Courtship Didn't Work For Me, A Straw Man Has Been Thoroughly Hung and Other Sundries

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.  Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.   For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.  But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.  And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” - Galatians 6:1-9

Courtship didn’t work for me.  Based on what I read these days, I still can’t decide if we ever actually engaged in that particular activity...but in any case, it didn’t work.  To be clear, in saying so, I do not intend to communicate in the spirit of a rebel or a legalist.

My family and I always thought we would “court” to get to Christian marriage because we perceived the concept to encompass many sound biblical principles. We found over time how nebulous the convention was to many and how obsolete the term had become, having been applied to such a number of widely varying philosophies.  Because we didn’t find ourselves quite up to snuff in practice or original enough to come up with a good plan on our own we decided to  “be creative” and check the word of God for the principles that could help us in a philosophy of marriage.  We called what we determined as an approach to getting married in a God-glorifying manner “courtship” at times and an “exploration process” at others for the sake of simplicity...and found to our chagrin how little simplicity those terms actually afforded us.

I recently read this article: Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed together with my family and I was disappointed and disturbed to say the least.  Not because I don’t agree with most of what the author said.  It is in fact irrelevant whether I agree with him or not.  I was troubled, rather by the nature of its attitude in the light of its ready audience...my peers.  The following is my humble rebuttal.  I write it in the knowledge that it will step on toes.  I can’t apologize for the truth since it does not belong to me, but I submit myself to the righteous Judge of all things to condemn my error.

Regardless of the degree to which our family actually fit the mold of what common consensus calls courtship, we were often classed among the courting “breed”. For a culture that takes pride in being tolerant, I’m convinced I could surprise many with the judgmental, pre-conceived notions that were applied to us by default when people looked in from the outside on our family.  I supposed we gave them some reason to wonder at us.  After all...I was never pursued by a man for fun, romance, or anything else until I was nearly 25 years old.  At that point in my life, my family didn’t socialize in a community with young people my age and I didn’t even know of anyone eligible who lived within two days drive of our farm.

It seems I had God by the tail...outsmarted and thwarted were any of his plans for my life or my marriage.  All because I chose not to date.  Don’t get me wrong.  I wanted to get married...oh yes.  I prayed about it...I even wept about it.  But it seems God withheld my heart’s desire from me...in any case I “missed out” on marriage along with all the fun, happiness and casual all-American relationships that my peers had because I was stubborn.

Our family was stubborn and I chief among them as they will tell you.  Characteristically determined-and-resilient stubborn or just downright-dig-my-heels-in-and-won’t-budge stubborn.  We stubbornly decided to give God the power to arrange my marital fate.  Stubbornly I placed myself under my parents jurisdictional authority and stubbornly I prayed for a spouse in the Lord’s timing.  I admitted that God didn’t owe me anything...not happiness or fun or comfort or social success or friends or a spouse or children.  I submitted myself to him knowing that no matter what I chose to do or which methods or rules or formulas I applied to my life, he was still sovereign and had the power to give or take away as he saw fit.  Job understood this and it should be our attitude as well:

“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” - Job 1:20-22

Just as my family suspected, courtship did not provide me with anything...because it didn’t owe me anything, nor was it meant to get me anything...any more than dating was.  The dirty little secret about both of those ideologies is… they don’t work!  Neither will make you happy, fulfill your dreams, make you comfortable, win you everyone’s approval or get you a perfectly suitable spouse who is guaranteed not to fail you, hurt you or divorce you!

Entitlement is a deadly sin that does not become the Christian.  My whole generation and I are beset by this ill which threatens to violently and permanently blind us.  When the Proverbs of Solomon talk about ravens plucking out eyes, these are the object of his warning:

“There are those who curse their fathers and do not bless their mothers.“There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.“There are those—how lofty are their eyes,how high their eyelids lift!” - Proverbs 30:11-13

Don’t listen, gentle reader, when the wisdom of men tells you that you have been cheated all along...that one method or another with a little list of rules on one side or a little list of liberties on the other will waft you right to the altar with a light heart.  The man who encourages a patronizing, barely tolerant or judgmental attitude towards parents has forgotten the admonition to obey parents in the Lord. Honoring parents was not a suggestion...it was a command by Almighty God. When he gave it he identified himself as "the Lord your God." The truth is, we can insert a method, a person or a circumstance and say it failed us, but all are beholden for their effect to the will of God...and God never owed you anything...and you owe him everything.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. - Galatians 6:3

I did the research.  It didn’t take long.  The thing(s) we call courtship are nowhere in scripture.  Neither is dating.  So like the toothbrush you scrubbed your pearly-whites with this morning and the fork you will use to imbibe comestibles at dinner, the “hello and how are you” employed to greet your neighbor and the blinker on your vehicle to note a courteous lane-change, neither convention for approaching marriage can be rubber-stamp guaranteed.  They don’t have to be and they don’t have to “work”.  I might add that in one sense, many of us should wonder why they are even worth arguing about.

