Last night I had a premarital counseling session with a young couple in our church preparing to get married this summer ... I LOVE doing premarital counseling, I think, because it gives me the chance to help nudge couples in the right direction from the outset.

In any event, as has become my custom, I walked the couple through Genesis 1 and 2 and opened up a discussion about what the point of marriage actually is. I do this for a very central reason. Far too many couples, in my opinion, carry around a completely myopic/atomistic view of marriage. What I mean is this. When you read MOST books on marriage, the focus seems to be exclusively on couple intimacy. How to communicate, how to resolve conflicts, how to "get the most" out of the relationship, date nights, and the like.

Not that any of those things are bad. Heck, I spend a TON of time with my couples talking through exactly those issues, and a whole host of others. My concern, however, is that too much pop-Christian rhetoric on marriage abstracts marriage from its biblical context and purpose. It becomes just one more place where we find intimacy and self-fulfillment in a topsy-turvy world as we seek to escape the pressures of modern life.

But Genesis will not let us think of marriage as abstracted from the concepts of

CONTEXT,
VOCATION, and
CALLING.

When we come to the opening chapters of Genesis and listen to the rhetoric used, we find (perhaps to our amazement), that the "internal" dynamics of the couple's relationship are subordinated to the purpose for which God created the couple in the first place ... and the narrative is unambiguous in what that purpose is:

"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves along the ground" (1:28).

That is, they are to function (coordinately) as the very "image" of this invisible God over the precise space allotted to them ... extending the administration of this creative and creating God into every uncultivated territory they find themselves: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (2:15). And this work is a quite holy work. In fact, the Hebrew words used for "till" and "keep" ('abad and shamar) are the same words used to speak of the work that the priests in the Temple did before the Lord. Make no mistake, the writer of Genesis is telling us, bringing God's goodness, life, truth, beauty, and order to bear in a world filled with evil, death, lies, ugliness and disorder is holy work.

I like that a lot. I like it because it infuses marriage and family with a sense of purpose. THERE IS WORK FOR US TO DO! Great work. Work that gives marriage meaning, a "telos", that keeps things interesting. Now don't get me wrong, the internal dynamics are critical. The text makes it plain that this first couple was to enjoy the "one flesh" reality and live before each other in the delightfully blissful state of "naked" and "no shame" (and all the people said "Amen!"). But marriage, in the biblical perspective, is like language - no meaning apart from context.

And even more than that, marriage has something to do, something IMPORTANT to do, with the Missio Dei - the mission of God. That homes are to be beachheads for the kingdom, outposts of heaven, in a world that's spinning out of control.

What if, I wonder, we got this? What if we stopped relying on programs and institutions to bring the kingdom of God, and instead started asking ourselves what it might mean, in the homes/families in which we dwell, for US to bring the kingdom of God?

With that in mind, I suggest the following things:

1) Get to know your neighbors. We live in a highly fragmented and socially distant age where we're rapidly losing the skills to relate meaningfully with one another.  Be AGAINST that slide as God's people, and find out the names of your neighbors. Learn their stories. It will feel awkward at first, but do it. It will reap rewards later.

2) Spend less time inside your house and more time outside in space that's visible to the rest of the neighborhood. One of the great tragedies of modern life is that our most intimate spaces are those furthest back from our streets. It's like we're so paranoid, disconnected, and fearful that we don't want people to see us actually living our lives. And of course that makes the people who live across from us and next to us feel like distant strangers. Counteract this by playing with your kids in the front lawn. Or even...

3) Plant some flowers. Having landscaping to tend to in your front yard forces you to spend significant time outside, where your neighbors can see you and where the mundane conversations that make up the substance of rich relationships can take place. You'll be surprised at how the psychological distance between you and your neighbors decreases when you begin to get into such mundane conversations about mundane things like gardening.  Furthermore, the prophets described God's new earth as a place that will be filled with abundant, fertile beauty.  So be a prophet and plant some pansies :-)

4) Learn to borrow things. We evangelicals have an odd love for occupying power positions in relationships with folks outside of faith. So when we think about doing mission in our neighborhoods, we immediately think, "WE must be the ones to give something ... the gospel, our money, our time ... whatever!" I submit that intimacy does not occur in any relationship until there is a sense of give AND take. Remember that Jesus and his disciples relied on the generosity of the people they brought the gospel to AS they conducted their mission. So if you need a tool or a stick of butter, don't run to Lowe's or WalMart.  Go to your neighbor's house and ask. Again, you'll be shocked at how the distance will decrease.

5) Learn to bless and pray for the homes around you. As we all know, the home can be a taste of heaven on earth. It can also be hell. And buried deep in the homes of many of our neighbors are all the things that Paul talked about as belonging to the "old humanity" - strife, anger, contentions, factions, infidelity, harsh words, hardheartedness, unforgiveness, bitterness, greed, etc. - making them hard homes to live in. Pray that God would "walk about" (Gn 3:8) these homes and up and down your street to drive back darkness and bring light.

I'm sure you can think of more.  What are some of the ways you've discovered as a means to bring the kingdom of God to bear in your neighborhood?