Marriage and its stakeholders
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ” (NKJV) Genesis 2:21-24
Marriage is an institution from God. After creation, God created this institution and outlined the major stakeholders.
Who are marital stakeholders? First, a stakeholder has a vested interest in a company and can either affect or be affected by a business' operations and performance. Typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Therefore, marital stakeholders are people who can be affected by decisions or make decisions that affect the marriage positively or negatively.
In marriage, there are those we call major or key stakeholders. These major stakeholders have the power to prevent the marriage from achieving its full set of objectives and potentially may cause the marriage to fail. In Genesis 2:23-24, God outlined the major stakeholders in marriage as the couple and their parents and they have the duty to keep God’s command of procreation and “sanity” of the rules in marriage.
In recent times, marriage has had a broader stakeholder base involving God, couples and parents who are still the major stakeholders and other stakeholders involving the entire family of couples, and friends, and even families of their friends and one stakeholder we cannot forget the church. This broad and non-segregated stakeholder base has been the failure of so many beautiful marriages today.
First, the couple must know they are in a covenant with God, themselves and their parents. This and all other stakeholders must be managed well so as not to misconstrue the objectives with which God put the institution together. A couple is each other’s best friends, they are each other’s companions, not ever in competition with each other but support each other through thick and thin. Above all, they have the responsibility of keeping each other in check with their relationships with their creator. One wins in an area and both are credited and vice versa. Again, they make decisions about who has what information and what to do with them. A man should love his spouse as Paul says in 1 Cor. 13. The New Testament also mentions how wives are supposed to submit to their husbands and also create positive impacts on younger women and children. A husband’s duty in marriage is to his wife and a wife’s duty is to her husband. Throughout the marriage, couples should also obey their parents as written in Ephesians 6:1-4.
Let us pray and know how to manage all the stakeholders in our marriages to ensure their success, peace and longevity.