The standard of living that is the foundation and background behind all other forms of standards of living - the core of social and personal well being - is the union of a man and a woman in the institution of marriage. It is the central and core, number one, civil right of humankind, and the basis for all other endeavors. It is a dangerous conjecture to reason there is no God, for marriage would lose its purpose and respect in our hearts and attentions.

   Like breathing, and a beating heart, there are standards of intimacy that, without exception, apply to everyone; whether one or another, or many, disagree. Many Scriptural illustrations of God’s example to us in Christ show the spiritually unseen manifestations of His Way in marriage as the guiding character our physical materialistic meanings require. Joy in shared living is through our active responses in giving attentions to God's promises of protection in the living vows of marriage - the merging of two independent individualities into a joint decision making team of one.

   The wedding band is the outward physical symbol of this bond of commitment. Marriage is not an optional accessory to living one’s life where other endeavors with career, friends, or hobbies take lead. Marriage is living where these other activities enhance purposeful companionship. The Bible says marriage is patterned after the church unto Christ where the man holds the position of Christ to his wife who represents the church unto her husband. That is because of original sin in the Garden of Eden where Eve was tempted to listen to the Serpent instead of Adam her husband.

   All things in the world that are not in the will of God are patterns of original sin because the falling away from life is from the same source. No matter what their particular or collective circumstances, everybody belongs to God. Jesus Christ fully committed Himself to live and die, and live again, humanity. His Word represents a man’s position of authority where a woman’s word authority combines with her husband’s place in Him. Christ’s flesh represents a woman’s position of authority where a man’s body authority combines with his wife’s place in Him.

   Marriage in the United States of America is legally classified as "fundamental to our very existence and survival" because of its role in encouraging and protecting the only type of interpersonal association which results in the natural reproduction of the human race. The working out of personal and interpersonal development is accomplished, by the hand of God through faith action, within marriage day to day by husband and wife.

   Shared personal intimate living, under the spiritually unseen/physically seen dual sanctioned powers of our eternal God in agreement with temporal society, where He remains humankind’s Authority and humankind’s various families are society’s authority, finds its lasting strength through the wedding ceremony. At issue is not promiscuous or “let’s see if it works out” co-habitude sex because who we are, as a people centered in our loyalties, has generally been abandoned due to available contraceptives.

   At issue are false confidentiality standards based in expressive intrigue. At stake are our self-assured attitudes about Who Jesus Christ is (consequently who we are), in our caring for the power of our committed word, connected with His. Casual sex, recreational sex, occupational sex, entertainment sex, and whim-of-the-moment hookup sex, take a subversive “emotional support” to financial stability and status in a society where personal achievement drives the powers behind consumerism and population control.

   Swaying the power of combined faith decisions in marriage into division for profit by cooperate advertising executives…  and people, collectively, lose their God given rights to trust in Him to know what He is doing as our source of supply, at the service to worldly economic vitality. To protect our own desires for self-aware fulfillment in our unique and particular independence, we are taught we must blame our father, our sisters, our brothers, the school, the teachers, the government, and ultimately our spouse - we can blame anyone but never blame ourselves.

   It's never our fault, just ask anyone and they can tell you which man or woman cause their problems. Trouble is, we have forgotten to trust God to know how and which un-human demonic pressures and influences are working to ruin our faithful living. In that sense it really is not our fault because we are overwhelmed by the spirit of the “master of thieves” throughout society. But, it is always our responsibility because we supernaturally want change called improvement. We are the one who has the power through faith action, together with our loved ones, to change.

   Honor does not “just happen naturally” except in our seeking for God’s wisdom through faith in Christ. Intentional respect leads to decency that leads to integrity that leads to honor; always in that order. Moving ahead into bond with a mate brings rise to paradoxical if not opposed thoughts and feelings accompanying fresh as well as accustomed positions in life. Fearful awed wonder of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old in concert with fear of losing the old and trepidation at the appearance of the new; repulsion and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity and despair are natural active elements during the changeover process.

   However, the process of conversion into married life is not meant to be a maintained way of life. Efforts to drag the old into the new as a conceptual/emotional integrated completion of wholeness will only serve to catch everyone involved into continuous confusion from being stuck in the transformation. Before marriage, attempts at finding solace is found in indirect pieces here and there, as one allows, because there is no foundation of particular lasting commitment in which to rely. This leads to an unfulfilled habitual hunger for attention.

