Real Christianity #57： Can Compatibility Affect Your Marriage？
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Summary
In this episode, Dale and Veronica discuss the concept of compatibility and how it can affect your marriage. They discuss how the Bible teaches us that our marriages are a mirror to the gospel, and how we should treat our spouses as such.
Transcript
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Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about...
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So this idea of compatibility, we are going to just discuss.
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There's been tons of articles on the internet about,
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Or how do we predict compatibility in our marriage success?
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um you know there's like these scientific formulas about you remember that tv show we watched a long
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time ago that like had you didn't get to see your spouse and they did based off these like
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personality assessments and like character yeah what was it called like i forgot what it was
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90 day fiance or something crazy like that yeah i don't know something weird but it was this idea
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that we're going to scientifically produce a compatible mate for you and so this idea of
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compatibility is very popular and it's very alive in culture. So we're going to dive into that from
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a biblical perspective shortly, and I think you'll learn that compatibility and the Bible's perspective
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is a myth. But we'll dive into that shortly. I want to mention real quick, if you're a regular
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listener to the Real Christianity podcast, would you guys consider leaving a review? You just have
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to tap the stars. You don't even need to write anything on the iTunes app. You can write something
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Second thing is if you guys want to listen to this show
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If you want to get the show notes for the show,
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you can always do that at relearnchurch.org forward slash listen.
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And the last thing that I want to mention is that, guys, I've been talking about this for a while.
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We are getting the Ultimate Marriage Program, our Marriage Mentor Program.
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It's a six-week program for small groups and for individuals, and it is just about done.
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Now we're doing all the motion graphics for it.
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Yeah, so, you know, Dale touched on these compatibility tests and articles all over the internet.
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But today, we generally, if you're a regular listener, we generally embed scripture into our lessons.
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But for this episode in particular, we're going to be referencing the general theology of Christian marriage that can be found in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 and Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 33.
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And so we want to go ahead and encourage you guys to read those passages of scripture with an intent to fully understand the text because they are crucial for building a biblical marriage.
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So in light of these passages, Dale's going to go ahead and jump in.
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yeah so what i think what veronica is really saying is that we're just not going to have so
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much like verse verse here break down verse yeah it's really we want you guys to read those passages
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genesis 1 and 2 and ephesians chapter 5 22 through 33 it's just really great it's like
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if you're married and you don't know those passages what marriage is to be man that's
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where you got to start all right so um the bible's clear uh your marriage my marriage
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our marriage, um, is a mirror of the gospel. And, um, that's an important fact. And this idea is
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clearly explained in Ephesians chapter five, again, 22 through 33, you got to read that passage and
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you'll really understand that our marriages are a mirror to the gospel. Husbands are to be like
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Christ in the way that, uh, he loves, uh, the church. Um, and wives are to be like the church
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And so there's this kind of symbiotic relationship
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and that's how husbands are called to love their wives,
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and wives respecting and honoring and following their husbands
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That's kind of that thing that you see in Scripture.
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this marriage thing that we have that God created,
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is the earthly image of God's divine plan for humanity.
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So, yeah, some of you guys might be wondering when you hear Dale say this, well, why?
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And I think it's because that God knows that we as humans have finite minds and that we need the power of symbolism to gain understanding.
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He's literally placed a symbol of the gospel all around us, everywhere.
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And every married couple is, in some way, a glimpse of his design for salvation.
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and for those who are married he's given us a way to truly experience
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God's or the gospel's sacrificial love order and most of all unity and I've
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emphasized unity because God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament
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affirm that the goal of marriage is to become one flesh yeah so just imagine
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this picture you're walking around in downtown and you see all these married
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couples. I mean, literally God has embedded the gospel into the earth in terms of just a symbolism
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element, right? A mirror to it, a parallel to it. You get a chance to see, oh, look, like this is
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what it is. It's all around us. And again, why? Because we're finite and we need symbolism to
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gain understanding. And then, you know, you and I know as married folks, we get a chance to experience
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that gospel relationship um you understand what it means to be the church and following christ
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because it's your call to be a role as a wife to a husband and i get to understand what it means to
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sacrifice and love my wife as christ loves the church because so we're literally experiencing
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this gospel narrative in our marriage and so um you know in view of two people becoming one flesh
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which again i think is the goal of marriage right that the two should become one i want to discuss
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the idea of compatibility. And over the years, you know, Veronica, we've seen so many couples
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that use the idea of compatibility or incompatibility as a reason for their conflicts
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or even a justification for the divorce. We're just incompatible, right? And just this past week,
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there's a popular Christian author. I should say even he's publicly denied the faith at this point,
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so I would even say that he's an ex-Christian, has left the faith. Joshua Harris, he actually
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announced his divorce on social media and it was all over the news Fox News had covered it
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and he used phrases in his Instagram post that were again I think pretty popular to the culture
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as a reason for their divorce he says you know we've changed over the years
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and quote we're different people now and quote we're going in different directions and I think
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this follows kind of the same line of thinking as we're no longer compatible you know that kind
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of idea is I think pretty popular in divorce culture and uh and it's it's I would say an
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excuse that we use in in the church and outside of the church quite often and I think it's important
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that we discuss that today yeah so in this episode Dale and I are gonna speak to the idea of
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incompatibility in marriage um and replace this what is wrong way of thinking um with the truth
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found in the bible yeah so I want to break you guys break this idea down for you um through the
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lens of, again, biblical Christian theology and the theology of marriage. And so to start, I just
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want to speak to the desire to have things in common with one another. You know, there are many
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areas in life that we can find common ground with our spouse. You know, we like to say movies. We
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like to go outdoors. You know, we have similar interests and hobbies, whatever that might be.
