The foolishness of marriage?
One of the local newspaper blogs, Huckleberries online posed the question "What's Wrong With Saving It For Marriage?" Apparently a couple saved their first kiss for marriage, and that had caught a lot of interest by the audience.
Predictably some of the comments where fairly negative on the idea:
"Foolish""Test Drive!
Test Drive!
Test Drive!""that which is worth waiting for is probably cool to get really early too"
"I never buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first."
"Would you buy a car without test driving it first to see how it handles?"
My comment was "If you need a test drive, you are testifying to your spouse from the beginning that your love is conditional."
Coincidentally, I last night, I was listening to a Mars Hill sermon where Pastor Mark Driscoll suggested three criteria for selecting a wife. Is she breathing? Does she love Jesus? Will she put up with me?
I wonder if much of our crisis in marriage isn't caused by overexposure to romantic story lines in media? If we marry a girl because she meets 20 or 30 items on our criteria list, isn't our love pretty conditional? Is it really love at all? Or are we just entering a contract in order to gain something that we want?
The culture that we live in most likely sees unconditional love as foolishness. After all a husband's love for his wife is supposed to be a picture of Christ's love for his church. (Ephesians 5:25) If the message of the cross is seen as foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18), should a biblical marriage be seen any differently?
So, what do you think? Is unconditional love foolish?
