I sat in the pew that Sunday morning when the senior pastor spoke to the congregation about marriage. His sermon featured a theme I had heard many times before from him and other preachers and read in books and articles. Although it was in line with the predominant teaching, it still didn’t sit right with me. "There has to be more than that," I thought. "I know there is. Why am I not hearing it? Reading about it?" I knew Scripture said more than what I had heard during my life. To use radio commentator Paul Harvey’s well-known phrase, I asked myself, "Where is ‘the rest of the story’?"

That Sunday morning, I vowed to find the answer. Over the next few years, I dove into the topic of marriage and what the Bible says about it. I surveyed the Old and New Testaments for passages that speak about marriage, reading them and re-reading them to see how they fit together. Then, I compared that to predominant teaching in the Christian community and the greater cultural context.

The beauty of biblical writing is that it all fits together. Choose any topic, and the writings across the books will flow together, without contradiction. In this case, the rest of the story is a tapestry that ties together a few central themes that are easily surveyed and don’t need extraordinary interpretation. However, over the last five decades it had been covered up with postmodern philosophies. How could this have happened?

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