Friday, July 19, 2013

Should You "Test Drive" a Potential Spouse?

Hafeez Baoku:
The primary problem with this notion of sexual chemistry is that it focuses sex on pleasure and performance. Contrary to what Hollywood may suggest, great sex (which is a good, God-honoring thing) isn't the pinnacle of humanity's existence. Sex was created for man, but man was not created for sex. God gave sex as a gift to be exclusively enjoyed by a husband and wife as a means of loving, caring, serving, honoring, and enjoying each other in marriage. So sexual compatibility between a married couple comes neither from ecstasy (how good the sex is) nor frequency (how often you have it) but mainly from intimacy, which occurs as love, trust, security, and respect deepen through the longevity of a monogamous, self-giving, covenant relationship.

Lifelong commitment is something our culture struggles to understand and uphold. If "soulmates" should be tried out sexually, then what was intended for marriage gets ripped from its original context and instead becomes a litmus test for vague, fleeting feelings of compatibility and connection. But this selfish objectification, which involves viewing another as a tool made to meet our sexual standards, has never been God's design for finding a spouse.

In the first marriage account, God declared it's "not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18). So he gave Adam a wife. He didn't give him his own reality show where he could meet Erin, Erica, Emma, and Eliza in order to discover which one would be sexually compatible. He gave Adam one woman, with whom he'd never had sex, and called him to love her for the rest of his life. Why did God do this? Because, in his perfect wisdom, he didn't design the purpose of marriage to be about great sex with the perfect person but about a lifetime of serving and staying with the inevitably imperfect person you've vowed to love.
Read the rest.

The other problem with the "test drive" philosophy is this: What happens when the car breaks down or doesn't run like it used to? Just get a new car?

1 comment:

Steve Finnell said...
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