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Marriage as a covenant
IN THE LAST THREE YEARS, THE number of registered
marriages between Filipinas and Japanese has shot up to more
than 7000 a year. In the same period, the divorce rate has
hovered at 40%. Marriages of Filipinos to Japanese women remain
incomparably lower at less than 100 annually, but the divorce
rate is higher at 60%.
The increase in the number of Filipinos marrying
foreigners, in general, has over time coincided with the Philippines’
economic difficulties. The upswing of such marriages in Japan
likewise reflects the tightening of the Immigration law which
made overstaying a criminal offense, in general, and on the
entertainment industry in particular. Marriage has become
the easy way out of economic and legal dispossession.
I recently had the chance to speak on marriage
on the occasion of Lynne’s and my twelfth wedding anniversary.
Since most of the members of the congregation were Filipinas
married to Japanese, I gave this statistical vignette, which
is even more striking when set in the backdrop of Japan’s
general population divorce rate of 1.9%.
As ambassadors of the Christian faith, these
facts cast a pall on our testimonial credibility. As Christians,
our marriages are supposed to be patterned after our covenant
with God, which is “everlasting.” The teachings
of Jesus and Paul on marriage say that our marriage on earth
is important only insofar as it prepares us for our betrothal
to Christ.
 One
invariably gets blank stares or raised eyebrows when one revs
up his speech from numbers to Scriptures. There is a pervasive
sentiment among Filipinos in Japan that the state of marriage
in this adopted turf is a no-holds-barred affair, and therefore
off-limits to any holier-than-thou preaching.
Sensing this, I slowed down to a comparison
between a “contract” and a “covenant”.
Although both are acts of free will, the covenant requires
total commitment. A contract pertains only to portions or
parts of our lives, while the covenant affects our entire
life. A contract enjoins us to comply, which can mean at least
a stroke of ink or a nod of head; the covenant requires us
to obey, which means we have to move our entire heart and
body. Violation of a contract has penal consequences that
can affect only parts of our lives—financially, emotionally,
physically or socially. Violation of the covenant means total
separation from the Source of life, and thus the loss of life
itself.
Contracts are transactional, which means a
simple exchange of values; covenants are transformational,
which means addition of values. A typical transaction is the
exchange of money for commodity wherein both parties get equal
satisfaction but their total well-being is unchanged. At the
heart of marital malaise among Filipinos and Japanese is that
they are entered into as transactions and remain as such—visa
for body, roof for company, yen for soul. In such a relationship,
at some point, the balance of values becomes mutually overdrawn
and results in estrangement. But a transformational relationship,
characteristic of a covenant, continues to add to the well-being
of each other, and therefore values are never depleted on
either side.
Differences in language, culture, beliefs,
education and the social environment are said to increase
the handicap of marital unions between Filipinos and Japanese.
But to borrow the words of Stephen Covey, they are factors
“out there” that we cannot really change. What we
can change is ourselves, and in marriage, our attitude or
mental state is everything.
A time-series study shows that the divorce
rate is increasing. In fact, the earliest batch of Filipino-Japanese
marriages when “marriages of convenience” or “fake
marriages” (gizokekkon) were still unheard of, show the
same trends as the general population.
Whatever the nationality of our spouse, we
can either grow into or out of our marriages. If we entered
into a marriage because of certain transactional needs, it
behooves us as Christians to be transformed first and in the
process empower the transformation of our partners as well
so that our contracts become covenants and our legal agreements
become spiritual agreements. That is the only way to everlasting
union.*
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