24 March 2022
The Holy Grail of the Christian RP ("Red Pill") Community on the Net is a blissful marriage. There's an awful lot of electrons expended trying to nail down verbally what defines and contributes to a blissful marriage.
First, you must understand that bliss is relative, and is often a matter of your attitude about things in general. Yes, there are some who are privileged in various ways who might consider themselves blissfully married for other reasons, but the primary ingredient is being the kind of person who seeks peace with God in the first place. Thus, the earlier to come to that kind of faith, the better the chances you'll marry blissfully.
Second, a blissful marriage is not always God's will. A peaceful marriage is always God's will, in that shalom isn't necessarily bliss, but it's peace with God. Peace with God puts everything in its proper place. The Covenant is its own reward; the greatest blessing God can give to mortal humans is the power to live within the boundaries of the Covenant -- it's a privilege. The whole point of that passage in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 is that your commitment from the heart is the basic standard. Once you get your heart right, everything else will take care of itself. That passage is about as mystical as it gets; the Covenant does not stand on human capabilities, but the grace of God. You appropriate the grace He has granted already. It was true with the Covenants of Abraham, Moses and Noah, and it's true with the Covenant of Christ.
Marriage is a covenant, first and foremost. It's a covenant sworn before the Lord. There may be a civil contract tacked on, but that has no part in our consideration. Only what God acknowledges matters to us, and He has said over and over again: Only what's under His Covenant gets His blessing.
Yours truly has a blissful marriage. Too much of what I might say about it contextual. Most of it is not for public consumption, primarily because if you don't know my wife and me personally, you'll never understand it. Only a very few people in close fellowship are aware of the story of how we got to this place.
But I am in a position to see why my marriage is so much more blissful than all but a tiny few that I've seen from any distance. And it should be obvious that the primary ingredient is our shared commitment to the Covenant as a covenant: a feudal tribal lifestyle of faith. This isolates us socially, as you might expect. We have very few close friends. There have been times when we had a wider social circle, but not right now. And even when we were in that larger community, we were recognized as quite unique in terms of marriage.
There was a point when my wife was part of a large group of women (over two dozen) who met regularly to express their Christian religion. They played a game once, in which someone not involved came around and spoke to the husbands. We were asked to say something positive that set our wives apart. The comments were anonymized; the game was for the women to gather and read the comments and guess who it was about. My comment was about my wife's consistent support for my mission in life. I found out that this pegged her immediately in her group, simply because no other husband would/could say that about his wife.
Obviously, it makes a huge difference if you choose a wife wisely. Despite my relative ignorance back in those courtship days, I chose mine based on a very strong consciousness of my mission and calling. I must confess I bypassed a lot of women who would have been deemed by the RP community as having a high marriage market value because of my convictions about that one trait. All that blather about what makes a good Christian wife means nothing if you aren't paying attention to your convictions first. My wife would have been turned down by a lot of RP advocates -- ignored, even -- but I was convinced she was God's choice for me.
So, I will warn you that a lot of RP rules are merely suggestions. I broke several of them and still break them. Yet my marriage is blissful to me; my wife is my best friend. She makes me believe it's so for her, too. I was not really competent enough to choose a wife, and I knew it. Had I known then all the RP rules I learned later, it would not have made any difference. Faith in my convictions was the key and I knew that.
And were it not now so blissful, I remain utterly certain I would be at peace with God. I would simply find a way to handle things, as Hosea did with Gomer. I would have submitted to the Lord's guidance and faced whatever it was He wanted me to face, including a rough marriage, or even one that had to end in order to pursue His will for me.
In other words, I think the Holy Grail for the Christian RP Community is about as bogus as the item behind the symbolic name. The mere notion of a Holy Grail, or any other sacred relic, is contrary to the gospel message. It's not about a blissful marriage, but peace with God. The issue is avoiding the defilement that weakens shalom. It's entirely likely that you can do all the right things according to the RP Gospel and still miss the will of God. Until you understand that, you cannot put the RP teachings to good use. There's too much focus and blather on the RP legalism and way too little about the heart-borne feudal commitment to the Master. No one is talking about following your convictions.
A blissful marriage is a miracle of God. It's not in your hands until God has granted it by His divine initiative. You can still screw it up, but you can't turn a less-than-perfect marriage into bliss unless the Lord wants you to have it. It's a lot better to pursue peace with God and let Him decide such things. The RP Law Code is simply an example of how to make the most of it. It cannot grant you the thing itself.
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