach fever pitch, however they were quickly diffused as Nina veered to the right to avoid collision with Ben, then opened her hand and tossed the waste paper that she had from the snacks that she had consumed onto the refreshment table, finally heading onwards and exiting the room without saying a word to Ben, not even giving him a glance of recognition.
This experience made Ben review his marriage plans!
Marriage is indeed a tricky issue. There’s the old adage that who you will marry is the second most important decision you will make (for some it might even be the first, but from a Christian point of view the decision to accept and follow God’s plan for our lives could well be considered the most important decision). In a cross-cultural setting the complexities increase as different cultures have different perspectives.
The place to start is singleness because everybody is born single and lives for at least a while as an unmarried person (even if they are betrothed!). In the western world this can be seen as a good thing as it allows the person freedom to enjoy life and invest time and energy in career and friends. In other places such as Moldova this is not the case. Here singleness is not generally viewed as a good thing and there is a lot of emphasis on getting married from a young age. This is maybe at least in part due to economic reasons as there are not many opportunities to develop a career here, so it is seen as better to invest in forming a family and it is also easier to get by as a couple, especially if agricultural work is the order of day. In addition to this, due to economic migration, the country’s population is declining, so it’s important for families to be forming and producing children to maintain the population level.
Of course, marriage is not just about practical concerns and the importance of values, companionship, love and romance probably also play their part in making marriage a prevalent aspect of a society.
In Moldova, something else that probably plays a role in attitudes to marriage is the influence of religion and faith. Christianity at both a traditional and living level is very active and widespread and it’s clear from the Bible that God’s plan is for people to live in families of one man and one woman. Admittedly, and tragically, some churches may well promote the importance of marriage as they have something to gain by it, whether financially or by affiliating an outsider to an existing church member. However, once again, beyond such practical concerns there is a Biblical teaching that God created us to have companionship and, as it says in the much-quoted words of Genesis 2:18 ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’
In the New Testament, Paul echoes this idea at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 7, where he talks about the fact that it is good for husbands and wives to come together regularly as a way of protection from certain temptations and for unmarried people likewise to get married to avoid burning passions. He throws though something extra into the equation. The first verse of this chapter contains the words, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman’ and later on in verse 7 ‘For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that.’ Thus, we understand that he is not promoting marriage as the only option.
In the Old Testament, marriage was very much the thing as the world needed to be populated and indeed, it was God’s plan for his people, the descendants of Abraham, to become ‘as numerous as the stars in the sky.’ By the time we reach the New Testament though, this need has already been fulfilled and the perspective begins to change.
In Genesis 1:28 God tells humans to ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it,’ however inMatthew 28:19 Jesus says, ‘go and make disciples of all the nations’. Hence, the emphasis from the Old to New testament has moved from being on physical to spiritual reproduction.
The result of this is that a Christian’s main goal in life (or at least should be!) to spread the gospel so that people convert and become disciples of Jesus. Christians can be meaningfully involved in this work, whether they are single or married thus the issue of getting married or not is more to do with our calling, as God’s plans can be served in both states, than other practical or personal considerations.