Learn God’s Laws before Marriage

When you are about to take a wife, you run eagerly to secular lawyers and sit beside them, examining everything with exactness. You ask what will happen if the woman dies without children, what if she has one child, what if she has two or three; how she will manage her property if her father is alive and how if he is not; what share of the inheritance will go to her brothers and what to her husband; when the husband will become master of the whole property so that no relative can draw off any part of it; and when he might lose everything. You investigate many other questions like these. You go around examining every possibility so that none of the woman’s property may in any way pass to one of her relatives.

Yet, as I said before, even if something unexpected happens, the loss is only money. Still, you refuse to overlook a single detail. How absurd, then, to show such great care when money may be lost, but when your soul is in danger and you will have to give an account there, to pay no attention at all. These are the questions we ought to investigate first of all.

For this reason I exhort and advise those who intend to marry to go to blessed Paul and read the laws about marriage found in his writings. Learn beforehand what he commands you to do if the wife you receive proves wicked and deceitful, overcome by drunkenness, abusive, foolish, or burdened with any other such fault. Only then should you make your decision about marriage.

If you discover that Paul gives you authority, when you find one of these faults, to put that wife away and bring in another, then go forward confidently, free from danger. But if he does not permit this and instead commands you—apart from sexual immorality—to love her and keep her in the home despite every other fault, then secure yourself beforehand with the knowledge that you may have to endure all her wickedness.