“‘Til death do us part” has long been the ultimate pledge of fidelity and love between a man and a woman joining together in marriage. Yet, fifty percent divorce rates demonstrate that remaining faithful until death is not an easy task. No matter how much “in love” couples may be on their wedding day, keeping the spark of love alive has proven very difficult indeed. I believe that one reason marriages collapse before death intervenes is because the pledge of love until death contains an inherent limitation. If one assumes that marriage is only for one’s physical lifetime, then it almost makes sense to move on to a better marriage if the first one isn’t working out.

Marriage, it seems to me, is a “God or No God” question. If there is no God -- or even if God is “distant” and not truly relevant to marriage, then marriage simply becomes an arena of humans looking for love and pleasure according to their own preferences. Isn’t it more logical to assume that God does exist and is intimately concerned with the institution of marriage?

Based on this view, the definition of marriage flows naturally out of our understanding of the ideal relationship between God and each human being. One way of looking at that relationship is to say that each person is a projection of one unique “atom” of God’s infinite personality. Each of us can relate to a unique part of God that corresponds only to us, and thus we can say that we are truly “part” of God. If we all are destined to have an intensely mystical relationship with God, living lives of love, as God’s literal temple, then what should our marriages be like?

First, they should be as eternal as the creator of love itself. If God doesn’t want our relationships of love with Him to end, why would He want our marriages to end? Pledging love until death is only a bit longer than pledging that one will love until next Thursday. On Friday we won’t love anymore, just because we moved to the spirit world?

Considering the mechanics of male-female sex, and the lovely children that are frequently the result, and considering the mystical relationship of love that God wants to have with each person, it seems logical to conclude that God’s spirit is present at the conception of each child and is also present during the lovemaking process that precedes conception. If God wants to live mystically with each person, resonating with each person’s thoughts and feelings and actions, then why would God want to leave the room when a husband and wife make love? Since God invented sex in all of its intricacies, and since He did so out of a motivation of love, why would He not want to participate in the breathtaking and transcendent union of two people in love? In the book Transcendent Sex, by Jenny Wade, Ph.D., the author writes of “unio mystica”, mystical union with spirit, or “devekut”, meaning “cleaving” to God, in the Jewish tradition. Dr. Wade interviewed many individuals who experienced union with God in the midst of their sexual experience.

It is no coincidence that many couples who loved each other said that their partner “completed” them. Men and women each reflect a male or female part of God and are complete, as individuals, when they meld themselves into oneness with their spouse. The process involves three: the husband, wife and God as the living essence and creator of both. The melding doesn’t just happen over coffee on the terrace; it happens when a husband and wife join together sexually, creating an “electrical” current between them, with God generating the power that allows the husband and wife to unite together. This places a priceless and unique spiritual value on the role of human sexual organs, and highlights why our sexual organs should be reserved for our eternal spouse.

Since men and women are indeed “spiritual” in nature, and since God is the origin of all things spiritual, the marriage of one man and one woman becomes an “eternal triune marriage”, where God and the husband and wife become utterly and completely one. A union of this type is unlike any other relationship. The depth of union in an eternal triune marriage is telepathic, empathic, resonant and interwoven to such a degree, with love and God as the glue, that the man and woman finally become “complete”. This definition of marriage clarifies why one should only have one husband or wife. We can love all the members of the opposite sex, but we should love them as brothers or sisters, not as a spouse, for an eternal triune marriage is only possible when one husband and one wife unite in an exclusive, eternal, unbreakable bond that allows God to live with them forever.

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Believing this to be so, my wife, Kimmy Sophia, and I rededicated our marriage, in 2006, with special wedding rings, on which we inscribed the Latin phrase, “Matrimonium Aeternum Trinum” (Eternal Triune Marriage). We posted our wedding vows, in the form of a poem, on our website at worldcommunity.com, in the poetry section.

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With eternal triune marriage as a couple’s goal and commitment, one’s perspective about marriage changes. Today’s troubles become small against the vision of living together forever, having tea by a riverbank in the spirit world five billion years from now. True love forever is a much more attractive idea than love that ends at age seventy five.

Since all of us, without exception, are unique reflections of a compassionate and loving God, the destiny of an eternal triune marriage belongs to each and every one of us. Our journey toward that destiny will be hastened by our own efforts, for we reach the world of true love by creating it as we travel along the way.