[This is the seventeenth in a series on marriage.]
The subtitle of my book Made in Heaven? is How God acts in marriage.
Looking back, that strikes me as a bit arrogant, like I know what God is doing. I really don’t!
What I know is what I find in the Bible. How does God act in the world? Other than creating it, when God acts, it is through us. Now, if I were God, I wouldn’t trust human beings to be my “agents”. Would you?
And yet, that is how the universe runs. God is not a part of it. If God were, it wouldn’t be God we’re talking about, it would be some super-powerful alien. Have you ever heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? It is a parody of my religion, of course — that’s okay. The reason I am comfortable is that it debunks in a fun way the notion that God acts in the universe because God is somehow part of it. Believers are “pastafarians” who have “touched by its noodly appendage” — “touched”, I suppose, implies “mentally deficient.”[1]
So in fact, God acts through us, and yet, remains sovereign. Not every action is at God’s behest, of course. But we are never outside the presence of God even when we choose to do what we know is wrong. And along the same lines, when God acts in our lives, we are not usually aware of it! So when you encounter for the first time the One who shall become your Other in marriage, we…
