Transparent Marriage

"To be loved by not known is comforting, but superficial. To be known by not loved is our greatest fear. To be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God." — Tim Keller

Today we begin a four week series on marriage, a tough but important topic to consider. The idea behind the series is to look at four marriages from the Bible and see what they have to tell us about marriage. This first week's focus is on Adam and Eve, but it's not on what you might think.

The focus is on nakedness, but again not in the way we might think. The idea is transparency, being completely open, known, and unashamed before our spouse. That can be tough even under idea circumstances, but it is what God intended marriage to be, and it is what we all crave.

The quote from Tim Keller hits on this. We desire to be fully known and fully loved, but sometimes our previous experiences can hurt that. Whether it's past romantic relationships, familial relationships, or friendships, we all have experienced times when we were transparent and it burned us. That makes it hard, sometimes, for us to be willing to go that deep again.

I think about my own marriage, which is 18 months old, and I feel a great sense of happiness about the ways we are able to share with one another. But it was a process, one that began when we started dating. It's a process of making yourself vulnerable, and trusting that the other person will affirm you, build you up, and love you anyway.

That doesn't always happen. I see people whose relationships are broken, and often you can trace it back to a lack of trust and transparency. Things happened that broke that trust, and sometimes people can't get it back.

Adam and Eve endured their own incident of broken trust, and the Bible doesn't offer a lot of details about them later in life. We follow their children, and we know they stayed together and built a family, but we don't know how, exactly.

But we have to suspect that a foundation for that rebuilding of the relationship, as is the case in all areas of our lives, is an abiding faith in God. Through Him all things are possible. That's important to remember when we feel naked and ashamed before the ones we love.