Love in Seven Minutes

Speed Dating. It started out as a way to assist harried young professionals to find their life's companion. So, when you're in a rush to know someone, what are the core essentials that you're looking for? The apostle Paul has some suggestions for what we should look for in other people, and, more importantly, in ourselves.

[NOTE: Play this Beatles tune through your sound system, or sing a few lines.]

"All you need is love,
dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,
all you need is love,
dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,
all you need is love, love,
love is all you need."

Love is all we need.

On this Paul the apostle and Paul the McCartney agree.

Looking for love and commitment is what single people have done for ages. It's what they still do.

However, conventional courtship, with its languishing, anguishing and wallowing, ending with being the dumper or the dumpee, is out; unconventional dating is in. Slow is out; speed is in.

The rare romantic, surreptitiously perusing the dwindling singles crowd at art museums while pretending to admire a Monet, or seated and scanning the scene at a cafŽ-bookstore while sipping a hot lattŽ, is totally useless, and what's more, he misses the new, red-hot social development: Speed Dating.

Undeniably, speed dating's about as romantic and as sexy as a job fair. Nevertheless, at roughly eight dates an hour, it...