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Donald Trump on Marriage
Donald Trump, several years after his second divorce, had this to say:
“If you have to work at a marriage, it’s not going to work. It has to be sort of a natural thing. But my ex-wife would say, ‘You have to work at this, you have to do this, you have to do that’. And I’m saying to myself, ‘Man, I work all day long, well into the evening. I don’t want to come home and work at a marriage. A marriage has to be very easy.”
I suspect Mr. Trump’s ideas about marriage are pretty common today considering present day attitudes toward marriage and divorce. According to the Pew Research Center, little more than one half of all families are headed by a married couple. In 1960, it was nearly three-fourths. The decline is attributed to changes in public attitudes over the past half century that have led to increases in divorce, co-habitation, and age-at-marriage.
Anyone who thinks a happy marriage is easy has never been married. Having made a lifelong commitment at your wedding what follows are years of work of making a relationship work - during good times and bad. When the scriptures instruct us to love our wives it is not talking about just having a fuzzy warm feeling for them. It is referring to always seeking your mate’s good. That is what the word “love” means in those passages. It is a constant, selfless effort to serve your mate and seek what is best for them. And I am sorry Mr. Trump, but that takes work.
If you want a happy marriage you have to put forth effort – lots of it. No partnership of any kind works without effort. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her…” (Ephesians 5:25). That is a pretty high standard Paul is setting. Let’s all work at our marriages and honor God with our homes.
