With The Perrys - The Idolatry of Marriage

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Marriage is to be honored as the Bible directs us but is it being held in highest honor? Or in other words, have we, the church, made an idol out of the institution of marriage? Yes? No? Maybe so? Listen in as Preston and Jackie share their thoughts on the topic. Book recommendations: 7 Myths About Singleness This Momentary Marriage   Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the Saints and the Ains. It's the Saints and the Age. Let me start it. It's the Saints and the Ayes. Wow. That felt better. I wish you all. I had to change kids.

I wish you all could see how she's like shaking her head. It's the Saints and the Age. You are. That should be our new theme song. No, it should. It's the Saints and the Age. Watch it be in their head, though, when they turn this podcast off. Whatever.

How y'all doing out there? My name's Preston Barry. We know that. That's why they're listening. Right. Some people don't know? They know that by now. Well, I'm Jackie Hill parents as we reintroducing ourselves 17,000 episodes here.

We're just going to get straight into it. We want to talk about the idolatry of marriage. I brought the topic up to Preston because it feels like a conversation people are having and not having, but also a conversation that, people need to have, you know. And by idolatry of marriage, I guess we can just define it. I'll create a definition for us. It's really just this kind of unhealthy glorification and esteem of marriage that exists in our culture and our church and in our hearts. Yeah. Yeah. When like, I guess I'll just ask this, is that a thing for men? Because I just,

I feel like this is a revolving conversation for my friends in particular. I just can't see men sitting around, you know, some whiskey or something saying, man, we're making idols out of marriage. It just doesn't seem like that's happening. Some men, you know, I think a long time ago, a couple months ago I made a post basically saying, you know, to not try to figure out men in general, try to figure out the men that God has for you. And the reason why I made that post is because men are way more nuanced. and I think the culture try to pay us out to be. And so there are many different type of men out here who desire marriage just as much as women do. But I'm saying, do y'all talk about the fact that you might desire it too much or that the culture props up marriage?

Well, not even the culture, church culture, can prop up marriage as the highest ideal to the Christian experience. No. I'm a judge, y'all would be like, I doubt that y'all having those conversations. No. And I think, but I have a reason. I think I know the reason why. Why? It's because a lot of times when I talk to men, they feel a different type of pressure for marriage that I think women don't feel. Such as. I think that in the church, because we've treated marriage like an idol in a lot of ways, I think that men have felt the pressure to pursue a marriage. before they can even become real disciples yet. And I think that I think one of the things that I've seen the most is men being made to feel like they're immature because they're not ready to be married.

And as if their maturity rests solely on their pursuit of a woman. Interesting. And I think that so because of that, it's always, it's this desire there, but it's always like this resistance in that. desire because of the fact that, you know, I feel like they have not felt the freedom to grow as men. And then when you grow as men, you naturally want to pursue, you know, as opposed of just as soon as I come into church, if I'm good looking and I'm saved, people think, where your wife at? You know what I'm saying? So I think women, they think about marriage and they're Prince Charming from like birth almost.

Which is, which is... Some of them. I don't want to like, you know... Which isn't their fault. Because we're a product of the society in which we live. And so when the cartoons that our parents take us to go see, always have a princess or a little girl falling in love with a prince charming or a little boy or a gargoyle or a beauty and the bees, which is low key. What's that thing when people do it to animals?

Becology? Yeah, that's what that is. She is in love with an animal. But anyway, when all of these cartoons like Aladdin or Beauty and the Bees, like I said, Lion King, all of them center on finding love. And so I think that we are simply just, we grow up then with this feeling like that is like the apex of what it means to be. you know, human, which is to find love. And then you come into church and it's just like, why is you still single?

Yeah. What's wrong with you? Why you ain't found a man? Where you now feel like you're less than because you don't have a ring on your finger, which puts more pressure on you to feel as if maybe that's what God has for me only is marriage. When you say the idolatry in marriage, what is the first couple of things that come to mind? Like, what do you think the issue is? Well, one, idols are always.

ways made out of created things. And created things are not inherently evil. And so, that's a word. Marriage was created and introduced into the world by God. That's pre-fall. You know, it was, it was a covenant that he established for man to have with a woman, one man, one woman, one flesh union under God for life. But sin, when it enters into the world, it always takes good things and makes them the highest thing. And so that's the first thing I think is that I don't want to demonize marriage as if we should not hold it in high honor. Because we should, but we shouldn't hold it in highest honor. Yeah. And so I think those are the premier thoughts that I have.

