Witnessing these tragic circumstances so frequently—and I do consider it tragic whenever the holy institution of marriage is undertaken with less seriousness than I know from Scripture God intended for it to be—caused me to consider not performing marriages at all. But that did not seem to be the answer. I labored over the question for some time before the Lord began to guide my thinking in a new direction.
As more couples from my congregation came to me for the purpose of being joined in matrimony, I began to encourage them to wait at least a year and to put that twelve months to good use getting to know one another. I even suggested that, if the war allowed it, the young man be invited to join his fiancee’s family. My idea was that he would live and work with the future bride’s parents for a year, ideally working with and alongside his future father-in-law in whatever activity the latter was engaged in. I suggested that the young woman spend the same period of time with her fiance’s parents, living and working daily with her future husband’s mother in that woman’s home. If the war did not allow it, then I recommended waiting until hostilities were over and then embarking upon such a plan.
What a wonderful setting, I thought, for the parents of both the young man and the young woman to get to know personally and in great depth the individual they would be welcoming into their family!
This plan was such a brainstorm, such a revelation to me, that I was certain all to whom I told it would be eager to adopt my plan in an instant. Ah, but how wrong I was . . . yet again!
The first young couple to whom I proposed it turned and left my office on the spot, saying that they would find another to marry them. They were not interested in all my spiritual talk on the subject. They only wanted to get married . . . and soon.
I was visited the next day by one of the elders in my church, a powerful man in the community with an attractive daughter of his own approaching marrying age. He had heard of my proposal from the father of the young woman and had come to tell me what he thought of the nonsense, adding that he hoped I was rid of such foolish notions by the time his daughter was ready for marriage, because he wanted her married in his own church. Furthermore, he added, he was uninterested in having any business dealings with whatever young man his daughter may decide to marry. If he was of a family of good standing and had means, that was what mattered. He saw no reason for two families to expose their personal lives to one another in such a ridiculous fashion.
This gentleman was far from the only one to react so. In fact, my proposal fell on not a single receptive ear. Again, as in the matter of my stance on the war, my views on marriage threatened to jeopardize my entire ministry. What am I saying? Along with the rest, it did jeopardize my ministry, with the result, as you know, of my ultimately leaving the pastorate.
But I was not dissuaded within myself. I continued to ponder the whole subject, and to study what I could find from Scripture. The story of Jacob and Laban’s two daughters spoke to me particularly. Jacob loved Rachel so much that he worked not one but seven years for her father—only to be deceived in the end and be given her sister Leah instead. But did Jacob despair? No. He served as a faithful husband to Leah, then willingly agreed to work another seven years for Rachel. Even though Laban had lied to him, Jacob submitted to him for fourteen years.
After all that time, you can be sure they all knew each other very intimately. Jacob would have known his future father-in-law like a brother. How can one not know a man with whom he has labored side-by-side for fourteen years? Jacob and Rachel, likewise, would have known each other like sister and brother. They surely would not have married solely on the basis of physical attraction or superficial acquaintance! Fourteen years had passed. They must have truly loved each other!
As I pondered the account, I saw that even though Laban played him false, Jacob proved the worth and integrity of his character by being willing to work all those years. Both Rachel and Laban knew what manner of man they were getting!
And what a demonstration of a man’s love! I love the passage that reads, “And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had for her.” No wonder God was able so to bless Jacob that in time he became more wealthy than Laban himself and eventually gave birth to the twelve patriarchs of Israel!
I cannot say I determined that such a before-marriage apprenticeship with one’s future parents-in-law could be termed a scriptural “standard.” In the end, however, I did become persuaded that it was biblically sound and in line with God’s intent. I was certainly convinced that God does intend Christian parents to play a more determinative and aggressive role in training their sons and daughters for marriage than is commonly accepted.
The conclusion of my reflections was the determination that even if I was unable as a pastor to communicate the importance of such preparation effectively, I would do it as a father. If I were ever myself blessed by God with a son or a daughter of my own, I decided that I would place such an injunction upon him or her before giving my approval to a marriage that they might consider.
Some would consider it a hard thing to exercise such control over his sons and daughters. But is it not the most loving kind of fatherhood imaginable to seek to protect one’s own child and spare no effort to obtain the best of all possible future marriages for him or her? Is that not exactly what God is constantly doing for us—watching out for us, helping us, guiding us, instructing us, he the loving and protective father, we his obedient and submissive children? Has he not arranged just such a marriage for us with his own dear Son? Is he not working day and night, all our lives long, to prepare us for that marriage? How can our earthly lives look anywhere but to that coming heavenly marriage as our example?
Some perhaps consider God’s overlordship a severe thing. But I say they know not what manner of Father their heavenly Father is! If they knew him, they would rejoice in his authority over every phase of their lives.
