Mere Christianity (cont)

I found Lewis' chapter on marriage 'lovely'. A couple of chapters prior to this one Lewis says that great moral teachers don't acutally instruct their followers in anything new but they remind their followers of those things that they already know and which often get lost in the fog of life. So in this chapter Lewis reminded me that God intended marriage to be a 'single organism' (one flesh). In stating this God was not expressing a sentiment but a fact. A fact that can be equated to a lock and key, a violin and a bow - a violin is not a violin without its bow! Our inventor - God- made something that consisted of two parts. This union is complex. One aspect of this union is sexual but you cannot isolate this aspect from the whole and still gain the benefit of the whole. Just like you cannot get the full benefit of eating by just putting food in your mouth and not chewing, or tasting food and then spitting it out.

However it is this thing called love why so many people in the world get married and it is whilst 'in love' that promises to be true are made. Though made whilst in love the promise was made to be true even when love ceased. Lewis says of this

A promise must be about things I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He may as well promise never to have a headache, or to always feel hungry

Being 'in love' may cease but this does not mean we should cease to love. Love goes beyond feeling,

"...it is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthned by habit -reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both ask for and recieve from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if allowed, be "in love" with someone else. Being 'in love' first moved them to promise fidelity, this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage should run."