Christopher on “marriage as discipleship”

Christopher makes some important points here, offering a corrective, I think, to some of the things I said here. For Christians, marriage isn’t just about “happiness,” but as Christopher rightly points out, it’s also a way of living out our discipleship. Or in Lutheran terms, it’s a vocation that allows us to learn to love the neighbor in a particular context. This doesn’t refer just to loving our spouses and children (if any), but also making our households blessings for the larger community. A household turned in on itself–concerned solely for its own prosperity and happiness, say–falls short of what Christians are called to. This may be a particularly countercultural word that the Christian understanding of marriage offers today.