Thoughts on Godly Romance Part 3: Putting Romance In Its Place

Part 1: Courtship? More Like Legalism!

Part 2: Dealing With the Reality of Sin

The third and final issue I shall address is that of making marriage more important than it actually is. This problem isn’t isolated in Umstattd’s post, but he certainly takes this problem to an even higher degree than I have ever seen. I wonder if his personality is the sort to exaggerate things.

He puts this things he calls ‘Traditional Dating’ on a pedestal, making it out to be the panacea of our apparently courtship-ridden society. Here is what he says:

“We need a system to help young people make good decisions. Fortunately, we have one: Traditional Dating.”

“There is nothing new under the sun and no new temptation that is not already common to man. This is not the first time Christians have lived in a sexualized culture. If you study history, you will find that this actually happens often. In each of those generations God provided a way out. I believe that for our generation that way is Traditional Dating.”

“Find a church with lots of single people. There are still churches out there with a healthy culture of traditional dating. If no one in your church got married last year, don’t expect to break that trend. You can always move back to your parent’s church after you find your sweetheart.”

Dating does not help people make good decisions. The vast majority of the highly-divorced Generation X dated before they married. They still decided to divorce, over things like ‘irreconcilable differences.’ Regarding moral decisions, many of the dating couples I know have not made God-honoring choices, which led to a breakdown in their relationship.

Good choices are rooted in conviction and the will, not in dating, and are guided by prayer and Scriptural truth. (Tweet this.) “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Paul wrote to the Romans. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death of life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.” Saying that ‘Traditional Dating’ is a system that helps people make good choices is just…immature.

I agree, this is not the first time Christians have lived in a sexualized culture. In fact, the church in Corinth had to deal with much the same environment we have now. You know what Paul told them? GET MARRIED. Not ‘date around to find out what sort of person you want to marry.’ Not ‘stay non-exclusive to avoid temptation’ (that would have been scandalous). Not ‘embrace courtship and have a ton of chaperones and group dates.’ Get. Married. How’s that for ramping up the intensity? And then he warns married couples not to deprive each other except when they both agree to ‘fast’ from sex for prayer, lest they be tempted.

Our way out of temptation is Christ. (Tweet this.) God himself sacrificed his own life so that we would be free from sin. To say that ‘Traditional Dating’ is the way out of sin elevates it to the level of salvation and reflects a view that holds the work of Christ on the cross in contempt. Did Christ come for nothing? Was he crucified for nothing? Are we redeemed for nothing? Apparently, since ‘Traditional Dating’ is all we need to escape our sin nature.

It’s nice to know that serving the body of Christ doesn’t have to be our priority when we go to church. Instead, we can shop around churches a bit if we don’t like the singles pool at the church we grew up in. At least, that’s what Umstattd implies. I shall reiterate, since that was quite a few paragraphs ago:

“Find a church with lots of single people. There are still churches out there with a healthy culture of traditional dating. If no one in your church got married last year, don’t expect to break that trend. You can always move back to your parent’s church after you find your sweetheart.”

For the love of all that is sacred, NO! There are so many things wrong with this paragraph. Firstly, church is not a singles mixer. Not ever. It is a priesthood of believers. (Tweet this.) Secondly, how has it been established that ‘Traditional Dating’ is a healthy thing? One may argue that it is what paved the way for our hookup culture to take over.

Thirdly, trends change all the time and to say that you shouldn’t expect to get married just because other people didn’t is really discouraging as well as illogical. Should I not expect to remain a virgin until my wedding just because other people didn’t? Should I not expect to remain married to only one person for the rest of my life just because other people didn’t? People have a will to exercise and choices to make. Marriage is something you pursue, not something you expect God to dish out to you while you sit around doing nothing except extolling the virtues of dating/courtship. (Tweet this.) I am beginning to wonder if Umstattd was taught that waiting on God means a passive approach to life, because passivity is what I’m sensing here. Earlier in his blog post he says that “Bible-reading, small-grouping, mission-tripping Christian young people [are] common in evangelical churches,” which I take to mean that they are common in the church he grew up in. So out of that pool, why hasn’t he just chosen a girl of good Christian character to pursue?

