Chiradeep Patra

Candles Online

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Marriage is a sacred institution where two people try their best to fit into each other to live “Happily Ever After”. But unfortunately “Happily Ever After” becomes a myth, they are not happy in their marriage relationships. I am not a marriage or relationship expert. I do struggle to maintain my marriage relationship sometimes but I always try to get out of the pit where there are landmines to destroy my marriage life with my wife.

Genesis 2nd chapter is one of my favourite passages from the Bible which I studied sometime earlier. Few lines from that passage read as under:

“The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him… But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife Eve were both naked, and they felt no shame.”  

As I was studying this passage I found some amazing truths in it. In the beginning God formed the foundation of the earth as well as the foundation of marriage. I could see ‘7 mind boggling principles of marriage’, right there formed in the beginning which we find today in self-help and marriage-help books after thousands of years of creation.

Let’s look into them one after the other as under:

1. Not good to be ALONE: When God was overseeing His whole creation He found Adam alone. He didn’t like it. Immediately, He thought of creating a companion for Adam. Many years after the creation, the wise king Solomon writes in his book, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up”in Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10. God foreknew the repercussion of both ‘being lonely’ and ‘being with somebody close’ in life. That is why He thought of creating a partner for Adam seeing him lonely.

So we get inside a marital bond not just for the sake of the tradition or the desire of our parents but for the need of our own being to survive and prolong in life. I find it very strange when I see spouses parting from each other for work and earning money. Is money important than our staying deprived for each other? Give a thought about it friends…

2. SUITABLE Helper: When God thought of creating a partner for Adam He says, He will make a suitable helper for him. The Hebrew meaning of the word suitable are: ‘in front of,’ ‘in sight of,’ ‘opposite to.’ That means God wanted to create somebody who can really stand with Adam or match up to him. In Genesis 1: 27 it is written, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”

What does it imply?

Man and woman both are in the same level with same statuses. Neither of them is superior or inferior to the other. Eve was created just ‘opposite to’ Adam as his counterpart not lower than him.

Men! Let’s keep our male chauvinism aside from our marital love bond…
We should not be fighting for our status in the marriage as who is above whom, ‘man’ or ‘woman.’

3. Woman made from MAN’s RIB: Finally when God created woman, He made her out of Man’s rib. That’s something amazing. It’s written, “…He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh.”An amazing principle that comes out here is that the woman is part of the man’s own body. The woman was not a foreign or alien but part of him, the man.

When God brings the woman to Adam, he joyfully declares that “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” Wow! What an amazing principle!

But sadly, we see disparity all around us… we see only broken relationships, broken marriages and broken families… Why? How can we hurt someone who’s part of us… part of our own body?

4. LEAVE his parents & UNITED to his wife: Further Adam explains that the man will leave his parents and be united to his wife. This is the most difficult chapter in many Indian families even today. It’s a truth and an amazing principle of marriage that two human being will leave their respective families and unite with each other to form a new family through a process called marriage.

Beautiful! Isn’t it?

It doesn’t mean that the man and woman have to leave their parents literally but they leave and form a completely separate entity altogether.

This principle needs to be carried out wisely as it is the most misunderstood and misused principle of marriage. I remember my Mom was the first one to react negatively to this principle when my uncle tried to admonish us as husband and wife during our marriage.

5. Become ONE Flesh: This principle makes the marriage relationship even stronger. The man and woman are not only part of each other but are ONE flesh. A single being. ‘One flesh’ again indicates about ‘a protective hedge or boundary’ around the man and the woman which is not tress-passable or not invade-able by anybody, not even the parents.

This is again a very difficult and sensitive principle to be worked on especially in Indian scenarios.

6. NAKED yet felt NO Shame: I pondered on these words NAKED and NO SHAME again and again before I come to a conclusion or derive a principle out of them. Naked means uncovered, exposed, not hidden and so on. That means there is nothing hidden between a husband and a wife. There is no barrier between them. Even when they commit any mistakes they become responsible and feel no shame to share it with each other for correction.

Wow! I love this principle which is so rare in today’s world. The husband and wife should not feel ashamed to each other not only when they are naked before each other physically but also naked mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They need to understand and know each other clean and clear. They know each other in every respect of their marital life.

7. GOD is the Head and Author of the Marriage: If we see minutely every details of the creation we find a skilled hand and mind behind all these creations. It was God who created everything beautiful and good even an institution like marriage. Marriage has three individuals in it, God, man and woman. The most beautiful part which I really like in Genesis 3:8, is when God used to visit the man and the woman in the cool of the day to have fellowship with them as the head of the family. I know this principle might be strange one for many of us in this world today as ‘God factor’ has been slowly moved away from our lives.

But the bottom line is that a marriage is complete and whole when it is a triangle with man and woman on two of the corners on the base and God in the top corner. A God inspired life is always free from hazards as He is the author and finisher of life.

Many principles of marriage can be derived from the whole Bible but these 7 principles in the beginning are built on such profound truth that nobody can deny it. If the spouses or the couples getting ready for marriage could follow these principles with discipline then it would definitely bring fruit in their present or future marital life.

Stay Blessed!

 

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Thank you for your time.

Pradita Kapahi