dating/courtship

I’m so tired of it. And I think it might be the elephant in the room.

So, you “did” courtship and now you see things that were off about it. I get it. There were weird versions like, “You can’t be trusted to be alone for a second with a member of the opposite sex” and “you can’t possibly be adult enough to make any decisions on your own so I’m going to tell you all the things.”

But there were other versions, like the one we took: “We had a wreck of a dating life, your Dad and I, becoming sexually promiscuous at young ages, and flitting from relationship to relationship until marriage, carrying with us so much baggage and stuff we didn’t have to carry. Because we love you, we want something different for you. So we’re going to walk a different path, together–not sure how it’s going to look, but we’re aiming for encouraging you toward purity (that’s the buzz word/bad word) and a more focused life, and then hopefully one day, you won’t have to deal with so much heartache and try to unravel it all in your marriage. Please, God, let there be something else.”

Josh Harris, author of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” has written a sort of “I’m not sure if I believe all of this anymore” and many are gloating. “Even he doesn’t believe this crap anymore.” writes one of my facebook/real life friends. Harris has no doubt come under unbearable criticism for his book and has reconsidered its content. That’s not a bad thing. We all need to examine our beliefs and keep humility before us, willing to admit when we have veered off, and especially when/if we have led others to do so.

The thing is, the basis for what Harris wrote is perfectly good and worthy of consideration. The basis is: “recreational dating/the hookup culture is damaging.” And if one isn’t willing to admit that, then one is deceiving himself. To say that fries are as healthy as carrots sticks is just dumb.

And honestly, Josh isn’t responsible for how people handled his book. There is an unprecedented trend to take the sins of man and pin the sweeping blame to some person or ideology. I think Harris is experiencing much of that.

The in thing is to denigrate the “purity culture” because “now we see its faults and obviously who could fall for that garbage, gah.” See, now you’re the cool kid who is smarter than that.

It’s how people are handling this shift in examining our belief systems, reevaluating things (which is a good thing) and taking a hard look at why we believe what we do.

There’s this dichotomy: an “us” vs. “them” thing going on. You know, “we are the new, enlightened, cool kids who aren’t prudish and weird” and then there’s the other people who still hold onto outdated views of good ideas held by people who have fallen into sin and obviously can’t be taken seriously anymore.

(Need I remind you that we still read the book of Psalms. David’s sin did not negate everything he ever thought, believed or wrote.)

So, away with it all. The farther you can distance yourself from “those people” the more you are applauded on social media and the more “those people” look like imbeciles. Is this response really any more mature than the supposed uninformed one of the other side?

Newly added:

Another common response is, “That teaching hurt me deeply so we need to expose and beat up the teacher and my parents for buying into it.” The hurt might be real. Exposure may need to happen. But to blame with hostility is wrong.

Most of us could blame our parents, if blaming were viable and/or helpful, for “subjecting” us to the atrocities of modern dating. I seriously feel like I’ve had emotional damage from it. But to blame my parents? That is selfish and unfruitful. They were doing the best they knew to do at the time. They loved me. They can’t be held liable for every wrong direction.

So the absurd irony is that you have this new generation of parents trying so hard to help their children avoid the pitfall they fell in, trying to do better, trying to be better, and they get slapped in the face with “that hurt me and you’re going to pay.” For whatever the practices of courtship did to damage, it doesn’t touch the damage left in the wake of promiscuity, STD’s, and unplanned pregnancies. So being a product of the latter, I’m a little unsympathetic about that approach.

The thing is, we should all be mature enough to address the actual problems of whichever side is being discussed, as well as acknowledge the specific good intentions and good ideas of either side, without creating this elementary school bully tactic to shame anyone who hasn’t come to our side. Just a good ole mature discussion.

If you have some reservations or even outright criticism about the courtship model, say so. But don’t ignore the very real problem of the culture’s sexually-charged dating game that Harris was right to address. Don’t discredit his attempt at encouraging Christians to answer this dilemma in a way that honors God, even if it has faults. It doesn’t have to be a villainizing of a man and his attempts at righting an obvious wrong. Nor do we have to villainize a whole generation of parents who agreed with him and didn’t want their children to experience the devastating consequences they did.

Don’t be so weak that you have to insult the “losers” to side with the cool kids. We’re not impressed. Anyone can fling insults. Keep a balance and nod to the real problems, having respectable discussions about solutions, and sympathize with parents who are desperately trying to do a very good job at raising their children.

This goes for a lot of other subject matter, by the way.

Let’s be adults, people.

Shocking title, I know.  And so was his statement:

“The polygamist lifestyle begins with polygamist thinking.”

Our friend leading Bible study said.

Sometimes the truth IS shocking and we just don’t realize it.

Think this through with me….

“Polygamy…a form of marriage where a person has more than one spouse at the same time.”

Now this is hard for us to swallow, but since God institutes marriages and not the state, He gets to make the rules.  And here are his rules:

“But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”

Obviously this could spawn deep theological discussion on marriage and divorce, but since there is an epidemic of “no-fault divorce” and I’m no theologian, I’ll keep it simple and just refer to that for discussion’s sake. (We’re not discussing abuse in marriage–different topic.)

In God’s eyes, a couple can’t really get an unbiblical divorce.  They can get the state to give them a piece of paper that says they’re divorced, but He says they’re still married and if they remarry it is….yep, polygamy.  Did you think about that before?

I’ve talked about how the dating system primes us for “disposable” thinking which increases likelihood of divorce. In essence then, doesn’t the dating system promote a thought-life akin to polygamy?

In the modern dating system, we are entitled to be romantically involved with as many people as we want and that is socially acceptable.  We can indulge in a physical and emotional experience meant to be reserved for marriage and then drop it on a dime and move on to the next person.  We can shop, use and borrow with reckless abandon.

BUT…when we get married, that track of thinking ingrained by our previous habits is expected to be instantly destroyed and returned to a monogamous state.

Well, at least that’s what used to be expected of marriage before we began accepting polygamy as a way of life.