The definition of happiness is not the prince and the princess living happily together ever after. Instead it is the close relationship of the couple and the family to mould each other into more Christ-like personalities. This is the ultimate purpose of marriage in God’s will.
“Often people think that happiness is a sense of security in living, material possessions, monetary abundance, social positions, having lots of down-lines, having luxurious houses and fancy cars and so on. In fact true fulfillment can only be attained when a person knows who he really is and his own values. It’s a pity that many have wasted their whole lives in busyness yet not found the meaning of their true existence.
During the warm season of May, Dr Peter Chiu, from the Chinese Family for Christ, was invited to conduct a training course “The Kingdom Men” organized by Board of Family Wellness and Counseling in Sibu. He was interviewed by the chief editor of The Chinese Methodist Message, Mr Wong Meng Lei, on “What is Happiness?”
Dr Chiu said true love is not found in man as no one is sufficient in perfect love. We can only return to Christ to find true love as well as the purpose for which God created us. If we can live out the very purpose of our existence, we are truly blessed.
“So my seminar will emphasize ‘uniting, living and passing on’; that is to say we need to be united in Christ, to lead a Christ-like life and to pass on Christian heritage. This will be our lifetime mission. If it is not for this, my 44 years of marriage wouldn’t have been easy. My wife suffered 16 years with brain tumor in her last stage of life. She changed from a beautiful school beauty to a sick haggard person, was she unfortunate? God let her live her last 16 years as a brain tumor patient. But she went beyond the sickness and her limitations. Others might say she had suffered a lot. Isn’t God supposed to give people love, protection and peace? On the contrary, for her last ill-stricken 16 years she still loved God devotedly and walked hand in hand with me to preach the Gospel around the world and to share the good news of marriage.”
Owing to her life beautifully lived, Dr. Chiu has a better understanding of true happiness. If a person doesn’t know his true self and the purpose of living, he will live in pain, and not happiness.
“We need to use the criterion of Christ to measure happiness. Thus, losing my wife did not strike me down nor take away my joy. For my wife, it was good for her to be free from the afflictions of this world. She can enjoy herself in the bosom of Christ and be young and beautiful again.”
Happiness in a family is that both husband and wife should be united in Christ like a plug with both positive and negative sides. Only when these opposite charges are plugged simultaneously into the socket, the bulb will light up. This is similar to the life of a married couple. There should be harmony and unity in Christ to create mutual commitment. If the two of them cannot come together in one heart, each professing a different faith, ideal or objective in life, there will be wars and conflicts.
“For a Christian family to enjoy happiness the couple should have the same faith, the same value system, and the heart of Christ, they can then have joint happiness. For God said it is not good for man to stay alone, He made him a helper to assist him.
For a country to be blessed and the church to flourish, families need to be united. If a family is not walking hand in hand for better or for worse, we cannot expect the country to be united and prosper and the people to be at peace with each other. We are not talking about dictatorship, but a country as such won’t stay strong.
Many families of today are having problems, particularly in the relationship of husband and wife which seems to appear easy theoretically but difficult to maintain in reality. To build a happy home, the relationship of the husband and wife is like the two pillars which are needed to share burdens, to support and provide* balance so that the roof would not fall down.
“At the same time, these two pillars should be able to ‘support heaven and stand firmly on the earth’. To ‘support heaven’ means that both pillars should be in close relationship with Christ, so that there is no hurdle or gap with the Holy Spirit. To ‘stand firmly on the earth’ is that the couple should lay their foundation in the Bible as well as in their intimate relationship. If they are stable, their home will also have stability, or else it may *collapse anytime.”
Dr Chiu stressed that the relationship of husband and wife is very important. His organization has been searching on what to focus for years. At first, they worked with the youths, then the husband and wife relationship, then the divorcee problems and counselling. It was like a man with many knives but all were blunt. Dr Chiu learned from experience that to be involved in all aspects needed a lot of resources, man-power and financial backing. If not, they wouldn’t be of much help.
“Our lives are very short. The resources of an organization are also limited. Thus, one has to find the right place to focus on. After twenty years, our organization has managed to find the two pillars, to help couples to live up to the ‘heaven and earth’ concept, that is to build a close relationship, to have better communication and to solve problems in marriage. Among them, Marriage Enrichment Retreat (MER) is one of the courses we offer.”
MER is to help couples to understand how each family of origin has affected one’s life, their gender differences, the keys to effective communication, how to express themselves in the right manner, positive encouragement, and how to check on one’s own lacking or mistakes in the light of God.
“The husband and wife relationship, is two in one, a coming together of two persons away from their parents as one body. It is like the two pins of the plug which must be plugged into the socket at the same time. However, we often see a wife is doing her devotion in the morning but the husband is up to work and does his devotion at night.”
“It seems that individuality is good and effective in serving the Lord. However, when it comes to problems like raising children and other crises, how would they cope together?”
“Chinese Family for Christ” was established in 1990. It has trained more than 1300 couples to lead at the MER in more than 20 countries worldwide. In 2018, we have to organize more than 300 MERs. Those leading the retreats are not only involved in the three-day-two-night camp but also need to do follow-up up to a year with the couples who have attended the camps. This is because the relationship of husband and wife cannot be solved in a day or two but take a longer time to maintain and manage.
Dr Chiu likened the husband and wife relationship to Apple’s I-phone. Though it is a good phone, it won’t be useful if the battery is not charged after use. The phone will by no means be fully charged all the time.
Speaking of the role of a father, it is often not the spiritual leader of a home probably due to the Chinese culture. The concept of ‘Strict dad and loving mom’ often influences a home. A father toils for the family while tender love comes from the mother. There is another Chinese concept of ‘Man takes care of external matters and the woman the home affairs.’ These two concepts have somehow made rigid the roles of men and women in a specific position.
In the Bible, however, the management role is given to the man and he is the head of his wife at home. This heavenly culture and values are different from the Chinese culture. The church as a whole rarely explains or emphasizes these points. And it takes practice to help men take up their roles as fashioned in the heavenly culture. There is a loop hole in the traditional Christian education which is merely teaching and listening and not practicing.
“Thus we need to make a change in Christian education, so that men are not just to be taught but led into doing, just like that of discipleship.”