C.S. Lewis wrote:
. . . . “There are two reasons why I do not particularly want to deal with marriage. The first is that the Christian doctrines on this subject are extremely unpopular. The second is that I have never been married myself and, therefore, can speak only at second hand. But in spite of that, I feel I can hardly leave the subject out in an account of Christian morals.
The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and a wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would mean in modern English. And Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and a key are one mechanism, or that a violin and bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that the two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all other kinds of union which are intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you should try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting. . . .
As a consequence, Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. (*see footnote) There is, of course, a difference between different Churches: some do not admit divorce at all; some allow it reluctantly in very special cases. It is a great pity that Christians should disagree about such a question; but for an ordinary layman the thing to notice that Churches all agree with one another about marriage a great deal more than any of them agrees with the outside world. . . .They all agree that it is like having both legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership. What they all disagree with is that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else. (continued September 23rd).
* Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe that marriage will be for eternity for those married by His restored authority within the Temple, and who are faithful in keeping their covenants.
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
