Someone once said that if you lock up two sinners together, you are bound to get friction. Like so many truisms, its truth can mask a more painful reality.
Marriage is a wonderful gift from God, designed to reflect His eternal loving sacrificial commitment to his people. There are many reasons why a good marriage models Christ’s love for the church. The husband who plays an active role in ensuring His wife is not taken for granted. The wife who encourages her husband to lead in a godly (and yes, sacrificial to her!) way. The couple who pray together, asking God to help them have priorities as a family which shine the light and love of Christ, within the family, within the church and community, at work and more widely. Praise God for good marriages!
And yet. You don’t have to be the best of friends with someone who is married to know that things are not always wonderful. That is another truism which can mask even more painful reality, especially when one or both feel they are unable to talk about it, either with each other or even a trusted friend.
Speaking about our struggles and suffering can be very hard, but is so very important.
Thankfully our church culture is beginning to learn to encourage people who suffer abuse to speak out. As people talk about their experiences and reports are undertaken (and some, though not all, published), more become aware of what characterises abuse, and feel emboldened to speak out. This is a very good thing.
The same is true for wider issues of safeguarding in church and society. Speaking out, raising concerns, asking questions: they are all essential to allow light to shine and good to prevail.
Speaking about difficulties in marriage
This ought to be true within marriages too. But there are a number of particular factors that render speaking about difficulties in a marriage especially hard.
This is true when there is abuse, and equally true when the difficulties are not related to abuse but still very real.
An abused spouse is hurting. They (it’s usually women, but not always) may feel weaker and less sure of themselves. They may be being gas-lit, so being persuaded nothing is wrong. They may feel shame. They will almost certainly struggle with a correct understanding of loyalty: to their vows, to their spouse, to the family, which may suffer as a result of any revelations. Just as an abused church member or child needs to be listened to very carefully, so also a married person who says things which may cause concern. Maybe they don’t even say anything: they may have stopped laughing or smiling. Such a spouse can feel very lonely, wondering what they should say, and whom to trust. We know our heavenly Father hears our cries and counts our tears (Psalm 56:8), but He has given us each other to support and encourage, to laugh and cry together.
There is another loneliness in marriage, however, which is perhaps even less spoken about. That is the loneliness of a Christian where their spouse’s affections for the Lord seem to be fading.
When a spouse seems to stop loving the Lord
Even that sentence is hard to write, because who are we to judge the other? We live by grace, not works. We are justified in Christ. We are one with Him. Our salvation does not depend on how much we pray as a couple, on how much we participate in the life of our church, or on how we prioritise our relationships. We all continue to sin, so who are we to challenge a spouse whose language is becoming more colourful or identity seemingly more career focussed? Except there is a very good reason the word of God is so full of warnings for His people not to harden our hearts, but rather to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, strength and soul, and our neighbour as ourselves. So, our lives do matter, before God.
This tension, this agony, is all the harder when the person who seems (because only the Lord knows) to be drifting from growing in devotion to Jesus is the wife of a pastor. It is harder still when the wife knows she ‘ought’ not to be drifting, but dare not say anything because of all the implications.
The pastor’s main priority is to pastor his family. 1 Timothy 3 sets requirements for the elder, which include managing his own family well. How can he be a good pastor if his wife ‘grows cold’? What would his church say? Do they care? The pastoral care of church ministers is a genuine concern in this country. Christopher Ash’s book on what your pastor wishes you would read is essential for all church leaders and members.
We must also feel the struggle for the wife (in this case). So many churches want to work so hard at being real and honest and open, yet it is in our most difficult and challenging areas that the depth of that commitment is revealed, and the quality of that commitment displayed. There may be many reasons she feels unable to share what she is feeling: we all know that doubts can creep up on us. Habits can begin and become embedded before we know it, sometimes meaning we find it all the harder to admit the truth and speak openly. Tragically, sometimes when we do, we are condemned for not having spoken earlier.
Just as our Lord counts our tears, so the Lord Jesus knows what it is to be betrayed and abandoned by a hard-hearted spouse (that’s you and me, believer!). The pastor - or any spouse - in this context can know Jesus’ ministry with, to and in them as they cry out to Him.
But we also know that God has given us siblings, brothers and sisters in Christ, through whom He works to provide that compassion. So here is a plea to the church: look after your pastor, as well as others who are married. Check-in with them and see how they are. Do the same with his wife.
There is an old adage that says: if you ask someone how they are, and they say 'fine', make a note to book in a time for a longer chat, because it may well be that they’re not. This is just as true for a pastor as for anyone else.
