{"id":1473,"date":"2009-09-26T21:40:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-27T05:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/09\/26\/book-review-25-surprising-marriages\/"},"modified":"2009-09-26T21:40:49","modified_gmt":"2009-09-27T05:40:49","slug":"book-review-25-surprising-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2009\/09\/26\/book-review-25-surprising-marriages\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: 25 Surprising Marriages"},"content":{"rendered":"
25 Surprising Marriages<\/em>, by William J. Petersen, Timothy Press, 1997, 2006 rpt.<\/p>\n This book, subtitled How Great Christians Struggled to Make Their Marriages Work<\/em>, is one that my brother describes as being helpful for its cumulative effect rather than any one of the particular biographies it sketches for you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In style, the book is very readable and is written for the general public. It is a collection of short biographies of 25 well-known Christians, focusing particularly on their marriages. At least, that is the stated objective of the book.<\/p>\n Some of the chapters contain very little information about the couple they are describing. I attribute this to the fact that in these cases there is likely very little known concerning the wife of the individual. For example, this is most evident in the sketch of John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim\u2019s Progress, especially his first marriage. No one even knows the name of his first wife (although our author gives her one).<\/p>\n Several of the marriages highlighted in the book were exceedingly bad marriages. In one case, it is surprising that the couple is included at all. That would be Hannah Whitall Smith and her husband Robert Pearsall Smith. Hannah was a universalist \u2013 that means she believed that everyone would be saved. As such, it seems odd that she should be included as a \u201cGreat Christian\u201d. She wrote a book called The Christian\u2019s Secret of a Happy Life, but the book is a very bad book giving a distorted view of the Christian walk and the marriage of the Smith\u2019s was anything but happy.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, it is true that there have been good and bad marriages among men and women who have been looked up to as great Christian leaders. It is instructive to us to look at them and to think of them as examples of marriages and married life.<\/p>\n If you have read any biographies of any of the individuals listed in the book, you will be a bit disappointed about the sketchiness of the stories. But as beginning looks, they are interesting, and as a collection with a focus on the marriages, I think they are helpful. However, as I said, it is the cumulative effect that is most helpful. Let me sum up what I think you should take away from a reading of this book:<\/p>\n This does not look the same in every marriage, because every marriage is different.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n Partnership is the main theme of this book. Without a full partnership, the problems of marriage are too much. The couples that succeed are the couples that fully commit themselves to one another, regardless of similarity or differences.<\/p>\n A marriage partnership doesn\u2019t mean that the wife moulds the husband into her image of what he should be or vice versa. What it means is that each individual takes what the other offers and works harmoniously with what has been given, denying self, in order to achieve a greater end.<\/p>\n ~~~<\/p>\n A few thoughts on marriage from the pages of this book:<\/p>\n From Catherine Booth, aggressive woman preacher (!), wife of William Booth:<\/p>\n Four Rules of Married Life, p. 79<\/p>\n From Martin Luther, his views of marriage, pp. 163-164.<\/p>\n \u201cTo get a wife is easy enough, but to love her with constancy is difficult \u2026 for the mere union of the flesh is not sufficient; there must be congeniality of tastes and character. And that congeniality does not come overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome marriages were motivated by mere lust but mere lust is felt even by fleas and lice. Love begins when we wish to serve others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, the Christian should love his wife. He is supposed to love his neighbour, and since his wife is his nearest neighbour, she should be his deepest love. And she should also be his dearest friend.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing is more sweet than harmony in marriage, and nothing more distressing than dissension.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n From George Muller:<\/p>\n How Love Grows: by praying and working together, p. 245<\/p>\n Muller\u2019s advice on finding a spouse, p. 247<\/p>\n From William Carey, p. 319:<\/p>\n Qualifications for missionaries: \u201cIt is absolutely necessary for the wives of missionaries to be as hearty in the work as their husbands.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 25 Surprising Marriages, by William J. Petersen, Timothy Press, 1997, 2006 rpt. This book, subtitled How Great Christians Struggled to Make Their Marriages Work, is one that my brother describes as being helpful for its cumulative effect rather than any one of the particular biographies it sketches for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-nL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Occasionally the author will include a few quotations or summaries from the work of his subjects on the subject of marriage. Some of these are quite insightful. They will be noted below.<\/p>\n\n
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