Several years ago, I read the self-help book entitled “Love is a Choice”.  Although the reasons why I read the book aren’t important to this discussion, its applications are.  It has been my belief, for as long as I can recall that love is in fact, a choice.  From my perspective, the love that you bring into a relationship and the actions associated with expressing that love are a choice.  Sadly, there are many among us who would disagree with that.  Perhaps the most damaging evidence that my beliefs are based on “fairy tails” comes from marriages.  Ironically, this is one of the areas I feel ought to substantiate my beliefs and not invalidate them.  For many, however, the sad reality is that love, and the language associated with love, is not a choice.  Rather, love is given based on “causality” or an action-reaction/cause-effect type paradigm.  This concept is very well explained in the movie The Matrix: Revolutions.  It is worth your time if you haven’t seen it but I digress.  For many, their view on love in a relationship is the same type of view that one would expect to see in the work place: you are compensated to perform a certain task and that is the reason that you perform the task.  In this model, choice really has nothing to do with it.  If you do the work, you are compensated; if you don’t do the work, you are not compensated.  Now don’t get me wrong, there is a certain amount of give and take in any relationship.  What I am talking about, however, lies beyond the scope of normal give and take.  The phrase “I have to give until it hurts” keeps popping into my head.  I don’t think that is what God intended and furthermore, I don’t believe that it is implied at all anywhere in Scripture.

Brothers and sisters, I tell you this in all sincerity.  One of the ways in which the evil one works in this world is through relationships, particularly in marriage.  It isn’t too hard to see the path of destruction that lies in the aftermath these days, even with limited casual observation of the world around us.  I see his attack as two-fold: the obvious and the subtle.  The obvious means in which he attempts to destroy a marriage include such things as pornography, domestic violence, etc. etc.  That isn’t a stretch of the imagination as there are very real and, in some case, very highly publicized cases in which this type of attack is verifiable.  The subtle methods, however, are a little less publicized and in certain situations, may not be perceived to be real by anyone other than the person going through it.  This brings about the question at this point, is love a choice in your relationship or is it a victim of causality?  When you do something for your spouse, is it with the intention of getting something in return, is it to repay them for something that they have recently done for you, or are you making a choice to do this act for them because you want to do it for them.  Has your expression of love through actions become the standard, and therefore is expected at all times, or is it simply because you are choosing to express your love in that manner.  Worse yet, is there an invisible scoreboard in which you keep track of such things only to pull that out later and, dare I say it, use that as ammunition as to why your spouse should now do this thing for you.  Again, normal give and take aside in all relationships, this tends to lend credence to the concept of causality rather than choice.  It only takes a slight crack in the foundation for the damn to break.  Similarly, it only takes a slight crack in the marriage to allow the evil one a stronghold into the relationship.  For some, this crack can, for the most part, be identified and resolved so that it returns to that which God intended in the beginning with little residue.  For others, it leads to more cracks and before you know it, the damage has been done and both parties are looking at the other person blaming them for what happened.  Regardless of the outcome, the battle plans have been made and the attack is either pending or actively ongoing.  The cold hard fact is that we live in a fallen world.  We must learn to defend ourselves and fight for our spouses and marriages.  Why?  Remember that marriage is a contract between you, your spouse and God.  By attacking the marriage, there is a potential to attack the relationship with God.  What a powerful victory for the evil one in those situations.  Ephesians 6:11 instructs us to “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”  This is particularly important in marriage.

If I haven’t lost you up to this point, congratulations and thank you for persevering.  And to validate your thoughts right now, yes, I have two different themes going on.  Or do I????  How, in all honesty, can we fight for our spouse and our marriage if we have already brought the works of the evil one into the relationship?  If the love in our marriage isn’t a choice, how, or in some cases, why do we fight for it?  Having said that, I will be devoting the next several blog postings to this subject matter.  As I begin this process, I humbly ask that you pray for me as I seek only to shed God’s light and truth on this matter.  I also ask that you would pray for my wife and our marriage as I fully expect for the battle to intensify in that area.  Until next time, I leave you with I Corinthians 16:13-14:

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.  Do everything in love.”

Your brother in Christ,


Jim