A point comes in every new marriage where a person is confronted with an either-or: Who do I love more: the ideal spouse I thought I married? or the real person I married — a person who can surprise and change me?

In other words, do I want to stay stuck in that lustful possessive state youths mistake for love, or will I allow love to do its work on me and allow my marriage to be a genuine living sacrament?

The same is true for for religion.

Like marriage, religion is not your posession, but something greater than you, something in which you participate as a member. It will change you in shocking ways when you are ready to allow it. The change in you will change the world, your marriage, your religion, your beloved. And not only once.

*

Fundamentalism is religious lust which has not yet discovered the sacrament of religious love.