I Built My Theology on a John Mayer Lyric (By Accident)
“Well, the lucky in love call themselves winners - And losers are sinners who have gone astray”
How did John Mayer sum up what so many Christians think about singlehood and marriage?
Somehow we’ve come to believe marriage is the reward at the end of the faith race, and being single means you haven’t won yet.
It’s insane, but I believed it.
I didn’t know I believed it - but it was there.
Maybe it’s because Paul used the word, gift when he discussed singlehood, that some folks are uniquely gifted to be single. Maybe, somehow, we’ve added all Disney has to teach and created a narrative that some Christians relational fate is out of their hands; some are fated to be single while others are fated to be married.
I subconsciously believed this for a long time.
I wanted to be married by 22 but didn’t get married until I was 29, so I had a lot of time to worry about my relational fate. It grew quite complicated.
I realize now it was much more simple;
I needed to unlearn a lot before I could get married.
I needed to divorce some mindsets before I could ever marry a person.
It feels embarrassing to admit now, but I truly believed that romantic love meant everything would be easy. Love = ease. If it wasn’t unbelievably easy, then it wasn’t love. The love at first sight love would be so charged that it would feel like we’d been custom-made for each other. I would know the script. I would know what to say and what she was going to say, everything would have been pre-decided, or fated. The script says “happily ever after,” so no matter what, the process will be smooth sailing because I’ve met the one. (Or “my person” as people say these days)
But I soon realized this was a protection mechanism. I took all my “faith” and misunderstanding of love and put it all into creating an unbelievably unrealistic expectation, not of the person, but of the process. I thought if I found the right person, there would be no risk.
Getting hurt, making mistakes, making sacrifices, loving the person in spite of their issues, and having to pray I’d be loved in spite of my own — all of this would have been “settling” in my mind. It was as if I thought anything requiring effort meant I wasn’t with the right person.
But there is nothing real about that.
The reality of the love I have with my wife is astronomically better than what I had previously wanted. And through that process, I learned I was hoping for love without effort. However, the effort, the verb aspect of love (to quote John again), is the most wonderful part.
Marriage not only takes effort, but it is effort. There is no separating the two.
We will not only have to show up, to be in attendance, but we will need to be fully present.
My marriage will not work because I’ve chosen someone of quality, although that obviously makes our chances of working out much higher. My marriage will work because both parties choose to do the work, further becoming people of quality.
I believe people approach Christ the same way. They take the love and grace of God and create a faith without effort. His love and work are so strong, like my belief in romantic love, that their new-found relationship with God requires nothing but their attendance. They just show up every day with their script, ready to love the fact that they are loved.
But love, even faith, not only requires but is effort; a faith that works must be a faith that works.
Better said - Faith that is effective will be a faith that puts in the effort.
To prove this point biblically, let us consider this verse from 2 Peter 1:5;
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith…”
He goes on to make a list of the virtues our faith requires, which we will get to. But we must pay attention to the three sections in this simple verse;
- “For this very reason
Before he tells us what we should do, he says we should do it for a reason. What reason is Peter talking about?
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” - 2 Peter 1:3-4
For the sake of time, we’ll break it down this way; God has done so much for us that it demands a response from us. He has brought so much to the table, we too must bring something.
- make every effort to
We must now bring our full effort. It is not because the work of God is lacking - God does not need my effort - but my faith does. These four simple words tell me effort is required and I must channel that effort strategically. What for?
- supplement your faith.”
It’s not as if the person I’m putting my faith in needs help, but my faith does.
When I was single, I had unrealistic expectations - not of the type of person God would bring me but of the type of process. I desired a process without effort or work. In the same way, we must realize the person of salvation (Jesus) does not need any assistance, but we must be active participants in the process.
We must also be active participants in our romantic relationship.
Because I desire all of the good things marriage provides, I must be willing to bring the effort in every season; in looking, in dating, engagement, and marriage.
God will not bring me an easy process - that's too boring.
He will not bring me a perfect person - that would be unfair to them.
God will bring me an imperfect person that I can actively love (verb) with my full effort, and in the process of being married to them, we will both become better versions of ourselves - capable of serving God and loving people better. It will require work, which actually becomes the fun part.
And the romantic part is not that we were fated to be together - what’s so romantic about someone else choosing each other for us?
True romance isn’t fate - it’s choice.
The romance is found in the reality that she could have chosen someone else, but she chose me. And I could have chosen someone else, but I chose her.
Just like in love, our effort is crucial to our faith, but you’ll have to buy this book later on to find out.