What Do You Think of Using the Internet to Find a Spouse?

By John Piper, Christian Post Guest Columnist Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

What do you think of using the internet to find a spouse, assuming no moral standards are being compromised?

When I have heard about and known couples who have met through eHarmony or other websites, I feel good about it-the ones I've known.

The feeling it has made me feel is, "I wish the church would do this better. Why should people have to go to the internet, for goodness sakes, to find a spouse!?"

Yet I totally understand. It's a way of putting out all of these profiles, and then you put out your profile, and then you say, "That looks really interesting." I just think that's totally normal!

I mean, that's the way you get married. You want to know a guy, and he wants to know a gal. And if there's enough commonality, let's talk. But I wish it were happening in a more natural way in the church.

And it does, it does. Most people still find their spouse that way. But the dynamics, evidently, of relationships for a lot of people are such that you can't get a profile on a guy real easily in ordinary group sessions.

If you go bowling together as a group of ten people, you may not get as full of a picture of this fellow as you would if you read thirty things about him online.

So I'll tell you, my idea is that the church should just set up eHarmony. Every church ought to have eHarmony or something like that.

So if you're single and you're going online to check out somebody in your church or your neighborhood, I'm not going to get on your case for that. I'd probably have done it myself, I was so chicken!