Written by Paul J Bucknell on November, 02, 2018
Defending the Design of Marriage
God’s Design for Marriage
Many people have a problem with accepting a design for marriage. There are at least two groups of people who argue against design.
• The large majority of people protest a design for marriage. They typically adopt the unproven theory of evolution to live their lives without God telling them what to do. Design implies the existence of God. If a person accepts a Designer, he or she must also accept His design for marriage.
• The second group is much smaller. They are disillusioned. They hope there is a design for a beautiful marriage, but perhaps, because their parents or friends had a poor marriage or they themselves have marriage problems, they have become skeptics. Despite their great expectations on their wedding day and their attempt to do all the right things, their marriage went sour.
Despite these rebellious and doubters, there are clear pieces of evidence that marriage is built by design. Understanding and accepting the design of marriage, is crucial to a good married life.
The closer one lives his or her life by God’s design, the more beautiful the marriage will be—whether a professing believer or not. From this follows an important corollary: the more a person lives apart from God’s design in their marriage, the more he or she will suffer pain, loneliness, emotional hardness, and spiritual guilt.
Support for God’s Design for Marriage
Below are six corroborations supporting God’s design of marriage.
1) The Architect: Designs require a designer
2) The Communicator: Passing the plans on
3) The Explainer: The innate desire for marriage
4) The Rewarder: High esteem for good marriages
5) The Maker: Proof in the pudding
6) The Judge: Carrying out the laws
Six Evidences
1) The Architect: Designs Require a Designer
If man was designed, then we should expect a design for marriage itself. We see natural support for this in the male and female features but also in their pursuit of marriage.
Architects love the chance to explain their designs for their great projects. We should expect God to have a design that He shares with us too (see Genesis 2:18-25).
In fact, we find clear imprints of design all through the bodies of men and women. This could have been disputed before, but now, there is clear genetic information detailing the chemical codes that are operating beneath a person’s skin. If there is a code, there must be a Coder. If there is a physical design, there is likely a design of purpose for their lives as well as other specific guidelines so they can best interrelate in marriage.
2) The Communicator: Passing the plans on
How would we know about God’s design for our marriages?
Is it possible for the Coder or Designer to pass hints of His design on to mankind so that we would understand this innate aspiration for happily married life? We believe so. After all, God our Designer has also given us ears to hear coded sounds in the forms of words and languages as well as the brain to interpret and process the information.
More than this, we find that man is able to reflect about what he hears. He also has a builtin desire to communicate what he learns. This makes it very likely that God has designed man to apprehend to some degree the things that God would want to communicate with mankind about marriage or any other matter.
Perhaps most important, God has shown Himself very involved in the welfare of mankind. He has displayed His concern for man, and so, it would not surprise us for Him to pass to mankind important information about how marriage works. We see God’s concern when He chose to send His Son Jesus Christ to be a sacrifice for His people’s sins—the cross moment. God intensely cares about what happens to mankind.
God’s greatest prophet, Jesus, clearly affirmed God’s design for marriage and the reliability of this prime source from the Book of Genesis. “AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh” (Mark 10:8).
We should feel fairly confident that this Designer of our bodies has also passed on important accurate information about how we are to operate our lives including our marriages.
3) The Explainer: The Innate Desire for Marriage
Where do we find this information about marriages?
We have the Bible that speaks very clearly about the origin of man, woman, and marriage. The Bible claims to be God’s voice. Do we have other sources that give a reasonable explanation of marriage? If so, how do they compare?
It is interesting that there are no other serious attempts to explain or define marriage other than in the Bible. Religions and philosophies speak about many matters, but they are critically weak in addressing the origin and purpose of marriage.
There are, of course, denials by philosophies such as hedonism that there is no design. They slant television nature programs to convince us that because one kind of animal does not choose one mate for life, then people don’t need to either have monogamous marriages. However, they do not explain the design of male and female. Nor do they attempt to explain the differences between animals choosing mates by instinct and man choosing by his will and purpose.
Marriage is much more than living together. Animals know nothing of vows and pledges, conversations, nor moral and immoral. Mankind is a completely different kind of creature. Have you ever heard anyone explain why mankind marries at all?
The Genesis account speaks very clearly on both the origins of mankind but also the purpose and design for marriage.
4) The Rewarder: High esteem for good marriages
We agree that many people are not faithful in their marriages and have much bitterness, mistrust, and hatred. This does not disprove God’s design for marriage. The Bible itself records such situations and societies. Let us make two observations about marriage that are supported by socialistic studies.
1) Most people agree that a bad marriage is like poison. Divorcees face personal pain, loneliness, disease, and distress. This pain passes on to their children. Many studies affirm this. Have you heard of a child praising any parent who haphazardly finds different partners? Not at all, though they might end up considering it normal.
2) Most people highly esteem a good marriage. A person will feel some good emanate from a happily married couple. The children that come from such marriages on the whole develop into well-balanced adults. The child and society will praise the faithful couple. My wife and I will soon be attending a 50th anniversary. That is a very happy occasion!
Those who observe God’s design as expressed in the scriptures have happy marriages and gain the rewards of such a marriage.
Check out the BFF Marriage Digital Library, which includes all our Marriage resources.
5) The Maker: Proof in the pudding
Society teaches the importance of marriage by its virtual appearance in the different cultures across the world.
We would expect that if God had implanted this aspiration for marriage between man and woman that we would find this aspiration around the world along with its cultural manifestations. This is exactly what we find. Cultures might view marriage slightly different, but the special isolation of a man and woman from others is accepted as normal. Even the most ancient law codes had laws against adulteresses. The man and woman are expected to live faithfully as one unit.
Anybody knows that marriage between a man and woman is accepted in any country. Marriage, in other words, goes beyond culture and right back to creation itself. For example, we do not see a law given to Moses about the need to marry. Instead we see laws regulating and validating the natural inclination of man to marry. Man was not to covet another’s wife. Adultery is evil. This is the same in other regions of the world even without any Christian influence.
Why do some unbelievers have better marriages than some Christians?
6) The Judge: Carrying out the laws
We would agree that some unbelievers have better marriage than Christian believers, and though this poses a serious problem, it does also affirm the principles of God’s design. Those couples, whatever they say that they believe, that go counter to God’s principles will face marital problems.
Those who claim to know God are in a sense tested in their marriage. If they obey God, then their marriage will be blessed. If not, then everyone will know. This is the reason the apostle Paul put a good marriage as a requirement for Christian leaders.
God’s design for marriage is everywhere around us and open for anyone to learn and follow. Time will prove the validity of God’s design by the happiness in one’s marriage. God judges the unfaithful couple, that is, the one who dares to live differently than God’s design for marriage. This is the reason we should learn and implement God’s design for our marriages.
Some people are very bitter against God and any plans He might have. It is common for those who have seen hypocrisy in their parents’ lives to have bitter lives against God and anything He says. We would encourage these people, as hard as it might be, to put aside their bitterness and consider that it is not the happy marriage that troubles your life but their lack of following God’s design. Reject your parents model but do not reject God the Designer’s principles of life. The principles are true for any who follow them and many blessings flow from them. Those that reject them will find empty lives.
Summary
The happiest people are those with a good marriage. They have gone through difficult times that have tested their principles and allegiance. Those that persevere without shutting down their hearts have found the deep purpose for which God gave them intimacy in marriage.
Again, it is hard not to be touched by a truly loving couple. They, to a large degree, carry out God’s principles for marriage. But no one wants the arguments, jealousy, evil words, outbursts of anger that come from those living apart from God’s teachings on marriage.