Fourthly, church-hopping to find a spouse to take back to your home church is just selfish. You’re leaving an opportunity to serve your congregation in order to (maybe) serve temporarily at another church until you’ve attracted and married a spouse, which leaves a gap wherever you had found a role in either church and takes a servant (your spouse) away from their ministry in their home church. And if neither of you were ministering in either of your congregations, then that is a different problem to be addressed in an entirely different post.

I understand that twentysomething singles struggle with loneliness. That is normal. Many thirtysomething singles struggle with that too. That is to be expected. But just because we are designed for companionship with a spouse does not mean we should put marriage on a pedestal. God created us first and foremost to seek and worship him. (Tweet this.)

A single person may fall into the trap of thinking that their needs will be fulfilled by a spouse. If that is how you think, here are some hard truths for you to consider: your needs don’t go away in a relationship, they just change; if you really have that expectation on your spouse, you are putting an impossible burden on them; and if you are relying on your spouse and not God to satisfy your heart, you will never find satisfaction.

Am I being too blunt? Fine. Such is the nature of difficult truths.

Think of loneliness as an opportunity to draw yourself closer to God. Singleness also has the advantage of more freedom. If you think you want to see the world, go on mission trips. If you want to serve others in your church, you can afford to be generous with your time. Part of dying to self is that we don’t wallow in ‘woe is me,’ but rather choose to act above how we feel in order to obey and serve the Lord. Marriage has its purpose, but we need to put it in its place as a gift from God that we might sacrifice in order to advance God’s kingdom.

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.

Thoughts on Godly Romance, Part 1: Courtship? More Like Legalism!

I recently had the singular experience of reading Thomas Umstattd’s long blog post on why dating is so superior to that fundamentally flawed institution known as courtship. Like me, he’s a former homeschooler, so I really, really wanted to like what he wrote, but there were a couple of things that disturbed me in his article. Here are a few:

-His legalistic approach to relationships

-His extreme naiveté about our hypersexualized culture

-His idolization of dating, even to the level of salvation

Those are the major things. There were also a few minor things that scared me, like the announcement at the end that said, “This post is turning into a book!”

There have been a couple of responses already written to Umstattd’s post, such as one by Scott Ross and another on Boundless, but none of the ones I read have addressed it from the perspective I am writing from. Let’s just dive right in to part one.

The first major problem I noticed was Umstattd’s strong legalism. In a response post, he later claimed that he does not advocate a legalistic approach to relationships. However, I must point out that he mentions nothing of consulting God through prayer in the process of finding a spouse, and he does not consult what the Scriptures say about marriage and how we ought to treat one another. Any approach lacking such an important relational element while attempting to maintain purity will eventually dissolve into legalism. (Tweet this.) Guess what? Legalism is one of the reasons he calls courtship ‘fundamentally flawed’:

“The deal was that if we put up with the rules and awkwardness of courtship now we could avoid the pain of divorce later. The whole point of courtship was to have a happy marriage, not a high divorce rate.”

Really? The whole point of courtship is to have a happy marriage? Not to serve God and submit your budding romance to his Lordship? There is no guarantee that a marriage may be happy. Personal baggage aside, difficulties regarding health, finances, and child-rearing may put inordinate amounts of strain on a marriage. A couple who is consciously choosing to submit to Christ and obey his command to love one another will have the grace to make it through the trials of life. A couple who enters such trials thinking that they earned their fairytale because they courted will be in for a sore awakening, and might not pass through unscathed.