The author of the above article claims to want a few things...and “freedom” was one of them.  “...the glory days when men were free” and “could fall in love and pick their own spouses.”

It is, I admit appealing to a part of me...it feels good to let the imagination run in a world where I get to choose what I like best, free from the extra effort, the debate, the responsibility.  Scripture calls that part of me my flesh.  Have we forgotten that the only freedom that is real exists in Christ?  There is nothing freeing about being bound to our own selfish desires or imprisoned in the narrow confines of human wisdom and our wicked wills.  The gospel freed us from that.  It is incumbent upon us not to bind ourselves again.

Excuse me for wondering why facts like: men sin, methods fail, the wicked appear to advance, the high road is narrow and good marriages are few mean that we can check principles at the door.  Do we really imagine God will give us a pass on not thinking and working because we didn’t get the results we wanted?

But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load.Galatians 6:4-5

The truth is, our method does matter.  Scripture is clear on that one.  Our faith must necessarily produce works or it isn’t real faith at all.  The Christian young person has nothing to appeal to but the word of God for a defense for his practice.  In fact, he has less excuse than anyone else if he doesn’t do so.  These are our marching orders:

“Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” - 1 Timothy 4:7-12

The Christian young person is a soldier, armed with the Word of God, indwelled by the living Spirit of God and charged with the conquest of Christ’s kingdom on earth.  His actions are not neutral, his principles must be sound.  His testimony and reputation, life and practice, time and talents don’t belong to him.  Christian young people, where God is sovereign there is no room for debate.  You don’t have time to have fun, or pursue your own happiness or take the easy road or build your own castle...you don’t own any time at all.  When God claimed ownership over all things and declared you shall not steal, he established his right to order your life after his will.

And then what did we expect? That being a Christian would make a great marriage drop in our laps?  That enjoying the ride or having fun or taking it easy would wipe away the weight of our responsibility to obey the God of the universe?  That believing rightly and obeying rightly and living cleanly would make us perfectly suited to marry someone?  That if we laughed away our convictions or cried away our courage the battle would disappear?  The easing of our  consciences and the perpetuating of our traditions and self-satisfaction can have no place in the Kingdom.  God forbid that it be so!

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. - Galatians 6:7-9

Let us not be oppressed or downtrodden but rather take courage from the gospel and gird ourselves in the knowledge that the results are not up to us.  We don’t have to appeal to our perfect marriages for proof that we have done right.  God is the verifier of a heart that is right before him, zealous to do his will, and hands that work faithfully to build his kingdom.  We are no longer bound to the futility of our own works...we are freed to the works prepared for us before the foundation of the world by the Creator of the universe.  We need no longer dwell in the shadowlands.  Merit is not met when we meet the handsome Christian guy of our dreams, but is rather inescapably linked to the victorious kingdom of Christ.

“Courtship” didn’t work for me.  It never could have produced anything in and of itself.  I recently promised to marry a sinful man who is going to fail me.  In a few short weeks, God willing, I will be an unsuitable and sinful wife.  God is still working his sovereign will in the lives of men, both obedient and disobedient.  Praise be to his name that he is not thwarted, outsmarted or surprised by the fact that we will be covenanting before him in a faith not our own to do works together not our own for a kingdom not made with our hands.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. - 2 Corinthians 5:1-10

"Through a glass, darkly..."

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1Corinthians 13:12

The verse has troubled me for some time.  Or rather, I should say, its common use in contrast to its true import has troubled me.

Culturally, among Christians, it is quoted often with the ennui of a common truism and dressed up with the sparkle of interest and a butterfly that identifies references as “inspirational” and worthy of featuring on a Hallmark Card.  Read sonorously at uncountable weddings, it becomes the part of tradition which we hear without hearing...at once bereft of any but superficial meaning and tied up with the perfunctory bow of an enigmatical concept called love.