Yeah, yeah, because I think that happens a lot in the church. And I think in a lot of ways we do it unknowingly. We say, you know, God is the center of my life. But it's like if you take too long to send that right one, it's kind of like, you know, our whole disposition begins to change. And I think that I'm a firm believer of thinking that the church need to do a better job of just building up strong disciples, men and women of God. And I think that when we do that, relationships between men and women would naturally happen in a healthy way.

That's true. I just think that. Because I think that if we train people to be husbands and not train people to be holistic disciples, I think we then run the risk of potentially, you know, somebody going into marriage and thinking that it was something that it was completely not. Yeah.

And marriage is being ruined. relationships being ruined, but if you raise up good disciples, men and women who serve the body, who serve each other and grow with one another, I think that then we'll see that like, man, like when we come together, it just makes sense. I wonder why this is a thing, though, because we could say, you know, sin. We could say misinterpretation of scripture. We could say the culture and it's how they make love preeminent over all things. But like, why is this the thing?

Because I brought up to you, I was like, I wonder if passages like, it's better to marry than to burn might be one of the, like, root causes, you know, because you have the reality that marriage does, I guess, help or assist us and not sowing all of our wild oats elsewhere, but it doesn't cure us. And so, like, do you think that that's a possibility that let people like, no, if you want to stay holy, if you want to stay righteous, You need to find you a wife and find you a husband. Is that a thing?

I think so. I think so because I used to do this men's group called War on Lust. And it was deep that most of the men who struggle with pornography and masturbation, they struggle more once they got in marriage. And I think that it's this idea. People don't think about. Yeah, it's this idea that once I get married, like all of my, all of my sexual desires will be fulfilled in this one person,

which lets us know. that we have put people at a higher standard than we put God because that's the work of the Holy Spirit. Like if the Holy Spirit did not cure your lust before marriage, it's not going to be cured in marriage. And it's like I think that we unknowingly, we make people more powerful than what, you know, they are. And it's just like it. So if we look at that scripture and interpret it in the way that, oh, let me marry this woman and all my, all my, all my lust will be. I have an outlet. It's like, no, like, you underestimated your heart and you don't understand the work of

of the Holy Spirit in your life. You know what I'm saying? So I think that, yeah, I think that we make marriage in Idaho in that way. So I'm just, I'm just asking questions because I haven't, I haven't studied this, read no books, nothing. We just having a conversation. But I wonder also for the woman, women want to get married to have sex too, obviously. That's the thing.

I think another reason is children, you know, wanting to have kids and feeling like, hey, I mean, I'm inching up on 40. I need to have, I need to get married so I can have kids now, which kind of gives you a kind of impatience that might lead to then seeing marriage or propping it up a little too high on your totem pole of things to pursue. but I wonder if like, I wonder in the same way you say that a man or people, but specifically men can feel as if their lusts will be completely like handled by a woman in marriage. If with women they feel like their fears or emotions or intimacy or need for intimacy and companionship would be, I guess put in a sense. safe place to be like, I don't know what I'm saying, but if women, when it comes to wanting a companion and wanting love and just wanting someone to be near them and maybe some of the

insecurities and the traumas that feel or feel these needs, if they feel like being with a man in a marriage will make all of that complete. Yes, that's the word, complete. I wonder if that's a thing because I think on both ends, it's this idea. that a marriage or a relationship will heal the parts of me that want to be whole or passify the parts of me that are needy. Because both perspectives have a semblance of health in them. Okay. So it's healthy and it's natural and it's normal to say, you know what, I have these desires and I want a woman to be able to express these desires with in a way that is honoring and pleasing to God.

