Every now and again I just can’t help myself—I respond to a clickbait headline and find myself reading an advice column. The question this time was from a woman who had become disillusioned with her husband and enamored with someone else. And as I read the columnist’s response I thought, “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how Satan would counsel if he was asked.” That got me thinking…

If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage was invented by human beings, either for reasons related to humanity’s evolutionary origins or related to men’s need to control and dominate women. He would want people to believe that because marriage came from within this world rather, it in no way reflects any kind of divine design for human beings or human society. This makes it not only unnecessary but possibly harmful and oppressive.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage offers no great benefits that cannot be had with singleness, cohabitation, or serial monogamy. He would want people to believe, to the contrary, that marriage offers risks and drawbacks that are mitigated or avoided altogether when people choose not to marry.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage is primarily a matter of an individual’s personal lifestyle, that before marriage is about giving oneself to another person to love and to serve, marriage is about a sense of personal well-being and fulfillment.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe marriage is so risky that it is best to postpone it almost indefinitely, that it is so significant and perilous an undertaking that people should not even consider it until they have completed their education, begun a career, and become well established in life. He would especially want young people to anticipate it with a sense of dread instead of excitement.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage is a union between any two—or three or four—willing partners regardless of any factor related to their sex or maybe even their family relationship. He would also want to be clear that marriage can be easily dissolved when it is no longer satisfying or desirable—“’til death or dissatisfaction do us part.”
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to miss the contradiction that while marriage is in some ways insignificant and easily dissolved, it is also so significant that a wedding should cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and that the institution is best dignified when a couple puts themselves heavily in debt to make sure every detail is perfect. He would want people to believe that the best measure of a successful wedding is that it wows the attendees, glorifies the couple, and looks great on Instagram.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage is where sex goes to die rather than to thrive and that a lifetime of sex with one person can be nowhere near as satisfying as fleeting moments of sex with a long succession of people. He would want them to be suspicious that to enter marriage is to settle for sexual mediocrity rather than fulfillment. He would make sure this message is so endlessly repeated in popular culture that it becomes almost a given.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that children are a hindrance to a happy marriage rather than a blessing to it and that people are happiest when dedicating themselves entirely to themselves rather than to others. And if they still insisted on having children, he would want them to think of those children as a lifestyle choice, as a kind of prop to be used to enhance a parent’s sense of personal satisfaction.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want struggles or issues a couple encounters to be left festering and unresolved. “It’s fine and good to let the sun set on your anger.” He would most certainly not want the couple to reach out to others for counsel, prayer, or even rebuke.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want husbands to be passive in their leadership and wives to be so disappointed in that lack of leadership that they feel justified in failing to respect their husbands. He would want wives to determine that submission is a mark of weakness and that if it is given at all, it should be given only when it is earned. He would want husbands to treat their wives harshly instead of gently and to express constant disappointment rather than delight.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would encourage husbands and wives to each insist that problems can only be resolved when the other person makes the first move. He would ensure they each consider it impossible to continue to love and serve their spouse when he or she fails to reciprocate that love.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that there is one soulmate out there for each of them and that after a number of years of marriage, they may learn, to their disappointment, that the person they married is not “the one.” He would want people to then believe that they will only truly be happy if they leave their spouse to pursue this soulmate.
If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want even Christians to focus more on the struggles and difficulties of marriage than on its joys. He would want even Christians to talk often about how hard it is and seldom about how good it is. And he would most certainly want Christians to forget all about the reality that the deepest meaning of marriage is not first about a husband and wife but about Christ and his church.

The thing about legalism is that it’s far easier and far more satisfying to spot in someone else’s life than in your own. We are masterful at identifying it and calling it out in other people, but not nearly so good at doing so in our own lives. In Pat Nemmers’ book Retractions he offers a list of 14 signs that you might be legalistic. It’s far from the definitive word on the subject, but is perhaps a useful guide to considering whether you—yes you!—are legalistic.

You read your Bible to get a check mark rather than to meet with God.
Your spiritual disciplines define your spirituality.
You refuse to forgive although you’ve been forgiven.
You judge others before you listen to them.
You justify yourself by comparing yourself to others.
You feel the need to point out someone else’s sin publicly.
Your schedule is so tight it doesn’t have room for “If the Lord wills” in it.
You separate your spiritual life from your natural life.
You spend time only with “saved” people.
You love the praise of men more than the smile of God.
You’re more interested in conformity than conversion.
You make little things big and big things little.
You praise only other’s outward deeds.
You reject the truth tellers who come into your life.

In the past couple of years I have learned more about cemeteries than I would ever have cared to know. I have learned about purchasing plots and commissioning monuments. I have learned about proper etiquette and how different cultures relate to their dearly departed in very different ways. I have learned that a grave offers a place to go to grieve and, as importantly, a place to leave grief behind for a time.

One thing we learned quickly is that while a cemetery will take great care in burying a loved one, raising a monument, and sodding over the stark, bare earth, they will take very little care in watering that grass or ensuring that it grows and thrives. Once the grave is closed and the grass replaced, they will offer only the barest maintenance. That’s true, at least, of the cemetery we chose for our son.
We cannot tolerate the thought of Nick’s grave being covered in dry, brown grass. We cannot tolerate the thought of it becoming overgrown with weeds. We cannot tolerate the thought of it looking overlooked and abandoned. And so we tend to it with great care. We visit it regularly. We water it diligently. We maintain a tiny garden that sits up against the gravestone, adapting it to the seasons.
I might have been tempted to believe that grass would grow best if was only ever sunny and that flowers would thrive best under the constant glare of the sun. I might have been tempted to believe that days of gloom and cloud would slow progress and inhibit growth. But I have come to observe that this is not the case, for clouds bring rain and rain brings life. Meanwhile, unbroken sun quickly dries the ground and leaves it parched. We have come to look forward to dark skies and brooding clouds, for we know the grass will soon be greener, the flowers brighter and straighter, all of it more colorful and more beautiful.
You and I are not too different from grass and flowers, for as God sees fit to have them grow through sun and rain, he sees fit to have us grow through joy and grief. As it is his will that they display their beauty through good weather and bad, it is his will that we display our beauty through easy times and difficult. The beauty he wishes for us to display is the beauty of character that is heavenly rather than worldly, that is divine rather than so naturally human.
Such character does not come easily to us, for we enter the Christian life with long-established patterns of sinfulness and selfishness, of caring much for ourselves and little for others. For our lives to display godly beauty, we must be changed, we must be transformed. And this kind of transformation needs more than ease, more than merely good times.
For this reason God leads us into times of grief and sorrow, times of sickness and loss, times of pain and persecution. He knows that for us to truly thrive in this world and for us to truly be fit for what lies beyond it, we need both sun and rain, both joy and sorrow. In the bright sun of the best of times we may grow in love and joy and peace and patience, for these virtues tend to be the ones that spring up first and bloom fastest. But it is often only in the dark gloom of the worst of times that we grow in kindness and gentleness and self-control, for virtues like these tend to grow slowly and only under specific conditions. If we are to be the Christians God wishes us to be, we must have sun and rain, clear days and cloudy.
And so, as we approach times of sorrow and suffering, when they sweep over us with all their pain and all their tears, all their agony and all their uncertainty, we never need fear that God has forgotten us or forsaken us. We never need fear that we will emerge worse than we entered in. For God has ordained that these times are necessary for our growth, necessary for us to take on the beauty of godly character. God has ordained that we will be like flowers—flowers that spring up in the rain.