Lack of financial transparency causes conflicts in marriage

News
If you carefully look at how the Anti-Christ is infiltrating society these days, you will see a planned trend of not only weakening but rubbishing marriage, the family, and the church. He uses two things money and sexuality.

If you carefully look at how the Anti-Christ is infiltrating society these days, you will see a planned trend of not only weakening but rubbishing marriage, the family, and the church. He uses two things money and sexuality.

KILTON MOYO

Many marriages are torn apart on these two God-given issues. Many families are collapsing, and you will agree with me that the church is struggling on those two.

I believe that we need to go back to the scriptures, so we can gain enough divine wisdom, in order to counter the deceptions sold us by the enemy concerning money and sexuality in our marriages, family and church. I want to focus on the money issue today in a marriage set-up.

I do not have Zimbabwean or African statistics to show the havoc lack of financial transparency has caused to marriages, but maybe we can consider its gravity by understanding that in the United States of America alone about half the divorces, financial conflicts are cited as the number one cause.

Depending on what I have seen and heard in our country, I believe that many of our marriages are also suffering the same fate.

Many couples have not learnt how to pool their financial resources as partners. They remain divided and fighting and wanting to dominate each other. They remain quarrelling on who does what or who brings what home. Others fight over the amounts of money brought at home.

Others hide their money and lie blatantly about their incomes. I have seen couples fighting over pay slips, bonus pay and many other money-related issues. I have seen couples fight over their investments. The sole reason for all these fights is what I call, lack of transparency when it comes to finances.

Let me give you more scenarios here. Some husbands hide their salaries. Their wives do not know how much they earn. Others do not bring the money home, but will just decide to buy whatever they want and expect the wife to toe the line. Some wives are not allowed to handle any cash from their husbands.

It is the man who buys the groceries, pays rent and rates and does everything. Some wives too, hide their money from their husbands. There is a lot of mistrust and greed in the whole thing. Some couples can never budget together. Infact they have no budgets.

Whenever they talk money, they fight and to preserve peace in the house, they would rather not talk money. Just in a nutshell, this kind of attitude towards money can cripple any couple anywhere. There is, therefore, a greater need to help couples handle finances as partners and as expected.

Let me look at only three reasons for such financial inconsistency by families.

Greed for money We cannot run away from this natural but sinful attitude. A greedy person does not share. They want everything unto themselves and they can be violent to cover up.

Many of us are greedy when it comes to money, we cannot even give to our spouses and children. This is poisonous to marriage. In fact it is poisonous to love because love does not hide but gives. Greedy people are not willing to change.

Love for money The Bible is clear in 1 Timothy 6:10 that, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Most of the evil in marriage, in the family and in the church can be traced to the love of money.

Some people love money, they would destroy their families by not giving them anything. Others love money they would engage in criminal activities that harm families. Others still will engage in serious carnal activities to the point of bewitching their families and destroying their marriages too. You see, the love of money has taken some husbands away from home. The love of money has caused some of us to betray those we love.

Ignorance Some people are genuinely ignorant on how to handle finances as a couple. There is not much teaching on this very important aspect of marriage life. We take things for granted. That is where we miss the mark. People need to be taught.

Marriage life is not about experiences. It is about learning and dying unto-self, so you can both gel and be in unity in everything. We come into marriage with different views on money and with many expectations too.

We are socialised differently in many things including money and, therefore, there is a great need to de-learn, so we can put on a marriage mindset on key issues.

You will agree with me that there is serious lack of financial transparence in most of our marriages today. All of us should be thinking of how best we can help each other overcome this wrong thing that has caused so much pain to us. I will look at a few ways of doing this next week.

For this and many more wisdom, understanding and knowledge on marital issues, follow us on our blog fruitfulmarriages.wordpress.com, on our Facebook page and on Twitter @fmarriages. You can also invite us to talk to your groups.

If you are in Harare, on April 23, we have a great seminar for pre-weds at the Redemption Ministries International auditorium, 20 Robert Mugabe Road and Harare Street. You can call us for more details.

●Kilton Moyo is creator of Fruitful Marriages, a renewal and enrichment program and is pastor, counselor and author of The Sex Trap. Call or whatsApp on +263 775 337 207, +263 772 610 103 or [email protected]