I had the pleasure of discovering a small gem from Mark Twain while perusing the aisles of a Barnes & Noble store one day – Twain’s short story A Murder, A Mystery, And A Marriage, Twain’s prelude to his masterpiece and “the great American novel” Huckleberry Finn (New York: Norton, 2003).

 

Twain was in fine literary form with this short story, only recently discovered after a century of the story being misplaced (“Foreword” qtd. in Marriage 9).  And I think that Marriage is a good book for thinking about the Biblical Gospel theme of sinners becoming so shaped and defined by their expectations about marriage that their expectations enslave them to moral depravity apart from God, and how we are to look to Jesus for liberation – and salvation – from the power of idols for knowing peace with God our righteous Father and true home.

If men and women are to be honest about themselves out of the Gospel testimony in Scripture, we have to admit that we shape our very identities between each other apart from God in the fall of Adam and Eve.  We become so heightened by our expectations for happiness in romance and marriage between each other apart from God that romance and marriage end up enslaving us and shattering our very identities.  We become relativistic to moral depravity in sexual pleasure and happiness apart from God.

God provides His Son Jesus as a jealous Redeemer for fallen men and women, in Jesus’ purchase of men and women from the power of idolatry and sin and death at the cross, and in Jesus’ bearing of guilt on behalf of guilty sinners at the cross, though Jesus knew no sin.  This is God’s gift of Jesus to a substitutionary sacrifice as God’s grace for our faith.  And God’s grace is a justifying grace; God puts His Son before His wrath and justice in place of us, even though we fully deserve this wrath and justice for our unbelief, particularly in our idolization of sexual pleasure and happiness.  If we are to take the Gospel seriously for men and women, we have to delight in Jesus’ justifying grace at the cross for knowing real peace, real security and grace from God’s wrath and justice, in real grace relationship with God as our Heavenly Father.

And we have to confess by the foundation of Jesus with God the Father that God has the right and the power to give men and women over to their sexual indulgences and sexual idolatry, so that men and women are hardened off to their sexual pleasures apart from God, in order that God would show His glory in His power and justice over sinners’ hearts, and in order that God would be understood in His glory as having the power to freely provide grace and justification through His Son Jesus on behalf of sinners.  And we are to count our false desires for sex and marriage as dead to Christ by faith and delight in reconciling men and women to each other in the name of Christ in our grasp of grace relationship with the Lord.  And we are to counsel men and women about their fall into sexual depravity and moral depravity apart from God through idolization of sex and romance and marriage.

“ ‘Samaria is held guilty,

For she has rebelled against her God.

They shall fall by the sword,

Their infants shall be dashed to pieces,

And their woman with child ripped open.’ ”  (Hos. 13:16 NKJ)

The prophet Hosea points out to the men and women of Israel that the women become so shaped and defined by their wombs and their children – the women’s pursuit of sexual happiness and prosperity – that the women’s wombs end up shattering their image apart from God.  God gives men and women over to sexual depravity apart from Himself, in God’s glory and justice.  And Hosea is saying to the men and women of Israel: You need to look to God as a jealous Redeemer for your sexual shortcomings.

Jesus is the true and better Hosea, the true Word of God born from above and the Word born in flesh who sympathizes with fallen men and women, and bears their guilt of sexual idolatry at the cross.  Jesus bears the wrath and justice of God at the cross though Jesus knew no sin.  And Jesus is the true and jealous Redeemer for His people, a jealous husband for His bride, the church, in His purchasing of His believers away from the power and bondage of idolatry at the cross.

If we are honest about ourselves in light of the Bible’s teachings about Jesus, we have to admit that we are worthy of being given over to our own sexual immoralities and depravities apart from God because of our rebellion and unbelief, our choosing of sexual happiness as our substitute god in place of the true God.  And we are to confess our sexual idolatry to Jesus, speaking our sins as dead to Jesus, as crucified to Jesus, by faith, and we are to delight in real grace relationship secured at the foundation of Jesus crucified with God the Father.  We are to delight in the foundation of justifying grace and redemption in Jesus at the cross with God the Father.  And we are to use the Bible’s teachings about sexual depravity among sinners and Jesus the jealous husband for the church to sympathize with sexually immoral men and women, understanding their decline into this immorality as their unbelief apart from God, and we are to speak the justifying grace of Jesus into their lives to bring these men and women to peace at the foundation of Jesus with God the Father, and to bring these men and women to peace between each other, as part of our own delight in grace relationship with God the Father.

