Dating isn't Biblical (cont.)

That is great stuff. I have some further thoughts on the subject, as I also believe that our culture (and myself) have some really distorted views on marriage. But for now, here are some quotes from people much wiser than Sumner and myself:

"Marriage"
Wendell Berry

How hard it is for me, who live
in the excitement of women
and have the desire for them in my mouth like salt. Yet
you have taken me and quieted me.
You have been such light to me that other women have been
your shadows. You come near me with the nearness of sleep.
And yet I am not quiet.
It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt, and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

How many of us have realized that we are always to think of the married state in terms of the doctrine of the atonement? Is that our customary way of thinking of marriage?. . . Where do we find what the books have to say about marriage? Under which section? Under ethics. But it does not belong there. We must consider marriage in terms of the doctrine of the atonement.
Martyn Lloyd Jones, Life in the Spirit

Marriage is a signpost pointing to and dramatizing the gospel.
-Rankin Wilbourne