THE SUBJECT of forced marriages has become a disturbing one in the United Kingdom. The Home Office estimates that upward of 300 young British people a year are forcibly compelled to marry, some of them teenagers as young as 13.

These marriages don't take place in the United Kingdom itself, but in countries overseas. Immigrant parents send their children back home to weddings they haven't even known they will be attending—let alone as bride or groom! A BBC news interview showed a 14-year-old boy who had been sent to Pakistan "to visit relatives," and had been chained up for two weeks, until a prearranged wedding took place with a girl he was informed he had been engaged to for five years. Their marriage has ended in divorce. Other forced marriages end in the breakup of the larger family.

In light of one common justification for this practice of forced marriage—tradition—I found it helpful recently to revisit the Bible story of Isaac and Rebekah (see Gen., chap. 24). In this remarkable story, the servant of Isaac's father, Abraham, agrees to travel a great distance to find a marriage partner for Isaac, and trusts God to point him to the right individual.

It becomes clear to the servant that the right woman is Rebekah, whom he meets at a well in Abraham's ancestral homeland. He respectfully asks her father and her brother if they will let her go back with him—on trust—so that Isaac and Rebekah can be husband and wife.

What struck me most was what comes next in this story. Despite their conviction that this is something they cannot contest, because it is God's will, Rebekah's family still asks her if she wants to go. Six thousand years ago, those devout parents asked their daughter whether or not she wished to travel away from home and family, and marry. Even six millennia later, I ask myself, aren't Muslims, Jews, and Christians all children of Abraham? If we trace our roots that far back, then perhaps our shared tradition lies in asking the woman (and the man) whether or not she or he wishes to accept a proposed marriage. (While the majority of forced marriages involve Muslim families from Pakistan, says the BBC, the practice is on the rise among Hindus and Muslims from India as well.)

That set me thinking about an experience that occurred when a close relative of mine was practicing what could be described as "serial monogamy." His relationships were strong while they lasted, but there was never permanent commitment.

One day I was sitting in a beautiful park, and across a pond I spotted a couple in an amorous embrace. I found myself wondering what was bringing them together—physical attraction or something stronger and more enduring? In a sense, I was asking myself, What was the cause behind the effect of those two lovers being a couple?

It suddenly struck me that I had to ask myself a different question, based on my own growing understanding of life as truly all-spiritual, and of God as the only Cause. I had to ask, Can there be any other cause than the perfect Love that is God? While it certainly seems so on the human scene of better-to-worse reasons for relationships, I realized that in prayer I could refuse consent to the thought that there could be multiple causes in my life and others' lives. I prayed to acknowledge just one all-good Cause—one God—and claimed my right to recognize no other cause.

A few days later I learned that on that very afternoon when I was praying by the pond, my relative had met a new girlfriend. I soon got to meet her, too. Twenty years later they are still together, married, with a beautiful family. Their relationship has not always been easy, but it has endured.

While the factors involved in this experience are mightily different from those involved in a forced marriage, I feel that they point to a universal and immensely helpful truth—namely, that we do not need to bow down to any cause except God. If we hold to that thought in our prayers in relation to forced marriages—indeed, any relationship issue—perhaps, bit by bit, the practice will fade for lack of divine causation and support. css