I’m online reading posts in a section devoted to discussion about relationships. Most of the people participating are home schoolers.
The message is from Jenny Ertl, a college age home-school grad. She’s been telling us about the difficulties of being the sole member of her church’s young adults’ Bible study who isn’t interested in dating. She coined the phrase “daters and non-daters” to differentiate between herself and the others. I was sure I had heard all the lingo on the subject, but this was new.
To someone on the outside of “home-school culture”, it might seem we were speaking in a foreign language. The discussion would appear out of touch and irrelevant—“What are these people talking about? Not dating? How do they expect to get married?” And, of course, the question has to come, “What in the world is this thing called ‘courtship’?”
Good question.
And even though I’ve read more books on courtship and listened to more tapes on the subject than anyone I know, I don’t enjoy trying to explain it.
Defining Courtship
Part of the confusion is that no two definitions are the same. Mine will be different than the next guy’s. Courtship has become a “catch-all” phrase to describe something better than dating. It’s the word used by people for everything they think boy-girl relationships should be, a wish list for how things should ideally unfold—The boy goes to the father, the boy courts the girl in safe family settings, boy and girl fall in love, and the sun shines at their outdoor wed-ding—and this is all good. We should have high standards; we should be idealistic. But misguided idealism can make for a rather unpleasant collision with reality. Unfortunately, what looks good on paper doesn’t always go as smoothly as planned in real life. Relationships are confusing no matter what you call them.
“I’ve heard so many things in regard to courtship now that we’ve gone through this. And a lot of things have grieved me.”
The voice on the other end of the line is deep with a roughness that adds to its warmth. Eric Ludy is 24 years old and a newlywed of less than a year.
I’m drawn to a guy like Eric. His love for his wife Leslie is exceeded only by his love for his Lord. A mutual friend in Colorado introduced me to them by sending a copy of a booklet they wrote entitled “His Perfect Faithfulness. “ It tells the story of how God led them in their friend-ship, engagement and marriage.
But even as they share their story with others, the young couple is discouraging people from the tendency to look at their relationship as a “blueprint” to try and recreate.
“A lot of people are looking for a formula,” Eric says. “They’re looking for just the way it works— ‘Just tell me how you did it, and I’ll reproduce it.’—That isn’t how it works.”
Then Eric gets to the bottom line: “If you don’t have the character attributes of integrity, honesty and discretion and the understanding of what true love is as the foundation; if you haven’t dealt with the heart, which is the selflessness and humility, it’s probably going to explode in your face.”
A focus on developing a method can detract from the real issue at stake. As long as we’re discussing the broader impersonal terms of courtship, we can overlook the specific, personal details of our own lives. As long as we’re consumed with figuring out how to “do courtship”, we never have to face the more difficult process of making the changes God wants to see in us.
It’s much easier to go on a crusade to solve the world’s relational problems than it is to build character in my life. But that’s what God wants to see. His main concern is not that I create some “doctrine of courtship” that I can propagate to the world. He wants to see me apply principles found in His Word to my own life. My search for “just the way it works” was helping me avoid the real issue.
The hard fact is that the missing ingredient in my life is strength of character. I’m not lacking for another book on “how courtship works”. I don’t need a history lesson about “how they did it in the old days”. I don’t even need a special “courtship community” of others who share my convictions. My problems stem not from an imperfect or incomplete definition of courtship; my problem is me.
Problems With Me
Even though my parents taught me otherwise, my attitudes towards girls and dating relationships in high school were all too common. It was not until I ended a two-year relation-ship with a girl that I finally realized the bankruptcy of my attitudes. The girl was, and is, a wonderful person. But our relationship could serve as a case study for the problems of teenage dating relationships. Wrong focus. Wrong timing. A distraction to both of us and a detriment to serving God. I knew I had been doing things wrong. I was beginning to see that there was something fundamentally flawed with the whole system.
The cover story for New Attitude’s second issue was part of my journey. Its title, Dating Problems, Courtship Solutions, betrayed my search for pat answers. “Here’s the problem, and here’s the solution.” Though most of the ideas were good, they came from a mind theorizing, not a heart that had struggled through the underlying issues.
My assumption was, “If I just change the system, then everything will be perfect.” If I throw out dating and follow these rules of courtship, I’ll be free from
the pain, the confusion, and the heartache of romantic relationships. But I misunderstood one important thing: changing my model for relationships did not change me. It didn’t deal with my selfishness or my impatience. Neither did it help me find my security in God. I could call my system anything I wanted—but as long as I was working from wrong motives, people would be hurt in the process.
