can I test drive your car

Found this and love it


The headline caught my eye: "Is it OK to live together before
marriage?" Although I didn't have time even to scan the article at the
time, I was pretty sure I knew the answer it would offer. Sure enough!
When I came back to it, the female writer's answer was this: "I want to
test-drive the car before I purchase it."

We'll get back to her analogy directly. For the moment, however, I
choose simply to wonder aloud about why such awful advice gets such
public play?

In the world of Hollywood tabloids, Oprah television, and answers by
statistics, that sort of answer certainly reflects common practice. A
recent study published by researchers at the University of Denver says
that approximately 70 percent of couples live together for a while
before getting married these days. They take the author's "test drive"
before buying.

But I challenge both the metaphor and the motive that appears to lie
behind it. They reflect a wrong-headed view of healthy human
relationships.

First, there is the analogy between marriage and test-driving a car. It
is at least a bit better than the writer's other analogy in the same
article: getting some milk for free before having to buy the cow!

Loving relationships are about giving oneself!

Automobiles are machines without reason, feelings, or commitment. They
serve an owner's ends. They are tools for their user's purposes. Are we
admitting to that sort of utilitarian view of people? Kant said the
ultimate evil in human life is to treat a human being as a means to an
end. Jesus said the way to view another person is to see him or her as
worthy of the treatment you want for yourself. Maybe my thinking is all
messed up, but I can't really image anyone wants to be test-driven,
milked, or otherwise used and then discarded to the junkyard or
returned to the lot as a "clunker."

Second, Kant (morality) and Jesus (faith) aside, the sheer
decision-by-statistics method argues against cohabitation as either
substitute for or prelude to marriage. Multiple studies have documented
lower levels of marital satisfaction and higher vulnerabilities to
divorce by cohabiters who ultimately marry.

The flaw in this bad answer is that "test drives" at best reveal
certain easy and natural affinities two people have -- with sex being
the primary declared joy they find in living together. Life is not
about "easy and natural affinity" so much as it is about commitment,
integrity, and love. That's why most parents do not take their
offspring back to the hospital or make them wards of the state. Even if
a test drive reveals that their easy and natural affinity for a cuddly
baby turns into toddler tantrums, educational costs, or adolescent
behaviors, most moms and dads believe there is a level of commitment
that runs deeper than having fun.

Loving relationships are about giving oneself to another, not sampling
to one's own taste. And maybe that's the root of such a bad answer:
selfishness.

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure,
for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral (Hebrews
13:4 TNIV).