dating and mating, God and the world

I had to write this for a psych class and i'm not displeased with how it came out.

We live in a world that says one thing, made by a creator who says another. Namely, that we deserve to be happy, and deserve so at the expense of even the very building block of society, the family. Our new world is growing steadily more insistent that reality is relative and that the truth behind all things ethereal is completely subjective. We have taken and applied from the Gospel, not Christ’s message, but Pontius Pilate’s message “what is truth”(Jn 18:38, D.R.B. 1582) In all this we continue to undermine the fabric of our Christian society as if on a kamikaze mission to bring about the end. I intend to present a fair and expository view of what the world generally teaches on the topic of dating and mating, though there is neither enough space to discuss their view in its completeness, nor a common reference of the worlds belief system that can be accessed to present every corner of everyone of their doctrines. Beyond that I intend to spend significantly less time presenting what God has to say about the matter, because it is rather concise, and is contained in a single source that is a common reference to be accessed when forming an understanding of His will for relationships.
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone-it, people like me” was the daily affirmation recited by Stuart Smalley at the intro to his sketch on Saturday Night Live, entitled Daily Affirmations. This was Al Franken’s sarcastic commentary on what he identified as a ridiculous new trend in the world, self help, and by relation the heightened level of importance being placed on one’s self image and sense of self worth. Why in the nineteen eighties did we as a society, after thousands or billions of years (depending on whether you ask a fundamentalist or an atheist) of development, realize that what we were missing was a system of convincing ourselves that we have value, and that we matter? We were experiencing a wave of fallout from the sexual revolution and the redefinition of what it means to be a human in existence. Now this was in no way the beginning of the problem, rather we see it’s origins as far back as Martin Luther’s “sin and sin boldly” (Luther), a product of the reformation, and Nietzsche’s “Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”(Nietzsche). When women started contracepting, aborting, and burning bras, the work of these men and many many like them was coming to fruition. Obedience to God had been replaced with revolution against oneself, and God had been replaced with our own moment to moment gratification, to put it succinctly things were looking up for our old pal the Devil. His hard work had really taken form and found solid ground for growth, right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Now what does that mean to us in the here and now? Marriage is no longer forever or for everyone, and in many cases marriage is not even marriage anymore, it is a right not a covenant. It is a tool of equality as opposed to a picture of our creator. It is a non-issue in the mind and heart of so many of my generation. We marry for status, we divorce for happiness, we sit in public talking loudly to our lawyers about just what we want from our former spouses on our cell phones drinking lattes, because it’s our right. The world says “do whatever you want, whenever you want, to or with whomever you choose, and when you’re done, then exercise your right to happiness”. Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.(Phil 3:19)
Agape and Eros, these are Greek words translated into love. While eros, the root from which we derive the word erotic, seems to be the prevailing idea amongst the lovers of this day, the intended love with which we would preferably seek, find, court, marry, and bed our mates, is described in the word agape. Agape means benevolent affection, giving without expectation, a desire for the best, highest, and greatest for the object of our love. If eros is a “taking love”, (and it is) agape is a “giving love”. Agape is the word translated to love in Ephesians 5:25-28; Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it, and so forth, whereas the word eros is not found in the passage or for that matter the new testament in its entirety. What love would our Lord have us seek? Agape. God wishes for us to find the woman from our rib, the one he created for us and placed in our path. The one who we would lay down our life for, and never forsake, and who would accept our love without reservation, and without self interest.
Unfortunately we poor banished children of eve continue to lust for the fruit, that is not for us, because the world says we ought to, and we seek to serve our bellies, not Him.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The gay science, 1882
Let Your Sins Be Strong: A Letter From Luther to Melanchthon Letter no. 99, 1 August 1521
Douay Rheims Bible, Philippians 3:19, New Testament, 1582