The Person Closest to You

The Rooting Path is for those who have been baptized and have walked the New Believer’s Path. Its seven topics are all about real days: marriage, family, work, money, friends, hardship, death. One thing first: when you finish this path, you will come back and revise your Rule of Life card.

This lesson is marked ‘optional’, but it is not only for married people: whether you are married, single, divorced or widowed, what follows applies—to the closest relationship in your life. Nor is being single a matter of ‘not your turn yet’: Paul says, “each man has his own gift from God, one of this kind, and another of that kind,” and then tells the unmarried and widows, “it is good for them if they remain even as I am”—so when he wrote this letter, he himself was evidently unmarried. The Rooting Path starts here because the hardest place to live out faith is often not in church but inside your own front door.

Marriage is not an arrangement people came up with. When Jesus was asked about husbands and wives, he went back to the beginning: “he who made them from the beginning made them male and female,” (Matthew 19:3-9) and “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh.” (Matthew 19:3-9) The book asks: how should a Christian husband or wife treat their spouse? The answer teaches no techniques; it speaks of the heart: “in humility, each counting others better than himself,” (Philippians 2:2-4) “each of you not just looking to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.” (Philippians 2:2-4) Jesus puts it even more radically: “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.” (Matthew 20:26-28)

The people closest to us are also the easiest to quarrel with. The Bible does not pretend this never happens. It says: “Be angry, and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath.” (Ephesians 4:26-27) It also gives a very concrete order: “swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” (James 1:19-21) Many quarrels go wrong precisely because the order is reversed—speaking first, getting angry first, listening last or not at all.

And after the quarrel? “be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32) Forgiveness is not pretending nothing happened; it is remembering that I too am someone who has been forgiven.