And what is this about ‘putting up with rules’? Does his circle of courters have strict rules about things like kisses, holding hands, and how closely a chaperone has to follow them? And this is considered a godly relationship model? When you try to live out a godly relationship with rules set by anything other than Scripture and your own personal convictions, you are trying to make a relationship godly by your own power – NOT by relying on the power of Christ.

I submit to you that Umstattd’s approach to romance is fundamentally flawed. Rules do not a deep relationship make. (Tweet this.) This applies not just to romance but also to our relationship with God. Hosea 6:6 says “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” God doesn’t want your church attendance, your good behavior, and 10% of your income; he wants you. The former can be given without the latter, but the latter cannot be given without also the former.

What, then is the correct approach? Find a mate who shares the same values with you; being equally yoked is certainly important to the longevity of any relationship. Pray about it. Most importantly, entrust it to God. He is the creator of romance, after all; he will breathe fire and life in the fairytale he’ll bring you, if you allow him to do so. This applies even if you are called to be celibate; profound relational intimacy with the Lord our God is something that many people desire but not many have.

“But are we allowed to kiss? Are we allowed to do _____ before we’re married?” you may ask.

You are asking the wrong questions. How about this:

“How can we serve God and each other? Can we kiss innocently or is that something that would hinder our sanctification and exercise of self-control?” Those are marginally better, though I can’t say they’re the ultimate.

How about this: “What is the unselfish choice?” Get yourself in the habit of asking that, and you will daily realize how much you must fight against the natural inclinations of your sin nature. I asked myself that after a dear friend and companion asked me out on a date. I realized that the only reasons I had for saying no were selfish ones regarding fear of possible heartbreak, and I had plenty of good reasons to say yes. Someone else may have selfish reasons to say yes and plenty of good reasons to say no. You can’t put a formula on following God, and that includes relationship choices. (Tweet this.)

Enough of rambling on this; I’ve got two more posts to write before I forget what points I was going to make in them.

A Call to Arms

Raphael's Vision of a Knight, depicting the ideal qualities of a knight.

Some time ago someone sent me a link to the video Virtue Makes You Beautiful. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s really encouraging. I really am amazed at these young men.” Then I thought, “I bet they’re Mormon,” the underlying expectation being that teenage guys in the Christian church wouldn’t speak up in such a big way to their sisters.

So I find out a little later that they ARE Mormon, and I was a little shocked to realize that I had such low expectations for my brothers in Christ.

I’m tired of low expectations. I’m sure you are too. I don’t want to write yet another post verbally flogging young men for their shortcomings – real or perceived – and I don’t want to write yet another long, whiny rant about how there’s no more real men anywhere. The former is useless for edifying others (well, both are) and the latter is untrue.

Instead, this is a call to arms.

The Christian faith and practice may be rather soft and fluffy in this day and age, or at least in North America, but there’s plenty of blunt, martial imagery in the Bible about what it is to follow Christ. Now is the time to wake from slumber. “The night is far gone, the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,” as Paul says in Romans.

Ephesians 6 describes in more detail our struggle:

“Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the Devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

As Christians, we are part of a great spiritual war. Did you notice there are no retreats? Look again: “stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” The war doesn’t go on only during the times someone makes fun of you for being a Christian; it’s not only when you go on a mission trip to a third-world country nor when you disagree with someone in your church. Every day is a battle, not only against our enemy’s schemes, but also against our own sin. Peter urges us believers to “abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” Indeed! “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”

“But mark this,” Paul writes to Timothy. “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”

Have nothing to do with them. Don’t be a part of their group. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”

It doesn’t take a fighter to give in to sin and selfishness. What does require a fighter is rising above ourselves to serve God in faith. The Lord’s army of saints needs you to join in battle against the devil and his schemes. Show yourself a workman of God, who correctly handles the word of truth; pray in the Spirit on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests; walk as children of light and find out what pleases the Lord.

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. Prepare for battle!

Misunderstanding Mysticism

Buddha statue in Japan

What comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘mystic’?

