THE LASTING EFFECTS OF A BIBLICAL, INTIMATE MARRIAGE

    While doing some of my daily reading today, I read where a Christian author was engaging in a debate against a psychologist.  The point that the psychologist was making, was that one of the biggest factors in how a person’s relationships will turn out in their life is “the perceptions that they had from about 5 to 25 years old of how ‘IN LOVE’ their parents were”.  

     So what the psychologist was basically saying was that if your parents have a deep, caring, loving relationship then you are much more likely to have good relationships and a good love life etc.  Including less divorce, less promiscuity and all kinds of other important factors.  Also, if your parents have “abuse” problems toward each other, ranging from not just physical but mental and or emotional and just plain dysfunctional, then you have a greater risk of not only growing up to act similar to them but actually taking on traits very much in line with what you perceived your parents to have had.  

     For example.  Children that believed their parents to have had a close, deep and solid love life would in turn be much more able to have the same as an adult and children with parents that they believed were cold, indifferent or manipulative in their marriage, would in turn be at much higher risk to have the identical if not at least similar traits in their adult lives.  

     Now, the Christian author was arguing that this “theory” of the psychologist was possibly incorrect.  His only real defense to his claim was that he only believed in truths that were put forth in scripture and that he knew of nowhere in the Bible that this “theory” or anything like it was discussed.  Well........far be it from me to get involved in such a challenging subject.  Just kidding.  Ok, so here is what I was thinking. 

     Now the psychologist went on to attack the Christian author and attack the Bible, blah, blah, blah.  And the author fired back with all kinds of unprovable mumbo jumbo, etc, etc.  And I hate to ultimately look like I am defending the psychologist but in all reality I am not necessarily for or against either one of them.  I am just for truth.  Discussable, usable truth.  

     My mind went to Genesis Chapter 34 and a young princess named Dinah.  Dinah was the daughter of a patriarch.  Her father, Jacob, was a powerful and very wealthy man.  It seems that Dinah could and did have everything that a girl could possibly want or afford.  But at a very young age she snuck out, partied with some “lower class” hoodlums and even slept with a man that she had only known for a few hours.  Huh?  These are people that she was not supposed to be with, in a place where she was not supposed to go and definitely doing things that she was not supposed to be doing.  WHY?  Why would Dinah do these things?  She was from a very respectable family, she had extreme religious roots.  I refer you to Genesis 29:31 where it states that Dinah’s dad hated her mom.  Let that sink in.  Now regardless of how you want to interpret that verse, Jacob really hated Leah or Jacob loved Rachel so much that his feelings about Leah were described as hate or the Chaldean, Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew words that were discovered in the dead sea scrolls blah, blah blah.....the bottom line is that you cannot read that verse and not come to the conclusion that the appropriate husband/wife “in love” relationship was NOT intact between Dinah’s parents.  Her mother and father “made” her and they are not even involved in a loving, nurturing relationship with each other.  Then she ends up in a sexual relationship with someone that she cannot possibly be having an appropriate relationship with because she just met him.  

    

     I am not putting this forth as some do or die doctrine but I think that there are more things to think about in scripture than we like to pretend there are and I also think that our actions have far greater consequences than we like to pretend that they do.  Many of you will be heart broken some day over the destructive behavior of your children and grand children, when today you still have the power within your own functioning relationships to do something about it.  But will you?

 Now I ask you to do two things.  #1 look at the young adults that you know very well and see how they are acting in their intimate relationships, good or bad, and then look back at their parents and see if there is a correlation.  #2  decide what type of a legacy you are leaving for your children and what you are going to do about it.  God bless.