Get On The Same Team

The way we define a word can make all the difference in what we think about that thing.

In Genesis 3, the serpent finds Eve in the Garden and attempts to redefine the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That means that the very first sin was an attempt at a redefinition– God said that something was to be avoided because it was bad, Satan said that the tree was something good and would make one wise.

Often, we find ourselves in battles over words, or find that the definition of words has been changed, and we think that these subtle changes are fine, but whoever controls the dictionary has a large control over the culture.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the attempt to redefine marriage over time. In the Bible, marriage was between a man and a woman for life from the beginning, but we don’t have to go very far to find someone attempting to change that. Lamech, also in the book of Genesis, takes two wives to proclaim his own greatness, and pollutes the definition. God lays out laws to protect women, widows, and orphans, only to find his people continue polygamy, and the king “after his own heart” commits a vile adultery.

Many women and children were treated like property, which was not God’s design. Marriage began to be viewed as “prison”, with “ball and chain” being a term applied to wives, and either the abusive husband or deadbeat dad being popular conceits. And then, in just the last few years, we added the idea that all marriages will end in divorce, and extended marriage to non-heterosexual couples.

So when we talk about marriage and try to focus on what God intended as recorded in the Bible, we shouldn’t be looking toward a 1950s version of marriage, or some romanticized version from books, but we should be looking toward what the point actually was for marriage. What was the design?

Let’s look at the pattern– God created two loving partners who were equipped to do a task together. Adam was told to name the animals, bring order to chaos, multiply, and tend the garden. He could not– I repeat, could not– do this alone, so God created for him the perfect being to be a part of that mission.

In English, a better word for what we see in the Creation is “Team”. That word contains everything we should think about when we think about when we think about marriage:

• There is a goal, a winning condition
• Everyone on the team has different roles that they fill to make it so the team will win (different positions, different hierarchy, etc.)
• Coaching the members on the team on how to play their role is foundational
  • Drills
  • Practice times
  • Creating the best lineup

So maybe it’s time to think of marriage in different terms, terms that help us understand a group that works together until we can fix or redeem the word marriage?