“Be it unto me according to your will, Father!” That is my constant prayer. It is the deepest cry of my being: “Oh, Father, watch my steps and guide me in your way in all things!”
But I stray from my purpose in writing to you, my dearest Corrie.
Let me continue. I was speaking of my thoughts if I myself were a father facing the marriage of one of my own.
If a young man were to come to me and say, “Mr. Braxton, I love your daughter, and I want to marry her,” I would measure his character and the depth of that love by his willingness to go along with my proposal.
“I would like nothing more, young man,” I imagine myself saying, “than to shake your hand as my son, and to give you my daughter as your wife. But first—I’m sure you understand—I must know what manner of Christian young man makes this request of me. So I ask you, do you love my daughter sufficiently to give yourself to me for a year, to live under my roof, to work with me, and talk with me and minister to people alongside me? Do you love her enough to make such a sacrifice—to earn the right to ask for her hand? Do you love her sufficiently to allow me to test your faith, to allow me to get to know you perhaps better than my own daughter knows you or even than you know yourself? Will you allow me to test your character as a man and as a Christian, to determine if I judge you worthy to be called my son-in-law?”
Such a one could well reply, “No, sir, I will be party to no such plan. It is not your right to decide whom your daughter will marry. That should be a decision between her and me alone. I am a free agent, an adult, capable of directing my own life, and I will offer to no other such a complete submission.”
If this were his reply, then I would know that he did not understand the most fundamental of all human institutions, that of fatherhood. I would know further that his resistance to my authority and my oversight over his and my daughter’s future indicated a flaw in his relationship with his heavenly Father—a flaw that goes by the name of independence. He has not apprehended his role as a child in submission to the heavenly Father’s authority, and therefore he takes um
brage at the thought of submission to me as the father of the woman he would make his wife.
I would therefore have no choice, if I wanted the best for my daughter, but to say, “I am sorry, my dear, but I cannot consent to give your hand to this young man. I know you think you love him a great deal at this present time. But in time, believe me, his independence and resistance to authority would inevitably cause you grief as his wife. Because he does not grasp the most fundamental truths of fatherhood or childhood, he is therefore ill-equipped to be a loving and sacrificial husband and even more ill-equipped to step into the proper role as a wise father to your children.”
I might hear my daughter reply, “But, Papa, he is young. How can you expect him to share your perspectives when you have been a minister and have been walking with God so much longer than he? He may well grow into all that you say.”
“Then he would have been willing,” I would reply. “Willingness is the indication of growth yet to come. No, my dear, of course I would not expect him or you to see things altogether as I see them. I look not necessarily for present level of maturity, but rather for willingness. A willing spirit is a spirit that will grow and will mature in time. But your young man was not willing, not even willing to inquire as to my reasons. He did not care to know my heart in the matter. And if he does not love you to that extent now, how much will he love you when the great stresses of life come to your marriage fifteen years from now?”
Oh, Corrie, I pray that you see what is in my heart! Do you see it?
During such a period of what I have, for lack of better term, called a marriage apprenticeship, all the facades would have time to be peeled away. Both parents would be able to know the quality of belief and the depth of character in the man or woman their son or daughter wants to marry.
What father does not want his daughter well provided for by a husband with foresight, integrity, and common sense? How better to determine whether a young man is capable of sustained work and a healthy outlook than to work alongside him for a year? And what mother does not want her son’s home well ordered and his children well raised by a woman with homemaking intuition and skills, a woman who loves children and understands how they are to be trained? What better way for a mother to determine such things than by bringing her future daughter-in-law into her own home to work alongside her?
Perhaps such a plan would not work in every case. Oh, but how many premature marriages between couples ill-suited for one another might be avoided if parents thus took more responsibility upon themselves for a wise and well-thought-out decision?
How wonderful even if the young man and young woman could share time under both parents’ roofs, perhaps for three of those twelve months, in an environment highly supervised by the parents. They, too, need to see each other with their hair down, in a family environment where stresses and strains reveal to the often cloudy eyes of love the stark realities of what a fiance may really be like when not on his or her forced best behavior.
Perhaps just as many ill-fated marriages would be avoided by the reconsideration of one of the two young people as from counsel by either set of parents. “I didn’t know that’s what you were like!” one might say. “I didn’t know you were so prone to anger . . . so self-centered . . . so irritable . . . so lazy . . . such a poor cook . . . so moody.”
I say, better these things be said, and the stars removed from the eyes now, while there is yet time, than after the marriage has been performed, when it is too late.
Am I too much a radical for you, Corrie?
I admit that mine is a far-reaching proposal, with astounding implications if Christians began practicing it in a widespread way.
I need not worry, for they will not.
Alas, it is the grief of my adult life to realize that most Christians do not take their faith seriously enough to allow its light to penetrate into all the many and varied corners of their existence. Marriage is a sad case in point, as my short time pastoring in Richmond attests.
