Friendship In Marriage
FRIENDSHIP IN MARRIAGE
A Sermon by Rev. Lawson M. Smith
“You are My friends if you do whatever I command you” (John 15:14).
Friendship is one of the most delightful parts of human life. It is especially precious between a husband and wife. But like every other human affection, friendship must be infilled and directed by love to the Lord and love toward the neighbor. First of all, we must try to be friends of the Lord by doing His commandments. Then the Lord can teach us to love others in the way that He loves us, and so to be true friends.
The Writings draw a sharp distinction between mere friendship and true charity. For example, they describe societies that exist merely for the sake of the pleasures of friendship. In the world, the people of these societies appeared good, delightful, witty, and talented, since they knew how to act with proper style and insinuate themselves into friendships. They love the people they converse with, not caring whether they are good or not as long as they are entertaining. Such people enjoy friendship for lascivious reasons, for the delight of idleness, or from contempt of others outside their circle (see SDm 4810).
These people dull the affection for what is good and true in others, the affections that might otherwise lead them to exercise some discrimination. They also absorb and take away others’ delights. Then as soon as they cease to be delighted by a friendship, they drop it. The Writings say, “There are more societies of such spirits today than anyone could believe” (AC 4054, 4804).
“Many say, ‘I love so-and-so because he loves me and does good to me.’ But to love him for that reason only is not to love him interiorly.” “It is one thing to love the neighbor from the good or use that is in him toward oneself, and another to love the neighbor from the good or use in oneself toward him.”
“The man who is in charity examines and discovers by means of truth what ought to be loved, and in loving and conferring benefits he has regard to the nature of the other’s use” (Faith 21). An illustration is the saying commonly used today, that a real friend does not let his friend drive after drinking. But those in mere friendship have no idea what it means to be a friend to good.
“Genuine love toward the neighbor is to love the good in another from the good in oneself [as to love the honesty of another person from one’s own determination to be honest] for then these goods kiss and mutually conjoin themselves.” “He who loves what is good because it is good, and what is true because it is true, in a special sense loves the neighbor. For then he loves the Lord, who is good itself and truth itself” (TCR 418, 419).
These teachings apply to marriage just as much as to any other friendship. With the doctrine about friendship in general, plus the specific teachings on conjugial friendship, the Lord gives us guidance as to how we may be His friends first of all, and thus true friends with our married partners.
The Word advises us in choosing a married partner, someone we hope will be our best friend forever. We ought to look for someone not merely on the basis of personality, looks, and other external characteristics. We should choose a person who has the same religious and moral principles as we have, someone who brings out our best qualities, who helps us become the kind of person we want to be.
In heaven, we are taught, a man is loved for his moral wisdom, and for his love of growing wise (see CL 44:2). A man in heaven loves his wife for her spiritual beauty, that is, her affection for the truth and the life according to it, which inspires him to want to grow wise (see CL 56). We can continue to look to and honor these qualities in our partners throughout our marriage, and even forever.
The Writings point out that almost any two people can be conjoined by external affections, and that in the world today, internal affections rarely show through (see CL 272-4). Most marriages are based on quite external affections for the partner, and therefore many are dissolved after death.
But in the New Church we have the opportunity to share internal affections with our friends. Internal things all have to do with religion and the way religion is expressed in life. The Word teaches us plainly that we should explore the similarities and differences of religion between ourselves and someone we might marry. Since we have such clear, specific religious teachings provided for us in the Writings, it is easier for us to discuss and apply the Word to life than for other sincerely religious people.
We have, therefore, a good hope of entering into a marriage that will last forever. The Writings say that a marriage with a spiritually, eternally compatible partner is provided by the Lord on earth with those who have loved, chosen and asked of the Lord a legitimate and lovely companionship with one, and have spurned wandering lusts as an offense to their nostrils (see CL 49).
One of the main purposes of the period of engagement or betrothal is to provide an opportunity for a couple to explore more deeply their interior affections in the freedom and security that consent brings. They can apply themselves to conjoining their affections in the inward joyousness of love.
Conjugial love, from its first heat, ascends progressively upward toward their souls with an effort to conjunction there by continually more interior openings of the mind. No love labors more intensely to open the mind to the Lord and to the neighbor than conjugial love. No love opens the mind more powerfully and easily, since the soul of each is striving for this opening. They separate themselves from the unlimited or general love of the opposite sex and direct their love to one. Their spirits enter into marriage, and they look to an eternal union with one. In this way, conjugial love progresses in proper order, from its first heat to the nuptial flame (see CL 301-304).
The Word tells us that the first, romantic love which leads two people to get married does not really conjoin them. This teaching seems to apply even to those who look for a common religion in choosing a partner. Since we are not yet regenerated, our first love is based on external things–“a love belonging to the body and thence to the spirit.” What is in the spirit from the body does not last long, while love which is in the body from the spirit, from conscience, does last (see CL 162). The instability of merely romantic love is well known.
The Lord makes use of such external affections, though, to lead people into marriage, and then if they are willing to shun evils as sins, He gradually purifies and cleanses their love from day to day (see CL 64). We do not need to feel discouraged if we find motives that seem less than perfect involved in our love for someone else. If we are trying to look to the Lord to guide us, and if we shun evils against our partner as sins against the Lord, then the Lord will be able to replace our mediate affections with genuine ones in time.
