"Stanley the Manley"
I’m not typically one to like much from Relevant magazine, but Tim Keller has a nice article here about marriage and Christians that includes this infamous – and spot on – paragraph from Stanley Hauerwas.
“Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.
We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.”
Dave Mowers
Joshua C. Dorman
Thanks for sharing that quote, Dave. I’ve filed it away for future reference. Far too many people get divorced because they finally realize they’ve married the wrong person and don’t know what their realization actually means.
Great quote.
Right, Chris – and it’s how we respond to that person in grace and love that ought distinguish Christians, in my view. It often doesn’t work out that way, to be sure, but it ought.