> > The reason there is such a ridiculous divorce rate these days is that marriages are based on feelings. "I feel love for you; let's get married." Inevitably, the feelings will wane, and if the marriage isn't built on anything stronger, *obviously* it's going to fall apart. You can't "feel" love for someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You can, however, *choose* to love someone constantly, and with a right-headed decision to do so, the feelings (less needy, selfish feelings, I might add) fall into place as a result. One reason I think arranged marriages have such a notorious reputation for success in certain cultures (not that I'm advocating them) is because it is ingrained in those cultures that that's the way things are done. If you are resolved to abide by a previously arranged marriage and commit yourself to making it successful, that decision is, in fact, love, and however unromantic the notion, it stands to reason, given the above, that it would have a better chance for success.
> >
> > Interestingly, the divorce rate in the USA, somewhere in the area of 50-55 percent, does not differ significantly within any particular religious sect -- Catholic, Protestant, some religion not based on the Christian God at all -- except for the particular subgroup of Bible-believing, so called "born again" Christians, where it is somewhere under a third of that percentage.
> >
> > Can you love without God? Certainly I have seen great love in others that did not know God. I believe Man was created in God's image, and I believe that image to be not entirely physical. Since the fall from the Garden of Eden, sin has corrupted that image (ours, not God's :-) ), but there are vestiges of godliness in all of us, and certainly we have nature and conscience as vague indicators of what is right and true and what isn't. But speaking for myself, I certainly wouldn't want to be without God's great love, more powerful and compassionate than any even the most loving of others can give.
>
> My parents take on the divorce rate is that people expect to be happy all the time once they get married. Once they have an argument they think somthing must be wrong and blame their partner. Which leads to more arguing and divorces.

That's almost the same thing as what I said, and there's certainly something to be said for this more specific cause.

> I'm still trying to get to the point that people who don't regonzie the exitance of God can still experiece the true love of which you speak.

Still? You got there with the first post. Repeat yourself as you please; I don't believe it. At least not with the purity that only a continuing relationship with God can nurture. As I said, I believe there are vestiges of godliness in all of us, and that allows us to be loving individuals to a point (but even that is a direct effect of God's influence, isn't it?), but if there is love without God on this earth, it's because, I think, that it has yet to be tested strongly enough.

So you're a proud parent of a teenage girl. You love her as a parent should, try your best to teach her moral values, build her character, and help her grow into a fine upstanding young woman. Then she stays out late without calling one night. You're worried sick. She comes in at three in the morning, drunk. Still love her? Still put her needs above your own? I would hope so, but there are many who consider themselves genuinely loving who would lapse right there, even if only in the heat of the moment. (Even those with an abiding relationship with God are apt to falter, though, barring a backsliding from God as well, not likely to falter forever.) So then she says she's pregnant, and she isn't sure who the father is. Your love is tested again. Then she says she hates you. Then she threatens to run away. Then she does. She kills the family dog on the way out. She comes back in the middle of the night to sneak in and pick up her stuff. She burns up your entire comic book collection while she's there. She becomes a drug-addicted prostitute, and the only time you hear about her is from the odd arrest report in the paper. Two years later, she comes back and tries to kill you with a knife. Then she tries to kill your wife. She ties you both up and starts torturing you for no obvious reason. Your fingers are broken, and your legs are chopped off above the knee.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Seldom is earthly love tested to this degree. At any rate, would you, as a parent, still love your daughter? At some point, probably well before the torture part at the end, your love for her is going to fail. I don't care who you are -- if you answer this question affirmatively, I don't believe you. Is any human, whether you know God or not, capable of love like that? With six billion people in the world, probably, but I would expect them to be so few and far between as to be negligible for the purposes of this question. But God's love is so powerful as to scarcely even be tested by that ordeal.

So I pose the question back to you: is it possible to be "truly loving" without God? What's the *point*? Why even bother, when the alternative is to know the One who does know love like that?

And that's my point.