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Get your own Free Home PageThe purpose of this book is to bring us into a deeper love of God that is consequently reflected in love towards our family (p. 12). It may be divided into four parts.
Part I: Introduction
The first part is the introduction and shows the importance of a good marriage and horror stories from bad marriages. It points out that planning to have a good marriage is the first step in accomplishing a good marriage. And it gives credence to the material in the book by giving real life examples of terrible marriages that have been revitalized by the principles shared in this book. So the point of the introduction is that good marriages are important, and they come to those who plan for them
Part II: Knowledge Basis
How to love. The second part of the book, consisting of chapters 2-3, seeks to provide the knowledge basis for applying the practical skills that will come in later chapters-for all application is the application of knowledge and thus based upon truth. Chapter two lays the basis of the book: that love is a reflection of our honor for the person (p. 8). Therefore, the way to increase your love for someone is to increase your honor for them. Honor means "weight" or "significance." So to honor someone is to regard them as important-"weighty"-and to display that in your actions by listening to what they say, considering it, reacting to it, and treating them with great respect, doing this for them that show them that you value them. We should seek to honor people out of love and honor for God. We should not only treat our spouse this way, but all members of our family, the church, and the world.
While I think that Gary Smalley is getting at something important here (that love is a reflection of honor), I think he is also misguided at this point. This is because love for another that is based on their significance is man-centered. Love is not a result of our making much of another human. It should not have as its foundation the great worth we place on the person. Rather, it should have as its foundation the great worth that we place on God. Love for people is to be a result of making much of God. Loving another does not mean making much of them, or flow from making much of them, but flows from a sense of God's immense "weight" and means making much of God so that they will be more satisfied in Him.
So I propose an adaptation of what Gary Smalley sees as the foundation of the book. Love for another person is not a reflection of our honor for the person; love for another person is a reflection of our honor for God. The foundation of love for people is a valuing of the glory of God. And the goal of our love for others is that they would come to honor God more. Thus, love for people has God as its source and aim. This does not necessarily deny that the honor we place another might be one of the things that fuels our love for them. But the main fuel is the honor we place on God. And, as Smalley himself said, the value we place on other people should not be based on any inherent value we necessarily find in them, but should come out of our the significance we place on God.
Thus, to build your love for someone, first build in your heart a deeper sense of the weight of God's value. This will result in such a reverence for God's worth that you will want God to receive the glory that comes from being honored by others as well as yourself. Your delight in the worth of God will seek to reach its consummation in the delight of spreading God's worth to others. So as you recognize that your neighbor (or wife, or family member) is a vessel that can become more filled with reverence for God, you will be moved from a joy in the greatness of God to the joy of spreading the greatness of God to the one you must love. And the desire to spread your honor for God to your neighbor (and the act of doing it) is love. And your joy will not only be that God will be glorified, but that your neighbor has a part in glorifying God. Look at your neighbor not through their faults, but through their potential to honor God. Then, a love for the honor of God will result in a love for your neighbor.
Though much of the rest of Smalley's book is based upon the principle of placing honor on others, if we place these God-centered corrective lenses on what he says is useful. He perhaps seeks to provide us with these lenses in part four, which is on the power from which we are to act. Also, Smalley's emphasis on honoring one another will surely help us to be more committed to following the biblical command to "give preference to one another in honor" (Romans 12).
Love is not a whim. Chapter three seeks to show us that we are not helpless in the matter of love. It is not something over which we have no control, and therefore we can change loveless relationships and must seek to maintain loving relationships. Hence, the title Love is a Decision.
Smalley's intentions are good here, but I think that it is unbiblical to regard love merely as a decision. Feelings are essential to true love. These feelings are not merely the good result of love, as Smalley maintains, but are part of the essence of love. Nonetheless, I agree with Smalley that love is not something over which we have no control. While we do not directly control our emotions, we can do things that will indirectly affect them-and affect them in an effectual way. I think that Smalley is essentially right in his views of how to fire up love. To do so, you choose to love the person, pray that God would give you the love (including the feelings!), and then you seek to honor, serve, and appreciate the person (out of your honor for God), trusting that in doing so God will give you the deep affections of love.
