Bride for a Day - or Two

I prayed for Britney Spears today. I don’t know her personally. I have never met her and probably never will, but I was prompted to pray for her today. She has become an extremely visible (no pun intended) personality in the world of entertainment and consequently has considerable influence on life in America. Teen idols such as she have helped shape fashion and pop culture for decades not only in our country, but also around the world.

Spears was born in Kentwood, La., on December 2, 1981 to Jamie and Lynn Spears. She comes from a Southern Baptist background and has frequently spoken of her faith. She got her start in music by singing in church as a child.

She has continued to do some good things by using her fame and influence to establish the Britney Spears Foundation, which provides fun-filled playrooms for sick children on extended hospital stays.

However, it must be difficult to walk circumspectly in the environment in which she lives. Reports indicate that her songs have become more racy, her videos more provocative, and her photo-shoots more sexually oriented.

At last year’s Video Music Awards television program Spears kissed another female singer, Madonna, and remarked, “I don’t understand what the big deal is … Hasn’t America seen two girls kiss before?”

Then on January 3 Spears and Jason Alexander, a childhood friend from her hometown, had been partying at a local bar and spontaneously decided to get married. Alexander said, “We were just looking at each other and said, ‘Let’s do something wild, crazy. Let’s go get married, just for the h--- of it.”

So, dressed in tattered jeans and wearing a baseball cap, Spears and Alexander got married at 5:30 a.m. on that Saturday morning at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. Her Palms Casino Hotel limousine driver escorted her down the aisle. If you are astonished that they got married at such an early hour, many of the more than 50 wedding chapels in Vegas are open 24 hours a day. In fact, if you want a “quickie” wedding in this city that never sleeps you can pull up to the “I Do” drive-through window at the Chapel of Love and for less than $100 drive off as husband and wife with an order of wedding cake to go.

Hours after the Spears-Alexander wedding the couple concluded that they had “taken a joke too far” and quickly arranged for an annulment. The 55-hour marriage ended at 12:24 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 5. David Chesnoff, Spears’ attorney who orchestrated the annulment, said, “Plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage.”

Marriage is not something to be engaged in on a whim. It is not a joke. It is to be entered into “advisedly, discreetly, and in the fear of God.” The devil would love to undermine the home, which is the first institution established for the welfare of the human race and the very foundation of our social order.

The gay/lesbian coalition that persistently pushes for the public to accept same sex marriages militates against the beauty of the marriage relationship as God intended it to be. The Hollywood exaltation of infidelity and cohabitation also drives a stake into the heart of the sanctity of marriage. The rampant polygamy that is prevalent in some Mormon communities is an affront to the marriage relationship as God designed it. The serial brides of Hollywood, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, who have been married a combined 22 times, cast a negative influence upon the institution of marriage.

In fact, statistics show that the United States has more divorces annually than any other monogamous country. In a recent year 19.4 million Americans, or 9.8 percent of all adults, ended their marriage relationship.

But the Spears/Alexander debacle has perhaps done more to diminish the Biblical ideal of marriage than anything that has happened in recent years. Our youth need a better example. Hopefully, they can find it in you.