My lifestyle of dating encouraged a wrong sensibility, but it didn’t cause as much as it accommodated my lack of character. Changing my environment helped; but even more importantly, my heart had to change.
Lessons From the 10 Commandments
Looking back, I can see that my personal campaign for courtship was driven by the anthem, “Rules will save us!” But such a charge is impossible to sustain. We need guidelines to keep us on track, but they cannot serve as our starting point.
F. W. Boreham, the great English pastor and author, explains, “Life can only be constructed positively. The soul cannot flourish on a principle of subtraction; it can only prosper on a principle of addition.” In other words, we should not make the starting point of our service to God a list of do’s and don’ts. Using the 10 Commandments, he illustrates the proper order. He shows that the 10 Commandments consist of three parts:
(1) The Preface— “I am the Lord thy God”
(2) The Precepts— “Thou shalt. ..“
(3) The Prohibitions— “Thou shalt not. ..“
The key of the 10 Commandments lies in its preface: “I am the Lord thy God. “ The Person of God, and my relationship with Him, have to come first. I cannot begin to know how I relate to the opposite sex until I’ve learned to relate to God. My relation-ship with Him is not merely one of my relationships; it is the relationship by which I understand every other. It is only when my relationship with my Creator is right that I can be the son, the brother, the friend, the husband that God wants me to be.
Out of a thriving relationship with my Heavenly Father, it flows naturally to throw myself into His work. After the Person come the Precepts—the good He tells us to do. “When,” Boreham continues, “we pledge ourselves so desperately to do certain things no more, we entirely forget that our worst offenses do not consist in outraging the Thou Shalt Nots; our worst offenses consist in violating the Thou Shalts.” And lastly, there are definitely those things that I must never do. But the Thou Shalt Nots can only be obeyed and appreciated when they follow a relationship with, and a willingness to do God’s will.
I doubt that Mr. Boreham could have imagined seventy three years ago that his insight into scripture would help guide me through relationships with girls, but it has. In fact it has revolutionized my whole outlook on relating to everything. Before, pleasing God in my relationships meant pulling out my stone tablets and chiselling the Thou Shalt Nots. “Okay, I can’t have a girlfriend. . .I can’t go out on Fridays...” But I was doing things out of order! By starting with myself and my own strength, I was putting last things first.
When I start with myself, I automatically limit what I can accomplish; I can only progress as far as my own strength can take me; my standards will only be as high as I set them; my motivation only as noble as me. Needless to say, that’s not very far, that’s not very high, and that’s not very noble.
Richard Foster writes: “The contrast between God’s way of doing things and our way is never more acute than in this area of human change and transformation. We focus on specific actions; God focuses on us. We work from the outside in; God works from the inside out. We try; God transforms.”
When I open my heart to let God transform me from the inside out, I am no longer limited by my own ability to want to do good—His strength and goodness working in me are unwaning. And when my motivation for everything I do becomes pleasing Him, can there be a more noble motive?
But look how we’ve gotten off track:
I can only focus on the good God wants me to accomplish when I’m resting in His timing. It’s impossible to focus on developing character and serving others when I act like a three-year old on a family vacation: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
The most needed and most difficult character quality is patience. Waiting for God’s timing is never easy. It’s difficult to say, “Because I’m not in a position spiritually, emotion-ally or financially to consider marriage, I am not going to allow myself to get caught up romantically with this person.” It involves a painful daily exercise of faith. Faith that involves more than simply mouthing the words, “God, I know you love me and have my best interest in mind,” but “God, I know you love me, and I believe that by passing up something good because of wrong timing, you’ll pro-vide something even better at the right time.” If you think that’s easy to do, you’ve probably never done it.
If You’re Not Ready, You’re Not Ready
It’s easy to say you trust God’s timing, but very difficult to live like you trust God’s timing. I’ll never forget the 15-year-old guy who talked to me after a teen conference we had in Houston, Texas. He and his girlfriend had held hands through my entire session on the problems of dating relationships. To my surprise, they walked up to me afterward beaming. With his 14-year-old girlfriend in tow, the guy proudly stated, “Well, Josh we’re not dating any-more. . .now we’re courting!” I almost laughed out loud. The idea that the relationship might be premature didn’t cross his mind. He was calling it courtship now, so everything was fine.
The problem with being in a “I’m doing courtship” mindset is that most of us don’t need to be doing anything! At the age of 15 and 14 the couple wasn’t ready to do courtship. I’m 20 years old, and I’m not ready either. I have friendships with girls; I go out with groups of friends—but if I’m not ready to pursue the commitment of marriage, I have absolutely no business cultivating a romantic relationship with someone. I have my own list of reasons why I’m not ready. One of the biggest is simply that I know it’s not the right time. God just hasn’t released me. Your list doesn’t have to be the same as mine. It may involve age, spiritual or emotional maturity, finances or a combination of them all.
