The Christian Way to Be Happily Married

How can Christian couples be happily married in this 21st century? By communicating well? Resolving conflicts? Dealing with gender, personality, and cultural differences? Rekindling the romance? These communication and relationship skills have helped many couples, but they have not always helped enough, according to David Sanderlin in his ecumenical Catholic Christian marriage guide, The Christian Way to be Happily Married. Sanderlin points out that mainstream marriage authorities throughout the Western world have been promoting these communication and relationship skills for over half a century now, and it is during this very time that divorce rates have skyrocketed! The author argues persuasively that Christian couples need something more than these communication and relationship skills. They need to follow Jesus with love, wisdom, patience, gratitude, and other Christian virtues in a loving Christian marriage discipleship. This book is ideal for Christian engaged and married couples who would like to be happily married not only by using conventional communication and relationship skills, but also, above all, by following Jesus with love, wisdom, and other Christian virtues during their ordinary marriage and family activities. Couples can learn from this book how to deal with money, housework, and other practical marriage and family matters with the love and wisdom of Jesus, saints, and spiritual reformers. The author points out that this Christian Way to be happily married is good for non-Christians too. It is good for non-Christians also to love their partner and treat their partner well, with wisdom, patience, and other virtues. The author draws from Jesus, Paul, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other saints and spiritual reformers to recover the Christian Way for couples to be happily married by following Jesus virtuously. The author emphasizes that Christian couples are called to follow Jesus not only by believing that he is the Son of God and trusting that he loves and forgives repentant sinners, but also by turning away from their sins and amending their life. We Christians turn away from our sins and amend our life in an authentic Biblical sense by becoming like Jesus in our moral character and conduct, with a Christ-like love, wisdom, and other Christian virtues. Paul urges the Ephesians "to imitate God . . . and follow Christ by loving as he loved you" (Eph. 5:1-2). John teaches that "we can be sure that we are in God only when the one who claims to be living in him is living the same kind of life as Christ lived" (1 John 2:5-6). The author deals effectively with the fact that some couples might be reluctant to try to become like Jesus in their moral character and conduct, for they might be afraid that they would have to sacrifice their happiness too much. The author acknowledges that they might have to sacrifice a conventional happiness at times that would include feeling good emotionally and being satisfied with their life mentally. A husband, for example, might feel good emotionally and be satisfied with his life mentally during an extra-marital affair, and then he would need to sacrifice this conventional happiness in order to treat his wife well and to follow Jesus virtuously. But he could still be happy--with a profound Christian happiness centered on God and virtue instead of a conventional happiness focused on worldly goods. The Christian Way to be Happily Married makes an important contribution to contemporary Christian marriage guidance by recovering the concept of a virtuous Christian happiness from Jesus, saints, and spiritual reformers, and by applying this happiness to marriage and family life. Paul refers to this happiness in a letter to the Philippians: "I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord . . . Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, . . . and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise . . . Then the God of peace will be with you" (Phil. 4:4-9). The book accounts for the fact that it may not always be easy for Christian couples to strive for lofty Christian ideals of love, happiness, and holiness. The author stresses that couples can grow gradually from a romantic love and wisdom that help make them emotionally happy during a beginning romantic stage of Christian marriage discipleship to a conventional needs love and wisdom that help make them conventionally happy during an intermediate stage and finally to a Christ-like transforming love and wisdom that help make them virtuously happy during an advanced transforming stage. The author compares these stages of moral and spiritual growth to the stages of moral and spiritual growth discussed by John of the Cross in his Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night. With these three stages of Christian marriage discipleship, the book covers not only the process of Christian moral and spiritual growth, but also the Christian ideals of love, happiness, and holiness. The author takes to heart Pope John Paul II''s call for Catholic parishes in this 21st century to provide training in holiness for all parishioners. John Paul writes that all the Christian faithful "are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity." He adds that "the time has come to repropose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living." The Christian Way to be Happily Married can help engaged and married Catholic parishioners and all engaged and married Christians follow their Christian calling to the high standard of the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity in their everyday marriage and family life. This book includes 1) a "Christian Marriage Discipleship Check-Up" for couples; 2) "Discussion Questions" for participants in church marriage workshops, college classes on marriage and the family, and other groups dealing with Christian marriage, ethics, and spirituality; and 3) over 350 endnotes for popular and scholarly sources in theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature, and other disciplines.… (more)