That is okay. Then you have women's or people that's like, you know what, I just want to be near somebody. I just want to touch somebody. I just want to be held. I just want to tell somebody my fears and my anxieties and my hopes and be heard and loved consistently by this individual. Both of those are healthy and pure perspectives, but they move towards idolatry when we're not practicing those same things with God and His spirit by saying, God, you help me to

control these affections and these pleasures and these desires. God, you told me to cast my cares on you because you care for me. You said that you love me. You get what I'm saying? So it's like when the Holy Spirit and the God that loves us is not already seen as the access point by which we can experience these things to a certain degree, that's when it moves to idolatry because we've left God out of the picture. Yeah, right? That's really good. And I think another way we can have an idolatry of marriage is when we don't, when we don't understand how much God wants to sanctify us in a marriage. Because I think that a lot of times we say God sanctify us, you know,

and we have all of these prayers of just, you know, wanting to be holy and righteous. Make me like you. But a lot of times we don't realize that God makes us like him a lot in marriage. So you're saying that people probably wouldn't esteem marriage as high as they do if they knew how difficult it is. Absolutely. I don't know why my voice is sounding like that. There you go. And I think that a lot of times people, they pray for God to sanctify them or to make them, you know, right so they can get this reward of marriage.

But oftentimes, God actually does that in marriage. Like there is, there is, I don't, I don't think there's another relationship on this earth that will stretch you, that will challenge you, right? You're living with a person every single day. And a lot of times that romance and there butterflies, it's good. You give me butterflies for two weeks. It's just not the reality. It's just not the reality of marriage. Marriage was ultimately created to glorify God and his church and allow the world to see, um, his relationship with this church. I think that if we think about marriage in a holistic, in a more holistic, you know, framework, I think then we won't romanticize it as much. I don't know if that makes sense. When you were a single man,

because I think some of this comes back to how we value singleness, where you ever taught or heard from another man about the beauty of singleness and how to experience, it in a healthy way. Yes, absolutely. So the reason why I decided to get married is because I began, I talked about Brian Dye before, but I began to be disciple by Brian Dye. And one of the things that he did was, one of the thing he's big on is life on life discipleship. So not meeting me, you know, at a coffee shop, but bringing me into his life to allowing me to see his marriage. And one of the things that he talked about from the jump was that I'm glorifying God in my singleness and the beauty of my singleness, but also the beauty of marriage and what marriage looks like.

So he allowed me to see both. And so he taught me that, you know, in a lot of ways, God can get glory from my life in my singleness that he cannot get glory in my life in my marriage. Completely agree. Like he taught me these things. I'll be free to go and to Rome and to evangelize more in my singleness than I am if I have, you know, a first ministry, which is my family. But he also taught me that it's also beauty in marriage. And it's also ways that God can be glorified, you know, in marriage that he couldn't be glorified with me through my singleness. So it showed me that marriage shouldn't be the ultimate goal to get glory from God, that God is sorry.

And God can get glory from both. And so I had that perspective. But also me coming into his life and, you know, coming into his home and seeing his marriage, I saw that marriage was a sacrifice. I saw that marriage was hard. I saw that marriage in a lot of ways was difficult. But I saw that it was glorious. So it was just like.

You had a balanced perspective. Yeah, balanced perspective. And I think that if we don't have a balanced perspective, we had just, we had just want something. And it's a lot of our flesh and not us really wanting to see God please through every aspect of our life. That's interesting. I ask because, you know, singles conferences, one, they seem to be really packed with women registrants. So that's one. But two, while there, I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but I guess it feels like to me,

when I look at posters and flyers and conference schedules, I like how you scrolling on your phone. I like how like... You don't call me how like that. It's bogus. That's marriage. I guess it's interesting that the most edification or biblical teaching that people might get for singleness

is teaching how to prepare for marriage rather than how to enjoy the place that God has you in now and the beauty that it is and how it's not an indictment on your identity as a woman because you're single. Because I think that really is a thing that I'm single because of me, which might be purity culture, which might be this idea that a man, you got to be a wife or a man want to pursue you as a wife where all of the burden of becoming a wife is on. how you are as you're single. That's not really fair. I don't know. I'm just talking about observations. I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. But I'm just thinking out loud. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if men have the same like struggles. But I do know it just kind of goes back into the same thing that I said before. I think that we put unhealthy expectations on men and women and in the church. to be the pursuers and to be the person who was pursued. So in the same way in which women can be made to feel that I have to look,

I have to act, I have to be a certain way for a man to pursue me. It's the same pressure that I feel like we put on the church to make men think that, show the world you're ready to be a man by pursuing this, pursuing this young lady. And it's just like, no, like, do we, do we think about glory? Mm-hmm. Like, do we think about God's glory in wanting to be married?

