Diminishing Returns:
Marriage without a high commitment to serving each other

Even we in the west, wanting our choices, cannot escape the strictures of Watt's Law or Ohm's Law. From Avagadro's Law about gasses to Ziph's Law regulating the repetition of common words in a natural language, we live under their effects. You might think you are defeating Newton's laws of force and movement, but your perpetual motion machine will get tired!

Consider the business law of Diminishing Returns. I call it the Teamwork-or-Bust Law. It's saying if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point. Thomas Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population illustrates it well.

I've seen the Law of Diminishing Returns at work in marriages.

Recently I heard how, in Iraq, on an unprecedented scale, the pornography industry is prospering. Saddam allowed only the elite to have access to these magazines, videos and satellite TV channels. The flipside of freedom has opened this Pandora's box to all.

Iraqi marriages will soon diminish. Here's why.

Like an athlete's law saying that no level of fitness is increased by beer drinking, the same applies to marriage: no lasting increase in love can be attributed to pornography.

In both examples the latter is potentially lethal to the former, yet it's a hazard with which some flirt.

Both dangers offer immediate satisfaction calling for increased participation resulting in long term damage.

The destructive power of the porn industry isn't the display of sexual organs. Medical staff sees them often and is not morally debased.

The problem erotica creates is linked to emotional brokeness. In our world we prize self-sufficiency. To be called "needy" is the zenith of insult. We tell our kids not to become leaches. An old Yiddish proverb says the first place to seek a helping hand is at the end of your own sleeve. Well-and-good, but the reality is we are all incomplete. Created as social beings, we have a relationship vacuum deep in our hearts.

God intended it that way. He made marriage the answer to the longing He put in us. He made servanthood the oil by which the marriage machine would purr. I've built enough things to see the value of following the instructions. What if a couple tries marriage without a high commitment to serving each other? Counselors and lawyers will enter their lives.

Men are especially vulnerable to false solutions to the hurt that being dependant causes. God made us to need our spouses. The world has warped that noble want into a caricatured insult. With sighs, modern women must "put up with" their husbands. Men get the message: they are not the studs they ought to be. Inner pain grows.

At this point a man might hear the bugle call of the false cavalry. The sex industry offers satisfaction without the threat of appearing, ugh, needy. Quietly, secretly, a habit develops that offers immediate requite.

Today both sexes are being drawn into this; though it's still 7 men to 3 women. Thinking that those romping sexual escapades will import into marriage is delusion. Until spouses continually speak and act out their need for each other, marriage will struggle.

If you're not married and hope good sex will help your current relationship you might be the most deluded of all. The pride of self-gratification looks like an increase, but the law of diminishing returns will take away the little you have.

Try it God's way instead. Abstinence from all else creates the needy person who is morally best at marriage. Abstinence, like running marathons is possible, but not without commitment.