Whatever the reasons may be, if you’re not ready, you’re not ready. So if you develop an intimate relationship which involves commitments, spoken or unspoken of “I belong to you. You belong to me”, you can call it courtship if you want. But it’s still not right.
We get caught up in figuring out the mechanics of courtship because if we’re not dating, we want to be doing something! Sure we trust God, but we want to give him a hand.
When Elizabeth Elliot was asked by a young woman how to get a guy’s attention, she said, “My answer is ‘nothing’. . .Direct your energies to obedience, not to nailing the man [or woman]. God has his own methods of getting the two of you together. He doesn’t need any help or advice from you.”
This advice holds true for all of us. We need to stop worrying about “nailing” that special someone, whether by dating or courtship. Don’t worry about how you “do courtship”. Don’t do a thing! Don’t find your identity from some romantic linking to another person. Have friend-ships and develop the character God wants in your life, but don’t be distracted by figuring out how you’ll get from singlehood to matrimony—be concerned with how you’ll get from here to God’s kingdom pure and blameless.
Let me drive this point home by restating it: God’s main concern for your life is not getting you married off to some-one. It may be the biggest concern of your parents and everyone in your church, but it isn’t God’s.
The Christian life is often compared to a race. Get this straight now: the finish line is not any point in your earthly life. It’s not graduation; it’s not success in a career, falling in love or getting married. The final goal is the day of Christ Jesus. Unless you realize that you’ll be living out of balance—looking for fulfillment in things that cannot ultimately fulfill, asking too much from the temporal. God’s will for his disciples is that we learn by His Spirit to live through the confusion of the now, but with our eyes fixed on eternity.
This theme of learning to operate in the present is so important to any discussion of courtship. Much has been spoken and written on how courtship works for two people ready for marriage, but very little has been said about what a person does “in the meantime”—the time when most people are dating.
A scripture that has guided me during this time is found in Philippians. Paul is writing what would later be recognized as his happiest letter to one of his favorite churches. He is communicating on a very intimate, joyful level; not rebuking but expressing his deepest desire for the believers. He writes in Philippians 1:9 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blame-less until the day of Christ...”
Paul’s prayer is that their great love would also be smart. To abound in “knowledge and depth of insight” is to understand our own motivation and the true nature of our dealings with those around us. The Message translation puts it this way: “Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is si-cere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.”
God wants us to learn how to “love appropriately” in every situation and relationship. Whether it’s a case of someone liking you or you liking someone, He wants to teach you to cut through the “sentimental gush” and test your actions.
The real beauty of the verse comes when we realize the purpose God has for teaching us to love wisely. God wants us to learn to choose what is best. And isn’t that what we need so desperately? Rarely are we offered a choice between good and bad in relationships. That would be easy. Most often we have to choose between that which is good and that which is a greater good. Only with spiritual eyes will we be able to discern what is best for others and for God’s kingdom.
Developing this kind of love and making the tough choices of passing up the good for the best is not easy. On the day when we’re lonely, or crave for someone to love and be loved by—on a day when it feels like we’re the only person in a mall not holding someone’s hand—we wish God would magically zap us into the future. But He doesn’t.
Why?
Because He wants us to exercise muscles of faith that would remain weak and worthless if He spirited us away from the hardships.
God wants you and me to see the gift of right now. He wants us to learn to rely on Him today. Because He knows that “ suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”(Rom. 5:3-4)
Is your suffering producing perseverance or is it hosting a pity party? Are you persevering or just getting by? God does not want you to “just get by”! I know too many people who, “commit to courtship” and then like prisoners despondently do their time in singlehood. Their hope is in that moment of liberation when courtship kicks in. What a lousy hope! God has not called us to commit to courtship and sulk while we wait for Prince Charming or Princess Charming to show up. He has called us to commit our lives to the Kingdom of Christ and set our hope “fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:13) God is not impressed if you “get by.” Every moment of your life is entrusted to you. Will you give Him a good return on His investment? Seize the moment. Realize that your present struggles with emotions and feelings are all part of the glorious transformation He is working in you.
And remember this invigorating truth: you can only face the cost of living for Christ when your eyes are on His Kingdom. The day of Christ is the finish line. That has to be your goal.
JOSHUA HARRIS is the editor of New Attitude Magazine. The series on Searching for True Love is a sneak preview of his upcoming book I Kissed Dating Goodbye scheduled for release in late 1996.
NEXT ISSUE Installment II: Just Friends in a Just Do it World.