We know, of course, that marriage, the most intimate, beautiful, and enduring relationship between a man and a woman, is anything but a joke. Nonetheless, when some people look at how celebrities have misused this lofty ideal, we can understand why they might be tempted to think that it is a joke.
In the case of Tommy Manville, heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune, marriage for him was surely a joke. On the occasion of his thirteenth marriage, he earned his way into the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest number of marital unions. He is mentioned in a song by Irving Berlin–What Chance Have I with Love?–that includes the words, “with asbestos he still gets burned.” He stated, concerning one particular divorce that carried a huge cash settlement, “She cried and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.”
Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jennifer O’Neill tied the knot 9 times, while Lana Turner, Artie Shaw, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, and Larry King ventured into marriage on 8 occasions. Martha Raye and Jerry Lee Lewis sought marital bliss for their 7th merry-go-round whereas a host of celebrities exchanged vows 6 times, including Hedy Lamarr, Boris Karloff, Stan Laurel, Claude Rains, Tony Curtis, and Rex Harrison.
G. K. Chesterton was amused by those critics of marriage who found it to be unrealistic. “They appear to imagine,” he wrote, “that the ideal of constancy was a joke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed on all lovers by themselves.”
Aristotle remarked that “the corruption of the best is the worst”. When marriage fails, it falls from a great height. It should not be judged by its failure, however, but by its fullness. There are enough failures, however, for marriage to serve as the butt of humor: “Marriage is not a word, but a sentence”; “Wedlock is padlock”; “Marriage ties the knot, divorce unties it”. “Socrates died of an overdose of wedlock”; “The plural of spouse if spice.” Benjamin Disraeli added to the fun by recommending that every woman should marry and no man.
Pope John Paul II began his “theology of the body” with a text from St. Matthew (19:3ff.). A group of Pharisees approached Christ and asked him whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason. Christ’s answer must have been very disappointing to his questioners: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder’.”
Not being satisfied with Christ’s response, the Pharisees asked why Moses allowed divorce. Then Christ said to them,” For you hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”
The “beginning” is described in the first book of the Bible. Genesis 2:24 establishes the principle of unity between man and woman as the very content of the Word of God as it is expressed in the most ancient revelation. One cannot argue with God. Marriage is an intimate union between a man and a woman and is indissoluble. This is decisive!
Christ answers the Pharisees. But at the same time, he is speaking to everyone so that what is demanded of marriage is clear to all. As John Paul remarks, “we must put ourselves precisely in the position of Christ’s interlocutors today. Marriage has not changed, though many have sought a less demanding substitute”.
The nature of marriage, as stated in Genesis, rules out contraception and abortion. Contraception would deny the bodily unity of the husband and wife. It would also deny the fruitfulness of the marital union which is the conception of the child. In addition, the fruit of the marital union cannot be death, but life. Therefore, the adoption of contraception and abortion contradicts the essence of marriage.
Also, as Christ told the Pharisees, marriage is indissoluble. Divorce violates the indissolubility of marriage. So, too, adultery violates the two-in-one flesh unity of marriage. Moreover, the heart must have a definitive role. As Christ remarked, Moses allowed divorce because of a certain “hardness of the heart.” Marriage, therefore, is about love, specifically the kind of total commitment that continues until death.
The essence of a joke is to bring something down from its lofty perch, such as in the aforementioned examples about marriage. All the jokes about sex involve reducing it to something far less than it is, often to something bawdy. The redeeming value of a joke, on the other hand, is that it is not to be taken seriously. But there is no redeeming value to making a joke out of marriage by reducing it to a charade, a sham, a travesty of what it should be. Those who enter marriage without honoring its true nature will inevitably pay the price. If the price is not divorce, it may be discord, disappointment or unhappiness.
Finally, it must be said that reading and accepting the wisdom of Genesis requires humility. Today it seems that more people are reading the Bible with a certain critical pride that inclines them to disregard some passages and delete others. We turn once again to G. K. Chesterton who saw clearly that “pride, which is the falsification of fact by the introduction of self, is the enduring blunder of mankind”.
No one should want to create a bungle out of his marriage. Only by accepting marriage in its wholeness, the way God instituted it, can we prevent that tragic descent into its disfigurement as a joke.
Photo by Wu Jianxiong on Unsplash
