At first, it was just a quiet policy change. But then word got out, and the rest of the country took notice. Rightfully so. Not only should we notice, we should applaud.
Bob WeathersAwhile back, the U.S. Army decided to permit its husband-and-wife soldiers serving in Iraq to live and sleep together in the war zone, changing rules that had prohibited soldiers of the opposite sex from living in the same quarters. Even married soldiers.
Don’t misunderstand. The Army did not suddenly install plush accommodations to move married couples out of the gender-specific quarters. No cottages and pickets fences here.
Instead, at the end of a hard day, Staff Sgt. Marvin Frazier and his wife Keisha return to their small trailer in “Couples Row” on the outskirts of Baghdad, where they have two single beds they pushed together for sleeping arrangements. Frazier told the Associated Press that he appreciated the Army’s move. “It makes a lot of things easier.” Noting that being separated “adds a lot of stress,” he said that now he and his wife can “sit face-to-face and try to work out things and comfort each other.”
So why the change? The Army offered a simple and astute observation: It is in the best interests of the Army to preserve marriages. For that we can commend the Army’s wise action.
Because the Army has taken steps toward winning a war even more significant than the war in Iraq. It’s the war for the marriage union. Every marriage is constantly under attack by enemy forces desiring to demolish the home, to dissolve the marriage, or infiltrate the union and pull it apart.
And the marriage union is weary from the war. In March, the Barna Research Group reported that of all American adults who have been married, at least 33 percent have experienced one divorce. And California recently made history by becoming the second state in the nation, behind Massachusetts, to legalize gay “marriage.” By lobbing such grenades into the family unit, California joins the cultural forces allied to wage war against healthy, biblical marriages.
The biblical family is embattled, fighting for its life. So we should cheer when we see a positive step taken to preserve the marriage union. Even so, what is your church doing to win the fight for the biblical marriage?