God Doesn’t Care If You’re Married or Not

Last updated on: July 31, 2008 at 6:10 am by John Shore

God Doesn’t Care If You’re Married or Not 2008-07-31T06:10:08-08:00 John Shore

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It’s fun to write about being married or single—because that’s about relationships, and that’s about Intense Human Interaction, and what’s more dependably interesting than that? And so I’ve enjoyed writing (and wading through the many, often emotionally intense responses to) You! Get Married! Now!; Looking for Mr. Right? You’re Missing the Point, Missy; Six Tests to Determine If He’s Mr. Right; To Single Women: Men. Don’t. Change.; Surprise (Or Not!)! Men Are Spoiled; Top 10 Tips for Becoming an Ideal Husband; What’s In A Word: The Truth Behind Men’s Personal Ads, and others.

For the record, though, do let me say that I don’t think God cares any more about whether any given person is married than he does about the color of that person’s hair.

This is God we’re talking about here, not anybody’s Aunt Bea or gossipy Uncle Randy. God cares what’s in our hearts. God cares about the state of our morality. God’s interested in whether or not we’re lying, cheating, being unfair, dismissive, arrogant, self-righteous, stubborn, irrational, unkind. That’s the stuff God cares about.

What God cares about is the degree to which we’re accepting his love for us. All God wants to know is how we’re faring in our central, ongoing challenge to love ourselves as much as he loves us—to love the world as much as he does.

What God cares about is our relationship with him—not our relationship with that cute guy who works in the graphics department, or with that one girl who works downstairs. Of course that stuff is important; the quality of our lives is largely if not ultimately defined by the quality of our interpersonal relationships. We all know that. But considering nothing more than the state of a person’s marital status as indicitive of the quality of their relationship to God is like determining that you can judge a person’s character based on the make and model of the car they drive.

It’s fun to try and connect people’s characters to the kinds of cars they drive—but it’s not real.

Nobody cares whether or not you’re married. And sure as heck nobody’s opinion of whether or not you’re married should care to you. What you care about is your relationship with The All. In the life of each and every one of us, everything else—everything else—comes after that.

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