Compatibility

Whether it's to meet demand or fill a void, relationship assistance has proliferated. Many services tout their ability to profile people and carve them up into various factors and attributes which can then supposedly be matched with others for “compatibility.” The higher the percentage ranking of compatibility, the higher the likelihood of your relationship lasting “till death do us part.”

I remember a college chapel message in which Dr. Brown told us that he and his wife had been told they had one percent relationship compatibility. He then explained, it's not about how compatible you are, but how you handle the incompatible part. He is still married to the same woman as far as I know.

Even marriages with 99 percent compatibility have to face the other one percent at some point. That's when one's commitment is tested. Every relationship at some point will require endurance for a time. Even in those times the words of Paul, in concluding his words for husbands and wives in his letter to the Ephesians, are still true and wise advice: “let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:33).