This is a surprising little short film. Here is the official description

“Mr Roberts finds himself awoken inexplicably in a white room. A man sits before him at a desk and in between them stands a black button. If Mr Roberts pushes it, he will receive a briefcase filled with millions of dollars. Or he can take the key to the door and leave penniless. The catch? Pushing the button will result in the death of a human being. What would you do?”

I was surprised at the ending of this film. It really hits you and makes you think about your own situation

Continuing in the series on marriage, I want to talk about a much misunderstood topic from the Bible concerning the concept of marriage. And that topic is the notion of “One Flesh,” or more precisely, what is meant when God says that he takes two people and makes one out of them when they are married. This comes from the following scripture.

And then Jesus added to this when questioned on the subject of divorce.

We can see from these passages that God takes marriage very serious. So much to the point that God says that when he marries someone he joins them together so that they are one flesh and not two and therefore he warns let no one separate what he has put together. What does he mean when he says this? I heard a preacher once state that when God puts us together he knits us together like a giant afghan in that he takes a blue thread and a red thread and intertwines the two together to make one beautiful garment. While that is a beautiful picture, I find a fault in this picture in that you can unravel the object that was knit together and have two separate pieces of yarn again. Anyone who has been through a divorce, especially if children are involved, will tell you that unraveling the marriage and becoming totally separated and two complete individuals again is impossible because there is some kind of connection that exists between the two who were married. Often this connection is attributed to the existence of children that were in the marriage. But I think there is something deeper there.

I asked God once what he meant when he said that he joined to people together into one flesh and he gave me an illustration that I believe answers the problem above and shows why God is so strongly against divorce. He showed me two buckets of paint. One bucket was of white paint and the second one was of black paint. Then I saw the two buckets being mixed together into a new bucket of paint that was gray. God said, “This is what I mean when I join two into one flesh.” You see when you mix black and white and get gray you get a single (one) new creation out of what previous (two) existed. There is no longer white or black, only gray. When two people get married, God mixes their spirits into one gray can of paint so that spiritually they are one person because God has joined them together. Now, the problem that occurs when one wants to get a divorce is that you can no longer get black out of gray because it has been fully mixed into becoming a new thing which is gray. Likewise you can not take out white out of the gray anymore. Therefore, when a divorce occurs, half of the can of paint leaves and not just the black, but a mix of the black and the white. This is why Jesus warned the following:

If we were separate strands of threads that could easily be pulled apart out of a garment then separating, divorcing and marrying another should not in any way be adultery. However, if we are joined into one gray can of paint so that it is impossible to pull out black or white and then divorce, which means take half of the can of gray paint and leave, then we are taking part of our spouse with us because you can not separate the colors out of the gray. If that be true, then if we try to remarry, we are still joined spiritually to our former wife and thus would be committing adultery in God’s eyes who sees both the spiritual and the physical. This, I believe, is the perfect picture of what God does when he marries to people and joins them together and why God warns not to divorce and why God sees remarriage as adultery.

What then are we to do in this society if we run into trouble within our marriage? To begin with, you need to seek good counsel. Be weary of any who would advise that you leave your marriage with the exception of abuse because God does not desire that you suffer any abuse. Pray that God would help your situation and heal your marriage. Seek the Lord, because he is the one that can heal anything that has gone wrong. It does not matter how far gone or lost you feel your marriage has become, it can be saved. Allow me to share about my marriage.

The year was 1998 and we had been married for seven years at the time. I was going to college and my wife was working hard at night at UPS loading trucks because only UPS offered benefits at part time hours. Our days were long and the same. I would get up and be at college by 7am. My wife would get up with our two daughters (at the time that was all we had, we are now blessed with three children) and watch them until about 4pm when she took them to the babysitters. I would leave school about 6pm and pick the girls up from the babysitters and bring them home. I would watch them until 8pm and which point they would go to bed. A quick straighten of the house and then I was doing homework until the late hours of the night. My wife would arrive home some time after midnight. Sunday was spent doing church all day with a break for lunch and Saturday we spend running errands that could be run and fighting because of tension over money mostly. Stress was high and money was tight and there was only so much of everything to go around and we lived like this for literally months. Finally, my wife was pregnant for a child we lost and as we lost the child our Christian doctor told us to go home and confess to each other. What a word from a doctor. Well that confession session both nearly destroyed and eventually saved our marriage because our marriage had been rocked by an affair and it was eating at the heart of everything but as a hidden underbelly just the way the enemy likes it. When this confession came out, well, it seemed like all hell broke loose in our marriage. My wife had begun packing and said she was going to her mom’s and wanted a divorce. I told her no, but I honestly was not sure I wanted her to stay. In the coming weeks, things got so bad that the original elders who were helping us told us that there was no way to reconcile and get a divorce. Imagine for a moment that the church elders you went to for help were telling you that there was no hope and to give up. We went to the Pastor and told him where we were and he recommended another couple in our church. While leery, we went. By this time, I had my speech down as to why I hated my wife and everyone else should too, it is amazing she stayed through that. Gary and Gina sat us down and asked us what was going on. I got maybe a sentence or two into my speech when Gary interrupted me and asked, “How is your walk with Christ?” Before I even knew what I was saying the following words came out of my mouth, “What does that have to do with anything?” And that was the heart of the problem. From there, they were able to bring us back to Christianity 101 and then build us up from ground and a solid foundation and now our marriage is stronger than we ever thought it could be.

I share this testimony to let you know that no matter what you may be facing and however dark and bleak it may seem God can heal your marriage if you let him. In our situation, we were hurting and the hurt began long before the affair and because of that we suffered, we both suffered because remember we are one can of gray paint and if communication is not working than instead of God’s design working where when one is down the other can lift them up, you wind up bringing the other down. But God healed all of that. We were right there perhaps moments from filing papers and God brought us back and he can bring you back also. He can heal you and restore the joy to your can of paint again. He can restore hope back into your marriage and your life because God is love and love hopes. Love bears all, love believes all, love endures all, love hopes all and love never ever fails (1 Corinthians 13:7-8). Focus on God and his love will fill you and your marriage and restore hope again and he will heal what was broken because God loves to heal the broken hearted.

I hope this illustration about how God joins two together has helped you. Next post we will discuss the roles of each spouse and how they are to interact together in a Godly marriage. There is a lot of misconception in this area and everyone needs to know the truth. So stay tuned.

Love in Christ

The Marriage Series (so far):

• Part 1 : Marriages – Introduction