This past weekend I watched Fireproof on television. In this movie Kirk Cameron plays a fire chief who has been married for seven years to a woman who is the public relations person for a large hospital. When the story begins, their marriage is in shambles, and the wife tells him that she is filing for divorce.
As we get to know these characters, we find out that the husband is a good guy in almost every way. He puts his own life at risk time and time again to save people who are trapped in burning buildings, trapped in cars on railroad tracks with fast-moving trains bearing down on them, and, we assume, trapped in various other situations to which we are not made privy during the course of the movie. This guy loves his wife, but they are no longer close; perhaps, because he also has an internet porn habit that takes up most of his free time.
The wife cries a lot and is angry a lot because she is disgusted by his porn habit. She has, however, met a doctor at the hospital where she works whom she believes to be everything her husband is not—gentle, sweet, loving, and intensely interested in her. She believes that after she dumps her husband she will marry the doctor and live happily ever after. The only problem is that the doctor is married—a fact that he keeps hidden from everyone at the hospital.
The movie deals with how through agreeing to complete a forty-day exercise in working to win back his wife’s affection, the husband comes to understand his own shortcomings and strives to become the godly husband that she deserves.
The underlying theme that struck me as the story unfolded was that if any troubled marriage is to be saved, at least one partner must accept the responsibility of doing everything in his or her power to repair the damage. Although the husband did have a porn habit, which was a major contributor to their marital problems, he did not want his marriage to end, and he had not stopped loving his wife. He was the one, therefore, who had to take the lead in working out their problems.
Each day for forty days the husband is required to perform some act of kindness and thoughtfulness for his wife as instructed by the Love Dare manual, and each day his efforts are met with rejection and anger. Encouraged by his father, however, the husband continues until he is finally on day 43 of a 40-day exercise.
As I watched Fireproof, I began thinking about how we deal with problems in our own marriages. The party who is mostly in the right tends to take the position that the party who is mostly in the wrong is the one who needs to change. While that may be true, the fact is that the party who is mostly in the wrong probably has no desire to change or to work on the marriage. Any steps taken to repair the marriage, therefore, will fall on the shoulders of the spouse who is mostly in the right.
I believe that the Bible bears out the thinking that the spouse who is mostly in the right is the one who will take the lead in repairing a broken marriage. I Corinthians, chapter 13 says, “Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong….If you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost.”
In American culture we are taught to stand up for ourselves and demand that we be given all that we believe to be rightfully ours. We are told that we should never allow anyone, especially our spouses, to “run over us” or take us for granted; “Don’t get mad; get even.” If your spouse fails you, “throw the bum out!”
While this kind of advice makes us feel empowered, it has also led to a divorce rate that is the highest in the history of our country. While we are demanding our own way, holding grudges, and bringing up every wrong that our spouse has ever done to us whenever we have an argument, our marriages are falling apart.
I want to say that there are some circumstances when divorce is, absolutely, the right course of action. However, most divorces occur because the spouses refuse to live by the principles outlined in I Corinthians 13. Most divorces could be avoided if we showed our spouses the kind of love described in “the love chapter.”
Today I want to challenge anyone who is experiencing trouble in his or her marriage to take the Love Dare. Rent the DVD and watch Fireproof. Buy the book—the Love Dare is available in bookstores, at Sam’s Club, and on Amazon. Take the dare, and even if you find that you have gotten all the way to day 43 of a 40 day challenge, keep on loving your spouse and applying the principles of love that the Bible has given us because, in the end, love is the only thing that lasts.
Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.
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