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That's kind of this desire for common ground. And those things are good things. I'm not going to
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that those are bad things that's generally what attracts people to one another totally yeah it's
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the very beginning the the the one area though uh that we do for sure every couple every husband
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and wife that we do have in common um is that we're both selfish and we're both sinful that's
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for sure okay so if you're looking for common ground i promise you that every marriage has
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common ground in the fact that you guys are both sinners and that you're both selfish and romans
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3 23 says for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God all of us there's none righteous
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no not one that's what the scripture says and so because of this we are all incompatible okay I
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just want to get that out there real quick every marriage because of the our fallen nature is
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incompatible our kind of very broken state which is against self-focused and sin-focused that's
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what the fall has done to us, self-focused and sin-focused. It actually prevents us from having
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complete compatibility in our marriage. It really does. And what this means is there's no such thing
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as an intrinsically compatible marriage. All these scientific, you know, formulas trying to create
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these compatible personalities, it doesn't exist. It will never fully exist because we are not
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compatible because we're fallen it's a flaw it's a flawed uh desire because it has an impossible
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outcome okay so i want to say that just again compatibility is flawed it's a flawed desire
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because it has an impossible outcome you can't be fully compatible uh with your spouse and we're
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going to talk later in this episode veronica is going to share what the definition of compatibility
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really is. But I want to give you guys some hope. There is one thing that we can have in common as
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Christian couples that will allow us, even in our flesh and our fallen state, to find unity in the
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midst of any marital situation, circumstance, or trial, and that's Christ. Okay, when a husband
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Veronica and I really don't have much in common.
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Okay, I think it's actually a unique part of our story.
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uh and our marriage which i believe is anchored in scripture
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has allowed us to fully satisfy our need and our desire for unity and we can only do that through
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him yeah i think it's important to kind of highlight and point out what dill said because
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um i think people look to our marriage and imagine that we just have everything in common
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and we don't struggle, um, that we don't struggle to harmonize.
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Um, and like Dale said, yeah, to be honest, we have to work very, very hard to find anything
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Um, but in Christ, we can submit our needs and desires to one another in an effort to
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fall deeper in love and to understand the unifying gospel relationship between Christ
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um i know a lot of times people often write us on social media and say well i i didn't grow up
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in a christian home or i didn't have godly biblical examples and neither did we um we had
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to learn this we started from scratch and so um another point i wanted to highlight is uh the
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difference between compatibility and complementary the definition of compatibility is two things
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which are able to exist without conflict yeah like just say that again so that's that's the
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definition of compatibility yeah the definition of compatibility is two things which are able
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to exist without conflict yeah and i think this is this is so when people hear that like people
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this is so badly what people want yeah um we want a spouse who does everything that we want
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and will never bring opposing views or behaviors um but in all honesty that's just kind of a
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ridiculous goal and it's unattainable um especially in our in our fallen state um but i want to
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contrast the definition of compatibility with the definition of complementary um as we see in
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genesis chapters 1 and 2 god creates complementary pairs such as light and dark heaven and earth
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land and sea man and woman we've touched on this a few times before on other podcasts
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the word complimentary means an element that completes or brings another to perfection
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read that again because that's just so good an element that completes or brings another
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to perfection that's awesome yeah and i think i think this is a more accurate goal for marriage
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we're called to complement one another according to god's scripture for marriage
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So your imperfect spouse actually teaches you the sacrificial love of Christ.
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Yeah, like the imperfectness of each other is actually what kind of sanctifies each other.