This is exactly the case with the main character of sexual immorality and idolized marriage, the coveting father John Gray, in Twain’s book Marriage.  John shows a real jealousy for his daughter Mary to be married off to Hugh Gregory as an act of spite to John’s brother David – a classic case of brotherly rivalry gone mad.  John has heightened expectations to show his brother David off by securing a happy future for Mary, and for John.

“One stormy winter’s night Mrs. Gray came beaming to bed an hour later than her husband, and whispered:

‘John, everything’s safe at last.  Hugh has popped the question!’

John Gray said:

‘Say it again, Sally, say it again!’

She said it again.

‘I want to get up and hurrah, Sally.  It’s too good for anything!  Now what’ll Dave say!  Dave may go to grass with his money – nobody cares.’

‘Well, old man, nobody does care.  And it’s well it’s so, because if your brother ever might have left us his money he’ll never do it now, because he hates Hugh like p’ison – has hated him ever since he tried to cheat Hugh’s father out of the Hickory Flat farm and Hugh chipped in and stopped the whole thing.’

‘Don’t you worry about any money we’ve lost of Dave’s, Sally.  Since the day I quarreled with Dave, twelve years ago, he has hated me more and more all the time and I’ve hated him more and more.  Brothers’ quarrels don’t heal easy, old wife.  He has gone on getting richer and richer and richer, and I’ve hated him for that.’ ”  (Twain 23)

John shapes and defines and hardens his image through his daughter’s prospects for marriage, all because of a deep jealousy between brothers and in the longing for prosperous happiness.

John’s coveting of marriage for his daughter, and John’s hardening of his own image in the process, become even more exaggerated with the arrival of a Frenchman, Hebert dee Fountingblow, in the Grays’ rather secluded home community of Deer Lick, Missouri.  John becomes excited at the prospect of a dashing mystery man quite literally showing up at his doorstep.  It adds a bit of spice to his mundane rural existence, especially in light of his rivalry with David.  And John’s excitement becomes even more shaping and defining for his heart when he realizes through conversing with his wife that Fountingblow is a man of royalty who has experienced a family squabble very similar to John’s squabble with David, and that Fountingblow could be a potential new suitor for Mary.

“ ‘Out with it you old fool, out with it!  I’ll keep mum.’

‘Well, you know he used to always shet up like a shell whenever we asked him what countryman he was.  Times we’ve thought he was an I-talian, then a Spaniard, and times we thought maybe he was an A-rab.  But he ain’t.  He’s a Frenchman.  He told me so.  And that ain’t all, by a grand sight.  His family is awfully rich and grand.’

‘No!  is that so?  I always said it to myself.  ‘Deed I always said it.’

‘And that ain’t all, either.  His father’s a lord!’

‘No!’

‘Yes!  And he’s a lord, too!’

‘Great Caesar!’

‘True as you’re a laying there, he said it.  He’s a Count!  Think of that!’

‘By George!  But what did he leave home, for?’

‘That’s what I’m a coming at.  His father wanted him to marry a grand girl, for her wealth and high style.  He wouldn’t; said he’d marry for love or not at all.  Then they had words.  Then there was some politics mixed up in it.  This one is down on the king, or the emperor, or whatever he is, and it got found out, and he had to clear the country.  He dassn’t go back for two years, he says – till the law’s time’s up – or they’ll fling him into prison and make him pay like smoke besides.’

. . . ‘Old woman’ – in a low voice – ‘don’t you know, he’s got his eye on our Mary?  Say, don’t you know that?’

‘Well, as you say, I’ve kinder thought it, sometimes – but then, he’s up so high, and so rich – ’

‘Never you mind about that.  Didn’t he tell his old father he wouldn’t ever marry, only for love?  You encourage him, that’s all.  And I will, you bet.’

‘But husband, she’s just a-wasting away for poor Hugh – and if it only could be, I do wish – ’

‘Hang poor Hugh!  That was a good escape.  A mighty good escape.  You want to do the best you can by your daughter, don’t you?  Well, I do,      too.’ ”  (Twain 36-7)

John’s imagination runs wild with the prospect of adding royalty to his family name, obsessing with Fountingblow even though Mary’s heart is set on Hugh.

And sadly in this story, John’s fascination with royal marriage ends up shattering his own image before the community of Deer Lick.  Someone surprisingly and mysteriously murders David, and Hugh gets pinned with the murder, despite circumstantial evidence.  But John writes Hugh out of sight and out of mind, and prepares for his daughter’s marriage to Fountingblow           (Twain 50-2).  But when the big day finally comes, the wedding does not go as John planned, and everyone in Deer Lick sees it for themselves.  John’s name is utterly exposed to embarrassment.  And John is left to try to save face for himself and his daughter (56-8 ).  John’s image becomes shattered to his own immorality of coveting marriage and high utopian happiness, even at the expense of his daughter’s happiness.