   As a person integrates their persona, interests, and expectations with the one they marry, there comes a unifying of finding secure solace with and in their mate and a giving up of the varied opinions, viewpoints, and scattered yearning being single naturally causes. If one were to remain single in their avenue of expression in life without marriage, only one stable and centered focus is available without falling into the perplexity resulting from multi-intimate companionships: living solely unto solace in God through Christ without interpersonal intimacy with another human being.

   Any events of experience we are reluctant to be respectfully open and honest about with our personal partner is probably something we shouldn’t be doing. It causes distortions of proper consideration in unrestrained free association between unconnected similarities of meanings and purposes. Lost is the power of our God-instilled natural instincts true romantic traditions find in putting marriage first through open ceremony (and straightforward eloping) to shed aside family and social restraints against a man and woman choosing to permanently be responsible for one another in God’s capable, responsible, hands.

   Giving our mate a chance to be for us, in personal responsibility for everything we may be involved, allows them to be who we married them to be. There can be no constructive success in the upside-down-backwards manipulative practice of refraining from togetherness in marriage to facilitate any general and/or certain demands of behavioral criteria and/or performance.

   An extravagant expensive wedding ceremony, though a delightfully positive expression of dedication, must never displace propriety’s priority about cohabitation and present affordability. Attention to honest straight-forward composure in wedding arrangements provides the dignity of witness expensive pretentious preparations for a “dream wedding” cannot approach.

   A wedding for a few hundred dollars, or less, is not diminished in God’s eyes. Splurging on the nearly $30,000 average wedding costs in the USA shows; on the one hand a celebrated radical trust in faith, and on the other a retreat from moderation in all things. Many times, depending upon what a couple has to work with, elegant simplicity and necessary thrift allows for much more appreciated memories.

   One of the adversary’s biggest weapons is discouragement about supposed negative circumstances accompanied by a vague overall disgust that paralyzes our activities to hold ourselves and others in account. The devil’s divide-and-conquer methods are always the same: To keep a couple from an open and honest living under the joys of grace and mercy. Indignation against frustrations gives a false reasoning about our fears and distances our active reliance in Christ’s hand, through our hands, in our affairs.

   When our attentions in the decisions we daily make affect intimately involved companionship (marriage), and other important decisions a man and woman are designed by Creation to share, we must seek special direction from God by our trust in Him through our partner. Too often, however, private individualistic prayer is used to camouflage our lack of activity on behalf of our mate because of fears of failure.

   Love is from God and of God and must always be from open and honest faith-action because God Himself is Love. He is forever. Since people are not God and cannot be God, what people usually call love in their own reactions to desires is an emotional substitute for faith; attempting to provide the necessary devotions it takes to make a permanent 'go' with a man or woman we marry. When the flesh is understood for what it is, as subject to God’s desires of Will, we have His personal life giving guidance to not reject our personal cares and concerns; but a proper order of sense about commitment.

   People cannot actually fall out of love unless it is the 'love' they fell into in the first place that is usually a well satisfied fulfillment through the use of others. When others do not comply with our own perception (deception) of right over wrong, we say our love is diminished. However, that does not mean that we do not truly love a person we understand we wanted and accepted based in our self-serving misunderstandings about what love is.

   The problems people have with accepting God's grace and mercy of the Good News Gospel of salvation, in most people's hearts and minds who have yet to know Him for Who He is, is they transfer their worldly selfish ideas about what love means onto and into their learning about God. Belief in intelligence as superior to ignorance in world knowing by Godly principles is part of the humanly distorted blocks to receiving Him - because balancing right over wrong in one’s egotistical pride is not of God but of deception from the knowledge of good and evil.

   This causes an unintended rejection of Christ as the Alive Man of Redemption He is by believing He is someone He is not. In defending God’s righteousness in order to find emotional stability to hold onto faith, we get caught up in our pride to brow-beat others into our ways instead of His ways. So, we balk and fight against anything of Truth that gets in the way of our personally and collectively honed and polished misplaced faith in humanity's religious pathways founded in instinctual attractions.

   Putting ourselves first over the errors and discrepancies of those we love by aligning our attractions to have things right, by requiring their submission to our will, has nothing to do with patient devotion to a mate in their freedoms of will unto the real God, through His provided faith in His Son, to expand our heartfelt attentions to see our courses of true love in following His leading. God will never lead us astray, and understanding matrimonial vows enough to realize permanence in Him allows us to see our own God given gifts of determination to trust in our loved ones for His sake – no matter how things may seem to be amiss or a mess.