Luke Bruce Made Me Post This, p. 1

Okay, okay, Luke didn't really make me post this. He told me that he actually still checks my blog, so I said, okay, I'm going to commit to three blog posts this week. It actually would be a good practise for every week, however I'm not sure I can commit yet. Anyway, in honour of that commitment, here is post numero uno:


I've been reading a book about marriage (surprised, right?) called The Mystery of Marriage. It's pretty awesome. Like most good, semi-theological books, J.I. Packer (back when he was just James Packer) endorsed it. His intro is really funny--he says that if any student of his had asked him whether they should write a book on marriage, he'd tell them that the market was already flooded with drivel on marriage, so they ought not bother (This was in 1985. If anything, it's gotten worse). He follows up that statement by saying that he's so glad that this particular student of his never bothered to ask. So, by way of introduction, J.I. Packer thinks it's good (and someone's going to comment about how he also signed Catholics and Evangelicals together... to you I say, Ask me about my theory on that one later).


So, I'm reading this book, and it's quite profound. It's pretty well a theology of marriage, or rather, a definition and explanation of marriage on the basis of theology. My favourite parts so far (and I'm only 64 pages in) tend to be when he talks about fate and all the questions that theologians and psuedotheologians (like myself) love to ask about marriage. Below is an excerpt that, had I wrote it, might sound a little haughty, but, I didn't write it, and it's certainly true from my vantage point.

What is interesting about this question of the fortuitousness of love, however, of whether it turns upon fate or coincidence, is that it is a question that is probably only seriously entertained by those who are not yet in love, or not deeply in love, or who in fact have no idea what love is. This is the sort of person who likes to ponder whether there may be some "special someone out there," or whether even the person they have found might be only one of any number of possibilities. But the person who is in love, by contrast, couldn't care less about other possibilities, just as one who has found the Truth takes no interest in "other truths." For the one who believes and for the one who loves, there is no other truth and there is no other love.

So, real love is always fated. It has been arranged from before time. It is the most meticulously prepared of coincidences. And fate, of course, is simply the secular term for the will of God, and coincidence for His grace.

(Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage,
copyright 1985, Multnomah Press, Portland.)