Pastoral Reflections on Marriage: Part 2

*Posted by Everett Berry. For part one of this series, click here.

I recently posted some initial reflections on the criteria that I gradually came to embrace during my early years of pastoring when it came to possibly being involved in a wedding ceremony. Again for quick review, the first two concerns I discussed pertained to whether inquiring couples were believers and were they sexually active. And as I mentioned the benefits of asking these seemingly elementary questions, I highlighted the fact that a positive answer to the first question did not necessarily mean the second inquiry was answered in the negative. But this dilemma aside, another question I would ask couples was-

Question #3: Would they be willing to receive at least three sessions of pre-marital counseling from me? There were several reasons for this question. One obviously was so that I could help couples come to grips with what a marriage fundamentally entailed both practically and theologically. For instance, often brides-to-be would be consumed with the knight-in-shining-armor mirage or were deceived into thinking that a marriage would allow them to escape some sort of difficult situation in which they found themselves. I would be compelled to let them know that no matter how responsible, charming, or mature their hunk of burn’n love was, every man was still a sinner in need of selfless sacrifice and divine grace. On other occasions, men would be duped into thinking that getting married would help them overcome their struggles with lust because now they would have a legitimate outlet. However I would be quick to inform them that many times marriage can create new venues which intensify temptation rather than nullify it.

Yet even beyond the probing of simple misconceptions of marriage, counseling also became a requirement for me because I did not want couples to see my involvement as just a means of getting a marriage license. My service as a minister of the gospel is not equivalent to being a generic justice of the peace for hire who provides a little more respectable environment than a Vegas wedding chapel. I wanted couples to know that if I was going to be involved in something as sacred as their bonding together in this covenant before God, there was going to have to be some life rehearsal beforehand. Sometimes this attitude would weed out couples for various reasons including not having time to meet, having to get married with very short notice, or just thinking that counseling was a waste of time. And to be fair, I am not necessarily saying that I always thought every couple in this category shouldn’t have gotten married. But for me, I saw my possible involvement as having an intangible sense of accountability. So at the end of the day, I could not separate my act of providing a legal marital declaration from counseling the couple. Why? Because in a sense, being asked to do a wedding without having any pre-marital counseling would be like asking me to do a funeral but forbidding me from preaching the gospel at the service. As a Christian, both of these acts are inseparable.