I think that if we truly start to think about God's glory and how he is glorified with his marriage, I think then then it is, yeah, it has just changed how we look at marriage. Some of this, I mean, I think just goes back to how God created us, you know. He created us as relational beings, you know, being made in the image of God. It was not good for Adam to be alone, depending on who teaches that. They'll immediately connect that to God making his situation that wasn't good, good, by giving him a woman, giving him a marriage, which is a part of it. But I think the over or the general gist of what God was making right or what he was creating was community, you know. And so in a real sense, it's not good for anybody to be alone,

but for us to offer up marriage as the only alternative to those feelings of being alone is, I think, unbiblical. When we have church, we have families, we have friendships that we can and should invest in. And those things are just as good as marriage. They are not the same. Yeah. Because you shouldn't be having sex with your family and your friends and your neighbors and the church. It's a different type of intimacy we experience in marriage.

And I think people want to. But it is intimacy. It is intimacy. And I think that when we see how we're created in the image of God and how he created us to be relational beings, I think that all the relationships that God has given us is special. And they all, yeah, give us a special. certain, it offer us a certain need that we, that we need as people. But I think that when we, when we, when we put marriage too high, we, we begin to not

appreciate all the other relationships that God has, that's good, that's given us. You know what I'm saying? Because we see him as not good enough. Yeah, we see them as not good, good enough. And we see it, and so we, we become discontent and, and not being with somebody who we could be romantic with. And I think God wants us to see that not like it's relationships in your life right now that will offer you something that marriage won't. And also relationships in your life that will prepare you for marriage.

We don't take advantage of all these other relationships that will prepare us for this most difficult, but at the same time, most beautiful relationship that we would have in marriage. And truth be told to thrive in our marriages, we need friendships outside of our marriage. And so that continues to speak to this thing that my spouse will not be able to be everything for me. They can't be. And so if that is the case, then marriage will not be everything for me. And then remembering the fact, because I said this in my book when talking about sexuality because people promote marriage as if it will deliver us from sin and temptation completely. It helps, but it won't deliver. You know what I'm saying?

And so people will, you know, if you want to prove that you straight get married or if you want to be straight, get married. It's just like, marriage ain't regeneration? Where do you see that in the scriptures? Yeah. But it's like, I just want to stay away from ever promoting this ideal of marriage as if it will last forever. Marriage is not eternal. The only marriage that is eternal is the marriage between the bride and the lamb. We all going to be single in heaven.

Yeah. we're not going to be together. You're going to be my brother in Christ. Absolutely. I'm going to be like, hey, sir, we had kids together. I don't know how this going to look. That's going to be odd and weird. But guess what?

I'm going to be satisfied in God because the whole, or not the whole point, but one of the main points of the marriage was to get me to where I am, which is heaven, which is glory, which is to see Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. I have a devil's advocate question, which is, what if somebody says, well, how are y'all helping people to not idolize marriage when? And you got a YouTube channel where you talk about your marriage, where you show your marriage, you know, Instagram, showing pictures of your marriage and posting captions about your marriage.

Now you get on this podcast and you're still talking about your marriage. How am I supposed to not idolize when it seems like that's all y'all talk about anyway? Yeah, that's a good question. I think in a lot of ways what married people shouldn't do is hide their lives. so so we we shouldn't we shouldn't hide our love so people won't you know idolize marriage but what we should do is we should self-examine our own hearts right so because because i think the the marriage that we have and the love that we have um i'm not afraid to say it's beautiful like god has given us something special and i see i you know i admire other couples out there that were friends with that were not friends with who

who have a love in a union that is special as well. I don't think the goal is to try to hide what God has given us. But also, I think we have to do the hard work of not romanticizing marriage and looking at a married couple and paying attention to their love only. It's a way for you to look at our marriage and not just make a big deal. I think you made a comment about how when we do podcasts, when we talk about relationships, it gets way more views or way more listens than when we talk about the Bible. The Bible. Yeah.

And it's like so. And that's statistics. I can show you all the stats. Yeah. So I think that's a reflection of the coach's heart, not necessarily us, right? Because if people look at your Instagram, they can see you talking about you. And they can see me talking about apologetics. And they can see, you know, they can see us doing other things.

and they can see two people who have individual ministries, and they can see people who have a ministry together. And I think that's what marriage is. I think our marriage hasn't stifled us to walk in our calling and to be all that God has called us to be. And I think so I want to just say too, I think that that can be, you know, unbalanced in some relationships that just all they want to show is just love, love, love, love, love.

