Sermon Illustrations
Author's Glib Attitude Toward Marriage
Alice Gregory is a columnist for The New York Times Book Review and has written for the New Yorker, Harper's, and other American magazines. In an article on marriage in the July-August 2015 issue of The Atlantic, she shares her glib attitude towards the sacredness of marriage:
My husband and I got married last fall because we wanted to have a party. I doubt our friends, our family, or anybody else we know would have been surprised if we'd never done it at all: if we had continued living together, loving each other, one day having children, all without exchanging rings. The wedding was ideal—great cake, accessible by subway—but our life didn't change after it was over. It never occurred to us that I would take his name; I didn't want to (and didn't) get pregnant. We live in the same small Brooklyn apartment we'd lived in before, and our finances are still only haphazardly half-combined. We weren't expecting that our affection would either grow or diminish, and it hasn't. Getting married wasn't a romantic leap; neither was it merely, or even mostly, a pragmatic step. Whatever it was—delightfully unnecessary wrapping on an already very good present, perhaps—we made sure that there was more than plenty to drink.
Possible Preaching Angles: Use this quote (which reflects the views of many people in our culture) and then build the biblical case for the sanctity of a lifelong permanent union between a man and a woman.