Why Bible Reading and Church Attendance Aren’t Enough for a Healthy Marriage

Does prayer, reading your Bible and attending church guarantee a good marriage? Many Christians believe it does.

A few weeks ago, I made a post about why Christians stay in bad marriages longer than they should and someone left a comment, saying we should put God first, read the Bible, learn how Biblical marriage works and everything will be fine.

I responded to the comment but I thought the topic deserved a more detailed exploration.

I get these types of comments often. Many Christians believe that the best way to address systemic issues within the church and help people in dire situations is to encourage them (and their spouses) to deepen their faith practices so their lives can change.

And while I agree that following the way of Christ can result in becoming kinder, compassionate, and more loving overall – qualities that nurture healthy relationships – that only works if we are actually following the teachings and modeling of Jesus.

Many people claim to be followers of Christ while also being dominance-centered, church-rules-and-regulations-centered, imperialism-centered. Everything except for being truly Christ-centered.

And that reality makes it dangerous to view verbal confessions of faith, Bible reading, church attendance, and prayer as a cure-all for marriage struggles.

Bible Reading and Church Attendance Aren’t Enough for a Healthy Marriage

Here’s the thing, when we view Christian faith rituals as the entirety of our faith and believe that practicing them will fix everything, we reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how Christian belief systems can contribute to harm and chronic immaturity instead of holding them accountable.

So let’s explore what it means to be on a life-giving path, which Scriptures show was central to Jesus’ mission. (John 10:10) What does it mean not to use faith to bypass maturing? And why is it important that we stop throwing cliches at people who need actual help?

Bible Reading and Church Attendance Aren’t Enough for a Healthy Marriage: The Growth Arc

Maturity is not sticking to the same beliefs you learned years ago and following them without question. Actual maturity involves becoming aware of what you truly believe, exploring it, questioning it, and sometimes rethinking it.

Imagine with me for a moment: you bring home a little seedling from the nursery, fully aware of its potential to grow into a fabulous tree that provides fruit, shade, and beauty to your yard. You plant it, nurture it, and patiently wait.

Fast forward five years, and to your surprise, the tree hasn’t grown at all; it remains the same small seedling you planted. Would you look at it and say, “Wow, at least it’s faithful to how I planted it – it’s grounded on something!” Probably not. You’d think something was wrong because young trees are supposed to grow.

We are meant to grow, too. Remaining unchanged doesn’t necessarily mean we are more faithful Christians – it might mean we’re missing out on life’s natural progression.

From infancy to adulthood, we undergo physical, mental, and emotional changes. Our spiritual lives are meant to do the same. We are meant to evolve. The creator gave us brains to think, hearts to feel, bodies, and intuition to sense the world around us.

Why would those capacities work everywhere except in our spiritual lives? Using these capacities in our spirituality can result in rethinking, relearning, even unlearning. And that’s how we keep moving forward. It’s how we mature.

Nurturing our curiosity about where we are and where we’ve been: therein lies the seed of maturity.

Bible Reading and Church Attendance Aren’t Enough for a Healthy Marriage: The Shaming

I’m conscious of the fact that religious systems and culture can make us feel like questioning our beliefs is wrong. Systems of oppression and stagnancy rely on silencing the voice of truth and liberation.

If you have been shamed for expressing reality, remember that sticking to harmful ideas or staying in situations that don’t serve you isn’t a sign of faithfulness, as some might have you believe.

It’s a sign that you need to closely examine the teachings that make freedom seem threatening and bondage appear more comfortable.  

“Churches whose doctrines stress wives’ loving and obedient submission to their husbands can be a primary barrier to leaving for those battered women. [Research also] found that religious women who experienced Intimate Partner Violence often reported feeling responsible for sustaining the relationship because of the religious beliefs that good Christian women should sacrifice and forgive. Some researchers have suggested that religious beliefs may be associated with women deciding to stay in an abusive environment (e.g.. Church leaders may over-look the severity of partner violence by simply viewing the husband’s violence as the victim’s cross to bear.” ~ Christian Women in IPV Relationships: An Exploratory Study of Religious Factors

Defending the Bible and Protecting God

I came across a post last week on Threads by Kat Armas (@kat_armas) that beautifully ties everything together.

“Much of evangelicalism taught us to spend our energy defending the Bible and protecting God—as if the divine needed safeguarding—while overlooking the people around us who actually do. Empire thrives when we direct our allegiance toward abstract ideals rather than embodied care. It prefers defenders of doctrine over lovers of neighbor. Jesus said we’d be known by our love—not by how fiercely we guard our beliefs. Somewhere along the way, 1 Peter 3:15’s call to “give a reason for the hope within you” was distorted into a mandate to defend biblical literalism at all costs. In doing so, we traded love for certainty, relationship for control, and the wildness of hope for the rigidity of empire’s preferred order.”

Ideas for your next steps (and validation for those on the decolonization and deconstruction journey.)

• Nurture curiosity so you can expand your capacity to listen to others, specifically those from marginalized and oppressed groups, including victims and survivors of abuse, the silenced, and individuals who have left the Church/faith.
• Read books (Check out my books Courage: Reflections and Liberation for the Hurting Soul , The Newlyweds: Pursuing Mutuality Health and Happiness in Marriage and the reading list provided at the end of this blog post.)
• Learn about abusive systems (See this free resource)