Part III: Putting the Knowledge into Action
Part three is the skills section-the section that puts this knowledge into action.
From the worth of women to the worth of men. The first chapter in this section is called "The Incredible Worth of a Woman." It seeks to increase the honor that men will have for their wives by showing that they are worthy of honor because they have great value. The values of women are manifold, but the value that he keys in on is the intuitive ability of women to understand what is good and bad about a relationship and how to make the bad good and the good better. Therefore, consult your wife's "built in marriage manual" regularly! Also, it is important to realize that women tend to "personalize" everything in their environment. For example, they see the carpet in their home as an expression of their personality. "That's why a woman may feel 'trashy if the trash hasn't been taken out; she may feel dirty if the floors aren't cleaned and the carpet is not vacuumed..." (p. 49). Thus, in order to honor our wives, we must show respect to their surroundings and that which they do.
The next chapter teaches us how to energize someone. This is done by showing tenderness. This cuts the nerve of stress, especially in the midst of arguments, and therefore frees up the energy in the person that was being wasted on stress.
Chapter six is on the "closed spirit," a major relationship destroyer. Essentially, dishonoring someone closes them to you. Honoring them opens them to you. Do not let anger build up in others, because it leads to bitterness and thus a closed spirit.
Having focused on the worth of women as marriage experts in chapter 4, he now focuses on the worth of men in chapter seven. The value of men he focuses on is our nurturing ability. We are especially suited to be nurturers because we are fact finders by nature. Therefore, we can easily fulfill the task of nurturing: finding out our wive's needs and meeting them (p. 100).
The fourfold nature of nurturing. This sets the foundation for the next four chapters, which each focus on a specific aspect of nurturing. The first aspect is security, which comes from commitment. This is the soil of a good relationship.
The second aspect of nurturing is conversation. This is the water of a good relationship. One effective means of communication is the emotional word picture, which is "a communication tool that simultaneously activates a person's emotions and intellect. In so doing, it causes another person to not just hear our words, but experience them." This helps bridge a communication gap between men and women. Women's communication generally focuses on emotion, men's on facts. Thus, often times our words to each other aren't as impacting because they are not in line with the other's "main language." But a word picture involves both facts and emotions by showing forth the facts in an emotional illustration. Thus, they bridge the language gap.
The third aspect of nurturing is emotion. This is often expressed in romance, which is "The act of keeping your courtship alive long after the wedding day" (p. 133). Friendship is a root of romance because romance comes from sharing common interests-which is at the heart of what it means to have a friendship. "The winning recipe for romance is found in developing a friendship centered on shared interests-and carefully planned...If you're not growing a friendship based on each other's shared interests-I can almost guarantee you that the romantic soil in your relationship is lacking the essential nutrients it needs" (p. 144, 135). Two cardinal rules of romance are to make sure that the activity you are involved in receives your full attention, and to make sure that you are doing it for her best interests. Pages 141-142 are filled with great ideas for romantic activities.
The fourth aspect of nurturing is touch. This conveys tenderness and love, and is basically the culmination of the first three aspects of nurturing, and touch itself culminates in sex. It is important to recognize that purity in character increases passion in sex (pp. 150-153), touching outside of the bedroom can light flames inside the bedroom, and meaningful communication can fan the flames (p. 149).
The means to close relationships. The last chapter in this section is on the secret to a close family. That secret is friendship, which comes from shared trials. Strong friendship develops out of shared experiences, and especially shared trials. Trials will come, we don't have to make them happen. But we don't merely have to wait for trials to develop friendship. We can bring about shared trials, in a sense, by creating adventures.
Part IV: The Power to Rely On
Part four concerns the power to rely on for taking the knowledge we've learned (part 2) and applying it (part 3). The key is finding fulfillment in God alone (ch. 13) which not only empowers one to apply what the book has taught so far, but also empowers one to endure suffering (ch. 14)-one of the most effective means of growth.
To this I would add that a helpful way to keep oneself on the path to a good marriage is to remind yourself each day that you are committed to stand firm in honoring God and to honoring your spouse for God's sake.
MP
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