In the meantime, being friends with our married partner gives stability to our love. Friendship is very important to the conjunction of minds. Love which belongs to the spirit, and from the spirit to the body, is insinuated into the souls and minds of married partners together with friendship and confidence. Partners grow to have confidence in each other, and so to have a special kind of friendship, from religion in life, as when a wife trusts the spiritual-moral conscience of her husband. When friendship and confidence join themselves to the first love of marriage, that romantic love becomes a true marriage love, “and this opens the breasts and breathes into them the sweetness of love, doing this more and more deeply as friendship and confidence attach themselves to the first love, and the love enters into them and they into it” (CL 162).
With those who are in love truly conjugial, conjunction of minds, and with it friendship and confidence, increases. They become more and more one flesh, spiritually. This conjunction increases as friendship conjoins itself to love. The first love, before there is friendship, is similar to the general love of the opposite sex, and after the vows, it tends to grow feeble. But when the love is joined to friendship, the love remains and friendship makes it stable. The two partners can still be best friends even when they are not feeling ardently in love.
The Writings say that friendship is like the garment of love, protecting it and providing good external forms of behavior, the mutual courtesies and favors of friends. But friendship can also be the face of conjugial love, as one of the most important expressions of love. The two partners share the same ends, and each perceives delight in doing what pleases the other (see AC 4145:3). They want to do each other every good–every kindness, every service, every sign of friendship (see CL 180). With such friendship, love enters more deeply into the heart. Friendship introduces it and makes the love truly a marriage love, not just a sexual love; and then the love makes this its friendship also a conjugial friendship, which differs greatly from the friendship of every other love. The Writings call it “the friendship of friendships” (CL 334, 214).
During the course of a marriage, every couple has warmer and colder states. The Writings say that all states of coldness in marriage stem from internal dissimilarities, and all internal dissimilarities relate to religion: either to the lack of religion or to difference of religion. This is encouraging, because it means that in marriages where both partners are sincerely trying to follow the Lord, there need not be prolonged, serious states of cold.
However, even those who are being regenerated come into states that are relatively irreligious, times when the evil spirits attack them and they do or say things they later regret. From internal cold, cold creeps down into external, conscious states, due to such things as a wide difference in manners and habits; the notion that marriage love is no different from adulterous love; a rivalry for dominion; a lack of determination to any useful pursuit, which leaves a man’s mind open to wandering lusts; and a significant difference in age, social station or wealth. The Writings also speak of accessory causes of cold, causes which need not create a problem at all, but which may add to our troubles in unregenerate states. These relate to a man’s sense of freedom and initiative within marriage, especially in relation to the ultimate expression of love (see CL chap. on “colds”).
When cold states arise, either with ourselves or apparently with our partner, the Writings advise us to carry on the appearances of love, friendship and favor in marriage. Such appearances are praiseworthy, not hypocritical, because they are useful and necessary. A person who looks to the Lord does them from conscience. He acts seriously and looks to amendment as his goal and hope. If this does not follow, he still looks to accommodation for the sake of order in the home, for the sake of mutual help, for the care of little children, and for peace and tranquility. In this way, there can be a return of friendship, within which lies conjugial love, on one side if not on the other (see CL 271, 279-280, 282).
It is important for a man to continue to court his wife after they are married–to tell her that he loves her, to show her kindness, friendship and favor. He should regularly make time, free from business and household concerns, for talking with his wife. A man needs to do this for his own sake as well as for hers, because if he does such things from conscience, he is providing a form into which love truly conjugial can inflow from the Lord. The Writings say, “Act precedes; man’s willingness follows” (AC 4353).
The Writings speak of another state of friendship in marriage, the friendship of a couple in old age. We read, “When the partners grow old, if favor does not cease with the wife when ability ceases with the man, there may arise a friendship that emulates conjugial friendship.” With the ultimate foundation removed, love may grow cold on the man’s part, and then the wife may cease to favor her husband. But if the man then tacitly imputes the cause to himself, and the wife still perseveres in chaste favor toward him, there may result a friendship which seems like love, emulating conjugial love. It seems that this love is said to “emulate” conjugial love, because of the lack of the ultimate, which will be restored in heaven. This passage concludes, “That between aged partners, on the ground of their dwelling together, their dealings and their comradeship, there is a friendship as though of conjugial love–tranquil, secure, lovely, and full of courtesy, is attested by experience” (CL 290).
So the Writings guide us in the way to be a friend to the Lord by doing whatever He commands, and to be a true friend to our married partner. We can cultivate true friendship, first of all, by looking to the Lord and performing actual repentance. Our main responsibility will always be to shun evils as sins, for these are what make us an enemy rather than a friend to others, and block our reception of true mutual love from the Lord. Second, we can carry on our daily responsibilities justly and faithfully. Third, we can read the Word. If we are married, we can read and pray together. The Word is the medium of conjunction with the Lord, and so it is also the means by which husband and wife can be conjoined. Finally, in the light of the Word, a husband and wife can talk to each other and work together on the responsibilities and uses they share. If we do these things, the Lord will certainly bless us, in the other world if not in this, with all the states of conjugial love: “innocence, peace, tranquillity, inmost friendship, full confidence, and a mutual desire of mind and heart to do the other every good; and from all these, blessedness, happiness, delight, pleasure; and from the eternal fruition of these, heavenly joy” (CL 180). Amen.
Lessons: John 15:9-17; CL 214 Preached in Mitchellville, Maryland on July 13, 1986