But I am one who does take his faith seriously. I want the light of God’s truth to shine into every corner of my life where I can point it. And I know you share that desire. That is one of the chief reasons why I love you and why I want you to be my wife.
Well, this is not a treatise but an attempt to share with you something that is in my heart to do.
Clearly, what I have been explaining I have not had the opportunity to put into practice. I have no sons or daughters of my own, and none of those whom I counseled in this manner chose to follow my recommendation. All of a sudden I find myself contemplating marriage and realize that I had not given detailed consideration to what might happen in my own case! I honestly never expected to face this question, because I honestly never expected to marry. (That I could envision future children without ever considering where those children might come from can only be attributed to the unfathomable mystery of the mind. But that is exactly what I did.)
I have told you before, but I don’t know if you can fully appreciate what a huge change you have brought to my life. I am the most surprised of all to find that a young woman as wonderful and as devoted to the Father as you are would love me. And one unforeseen result is that now I suddenly find myself right in the middle of my own ponderings, something I had not anticipated!
I have been thinking about this almost from the day I wrote you the letter I sent by way of Sister Janette, and have decided what I want to do. I must live by the same convictions I espouse for others.
Here is my plan:
Your father does not know me. In one sense, Corrie, you do not know me that well either. The time together with which the Lord has blessed us has been relatively quite brief, and there were many unusual circumstances that could have artificially drawn us together. I want both you and your father to know me—really know me in the intimate way in which family members come to know one another. For me to put to your father now the subject of marriage to his daughter would be to place him in a position from which he could not make a wise and prudent decision. How could he? He has no possible way to determine whether I will make a worthy husband.
Don’t you see the wonderful protection there is in it, Corrie! Both of us are protected from allowing our love for each other to blind us to practical realities that only one who is married is capable of seeing.
I have never been a husband or a father. I cannot say with certainty whether I am capable of carrying out the responsibilities of either with the wisdom and love and sacrificial Christlikeness that both require. I love you too much not to want the very best for you.
What if that best is not me? How can I possibly know? Because men are so easily blinded as to their own motives and abilities, I am the least equipped to be able to answer the question insofar as it concerns me. And, dear Corrie, as much as I respect your maturity and judgment, neither are you equipped to answer the question as to what kind of husband and father I will make. You and I are both young, and your eyes, too, are clouded with love. If you will forgive my saying so, your judgment is no more to be depended upon than mine.
Similarly, how can either you or I know whether you are ready for marriage? How can we know how prepared you are to be a wife and mother? Like me, you have confessed that you did not expect to marry. Neither of us has spent years training and preparing ourselves for marriage. Is it wise for us to proceed?
But there is one whose eyes are not clouded, who is not young, who has been both a husband and a father for many years—a man who is a Christian and who has wide background in making decisions for himself, for his family, for his town, and even for his state. What wisdom such diverse experiences must have instilled in him. He is clearly in a much stronger position than either of us to evaluate the decision we face and to speak wisdom into our lives.
I am, of course, speaking of your father, and along with him your stepmother. If my father or mother were alive, then they too would enter into this process. But as they are not, the decision must rest solely with your parents an
d with you and me.
I want, therefore, to ask your father for more than your hand in marriage. I am going to ask him to allow me to submit to him in these ways I have spoken of. I will tell him that I do not want him merely to agree to what you and I would like to do, but that we desire to place the decision for what course we should follow fully into his hands. I will add that his decision must not be made until he knows me well enough and has seen me in sufficiently diverse circumstances to make a wise judgment concerning me.
Without pushing myself upon him, I want to ask your father if he would consider allowing me to work with him and your stepmother in whatever activities in which they are engaged, be it your father’s mine or the freight company you told me about or tending animals or building him a new building, or anything else. As long as I have my daily sustenance and a place to sleep, whether it be a barn or perhaps with some friends of your father’s in town, I will consider myself amply provided for.
With both your consent and his, my plan is to state our hopes of marriage, then to submit my way entirely to him for a year, at the end of which time he will be able to give us his decision and advise us in any way he chooses—counsel which you and I will gladly and eagerly receive.
I want to love you with the faithfulness Jacob demonstrated, and I want to prove that faithfulness to both you and your father. I feel it is right and proper and scriptural for me to earn the right to call myself your husband.
So that, my dear Corrie, is what I would like to do when I come to Miracle Springs, which I hope will be soon, before the year is out.
What do you think? Do you consider my plan altogether radical and ridiculous? I hope you do not. But I have been so in the habit of finding my ideas of spirituality looked askance upon by most with whom I share them that I find myself anxious about how you will react. Forgive me. I should trust you more than that. I will learn!
A Home for the Heart Page 6
