My thoughts... this Am

Okay... I was reading the newspaper this moring and I'm just so saddened... or maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but it made my heart cry.

This is the article that I was reading. And these were the things that made me sad... maybe I should stop reading The Standard.... it's actually such bad news reporting...

"According to Social Workers' General Union president Peter Cheung Kwok-che, the traditional view of marriage being an "iron contract" has broken down over the years as the younger generation absorb more liberal, Westernized values.

...

Hong Kong Institute of Family Education chairman Tik Chi-yuen said the survey points to a social trend in which young adults favor a "fantasy marriage" based on romantic love and youth.


He attributed this to the preponderance of overseas romantic movies and dramas that almost always end in an exchange of marital vows. Local television also plays its part, Tik said. For example, an ongoing local reality show called Brides Wannabes showed single women getting schooled by professionals on the art of snaring an eligible partner."

"Westernized values"? What exactly are these westernized values?! Forget the finger-pointing and the blaming game. I had started this as an "I'm so dissatisfied and angry at HK people for always blaming others for their problems." But... I must repent of my anger, and my own bias towards my own people. Let's look at the bigger picture... which is that this the enemy's attack on God's picture and plan for marriage. I believe in God, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, so to me there is only one picture of marriage that is correct, and that is God's!

In Mark 10 Jesus says, "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." 

There is no such thing as fantasy marrige. All those movies, K-dramas, Canto-dramas, Taiwanese dramas, chick flicks, reality TV shows... etc etc... their depiction of marriage has so distorted what God had intended for marrige.

In Genesis 2, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

In Ephesians 5, Paul describes marriage as "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

To unravel all of that theologically took Tim Keller like 7 sermons, so I'm not even gonna get into that. My point is that marriage is not meant to be easy... it is meant to be self-less. A dying of yourself, to pick up the cross to follow Christ. It is for God... to bring God glory, not to satisfy our own desires, or dreams or whatever. Perhaps you may find me idealistic... but too "Godly"... I can't control that. These are my thoughts... and I believe that marriage was desigined by God, to bring glory to God, and it makes my heart cry when I see what it's been turned into... and how easily people can divorce nowadays...

This is war my friends. And... in many parts of the world... in many marriages... the enemy is winning. Are you willing to stand in the gap for this? To take back for God what belongs to Him?!