You will probably never read a book about marriage with your children. I suppose it’s possible that some families may sit around the living room on a long winter evening to read The Meaning of Marriage aloud together, but it seems unlikely. It’s also unlikely that your children will attend marriage seminars when they are young or that they will hear more than the smallest handful of sermons on the subject. The greater likelihood is that in their most formative years, the only book on marriage they will read is the ‘book’ of their parents’ marriage.
You often hear it said that children are sponges who learn by absorption as much as by formal instruction. Most of what they believe to be normal about the world, and most of the ways they learn to interact within it, are absorbed from their environment. When it comes to marriage, this means that your marriage is their textbook. Your relationship with your spouse is their instruction manual. What is normal within your relationship is what they will believe to be normal within any relationship. You are the model they are likely to imitate when it comes time for them to marry.
Do you and your spouse shout at one another? Your children will believe it’s normal for a husband and wife to raise their voices in anger. Do you and your spouse punish one another with long silences? Your children will believe it’s normal to give one another the silent treatment. Do you and your spouse vent about one another to your kids? Your children will believe it’s normal for spouses to involve others—even their own children—in their quarrels.
But perhaps you and your spouse are committed to working out your disagreements in measured tones, with quiet voices, and at private moments. Your children will believe it’s normal to be self-controlled even when offended. Perhaps you and your spouse have decided you will set aside your disputes until there is an opportune time to discuss them properly. Your children will believe it’s normal to go on loving one another, even in the face of disputes. Perhaps you and your spouse have decided that you will always do your best to talk through your struggles privately and never vent them to anyone else. Your children will believe it’s normal to maintain dignity and privacy between spouses.
The great majority of what your children learn to be true about marriage they will learn from your marriage.
The question every parent needs to ask is this: What does my marriage sound like to my children? What is my marriage teaching, even when it is offering no formal instruction? What truths or errors is my marriage speaking, even when it seems that no one is listening? If my children and their future spouses are to imitate my marriage and apply every lesson they are learning from it, will they have a good marriage or a troubled one, a marriage that comes close to the biblical ideal or one that is tragically distant from it?
What does a good marriage sound like? It sounds like a husband and wife who are committed to being Christlike in their words, in their deeds, and even in their attitudes. It sounds like a husband and wife who understand that their marriage refers to Christ and the church, and so they diligently commit themselves to making it the most accurate reference possible. It sounds like “I’m sorry,” “Please forgive me,” and “I forgive you.” It sounds like a husband faithfully serving his wife and a wife freely following her husband, with both of them discovering, celebrating, and fostering one another’s gifts. It sounds like a husband and wife equally laboring to maintain all the beauty, the dignity, and the wonder of the relationship of Christ to his church and his church to Christ.
This is the marriage your children need to “hear” as you instruct them, not necessarily through formal tutoring or through reading Married for God Together (though you and your spouse may benefit from reading it), but as your marriage “speaks” in hundreds of ways through thousands of days. A marriage lived for the glory of God is the best marriage book of them all.