Twain weaves this tale masterfully as a portrait of the American Dream raised up to new heights of utopian fantasy and shattered to disillusion and cynicism.  Americans of Twain’s time longed to reshape their own identities by running away to some utopian lifestyle, whether it was marrying into royalty in the ethos of Europe or it was writing Victorian literature about the thrills of romance, all for getting away from the dreary existence of rural simplicity or the painful labors of putting their country back together after the Civil War.  The latter scenario was literally the case during the 1876 presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden.  Many Americans lived in fear of Reconstruction following the Civil War, and these Americans campaigned for federal troops to be removed from enforcement of the restoration process in the South (“Foreword” qtd. in Marriage 12-3).  Americans had become profoundly embarrassed about their image being shattered literally among each other from the Civil War.  And Americans had become profoundly embarrassed by their image being ridiculed by European observers who thought that Americans had shot themselves in the foot with their own stubborn streaks of political independence.  Americans of Twain’s time longed to shape and harden their identities by people’s opinions, even in the prospects of writing their own stories in utopian escapism and art and running off into impossible adventures, even impossible marriages.

In many ways, Twain’s short story is a good prelude to our present time of utopian escapism and radical suspicion toward a perceived dreary existence in American culture.  Many postmoderns and emerging neo-moderns long to shape their identities by the plateau of fantasy, whether in running off to Europe and the Middle East as their new frontiers for happiness and in the new emerging global market of telecommunications and consumerism, or in creating fantasy art and fantasy literature that often portrays rural deadness and metropolitan ecstasy in American culture.  Postmoderns and neo-moderns express a real fear of their image being shattered by the perceptions of “the other.”  We have to marry into outside people’s opinions about ourselves.  We have to explore and redefine our boundaries, even if it means compromising our values.

If we are to take the Biblical Gospel seriously as an exposition onto our own hearts, and if we are to know real peace by the foundation of Christ crucified with God the Father, we have to recognize out of Scripture with the Lord that we covet a false sense of beauty, even a false salvation, out of other people’s opinions, even among people outside our own comfort zones.  As sinners, we long to compare our own reputations and images, even our whole life stories, by what other people say about us.  We long to satisfy and even justify ourselves by our neighbors’ words.  This even becomes the case in sexual intimacy and marriage; if our spouses and our families do not measure up to other people’s standards, we have to ditch what we have and marry into something better for ourselves.  We commit spiritual adultery in our coveting of marriage, and our coveting of fantasies.  We divorce the true God in order to marry false gods, and false saviors.  And we commit a very real formal adultery among our spouses and our families; we readily ditch the husband or wife we are with in order to find a greater sense of happiness in a stranger’s arms.

But we have to recognize out of the Bible’s teachings that Jesus is the true justifying priest, the true Savior, for His believers, even a jealous husband for His church and a jealous Redeemer for needy slaves to sin, if we are to know real peace with God and do away with idols.  Jesus is the true redeeming priest who measures up better than false saviors, better than false measures of happiness among sinners, by Jesus’ own purchasing of sinners away from enslavement to sex and away from enslavement to alternative measures of happiness at the cross.  Jesus is the Redeemer of sinners who are in bondage to their fantasies.  And if we seek Jesus by faith, trusting Jesus’ purchase of sinners from bondage to their sins at the cross, we know real peace and grace relationship with God as our righteous Heavenly Father.

We have to recognize out of the Bible’s teachings that Jesus is the true Justifier for believers, and that all other types of justification are false types.  We are to count our false desires for justification on our own terms, and our own pursuits of happiness on our own terms, as dead to Jesus and Him crucified by faith.  And we are to delight in knowing real one to one relationship, even real spiritual communion, at the foundation of the cross of Jesus with God the Father, beyond the power of idols, even beyond the power of false saviors and false utopian paths of happiness.

“ ‘But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it.  You took some of your garments and adorned multicolored high places for yourself, and played the harlot on them.  Such things should not happen, nor be.  You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from My gold and My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them.  You took your embroidered garments and covered them, and you set My oil and My incense before them.  Also My food which I gave you – the pastry of fine flour, oil, and honey which I fed you – you set it before them as sweet incense; and so it was,’ says the Lord GOD.

