Pursuing Marriage Oneness: Abandoning Contract Twoness Marriage in an Islamic Context Book

This book is more than research and personal experience—it is an invitation to join a meaningful journey. Together, we will walk alongside new believers from a Muslim background as they navigate some of the most sensitive and defining areas of marriage. Through Scripture and real stories, you’ll gain practical tools to guide couples toward hope, healing, and lasting transformation.As the third volume in the Exploring Marriage in an Islamic Context series, this book builds on discoveries that have reshaped how we understand marriage in cross-cultural ministry. We continue the contrast between Islamic contractual marriage and the biblical covenant model—not as theory, but as realities that shape daily life and marital expectations. For many couples, contractual habits follow them into faith, unintentionally creating distance, hurt, or confusion where intimacy was meant to grow.Pursuing Marriage Oneness: Abandoning Contract Twoness shines a light on these challenges in a way that empowers rather than discourages. You will learn how to help couples move from contract thinking to covenant living and discover how this shift deepens unity, joy, and sacrificial love. Though especially relevant to believers from Muslim backgrounds, the insights apply to every marriage, revealing patterns that challenge us, enrich us, and ultimately draw us toward the oneness God intended. Whether you serve in ministry or simply care about strong marriages, this book will equip you to support others—and inspire you to reflect more deeply on your own.In 1995, my wife and I married on a covenant basis, but I had no idea how a husband demonstrates covenantal love or how to practice a covenant marriage. My only thought was, Hey, now I have a wife, so let’s go overseas and start ministering together. The initial years were full of happy memories and stressful moments of disagreement and discussion. Covenant thinking did not rule in my heart. Indeed, I missed the mark multiple times over.What my wife and I expected from each other varied, and we needed a clear visual goal for our covenant marriage. As our hearts became more covenantal, we, as believers, could identify more with how God created us to reflect his love. We came from a context that knew about the Bible, covenants, and marriage oneness. When God called us to go to Central Asia, we encountered a new set of paradigms that did not resemble our experiences. Our conversations with Tajiks, Uzbeks, Afghans, and Iranians sometimes used similar words but conveyed vastly different meanings and practices. I wanted to understand marriage, our relational assumptions, and how these dear ones viewed their marriage.Shirin Jon said:Imagine what navigating marriage looks like for those who don’t have the biblically-saturated foundation many of our own cultures afford. This book is for them, and for the people who disciple them….In this book, Jon builds a philosophy of understanding, teaching, and modeling biblical marriage in a new way: one based on identity. He explores oneness in terms of Christ, the divine “Love-giver,” and his sacrificial relationship with his Church, “the Beloved.” On the VerifiedHuman™ Human-AI collaborative Spectrum, this book is a VH4 – Mostly human-written: used Grammarly and ChatGPT to clarify a few paragraphs.