License to Wed

I just finished watching an entertaining comedy, License to Wed, starring Robin Williams as a priest who requires couples planning to get married in his church to take his marriage preparation course. In essence, he puts stress on them beforehand, so that they learn how to deal with conflict and, more than that, to recognize their differences and be honest with one another. The movie certainly isn’t destined to be a classic, but it is truly funny and makes a good point in the process.

Many will know that relationships, marriages, require such honesty. Keeping your true feelings bottled up, resenting, ignoring, pretending, playing a role to the public – that may indeed preserve an image of a ‘perfect marriage’, but it won’t give you the real thing, real intimacy.

Now what would happen if we made similar honesty basic to the lives of our churches, too?