‘Moreover you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured.  Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire?  And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood.’ ”  (Ezek. 16:15-22)

When the prophet Ezekiel denounces the priests whom the Israelites were seeking for themselves and their children, Ezekiel is saying that sex has become the Israelites’ pursuit of happiness, even their real pursuit of deliverance, apart from God, and apart from God’s power of deliverance.  Ezekiel is saying that God is a better priest and a better Deliver for His believers than sex or religion could ever provide for the Israelites.

Jesus is the true and better Ezekiel, the true Word born in flesh who speaks the harsh spotlight of truth and grace into sinners’ motives, showing them the true nature of their pursuits of happiness as pursuits of false salvation, in order that Jesus would point sinners to Himself as their true salvation.  If we look to Jesus as the true justifying priest who speaks on behalf of needy sinners, even self-enslaved sinners, we know real peace and justification and deliverance with God as our righteous Heavenly Father.  We know real righteousness credited onto our lives by God at the cross of His Son Jesus.  We know real freedom from the power of idols at the cross of Jesus with God our Father.  We know real sonship and daughterhood blessed among us, between men and women, as we know real communion at the foundation of Jesus crucified with God our Father.

And we are to look to the Bible as the exposition of our hearts, as a spotlight exposing the idols of our hearts, in order that we would do away with false desires for happiness and false desires for salvation at the cross of Jesus Christ, our true Savior and true Deliverer, and we would know real peace and happiness with God our Father.  And this Biblical exposition particularly applies to the context of male-female relations.  As we men and women look to Jesus and Him crucified as our justifying and priestly grace, we know from Scripture that we bear a real peace with God our Father, and we are to seek reconciliation between men and women, and between husbands and wives, not demanding each other as false types of happiness, but delighting in each other as creatures made in the image of God, in the “imago Dei.”  And we delight to share grace between men and women, even husbands and wives, at the foundation of Jesus at the cross, in our grasp of real communion with God the Father.

And this Biblical exposition of Ezekiel particularly applies to the context of neo-moderns and postmoderns redefining themselves in the new global market of consumerism and telecommunications and fantasy escapes.  If we take the Gospel seriously as a real word of justifying grace, we are to show postmodern people and neo-modern people the true motives of their pursuits of happiness.  We are to say to them: Look, your pursuits are fashioned out of a desire to divorce the true God and marry false gods and false saviors, other people’s opinions, time and time again in your lives.  These false types of deliverance will not free you; they will enslave you – they will harden you.  Your self-actualization will not bring you happiness, but Jesus’ resurrection will.  This is because Jesus’ resurrection conquers the bondage to your own self-salvation.

And we have to recognize out of Scripture with the Lord that neo-modern and postmoderns’ pursuits of happiness in the new global market and in fantasy art will not keep their images safe, but will shatter them.  We have to say to neo-moderns and postmoderns: Your desires for these escapist marriages – your marrying into other people’s opinions – will not keep you intact, but will bring you into a greater disintegration of identity, and a greater disillusion about yourselves.  God will give you over to your own compromise of your values, even as this compromise is to your own liking.  And in our conversations with neo-moderns and postmoderns, if we point them to satisfaction and happiness in Christ alone, we bring them to real peace with God as part of our own enjoyment of communion with God the Father.

But we also have to recognize in our walk with God the Father that we are to delight in God the Father and do away with all false desires for happiness, even false marrying into other people’s opinions, whether it is trying to be fashionable in the global consumer market or it is trying to be chic through escapist fantasy literature.  We are to recognize sex and marriage and art and global travel and metropolitan cities and rural towns as good things of creation, and also good things that we treasure as idols, through our study of Scripture with the Lord.  We are to do away with our false desires for these good things to the cross of Christ for knowing real grace and peace with the Lord, and for handling the good things of creation with a real sense of contentment and joy by the foundation of Christ with the Lord.  We are to show the Gospel as counterculture in our own lives to the false types of culture that neo-moderns and postmoderns are making for themselves.  And we are to delight in one to one relationship with God our righteous Father, in knowing Jesus as our one foundation of grace and peace with God the Father, even as postmodern sinners and neo-modern sinners drive themselves to reshape the boundaries of American culture and Western culture that we live in.

I recommend Mark Twain’s short story Marriage as a helpful mirror reflection into the ethos of our present time.  We long to marry into our own high plateaus of fantasy and escapism, even to the point of shattering our own identities and our own images, driving our very names into embarrassment.  We long for high fantasies that will only shape us into greater disillusion, the American Dream gone asunder.  And I believe that you will find Twain the master storyteller speaking well into our present age through the words of his well-woven narrative.