All’s Not Fair In “Love and War”
A book review by Anna and Ryan Snyder
This past fall, when we first learned John and Stasi Eldredge had written Love and War, a book on marriage, our initial reaction was negative, to say the least. Don’t get us wrong, we find the Eldredges’ desire to help people improve their marriages admirable. But having just finished re-reading large portions of Wild at Heart and Captivating, their books on men and women, respectively, we instinctively worried about the advice they would give. The Eldredges often claim God created men and women as almost complete opposites, and as a couple firmly committed to the idea that women and men have more similarities in their humanity than they do differences in their gender, we weren’t clamoring to see this type of approach applied to marriage.
The book, however, exceeded our expectations. At times, we actually found ourselves wanting to like it. Unfortunately, at its conclusion, the negatives still outweighed the positives.
Focusing largely on their own experiences, the Eldredges begin by asserting marriage is “fabulously hard” (p. 13). In fact, given that (1) men and women are complete opposites, (2) we are all broken people, and (3) Satan hates marriage, they say it is a “miracle of the first order” that any marriage makes it all (p. 14). However, despite these difficulties, marriage plays a crucial role in God’s story. We live in a world at war, they write, and God gives us marriage to provide us with companionship, and as a picture of his love. Thus, although marriage is excruciatingly hard, God is on our side.
With all this in mind the Eldredges proceed to discuss a number of important, marriage-related issues. From communication, to sex, to having a shared mission in one’s marriage, they offer input and advice, much of it helpful. For example, they explain how people’s brokenness contributes to problems with their spouse, and they encourage people to embrace the resulting conflict as a way of seeking transformation. Additionally, their discussion of the need for both spouses to seek fulfillment in Christ, rather than each other, was commendable. Much of their advice even borders on being pro-egalitarian; they advise a process of mutual decision-making and encourage couples to exercise authority together in matters of spiritual warfare.
However, despite its good points, we reluctantly found ourselves increasingly frustrated with the authors. Their extreme negativity about marriage was exhausting; a few of the more choice examples include comparing the exchanging of wedding vows to the special forces “vowing their lives to one another as they embark on a perilous mission in dark lands, the outcome of which remains quite uncertain,” (p. 4), and claiming “if you cannot admit the disappointment of your marriage, you have made an idol out of it,” (p. 67). They also resort to stereotypes, often attributing marital difficulties to irreconcilable differences between the genders. Sadly, by persuading men and women they are complete opposites and that marriage is almost impossible, they may well convince them their marriage is irreparable, the exact problem the authors are trying to correct.
The authors also treat Scripture carelessly, taking it out of context and providing incomplete quotations, without indicating they have done so. They use pop culture even more heavily than they use the Bible, reporting that human-made movies and stories prove how God intended the world to be. Also, throughout the book the Eldredges often muffle their own meaning with indirect, unstructured, and hard to follow writing. They are overly repetitive both with unclear and weakly constructed analogies and by restating nearly all of Wild at Heart and Captivating.
When we finished with the book, we were left wondering why our marriage is not as hard as the authors say it should be. We have never contemplated divorce, wondered whether we made a mistake in getting married, or threw our hands up in resignation to the fact that marriage is just so hard. While it is true we have only been married for roughly two years, according to the authors, we should have found ourselves wildly disappointed with our marriage by now, or even contemplating divorce, as they were at this point. Yet, while marriage is sometimes difficult, the overwhelming majority of the time we have found it to be better than we ever imagined.
So why do the authors insist marriage is so difficult? Has this been true of your marriage…or are we abnormal in experiencing a joyful and fulfilling marriage? (We doubt the latter is the case.) Why is everyone – Christians included – so down on marriage? Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy (the old ball and chain, etc.)? What causes divorce rates to hover at 50% both within the church and outside it? What are we missing?
