two of the guys on the trip wore t-shirts (which i addressed with them both – one directly and one a little more indirectly cos i couldn’t remember who had been wearing it) which distressed me a lot

[1] cartoon picture made up of two blocks – in the first block a guy and a girl figure [similiar to toilet man and woman stick figures] standing next to each other – in the second block dude has shoved his arm out and girl is falling through the bottom of the block – caption reads “PROBLEM SOLVED”

[2] second was a block with a cartoon groom and a bride, similiar stick figure vibe to first pic – bride is holding bouquet and smiling, groom has big sad face – caption reads “GAME OVER”

both of them saddened me in terms of the message they were delivering and in terms of the fact that young guys would choose to wear them [the ‘problem solved’ guy told me that he had been given the t-shirt by a bunch of his girl friends which made me maybe even a little more horrified]

are they funny? yes, i guess so, clever word play, well done

but they are horrible, horrible, horrible, especially the ‘game over’ one

the statistics for divorce are something like 1 in 3 marriages or maybe even closer to 1 in 2 these days – and they are largely the same in so-called christian and non-christian marriages – how much of this is due to the fact that marriage has largely become a joke, or at the very least a joked about thing

when i marry people [two down, one to go next weekend] i marry them with my shoes off, linking back to the moses story and the fact that he was standng on holy ground, because i truly believe that is how God views marriage – it is a holy and special and spiritual and sacred thing – when we return to that point of view, we will have a starting point towards having healthy marriages which – altho not necessarily easy, because marriage is not always easy, it requires work and effort and sacrifice and humility and service and surrender on a continual daily basis – can and do work and will be an effective role model in a world where relationships have largely become a selfish endeavour, reduced to a me-me-me-me enactment, or a joke on a t-shirt…