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You know, Paul Washer said this really great quote.
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We've shared it on the Ultimate Marriage Instagram before.
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It's how would you ever learn unconditional love if you were married to someone who met all your conditions?
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and so yeah you'll never learn it you'll never understand the sacrificial love of the gospel
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um if your wife or husband met every desire you have for perfect compatibility right life without
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conflict is that idea and then you have this i think again that the complementarianism perspective
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is so much healthier i look to veronica as as a part of together we can become unified in
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and kind of bringing ourselves to wholeness in Christ.
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And I think in some ways, our desire for compatibility,
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Yeah, they just want it to be all fun and enjoyable
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Like how is a marriage to grow without those things?
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Yeah, it's pretty much saying, I want to stay the same.
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I don't want anybody that's going to make me change, right?
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And so, again, our desire for compatibility is what I think like a manifestation of our desire for God and for a restored creation.
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And, you know, C.S. Lewis shares this really cool idea that we can only yearn for things that exist.
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And in other words, he's saying that we cannot yearn for something that doesn't exist.
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You can't do it. The stomach yearns for food because food exists, right? Men and women yearn
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for sexual relationships because sexual relationships do exist. The heart yearns
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for companionship because companionship exists. The sick yearns for health because health does
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exist. The logic actually can be applied here to God, right? The soul yearns for God because God
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must exist. And if you really don't believe that there's a, I would say, a universal yearning for
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God and the things of God, I want you to listen to the words of the Greek philosopher Plutarch.
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And I really, this is just a fascinating quote. He says, if we traverse the world, it is possible
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to find cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without wealth, without coin,
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without schools and theaters, but a city without a temple
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or that practiceth not worship, prayer, and the like
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no one has ever seen. And the idea is that he's just
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recognizing the universal desire of the human for God
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for perfect peace and harmony and compatibility.
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That's what we yearn for. That's why so many people want it.
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and we yearn for those things because peace and harmony and compatibility
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kind of captures this idea a bit it says but we
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also who have the first fruits of the spirit Christians
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within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption
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the redemption of our bodies and it's saying that man there are things that we want that are
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heavenly that are that are after that are eternal that are not temporary like this world we want
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those things and compatibility is one of those things we want perfect peace and harmony and all
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those things we yearn for those things because they do exist in christ and um you know we want
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a restored world. We want a restored body. We want that perfect
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relationship with our spouse. And for now, we have Christ
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firstfruits. We're sealed. We have a promised future.
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But we're still, again, as Paul would kind of say, dragging around this
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common ground and fellowship in marriage and in him we can quench that desire for compatibility
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and replace it with unity and and this desire to become one flesh and the focus that the lord is
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using our marriage to sanctify us to become more like him and so ultimately i guess to kind of
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close out this podcast which is i think a little short but it's okay ultimately a marriage is never
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incompatible that's a bad way to view it the goal should never be compatibility because again the
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view the outcome is impossible when people say they have an incompatible marriage what they're
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really saying is that we're just not willing to grow we're just not willing to conform to
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and transform to christ's demands and commands on our lives and how we should be viewing the spouse
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through the lens of scripture, through the lens of God.
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And so let's be careful when we say that our marriage is incompatible.
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I believe that Christians, if you have the common ground of Christ,
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And so if you have a friend who's struggling with compatibility,
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the idea of maybe they're getting ready for divorce,
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you know maybe they're having lots of conflict consider sharing this podcast I think it might
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help shed some light on the perspective that they should have that if we just be like Christ
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we won't have those conflicts you know there's that quote that we always say on the show that's
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from our mentors you can't argue with a humble person and when there's conflict it's usually
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just a lack of humility and two prideful people and so my hope is that this podcast becomes a tool
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and uh edification for those that are struggling in their marriage so on that note um i guess we'll
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close with just a couple of those announcements real quick um i'm finished my new book real
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christianity is done it's getting ready to to come out this september if you want to be a part of our
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launch team for that book. We'd love to have you. We're looking for some people to read it,
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to review it, just to be a part of marketing it and sharing it. It's a short book. You can read
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it in like an hour, hour and 15 minutes. You can be a part of that team if you just go to
00:20:59.120
relearnchurch.org forward slash launch. And again, if you want to be a part of our Ultimate Marriage
00:21:04.700
program that's going to open enrollment here soon, ultimatemarriage.com forward slash notify.
00:21:09.640
and then the last thing is if you want the show notes to the show any points watch the video
00:21:14.700
you can always do that at relearnchurch.org forward slash listen okay on that note thank
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you guys for joining us today and we'll see you guys next wednesday see ya take care