During my conversations with Bishop Eliphaz, the topic of marriage came up. He has been following attentively the developments in the west with marriage and the changes that were happening. I always like to take every opportunity to learn from the people I meet, so while we were on the subject I asked him to share his wisdom on marriage and finding my “Eunice” (his wife). He gave me two pieces of advice.
Don’t wait too long
The first was to marry young. This was interesting to me, as its very counter culture. These days I am more often told not to get married early, to “enjoy life” and to be sure this is who you want to spend the rest of your life with. I think this has come from societies changing view of marriage, and in some respects it has seeped into the church. Society views marriage in quite a negative way I feel – “the old ball and chain”, don’t get “tied down”. I feel it’s a little ironic that we are told to “be sure who you want to spend the rest of your life with” by a society that doesn’t really see marriage as a life long commitment anymore.
The Bishop explained his reasoning behind it, which is an upside down way of I think how we traditionally “plan” our marriages. He said to get marry young, so you can have a family and then when they grow up, your still not too old to do something with your life, or to do certain things, to have fun. He wasn’t saying that he and Eunice were too old. But he was, when looking at his grandchildren, reflecting on how much easier it would be to interact with them if he was still younger.
I think this is a flipped view of how we plan our marriage in the west. The way I always saw it, and the way I’ve heard it discussed is that you have fun, enjoy life together at the start, then you focus in on having a family afterwards. Which one is better? I’m not sure, I think an element of both are good. Build a strong foundation early in your marriage, then focus on building a family early enough, so that when they have grown up, you still have some youth left to spend on each other!