For me: Eastern religions, occult, Buddhist monk in an ‘ommm’ pose

What about the word ‘mysticism’?

For me: abstract, too open to misinterpretation, lacking truth

Sadly, these associations reveal that I’ve grown up with a misunderstanding of the concept of mysticism, especially as it applies to Christianity.

“Mystic Christianity? Aren’t you getting into some weird stuff now?” you may be saying.

As far as I have gathered, a full Christian experience has three parts: theological, mystical, and practical. These three things involve the intellect, the personality, and the actions, respectively. If any of them are isolated and taken by themselves as the Christian experience, the follower is seriously missing out. A purely theological, or intellectual, experience of Christianity consists of learning the history and doctrines of Christian teaching. This is the sort of experience a non-Christian professor of world religions would have. The mystical experience consists of personal interactions with God, especially through prayer, and such an experience isolated from the other two doesn’t last long, as a personal encounter with God requires knowledge of doctrine (because as fallen creatures, we need to have some objective measure of truth to discern by, as our sin natures prevent us from accurate perceptions using our own understanding) and practice (because if one does not act on what the Holy Spirit convicts him of, he is ignoring God and therefore won’t be coming to a deeper understanding of who God is). Finally, a merely practical experience of Christianity becomes blind legalism on its own without personal conviction to guide it nor knowledge of Scriptures to measure what is truly right.

As this post is about mysticism, I will reiterate what I mentioned above as the definition of mysticism: a personal interaction with God. Paul Tillich, in A History of Christian Thought, cautions us: “Do not make the mistake of identifying this type of mysticism with the absolute or abstract mysticism in which the individual disappears in the abyss of the divine.”

What kind of mystical experiences are legitimate in Christianity? Let’s look to examples in Scripture. The simplest and most concrete of these is prayer. There are many examples as well as instructions for prayer in the Holy Bible, the most famous being the Lord’s Prayer. I could ramble on about what prayer is and isn’t, but I think most of you have some notion that it concerns direct communication with God, so I will save those ramblings for a different post.

Another mystical experience, common to pretty much every Christian (and every non-Christian who obeys their conscience – see Romans 2:14-15), is that of conviction. It’s that feeling of when you know you’ve done something wrong and need to make it right – and when you ought to do something right to serve God. Such convictions can be misdirected by our accusing Enemy, though, which is why we must check it against the light of Scripture. Philippians 4:8 is a good measuring rod.

Another type of mystical phenomenon is called speaking in tongues. There seem to be two different types shown in Scripture. The first is speaking in known earthly languages, as we see at Pentecost in Acts 2. The purpose of this sort is to expedite the spread of the Gospel to people groups who speak a different language. The other is discussed in 1 Corinthians 14 and seems to be a sort of prayer language that pours out of the human spirit, not understood by the human mind but by God. I highly encourage you to read the chapter and study it for yourself; it’s fascinating stuff.

There is an interesting phenomenon that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 12. Speaking in the third person, he describes “a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.” There is much vagueness as to the nature of this vision; we find that this is intentional. “Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know – God knows. And I know that this man – whether in the body or part from the body I do not know, but God knows – was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” From what I understand, a person who has such experiences is not to tell anyone else; such a revelation is not for the edification of the church, but for the edification of the individual believer and thus we are not to receive such knowledge secondhand.

Now then, what is one to do with all of these modern ideas found in different denominations? “I go to a Baptist church; we’d never do some of that crazy stuff.” “What are you talking about? That’s like, normal, at my Pentecostal church.” To address the validity of such viewpoints would take a whole ‘nother blog post, and frankly I’m not interested in that topic right now. My goal was to help clarify what a mystical experience in Christianity is, and if you come away thinking, “Huh, I never thought of prayer as a mystical experience,” then I have achieved my goal. If you proceed to experience a more vibrant prayer life and thus walk more closely with Christ because of your new perspective, then to God be the glory!