How many couples have found true love and marriage? Of 28 combined seasons of the two programs four couples have been married. That's 14% of the couples who found "true love" that consummated it with marriage! Of the individuals that's a paltry 0.5% chance of finding love on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette !
What's wrong with this scenario? Imagine if you will the basic premise of the program: One man "dates" 25-30 women. Most often the bachelor is romancing with affection five to ten women at the same time. Three or four of the women and the bachelor are having passionate romance!
Flash forward: The bachelor picks the woman of his dreams and the two become engaged. Immediately what do they have to face? The reality television show The Bachelor! The "winner" of the contest sits back with a cold one and her fiance, tune in to to ABC Network and watch the bachelor make his moves! It appears he woos each finalist with the same words and seals each romance with a passionate kiss... just like he did his new fiance! What could be more conducive to the engagement than watching a fiance plunging his tongue down another woman's throat, to be blunt! This activity is the recipe for failure!
Jealousy often ensues. A jealous fiance is most often a contentious woman:
Proverbs 21:19 "It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman."A contentious woman is one who wearily quarrels at the smallest provocation or suspicion! For further on this subject read more on my blog (Herrin Daily Thought: Jealousy: November 1, 2013) [http://kentuckyherrin.blogspot.com/2013/11/jealousy.html].
Besides the passionate kiss there is what I call "the leg hug"! This is when an overexcited prospect is so happy to see the guy that she just met, that she runs toward him, leaps in the air and wraps both legs around his torso! Teenage boys in my generation had a term for this, but it's too provocative to share with civilized people.
What about the kisses? It seems that lip to lip contact isn't enough for the game. Each couple does "the pretzel" while kissing. That's where they wrap each others legs about the other in simulation of what only married people are rightfully to do... and in the privacy of a bedroom, not on public television where millions of people, those without a life, dream of being "used" by this handsome stud!
Some of the girls try sleaze. Some skinny dip. Others get drunk. Now if I was looking for a wife, I think those drunk and swimming nude on public television just might not be wife material! Call me selfish, but I want my wife devoted to me and only me! Let the other men get their own peep show. My peep show should be only mine!
Nothing ever happens without a cocktail or wine glass in hand. Does everyone drink alcohol? It seems that for people to fit in, they must be choking a long stemmed glass. Shallow Hal would like that! Wife material? You can have it!
Serial dating, which is what The Bachelor is, is "practice for divorce". Dating and breakups one after another makes it even easier each time it's done. Serial dating is not a great qualification for marriage!
What The Bachelor is all about is infatuation. Relationships are based on lust, not love. There is no talk of politics, religion, kids, or any other significant subject matter which does make a difference in a serious relationship! There is a huge difference between lust and love. Love is a sexually oriented emotion and love a commitment and devotion grown with time. See my blog on love (Herrin Daily Thoughts:Christians Don't Love God; Friday, March 6, 2015). [http://kentuckyherrin.blogspot.com/2015/03/christians-dont-love-god.html].
Most of the action in The Bachelor is erotic. We are expected to control what we feel!
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 (ESV) "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; "The last straw is the "overnight date" in the "fantasy suite". This is where the last few couples can elect, and most do, to have an overnight sleep over. They become boy scouts and brownies pitching their tents together! As with most normal men, "sleep" has little to do with sleep, but as the camera fades and the light dims, most often the couple are again linked in a pretzel lock on the bed, lips engaged and bodies squirming. Surely they study the pros and cons of marriage at this time perhaps using the "Kepner-Tregoe Approach to Problem-solving" or some other scientific and practical way of deciding which one of these fickle women to marry!
Colossians 3:5 (ESV) "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. "
I doubt that the passion of a kiss, the envelope in which he's embraced, the milieu created by the director, the bottle of wine which removes inhibitions, or any other of their props is substantial enough to answer the question "Is this wife material?" It does seem that those women who are youngest and have the skimpiest swimsuit do have a great advantage! If all else fails the "one with the big boobs" may make the best wife!
Occasionally, we have a girl with principle. Some have been virgins and told the world that! However, their action seems to be as passionate as the "rounders" who've rumpled many beds! Many of the girls "with principle" wait until they have serious conversations before bedding down or declaring their love, whichever may happen. Even the most chaste of the girls eventually give in to the bachelors magnetic charm. One bachelor talked an inhibited date to bare it all for camera. Dad must be proud!
Marriage is a divine institution. (Herrin Daily Thoughts: Marriage, Divorce and Adultery; Friday, January 23, 2015). [http://kentuckyherrin.blogspot.com/2015/01/marriage-divorce-and-adultery.html]. As God ordained marriage and engagement as a picture of his relationship to us, marriage ought to be treated in the vein it was intended to be. The Bachelor is a picture of what causes marriages to fail!
Why do people watch The Bachelor and programs like it? There are various reasons: boring lives, nothing else to watch, living the fantasy, finding relationships interesting, or just to see girls in bikinis or guys with rippling muscles. Regardless, the root reason is to tantalize! Most people enjoy living the life of luxury and intrigue when little luxury and intrigue is in ours! Watching others is a vicarious way to be something else than the boring people we are!
There are better things to do! We all fall victim to what the entertainment world offers and what they offer more and more of, is sleaze. There is human interest interspersed with what has been discussed and that's understandable. However, the naive and immature, those young people who watch this stuff, have little discernment and society tends to copy what the flesh offers.
We will leave this stuff behind, if not now someday. I see no need to have my coffin equipped with HDTV nor surround sound. This stuff isn't going where I'm planning on being. There lies no hope in reality. My hope is in what I have yet to see!
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