A Biblical Guide for Marriage in Africa
When God created everything in the world, He looked at His creation and proclaimed it all “good.” Yet, surveying His entire creation, God saw one thing that was not good. Genesis 2:18 says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’” The one thing that was out of balance and not good was for the man to be alone. So, God created a woman and brought them together because they were better together.
This theme of “better together” defines the marriage relationship and clarifies that men and women were created to be in a covenant relationship with each other. While it is true that a select few have been given the gift of singleness, which should be celebrated, one can see that God’s design from the beginning was one man and one woman in a covenant relationship with Him and with each other.
This covenant relationship is what this work defines as marriage. Marriage is more than a wedding ceremony; it is more than a contract between two people or the means of procreation. Marriage is the very first institution God designed, and it is the basic structure of society and the pre-cursor for the church. In fact, the analogy often used for the church is a marriage analogy where Jesus is the bridegroom, and His church is the bride. Marriage and the home are fundamental building blocks for any healthy church and any healthy nation.
When surveying the state of marital relationships in Africa, things look good on the outside, but there are fractures below the surface. The central premise of this book is that the African church and African continent need a biblical theology of marriage that is appropriately and contextually applied. If homes are broken, then that brokenness will extend to every aspect of African society.