Thoughts on Godly Romance, Part 4: Back to the Source

High school sweethearts, ready for prom!

Part 1: Courtship? More Like Legalism!
Part 2: Dealing With the Reality of Sin
Part 3: Putting Romance In Its Place

Amazed at how extreme Umstattd’s post was, I dusted off my copy of Harris’ infamous book and reread it. I am now under the impression that Umstattd and his circle of courters read mainly the title and skimmed a few pages in the book, then promptly left most of it unread, because nowhere in the entire 230-page book does Joshua Harris advocate no dating, or dating only in groups or with chaperones. In fact, at the very beginning (on page 13), he makes two things abundantly clear:

“1. I do not believe that dating is sinful. Some people have sinned as a result of dating, but I don’t think anyone can accurately say that dating in and of itself is a sinful activity.”

“2. Rejecting typical dating does not mean you’ll never spend time alone with a guy or a girl. There’s a difference between the act of going on a date and dating as a way of thinking about and approaching romantic relationships…I won’t say that it’s never appropriate to spend time alone with someone. At the right time in a relationship, if the motive is clear and the setting avoids temptation, going on a date can be healthy.”

Joshua Harris does not advocate an impractical theory of how to go from zero to married happily ever after; rather, he approaches romance with God’s design of marriage in mind. God didn’t make men and women for recreational relationships. (Tweet this.) The world may not know that, but Christians do (at least, they should). As a result, the way we handle romantic pursuits should reflect sobriety and respect for the other person as well as for God and his commands. This is not to say that Christian romance is full of dour-faced theologians who regard one another coolly; rather, it lacks the flippancy and selfishness that is all too common in the world’s cheap knockoff of romance. The latter is full of broken hearts and confusion, but the former should be filled with joy. I shall go so far as to say that kind of joy can only thrive in a relationship that begins with soberly placing it under the submission of Christ. (Tweet this.)

I say this simply because it’s what I’ve experienced. I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye in middle school. Being a middle schooler, I took an imbalanced interpretation of it similar to Umstattd’s, though by high school I was concerned with other things and mostly forgot about it. When a good guy friend asked me out at the end of our junior year, I said no initially, and then proceeded to grill him. For weeks. I asked him what he believed about God, about the Bible, about marriage, about courtship, about family, about career, about his character. I had figured that by that point, our friendship was strong enough to withstand such a thing, though looking back I’m surprised I didn’t scare him off. I tend to be pretty blunt, especially with questions like those. Anyway, we’ve been dating for a couple of years now with the intent of marriage and all is, for the most part, well.

In I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris identifies what he calls “the seven habits of highly defective dating.” I agree with what he says, and I shall share my own experience in dealing with each of them:

“1. Dating leads to intimacy but not necessarily commitment.”

Shortly before my dear friend ever asked me out, I’d decided I was done giving my heart away to guys who didn’t reciprocate my feelings. What does giving your heart away look like? You might think it’s only when you’re spending all your conversations gushing about your feelings, but it’s much simpler and subtler than that. I spent a great deal of time in my early teens obsessing over my crushes. I thought about them all the time, hyperanalyzed anything and everything they said to me, and wrote stupid letters explaining how I felt. Unfortunately, a few of those actually got delivered (I think).

So by the time my junior year was starting to wrap up, I realized how much emotional energy I was wasting and decided that whoever I might end up dating had to make the first move AND had to be of godly character. He also had to have the intent of finding out whether or not we were fit to be married to each other in dating; I didn’t think dating for fun would be conducive to guarding my heart. So when my dear friend broached the area of romance, I made sure he had the goal of marriage in mind before I agreed to date him.

“2. Dating tends to skip the ‘friendship’ stage of a relationship.”

I had no problem there; we became good friends over the course of a year, having many things in common and having most of our classes together every day. Personally, I’m not sure how you can find anyone dateable until after you know a few things about their personality and character.

“3. Dating often mistakes a physical relationship for love.”

Which is why at the very beginning we agreed on a hands-off approach until we were married. Now that we’re further on and progressing in our relationship, we’ve determined that kisses are ok when we’re engaged.

This is important because of brain chemistry. When you start a new relationship, your brain goes into infatuation mode for about 12-18 months. During this time, you see the person through rose-colored glasses. If you ramp up physical involvement early on, your judgment becomes even more clouded and those rose-colored glasses start filtering out red flags.

“4. Dating often isolates a couple from other vital relationships.”

This had the opposite effect for me; I became good friends with some of the people my sweetheart knew and my current friendships got stronger, partly because dating this particular fellow helped me realize that I’d learned some unhealthy relationship dynamics while I was growing up. I also found his mother a delightful Christian lady who has been a positive influence in my life. Regarding my own parents, they chose not to get too involved; when asking my dad if I was allowed to date or not, he said, “I don’t care; do whatever you want.” (That made me realize that I was an adult who was directly accountable to God. Then I realized what it meant to fear the Lord.)

Anyway, all this had to do with intentionality. If I had only dated him so that I might have a shot at fulfilling my hopes for a fairytale, I would have focused entirely on him and everything else would have been irrelevant to me. However, I wanted to know more about his character, so I got to know his family and friends, to see what sort of people he hung out with. I asked his mom how he treated her, and whether or not he was the same person at home that he was at school.

“5. Dating, in many cases, distracts young adults from their primary responsibility of preparing for their future.”

I would say that, marriage being part of most people’s adulthood, finding a suitable spouse is an important part of preparing for that future.

That being said, it was the prospect of marriage that made me, a college dropout, wake up and realize, “Agh! I need to get a job!” Weddings are expensive, and so is the cost of living apart from your parents.

“6. Dating can cause discontentment with God’s gift of singleness.”

Hm. We are created to have a lifelong companion in marriage; as I’ve gotten older and college and the working life has brought distance to many of my friendships, I find myself grateful that God offers us such a gift. At the same time, there is much freedom to be had in singleness. I can serve others more freely because I don’t have a husband to be home for or a family to take care of. Knowing that there may be only two or three years left before I marry has got me in service mode: I’ve only got a limited amount of time that I can freely give without the priority of a spouse, so I’ve launched myself into serving my church’s youth group. I can stay late nights cleaning up after a bunch of teenagers because I don’t have a husband who would like to see me after a hard day of work; likewise, I can go on mission trips easily because I don’t have a family who will sorely miss my presence for practical and social reasons.

“7. Dating creates an artificial environment for evaluating another person’s character.”

Again, we were friends before we considered each other romantically, so we never had the issue of putting on our best face when around the other person. I have also observed that homeschooled kids are more vulnerable and wear their heart on their sleeve, while public schoolers, due to the harsher social environment they live in, are much harder to get to know because they are so used to putting up a protective barrier between themselves and others. As former homeschoolers, my sweetheart and I are pretty open about how we think and feel about things.

I have a wonderful relationship with my high school sweetheart and couldn’t ask God for anything more. However, the reason for our strong relationship is not because we read books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and applied its message religiously to our lives, but because we looked to the Creator of romance for guidance. When you submit yourself to Christ’s lordship and seek to please him in the way you live your life, you reap the blessings of obedience. (Tweet this.)

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.