When Sinners Say I Do: Discovering the Power of the Gospel for Marriage, by Dave Harvey. Originally published in 2007.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I look toward most marriage books with a deep cynicism that I am not proud of, but which is almost always rewarded. This often goes double when it comes to Christian marriage books. Experience has taught me that even the best of the best Christian commentators are n fact, products of the culture in which they have been born, and as is typical of moderns, they tend to shy away from hard or unpleasant truths.
The most unpleasant truth as it relates to most of the marriage problems the average, middle class Christian faces is that the west has cultivated two generations of women who are spoiled, entitled, and innately rebellious when it comes to Scripture's prescription for the behavior of wives in marriage. This is not to negate the reality that the men and women of every generation are counterparts who deserve one another. The men are barely any better. However, the accountability chasm between the sexes is huge.
Men are held to the same expectations as they were 100 years ago, and pay the price when they fail. Women are held to very few standards, and when we fail at those, we are mostly coddled and allowed to pass the buck. The secular world justifies this using "the Patriarchy", and church justifies it using "Federal Headship" and the loathsome "servant leader".
Nevertheless, we are a part of a very good church, and are reading this book as a part of a ministry there. SAM and I were sorely tempted to skip it, but we're trying to resist the temptation to think that being happily married after 30 years means we have nothing to learn. So, we decided to give it a go.
Dave Harvey's book has turned out to be a pleasant surprise. This isn't to say that I agreed 100% with everything in it. But what he does, and does well, is remind Christians that we are called to a standard of love and forgiveness that, if followed with God's help, will mitigate the tendency for marriages to go off the rails. After all, when marriages fail, they don't often fail as a result of one of the big three: abuse, addiction, or adultery. It's usually the result of a long line of grievances, misunderstandings, and slights leading to an erosion of love that seems irredeemable.
Harvey's thesis is this: the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18: 23-35) is an object lesson for each of us, as believers, in our marriage relationship. The unmatched mercy that God showed us in response to the unfathomable debt our sin created should serve as the preeminent principle when dealing with our own spouse when they sin against us.
Harvey doesn't play the "man bad, woman good" card, which I am honestly always on the lookout for. He's a husband, so of course he uses his own sin as a jumping off point for many examples, as well as the examples offered in Scripture, which are also overwhelmingly male. But Harvey is pretty clear that wives sin against husbands as much as husbands sin against wives.
Harvey makes two excellent point in the book that I want to highlight here before I offer my one criticism and wrap this up. The first is that people stop believing that marriage automatically comes with problems, and that there are no such things as "marriage problems". There are individual sin problems, and lack of mercy problems (sin again), which manifest themselves in marriage. Marriage is blissful and beautiful when each spouse is willing to confront their own sin. I agree with this 100%.
The second point was that humility means we suspect ourselves first. Even if our spouse was irritable, curt, or dismissive. That can be addressed with clear, calm communication, but reacting to sin in kind rather than responding to it with grace, closes the door to a peaceful resolution. I speak from experience when I say that stopping to consider my own wrong motivations, unreasonable expectations, and problematic behavior does wonders to stop me from reacting sinfully rather than responding gracefully. These are issues where Harvey hits the target dead center.
If there was one quibble I had with Harvey, it's with the apparent assertion that any negative emotion in response to a spouse's words or behavior is automatically sinful He doesn't say this, but I often felt as if it was implied. I recognize that "the anger of the man cannot produce the righteousness of God", but I'm not sure I agree that all anger, frustration, or even irritation is born of a sinful impulse. Note: I said I'm not sure. It may be, but I'm still pondering the idea.
Another quibble is with the idea that feeling deprived of certain needs demands that we question our motivations. What many would consider needs in marriage, or any any relationship, Harvey would acknowledge as "legitimate desires" that we turn into idols when we allow anger to take root in their absence. I'm not sure I can fully embrace this line of thinking either. In some instances, I agree 100%. However, where Scripture plainly and explicitly outlines expectations of spouses, I am reluctant to reduce these things from needs to "legitimate desires" simply because we can live without them.
This discussion of needs and desires, by the way, was not related to physical intimacy. It was mostly about the kinds of needs women express, men express, certain personality types express, etc. At no point does Harvey assert that physical intimacy can be treated as optional. In fact, Harvey does a very good job of expressing the importance of sex in marriage, what it adds to the marriage, how it protects the marriage, and of warning against depriving one another as a Scriptural admonition. He devotes an entire chapter at the end of the book to driving home this point.
Overall, it's a good book. If nothing else, it reminds us to take the beam out of our eye before deigning to try and remove the speck from our spouse's. That was worth the time to read it.
4/5
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