In any case, one gets the vague impression that being really known would be uncomfortable, so this verse must be referring to that best-buddy kind of knowing that makes you feel “understood” without baring more than a few select extracts from the heart censored for security of pride.  After all, if someone really knew us what room could there be for love?  There we often let the verse lie.

.....

I remember vividly the day I understood.  For perhaps the first time, I was consciously remembering and it frightened me.  A circumstance, itself inconsequential, settled a new yoke of responsibility on my seven or eight-year-old self and because I could recall a time when I was free of it, I was unaccountably terrified of going any further in my short lisp of a life.

Every child comes to this time...where childishness becomes conscious, even while it has yet to become maturity.  A mother mourns that first loss of the baby lisp, the stumble over a word.  Then others will watch in vain for childish communication with all its frank, winsome naiveté and haphazard rambling.  The three year old hardly knows what he means when he presents his three chubby digits for your smiling inspection, and no one grudges him the privilege of ignorance on that score.  Soon enough the five year old will be proud to tell you how big he has grown and you will almost unaccountably miss the unpretentious baby in the self-conscious boy.

To our dying day, every one of us has the same insatiable desire to understand, and a dread of what will happen when we do.  The thought of knowing brings with it the shrinking of our childhood from the brink of understanding because we only know in part.  Our human heart, peering through the grand score of God's Word as an amateur musician, struggles to trace out the infinite scope of power and complexity with finite eyes seared by the burning glory of it.  The indwelling Spirit leans over our shoulder and points out the feeble lines of our own parts with surety and love, humming the music until it fills our being with its beauty.  Shut the score, though, and the thought of remembering your part in the symphony with all its intense import and and excellence can cause any one of us to throw aside our sheets of music in despair.  

This is the knowing in part.  But partial knowing carries a heavy responsibility.  The reflection in the glass, dim though it may be, was never meant to be a high thought set aside for moments of euphoric reflection on the swing at sunset.  Jarring as the thought may be, far from moving us to apathy and futility, 1 Corinthians 13:12 is an imperative call to maturity.  The Father did not give us the promise in His Word and send us His Spirit to bear witness to the fulfillment of His promises so that we could languish in the waiting.

 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer,

he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

James 1:23-24

To be in the midst of assembled believers and shudder over the raw grating dissonance and muddiness of the collected notes is to look in the glass and see the shadow of our natural face with all of its flaws and scars.  What natural man wouldn't wish to forget that natural face?  How easy it is to say then, “I saw the music once, and that is enough.  It is in my heart, and this is all that matters.”  How great a travesty is the secret of the eternal song carried about as a shadow in the depths of Christian souls and never learned or played simply because we all knew that in this life we could never perfect it.

The truth is, we are so concerned with the natural face peering out of the glass at us, that we forget the glass itself.   If we are honest, our sin, when held up to the light, fascinates us; not always, we can flatter ourselves, with the hardened inclinations of a dead conscience, but with the secret pride that says, "Mine is truly ugly."  The rehearsal is full of discordant sounds, and the first one to look up from the jungle of notes before him and say, "I can't possibly do this, it is too horribly difficult," has essayed to raise his "I" to a higher level than the symphony.  There is a great measure of pride in the one who indulges in self-deprecation by believing the music must stop because he has deemed his part to be beyond help or recall.

“For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

Isaiah 55:11

The perfect law of liberty was not composed for our especial benefit.  The divine artist writes to His own pleasure and glory, and His work does not exist merely so we can enjoy its sublime beauty on the mirror in our closet.  It is not the kind of symphony that can be made futile merely because we prefer not to participate, or play our part in secret so that no one may observe the wavering our touch makes in the reflection.

Any student of music can tell you that it does no good to dabble in music with self-fulfillment in mind.  There is no place for neutrality or, ultimately, the expressing of your own will.  In the same way, you must rest in the assurance that you can only begin to know your life-part because you are already fully known by Him.  Your heart must so submit to the hand of the master that you no longer know your hand to be pulling the bow, but you are at once certain of His hand pulling yours.  The beating of your own time must cease to wander stumbling off the steady rhythm of His music and instead be bound to it by His sure hand. 

This is to look into His perfect law of liberty, to see the reflection of true freedom in very submission and to continue in it.  

