They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they're receiving what they bargained for. But when troubles come to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through. They marry to give and to grow, bound by covenants to each other, to the community, and to God. And yet marrying and raising children can yield the most valuable religious experiences of their lives. They must surrender unconditionally, obeying God and sacrificing for each other.
Every marriage is tested repeatedly by three kinds of wolves.
The first wolf is natural adversity. Second, the wolf of their own imperfections will test them. The third wolf is the excessive individualism that has spawned today's contractual attitudes. Surely marriage partners must respect one another's individual identity, and family members are neither slaves nor inanimate objects. But this teacher's fear, shared today by many, is that the bonds of kinship and marriage are not valuable ties that bind, but are, instead, sheer bondage.