Which is what I was going to say is that I think, because some of what feeds into like discontentment or comparison or whatever is social media, right? And so I don't always, I don't think it's fair to blame people's followers for their experience, fully for their experience of the people that they follow.

I think how you post and what you post is your problem, right? So what I mean is, like, as a married person, I think I am being, dishonest if I'm not being transparent in exposing and talking about and discussing all assets or aspects of my marriage. So as not to give a false impression of what we have. So that's what I mean is that I think that is one of the differences. I've seen pages and I've seen couples where you really do think that their marriage is bomb. Yeah. And top notch and amazing.

And it's it's their responsibility. They're putting that out there. They're projecting that because that's what their captions are saying. That's what their pictures are saying. And that's the reason why I feel like we've always, and not saying that we're the standard of how a marriage is supposed to be portrayed, but I do think that's one of the reasons why, you know, I felt like God led me to talk about, you know, my struggles with pornography

and how we work through that and how, you know, I still struggle with, you know, thinking about other women and you still struggle with same-sex attraction. Like, it's, it's, it's, I think it's important for us to be realistic in, in our struggles. And without, without letting the whole world know everything that we go through. Right. It ain't their business. Right. But, you know what I'm saying?

I think it's, I think, I think that if you want to be a public figure out there, I think that it's, I think that it's healthy to give a well-rounded. in a balanced perspective so people won't think marriage is just butterflies and roses. And not only a public figure, I think it's the responsibility of every married couple that exists in the church. Yeah, that's true. Because this is a matter of discipleship. And so we communicate not only verbally, but we communicated implicitly how people are to understand marriage, you know, because perhaps we have people in our churches that are idolizing marriage

because we are not showing them the truth about what marriage is in our own lives, in our own homes. Absolutely. And also, we do a disservice to the beauty of marriage when we don't show the ugliness in marriage. Because I think that's the same way the Bible works. It's like we don't understand the good news if we don't first understand the bad news. That's true. And I think that the Bible shows us these stories that sometimes are like tragic. And it's like, wow, God, you did this? And it's like we get a well-rounded, perspective of the nature of God in the Bible when we see, you know, you know, bad things that happen that God got glory out of. And so we treat our marriage as if it's just this fairy tale, romantic love story. Which every married person, no way, true. It's not true. Y'all is lying.

We is making people think that marriage is just butterflies and roses. It's like, no, like the first year we were married, we didn't like each other. No, we didn't. You know, and we did. You know, and We had to work through it and we've had struggles in our intimacy and all of that. We had to work through it. And when we work through it, that's what creates beauty. Not just romance from the jump, a sacrifice to love, the struggle, the tears, the blood, the sweat. That's what makes beauty. So I think that we just have to do a better job.

I'm just portraying truth, being real. While we're saying in the hood, being 100. That's true. I actually like how that ended. I didn't think we would get into the social media influencer discussion, but it's a thing. It is. Like, I mean, you write a book on relationships. Because I'm pretty sure somebody, I'm pretty sure somebody was listening.

What about people on social media who would be like making us think that it's all good and stuff? Yeah, it is, it is, this has nothing to do with what I'm saying, but this is, maybe we should do a separate podcast. But I really truly believe that it is on the burden of the influencer to deter. how people experience their influence, period. That's a podcast. It is. We should. So, anyway, I got some book recommendations.

Sam Albury, he's a cool guy. He just released a book in 2019, actually, called Seven Mifs About Singleness. And he's a single man. So he, you know, because I know some of y'all be like, I don't want to read about singleness. I hear about sickness from no married person. He knows what you're talking about. Yeah. But you really like that John Piper book.

What's the name of it? This momentary marriage by John Piper is one of my favorite books of all time. Yeah, I think the third chapter talks about covenant and, you know, being an binding agreement. And that's the reason why I named my proposal poem, The Covenant. Oh, sweet. That poem, that book really, like, blessed me and really gave me a well-rounded perspective of marriage and how I should pursue a woman and love a woman in marriage. That's good. So I'll link to those.

I don't know what's gotten me in the habit of recommending books, but maybe because on Twitter, you know, you can really see how people, they don't read a lot. So we want to give you all some resources. But anyway, make sure if you want to be a patron, go to www. Patreon.com, for it slash with the parries to receive some exclusive random giveaways, Q&As, all that good stuff. Live conversations that we might have randomly. So yeah, be on the lookout.

Adios. Peace.