And the two shall become him...

These words of Jesus are repeated four times in the New Testament: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one...” Matthew and Mark both give identical first hand accounts and Paul later repeats this quote in both 1 Corinthians and Ephesians.

Biblical marriage it is a lofty goal and achieving oneness is nothing short of a miracle. Marriage is an institution which is heavily influenced by culture. The standard that Jesus lays out was extremely foreign to the culture of His day. He told them in no uncertain terms that they had gotten it wrong for a couple of millennia when the passage goes on to say, “They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”

The patriarchal culture that has formed the foundation of our great nation paid lip service to oneness, but in practice, I think we have gotten it wrong. It is a topic that no two people will see exactly the same and there is room for disagreement, but perhaps not as much wiggle room as we have taken. My husband and I entered marriage 28 years ago thinking we had covered all the bases and we were on the same page, but we very quickly learned that was not the case. I want my children and their future spouses to enter a marriage with fewer surprises so I hope they will give careful consideration to these ideas and find their own definition of what it means to become ‘one.’

I find the terms complementarian and egalitarian completely useless so I will use neither. I am neither in some ways and both in others. I’ve read books that define egalitarianism as believing that men and women are identically suited to all roles which I find absurd. I’ve seen complementarians claim they embrace ‘different but equal,’ but I’ve yet to find one who actually practiced it that way.

In patriarchy, the two become one - him. I could write a book illustrating this from personal experience: The guy who informed his wife at the church picnic that he was ‘pulling rank’ on her and it was time to leave. There is no rank in oneness. (But ‘rank’ is a good word as the concept definitely stinks.) The tired cliche, “Anything with two heads is a freak.” There aren’t two heads in oneness. There is one head - ours. Funny how we assume that the only head the counts when the two become one is his head. (This idea comes from the doctrine of headship which I will save for another time but when Jesus talked about marriage, He made no allusion to that.)

The couple who enters the patriarchal marriage each receives certain cards from a single deck and these cards define their roles according to cultural norms. There are a few wild cards that they will get to define for themselves. Maybe she has experience in accounting so they agree that she will handle the books. Maybe he is a chef so he will do more cooking even though that card is in her half of the deck. The one card he holds that makes all the difference is the trump card. He is perfectly justified in playing it whenever he wants and she is duty bound to obey.

In patriarchy, she is his subordinate. I think back to I Love Lucy. It was comedy gold but it illustrated a culture where the wife saw herself almost as a child who had to use cunning and manipulation to get what she wanted from her husband. Looking at it now, it seems satirical, but it wasn’t at the time. In patriarchy, we are taught to ‘appeal’ to an authority when we find them breaching our boundaries. What that means in practice is that we find a way to manipulate the person or situation indirectly. We have no power, no right of refusal, so we have to convince the authority to change their mind. I am reminded of the scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest’s mom does what she has to do to get Forrest into regular school. Women in patriarchy often become master manipulators. Not all men in patriarchy are monsters, but I haven’t met one yet who never played his trump card.

Some might argue that you’d have to be a real Polyanna to think that two people could be one on all issues. There will be days when they reach an impasse and in those times, someone has to have the final say. When there is no trump card, they have to find a mutually agreeable solution. In a partnership where we are all on the same team, it can be achieved. In patriarchy, the solution is always the same. The two do not become one hybrid of both in patriarchy. The two become him.

In Biblical oneness as I have come to see it, rather than

one deck of cards with predefined roles that are split between us, we each come with our unique box of gifts and skills and goals and we unpack those together. In the same way our possessions are unpacked to fill our one home for the benefit of both, our two skill sets and hope sets and dream sets are intentionally fit together like the pieces of a puzzle until they merge into one new unique identity. A partnership where both put the other ahead of themselves and neither has to worry about the other ‘pulling rank.’

I’ll admit, I’ve not seen much of this model up close. During the 40 years of my grandparents’ 60 year marriage that I was privileged to see, they seemed to instinctively work in tandem. I don’t know if that was because they had already worked out the kinks or if they just rejected the grooming of patriarchy that tells little boys they are the boss and little girls they are not. But my grandparents’ unChristian marriage beat pretty much every other marriage I’ve seen with few exceptions. I do think that oneness is a miracle that really can’t be achieved without two people both seeking to know and to do the will of God. What that looks like for each couple will uniquely fill the needs of both halves of the whole and not the needs of one to the exclusion of the other.