No one will truly love you well if they do not love God more than they love you. https://t.co/sBmfSIOFYk
— Desiring God (@desiringGod) November 16, 2016
There is not a single Holy Man in all of Christendom who will deny that statement. We have all heard it tens of dozens of times — offhandedly, casually, as though it is something that everybody knows.
I don’t know it, and it raises a fair question I think of the moral fitness of clergy to even conduct weddings.
Consider that teaching’s implications for marriage and parenting. Somebody who doesn’t put Our Invisible Friend ahead of his or her spouse and children loves inadequately and can’t be a good wife or husband? Really? How very odd, then, that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate in the country.
Remember this, too: The local expert on the wishes of the Invisible Wizard is … the Holy Man. Practically, this teaching aims to reduce marriage to animal husbandry and put the clergy in the position of superintending everybody’s family life. No sane, self-respecting adult is going to submit to something so degrading, and it tells you quite a bit about who is sitting in church.