05.07.2021 – The Death of a Marriage

I know as much about Bill and Melinda Gates as most of us know, which isn’t much.  I know they are very rich and are doing their best to put their money to good use.  That is enough to know to have felt very sad when I read the news of their impending divorce after twenty-seven years of marriage.

I don’t know much about the Gateses or their relationship – not mine to know, but the end of a marriage is a sad thing no matter what the circumstance.

I would not have had much more to say about Monday’s news were it not for a Wednesday headline. If Bill and Melinda Gates can’t make a marriage work, what hope is there for the rest of us? a column in the Washington Post “Relationships” section asked.

It takes a lot to make a marriage work. Marriage is not for the easily discouraged, and only a fool rushes in with advice and suggestions about another’s marriage.  With a certain fear of treading on dangerous ground, then, I offer that there is hope for the rest of us.

Marriage is a gift of God’s common grace, and as such there are many strong marriages that don’t acknowledge the giver of the gift.  You don’t have to be a Christian to have a good marriage. But the best of the good marriages are those with Christ at the center.

Every marriage has a center.  It may be raising children or sharing interests and activities. It may be common ambition or loving companionship.  In their joint statement announcing their separation the Gateses wrote, “Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.” The three incredible children and the shared work to enable people to lead healthy, productive lives was not enough to hold their marriage together.

With great caution and with humble awareness of the work – and the grace – it takes to make a marriage last, I wonder if something other than raising incredible children and doing much good was at the center of Bill and Melinda Gates’ marriage.

In the prepared statement, the Gateses said, “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.” It’s a nicely prepared thought that might mean different things to different readers, but, to be sure, it means Bill and Melinda think they will be better off apart than together and that the measure of the good of a marriage has something to do with growing as a person.  Certainly it does.

Enough about the Gateses. The Washington Post column goes on to ponder its “If Bill and Melinda can’t” question. It offers some possible explanations for why they couldn’t, but little by way of hope for the rest of us.

The columnist quotes a divorce lawyer who “highlighted (the) universal challenge in staying together long-term.”  “The people we marry are not the people we divorce,” she said, “because people change.” Yes, people change, but change need not, should not, end a marriage.

The column again quotes the same divorce lawyer about the effect of a year of pandemic on our marriages. “Because the pandemic made many of us grasp life’s fragility, there’s ‘more permission to be authentic now than there ever has been.’ And sometimes that return to our true selves spurs big changes.”

If authenticity and a return to a true self kills marriages, we might want to think about how authentic our authenticity is and how true our true selves are.

What hope is there for the rest of us? Maybe that we put something other than personal growth, permission to be authentic, or our true selves at the center of our marriages.  Maybe that we put the love of the other and the love of God at the center of our marriages – not for our glory, but to the glory of God alone.

I’m sad about the end of the Gates’ marriage.  But there is much hope for the rest of us.