Observe and Rapport

After reading Mere Christianity, I went down the Christian apologetics rabbit hole, which eventually led me to the legendary Timothy Keller.

Keller was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of our time. I was choosing between The Reason for God and The Meaning of Marriage. Given that I’ve been married for almost 5 years and had never really considered the Christian view of marriage, I opted for the latter.

Marriage is hard. But it is also, for me, the most meaningful commitment I’ve made. It’s a true covenant — a commitment to give yourself fully to another being. While love is what sparks a marriage, it is not the engine that keeps it going.

Keller’s argument is that marriage isn’t about self-fulfillment or even love, to a certain extent. It’s about mutual fulfillment through mutual sacrifice. Real love is tied to obligation.

A few years ago, I would have pushed back hard on that. Why bring God into it? Why involve the Church? Why not just keep it between two people? I even made that call myself. In hindsight, I missed the point.

But marriage is about sacrifice. You don’t become happy by marrying the perfect person and achieving your dreams. The goal is not to find the right person. The goal is to become the right person for someone else. And you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own.

In other words, you must be willing to give something up before it can truly be yours.

As Keller puts it, “When the Bible speaks of love, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you are willing to give yourself to someone.”

Rating: 3.9 / 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This place was made for guys like me📚

Checked out for the first time with Macy. It’s part bookstore, part bar, and part cafe. And they even have a kids section! So pumped to have a place like this in Huntington