The Value of Christian Marriage

This past Friday, I read something that made me wonder if we as Christians truly value marriage?  I mean seriously, if you label yourself as a believer of God whether you're Baptist, Catholic or Methodist, etc, and you get married you are charged by God to keep your union holy and pure according to His standards.  So, why then do I see so many couples practicing things within their marriage that disgraces the sacred union they entered? 

For example, I read on a certain blog that I subscribe to that the author went to strip clubs with her husband on a few occasions and doesn't mind him going to those kinds of places. Now my logic is this: if you still feel the need to oogle some other chicks naked booty and breasts then why are you with me?  When you take your wedding vows, you vow to honor the other person and to love them.  Well, honor means to show the purest of respect.  And while love can't really be defined, I can say that if my husband is still going to strip clubs he can't love me enough.

I can't help but feel like more and more we as Christians are selling out to the world's standards.  I feel like I'm becoming a minority when it comes to doing the marriage thing God's way.  Seriously, if my future husband ever asked me to go to a strip club, I would:

1. Ask if he was crazy.
2. Remind him that he's married and has a wife who has the same goods as those girls at the club.
3. Hit him divorce papers if I found out he was making strip club visits on the regular!

Yea, some of you might say number 3 is a little bit harsh, but I take my faith seriously.  And having come from a family where all my aunts and a most of my uncles are divorced due to adultery, I have learned that marriage is not something you enter in lightly.  I'm not holier than thou either because I sin, but I don't make the conscious effort to do so or cosign on my mate sinning and disrespecting our marriage.  I'm pretty sure that Lust is one of the Seven Deadly sins.  Also, we can find quite a few stories in the Bible that warn against coveting others who are not your spouse.

So, why then are some women and men content to let their spouses out to places like that without a word?  More important why get married if you're going to keep up behavior similar to living a single lifestyle?  Let's be frank, you're traveling a path to Hell anyway, so not just move in together and skip the marriage vows?  If it's having legal rights to a person's property when they die or whatever they make wills and last wishes that could take care of that.

Maybe, because I'm getting married in the near future I'm getting heated about this.  Or maybe it's my fear of wondering what kind of marriage my daughter will have that scares me.  Seriously, if people of my generation and even those twice my age are settling for this, what will my Moo have to settle for?  And why is it so hard for us to live by God's standards instead of the world's?  I am forever puzzled by this complex issue and can never seem to come up with an answer.

My only hope is that wholesome marriages like the Huxables portrayed on The Cosby Show will come back in style.  I for one will be doing everything in my power when I tie the knot to uphold my vows and the marriage commandments outlined in the Good Book!!