By Dr. Sam Amadi

Someone asked my view about the marriage problem between Funke Akindele and her former husband. I told her I don’t pay attention to issues about stars and their marriages because I believe that they have a licence to ‘marry’ and divorce when they want.

I shared with her my views about marriage. I think that marriage is no longer viable as a social institution. Actually, people have no need to get married. Or rather, no one needs to marry in the old sense we understand marriage. The necessity of marriage in the old Judeo-Christian sense is no longer compelling. Social order has changed. A woman no longer needs a man to be socially responsible or economically viable. The old rules that govern property acquisition have expired. New rules of economic and social transaction are gender and marital-status neutral. So, there is no compelling secular reason for a woman to continue to tolerate a man who no longer provides maximum satisfaction and endless positive vibes. That’ s the reality of modern life.

So, all earthly marriages are subject to end abruptly as the ephemeral feelings that triggered them. Except, you married in the LORD. The difference is that marriage in the LORD is utterly mystical.It is not based on love, in the human sense of happiness and satisfaction, even it it produces those. It is not based on vibes. It is not based on what this or that person will provide for me. It is a marriage based on pledged obedience of two persons to a third party. It is a commitment that two of them will work together in the love of Christ and by that commitment they have become one body to pursue the evangelism of the love of God.

When Paul the Apostle wrote about marriage as a symbolism of the relationship between Christ and the Church, he meant that it is indissoluble, or ought to be so. He meant that the end of that marriage is the production of godly character (what an ancient biblical prophet called ‘godly offspring’, and not the manufacture of good feelings and vibes. That kind of counter-cultural marriage is not open to all. It is for those who have accepted the purpose of God for their life and the earth. Such people will have no problem marrying in this world of fraglity and sin, knowing that their marriage is actually to the LORD who does not change or fail.

Every other person is free to marry who they want anytime and unmarry anytime they FEEL like. Such marriages are socially determined, in their contracting and in their dissolution. They are ad hoc arrangements for wayfarers in the journey of life who need a short time beneficence before plunging further into the abyss of endless anxiety.