Pulling Down the Lifestyle Argument

One of the reasons the runaway bride gave for running was "lifestyle differences." Frankly, I don't see it. Joe thinks that the examples she gave him were more like variances in hobbies and preferences in foodstuffs than lifestyle differences. His is the kindly viewpoint of a man in love. It seemed to me that she was grasping at straws in an attempt to make her fear sound reasonable.

I am not being dismissive of KatieLyn's feelings here, but she was doing the Straw Man Argument thing and misrepresenting both what is important to Joe and his willingness to work out solutions. They do share the main core values and have essentially the same worldviews. Their lifestyle differences are no greater than those of the average couple, so unless she was anticipating a continuation of her single-living lifestyle after marriage, the real issue was her self-doubt and lack of confidence, not their different views on lifestyle.

To show that I'm not trivializing her "lifestyle differences" comment, let's examine the importance of that more closely, starting with an unlikely friendship that begins in Luke 19:2 when Jesus sees a spunky little tax collector peering down at him from a sycamore and then invites himself over for lunch. The tree climber's name was Zacchaeus. John Greco, in his article titled "When Jesus Invites Himself Over" describes it this way:

The friendship between Jesus and Zaccheus did not develop out of a mutual appreciation. As far as we know, they shared no interests, no hobbies, and no common acquaintances. Jesus and Zaccheus were on opposing paths. While Jesus was headed to Jerusalem—where He would be betrayed, arrested, tortured, and crucified for a world of sinners—Zaccheus was on a path of power and prosperity. Jesus had emptied Himself of the glories of heaven and come to earth to rescue those who would shout for His death. Zaccheus had enriched himself by taking advantage of his neighbors. […] Friendships where Christ is the center have the power to be the most meaningful and the most enduring. When we invite ourselves into the life of someone wholly different than us, the goal is never that we stay wholly different but that we become brothers and sisters.

The central wisdom that Greco extracted from the life story of Zaccheus is "never that we stay, but that we become."
In verse 5, Jesus says, "Zaccheus, make haste, and come down."
In verse 6,  Zaccheus makes haste and comes down from the tree.
He was quick to do Jesus' will, and it changed him.  By the time the passage ends, salvation has come to Zaccheus' house, and Jesus is calling him a son of Abraham. They started their friendship in different worlds, and when Zaccheus did not stay in the sycamore but climbed down into God's plan for his life, they became family.

Never that we stay, but that we become.  Some natural caution is a good thing. Marriage should not be a fools-rush-in deal. But figuratively, KatieLyn had been sitting in her sycamore. (This is the Ficus sycomorus, which, incidentally, has heart-shaped leaves.) When she heard what God said, she agreed initially, and she even started to climb down, but in the end she sat back down and stayed.  Unlike Zaccheus who had a heart toward God, she did not 'become.'

The kind of relationship that Joe was seeking with KatieLyn was one with Jesus Christ as the center. That one foundation would give it both power and endurance. For the building blocks, they shared many other matching points of compatibility. KatieLyn told Joe he was everything that she had prayed for, (yes, she had an itemized list). They had sufficient income and resources to maintain a lifestyle similar to the ones they were used to. The shared similar taste on how to spend free time. The "lifestyle differences" claim has so little demonstrable basis in fact that Joe does not believe that KatieLyn came up with it on her own. He suspects that suggestion was planed in her mind by someone else.

There are only two noteworthy "lifestyle differences" that I have seen and marriage would have made one of those, if not obsolete, then manageable. Joe has lived as a bachelor for over ten years. As a result, his cleaning style has come to resemble a bulimic's binge/purge cycle where there's a time of unrestrained accumulation of clutter followed by garbage truck day purging. This is a fixable issue. [I once thought about contacting the design departments at Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox to suggest mounting consoles atop sock hampers since so many gamers like to play in bare feet.]

The second, and far more serious lifestyle difference is that KatieLyn seems to be a pessimistic worry wart at heart. She did not seem to be one when I first met her, but it's possible she's adept at hiding that. Maybe her "bright and bubbly" persona is an acquired coping skill. If so, that would be a sharp contrast to Joe, who is hard to ruffle, never flustered, and rarely agitated (except by drivers who daydream behind the wheel). Does she think no one took her concern for caution seriously? She never said.

The Lesson
Ultimately, if the love is there, the lifestyles can adapt. Jesus never took the thought, 'Oh, that Zaccheus, his lifestyle is just too different!' Jesus was so in-tune with the Father that Jesus knew Zaccheus had a heart toward God. Lifestyle will change during a healthy marriage. Even if two started out perfectly matched, they are not static. Life will be styled and restyled by job changes, births, friendships, growth, and the culture that swirls around us. If KatieLyn was looking for constancy, she could have had it best by receiving from a loving heart, not by fretting over Joe's lifestyle that would change dramatically anyway with the saying of "I do."  It was Zaccheus' heart that was important to Jesus, and it is the willingness of the heart that is important to God.  


Greco, J. "When Jesus Invites Himself Over." InTouch Ministries. February 1, 2015. Click to Link  Accessed August 31, 2015.