Thoughts on Godly Romance Part 2: Dealing With the Reality of Sin

Read Part 1 here.

I have already addressed in my introductory post the problem of Umstattd’s legalistic approach to romance and now must move on to the problem of his naivete, which is so strong that he has completely failed at creating a practical approach applicable to today’s immoral culture. His ‘arguments’ are just assumptions based on anecdotes. Let us examine them here.

“My grandmother grew up in a marginally Christian community. People went to church on Sunday but that was the extent of their religious activity. They were not the Bible-reading, small-grouping, mission-tripping Christian young people common in evangelical churches today.”

Common? Do you seriously think that today’s generation of church kids are any more pious than previous generations? Your grandmother grew up in a culture where Judeo-Christian mores were still comfortably embraced in everyday life, good sir. Sexual immorality was scandalous, a thing unheard of in everyday life. Today I see it every time I look through my Facebook feed, and it’s normal. I can’t speak to specifically Umstattd’s sheltered homeschool community, but I can speak about what I have observed in life and in the media about where our American society is, and it is not even marginally Christian. Moral relativism is found in abundance, and for many people, being a Christian is a Sunday morning thing.

In a section subtitled “Advantages of Traditional Dating,” Umstattd lists several points that I suppose are supposed to be arguments, but in which practical logic is absent. I’ll address the points on temptation, heartbreak, and the institution of marriage.

“Less Temptation – It is hard to fall in love with Bob on Tuesday when you know you are going out for coffee with Bill on Thursday. This lack of emotional commitment leads to less physical temptation. Less temptation leads to less compromise. I have no idea how women are supposed to guard their hearts while in an exclusive relationship with the purpose of marriage.”

“Less Heartbreak – One of the promises of courtship is that it can lead to less heartbreak than dating. I laugh at this to keep myself from crying. This could not be further from the truth. Calling off a courtship can be as emotionally wrenching as calling off an engagement. It can take years to recover from a ‘failed courtship.’ Also let’s not also [sic] forget the emotional cost for girls of not being asked out year after year and the emotional cost for guys of being rejected by father after father.”

“More Fun – The institution of marriage is crumbling. Of the last two generations, one won’t get married and the other won’t stay married. A smaller percentage of people are married in America than at any other time. Part of what helps perpetuate the institution of marriage is making the process of getting married fun. My grandmother made dating in her day sound really fun. Courtship on the other hand can be awkward and emotionally heartwrenching. Dating also trains people to continue dating their spouse after they get married. It is important for married couples to be able to have fun with each other. The kind of parents who are the strongest advocates of courtship are often the ones who go on the fewest dates with each other.”

He claims that dating will reduce temptation, because apparently temptation to sin flourishes under the conditions of high relational intensity, exclusivity, and commitment. I suppose that criteria includes marriage as well. “It’s easier to justify promiscuity when you are exclusively committed to just one person, even if that commitment is only one week old.” Actually, it’s easier to justify promiscuity when you reject any notion of God, embrace the moral relativism that has infected our culture, and you believe you are an animal and it’s only natural to give in to sexual impulse. My generation doesn’t know much about commitment, having grown up with our divorced Gen X-er parents. The natural result of a lack of commitment and exclusivity is promiscuity; I’m not sure why Umstattd thinks that more of the former causes the latter, since promiscuity is by definition casual and indiscriminate – it is the antithesis of monogamy.

The devil doesn’t discriminate between daters and courters, and neither does our sin nature.(Tweet this.) Temptation exists regardless of how you live out the romance, and it will likely look a little different for everyone. I don’t expect Umstattd to understand this because he hasn’t actually gotten through a successful courting/dating/whatever phase; from what I’ve gathered, he’s only gone on a few awkward dates at most. Whether it’s temptation to sin sexually or temptation to stop trusting God with the relationship and take matters into your own hands, temptation is always present.

His assumption that dating causes less heartbreak than courtship is laughable at best and completely ridiculous at the worst. Based on my observations, people do not thrive emotionally and spiritually when they reject boundaries. Since dating, by Umstattd’s as well as everyone else’s definition, has far less formality than courting and therefore fewer ‘rules,’ it stands to reason that close relationships which develop out of that (inevitably they will, as male and female attract like magnets in early adulthood) will have less definition and fewer boundaries than the more formal courtship route.

Consider also what Lewis wrote: “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” If you choose to show love to anyone at all, that opens you up to potential hurt. If you show a deeper love to someone and you form a strong bond with them, as what will eventually happen with dating, how much more will that hurt if the two of you break up? Quite often what happens is that as the couple enters the infatuation phase, if they do not have their guard up they will quickly attach themselves to each other, and when a breakup comes it feels like an emotional divorce.

Speaking of divorce, Umstattd thinks that dating will help the institution of marriage. I’ll reiterate: “Part of what helps perpetuate the institution of marriage is making the process of getting married fun.” I will ask what should’ve been the obvious question when people came to that paragraph: The institution of marriage is crumbling in a dating culture and he thinks dating is the solution? (Tweet this.) He must be a rhetorical gymnast to make such a leap of logic. Furthermore, if you’re getting married for the fun of it, I will feel very sorry for you and your spouse when the first trial of life comes: one or both of you fall ill, morning sickness, financial woes, the challenge of raising children, distance that creeps in when you get to that phase where you’re both so busy it’s hard to connect…if you’re looking for fun, I suggest you visit an amusement park, not enter into a sacred covenant for better or for worse. I’m not saying that there’s no joy to be found in marriage, but the expectation that marriage is primarily for fun is pretty frivolous.

I don’t know what sort of practice Umstattd is presenting, but I find it extremely impractical. He does not address the realities of carrying out a God-honoring relationship in the midst of battling our sin nature, presumably because he’s never had a relationship in which to deal with those realities. He has failed to recognize that God has wired the brains of men and women in marvelous ways which ought not to be taken lightly in our interactions with the opposite sex (hint: a casual ‘traditional dating’ relationship will likely not stay casual for long if the couple has anything in common with each other). Above all, he does nothing to address what makes a successful lifelong relationship that progresses from dating/courtship through marriage and instead attributes divorce to courtship, which he speaks about as if it were mainstream.

I shall end this post with some Biblical directives for how to live: Love as Jesus loves you. Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it become more and more ungodly. Treat young men as brothers and young women as sisters, with absolute purity. Be imitators of God and live as children of light.