The compelling reality about the music of the perfect law of liberty is that one must not only hear, but listen... and not forget, but play.  

The overpowering weight of the score, after all, does not rest in our hands, nor even is the completion of our part given into our keeping. 

The secret to playing a symphony is to simply play the notes before us in obedience and 

trust the author to make the symphony.

In the waiting for completion we cry out with Paul:

“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

A girl of especially stormy passions and vivid imagination, I cried the day I knew what I could never forget again.  I told my mother with an almost pettish desperation that I wanted to go back to being a little girl.

My dear mother...from my earliest memories the sensible, sympathetic constant that anchored my tempestuous emotions.  I will never cease to be grateful that she was usually undaunted by the wild outbursts of joy or sorrow that rocked my self-aware little world.  That day my tears brought a quiet smile to her face, not unlike the smile I imagine God harbors over our knowledge-bereft wailings.  Before she said a word, I knew she understood, and then she spoke comfort that I didn’t entirely understand, but accepted with the faith that children have in good mothers.  “When you have grown up, you will be glad that you were never able to go back.  You will learn to love growing older.”  And of course she was right.

To this day she still reminds me early and late of the words another wise woman, Elizabeth Elliot drew from this poem, “Do The Next Thing:”

"At an old English parsonage down by the sea,
there came in the twilight a message to me.
Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven
that, as it seems to me, teaching from heaven.
And all through the hours the quiet words ring,
like a low inspiration, 'Do the next thing.'

Many a questioning, many a fear,
many a doubt hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from heaven,
time, opportunity, guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,
trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer,
do it reliantly, casting all care.
Do it with reverence, tracing His hand,
who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on omnipotence, safe 'neath His wing,
leave all resultings, do the next thing.

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
working or suffering be thy demeanor,
in His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
the light of His countenance, be thy psalm.
Do the next thing.

The little girl in me no longer casts longing glances over her shoulder.  There can be no mourning for imperfections done away when every look into the mirror is a brush with the perfection that we long for.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

1 Corinthians 13:10

The time darkened glass, serene and expansive, unerringly casts back shadows of the light from timelessness.  The fading of it as it shifts away from a touch awakens the painful longing for it to be still it forever.  Here stands the briefest sliver of time, yet this space, thin enough to shatter at a brush from eternity, stands yet adamant before the mortal, an impenetrable testimony to a sure fulfillment...fulfillment that will engage the whole being un-impaired by sin.  At last to know as we are known, to truly commune with God, face to face.  What joy it will be to no longer reach out over the deep waters of His glory and see the muddying of our sin-tainted hearts obscuring them.  So into this glass, “this substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen,” we look again and again.

"But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty,and continueth therein,

he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,

this man shall be blessed in his deed.

James 1:25

Amiability...

"I make up my mind to be very good an amiable, and the next minute let anyone, big or little, child or servant say any thing crass or disagreeable, and my spirits ooze out, until my only safety lies in flight, and if I want to regain my equanimity of temper I have to run away and sing Dixie, or Keep your Ark a-moving, before I make another sortie...
"...considering how much the happiness of those around us depends on our loving words, and kind feelings towards them, how whole days may be made miserable by one cross word or thoughtless deed, how a dozen merry faces can be clouded by one ill tempered or anger one - considering how we are responsible to God for every evil influence which may cause other to sin, cultivate amiability, Sarah, as you would the rarest talent bestowed on you prize it above all things...
"If ill humor must have a vent, make faces at your looking glass; but when you enter the family circle, do as our dear father did; throw all care and annoyance to the winds, have a pleasant word for all, for you enter the Holy of Holies - Home - the least and lowest can add a new pleasure, or a new disturbance, the duty of contributing to the common happiness is encumbent on all. Let the home circle be the place for the exchange of pleasant thoughts, let all disagreeable ones be put away.  Ours was a happy home; father’s example should influence his children.  O Sarah my dear! if you are ever inflicted with a large and interesting family - which Kind Heaven forbid! - teach them to cultivate amiability as the only safeguard of happiness.  Teach it, preach it, incessantly.  Yes! and by the time my “interesting family” is brought up in the way it should go, I will not have the amiability enough myself to make a respectable appearance! So much for theory without practice!"
~Sarah Morgan - from The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman

Happy 25th Anniversary Daddy and Mama!

How faithful is God and how wonderful His works from generation to generation!