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

Our Father...Who art in Washington

His name is indeed hallowed by many...whether with the little community's youth orchestra performance of Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" or in the temple where they enshrine him in Washington, his name is almost universally numbered among the prophets of history.

Lincoln taught us about fathers, and through it, Steven Spielburg has established new traditions around fatherhood.

Here is the father in the home, imperfect and arbitrary in so many ways, unreasonable and distant, even harsh in neglect and a failure to communicate coherently...yet somehow occasionally tender.  He ultimately casts a strange kind of shadow over the lives of his children.

In an article in the Washinton post entitled "The Comfort of Lincoln as Imperfect Father" Tracy Grant wrote: "Even for the Great Emancipator, parenthood was the great equalizer."

Here is the father of his nation as so many like to call him, and no one asks of him a reason for the terrible things he does, or even tries to understand the complex reasons for all his simple acts of blatant tyranny or thinly veiled dictatorship.  The reason is in himself, it would seem.  He accomplished what he was meant for ..."fit his time" as you might say and payed his dues to humanity by obliging them with their desired ends.  So we take interest in the machinations of a radical, power-hungry madman as if they were the impersonal footsteps of the march of progress through time, somehow inviolate and above the common way, "blest with divine right" as you might say.

If anyone notices the inconsistency in all this, the blatant touted inconsistency, "they do not understand".  Understand what?  That a father can wage an ungodly bloody war with other men's sons and then unabashedly withhold his own?  That a man can strive to grip the jurisdictions of almighty God in his hand and then fail to grasp the rightful jurisdiction of his own home?  Or that things which would be wicked in other men are hallowed on the score of the one whom men favor?  Can the tyrant be generous to a subject without making a mockery of justice?  Can he be forgiving to another, a respecter of persons rather than God, without spurning his victim in the dust?  God keep us from the great idolatry...self...from such unreasoning passion for our own ends.

I suppose in one sense one could, with reservations in plenty, recommend the circumspect perusal of a film that manages to elucidate some historical truth because it is not quite philosophically self conscious.  ...Or perhaps it is and we would rather not believe it to be so?

The Joy-Cup

We are commanded in scripture to fear God…to know that God works all things after the counsel of His own will...giving us love and desire for what He loves and joy in whatever He sends...or does not send; and then preparing a table of abundance in the wilderness where there was nothing.

All the "if's" and “why’s” in the lives of men are guaranteed and certain in their final results in the mind of God. Knowing this is the obedience of the heart to the will of the Spirit. It is our right worship of almighty God, the understanding that makes us whole and the faith that is none of our own making. Summer or winter, working or resting, alone or befriended, wealthy or wanting, nothing can satisfy apart from Him.

So we pray that “If the allure of anything, however "good", draws me from Him, let it be struck from me, so that even the pain of pruning draws me to Him.  So let everything about me die...the loves and hates, the body and will...only let Him be my shield and my eternal great reward.”

This is the eternal rest of salvation, the storehouse in which all meaning is garnered.

This is the joy-cup He makes to overflow.

The Fear of God in a Peach

Sunshine warming the floor and steam coming off the canner in billows, hair frizzed in the humid heat until it made to fly right out the window, sticky-sweet hands and the rich ripe perfume of peaches.  All of it so very sundry.

There is a danger in words...this strange power to almost thoughtlessly make poetic what is plain or trivialize what is transcendent.   The composer can do this too...write epic music without a real epic.  But there is more to the art of creativity than this, because there are real epics and real poems.  Sorting bright round peaches into jars can sort your brain.  They call tasks like these mindless...but I found that here, at least as much as at any other time, there is no room for mindlessness.  The Spirit has a way of using menial tasks that get your hands dirty to compel you to face the greater issues of life.  And when He presses we can face them without fear like Sarah or bend to the temptations of self-imposed martyrdom like Eve.  The daughters of men are especially susceptible to the latter temptation, I believe, so I had the great audacity to wish for a good conclusion on the matter that pressed while I steamed in the kitchen along with rosy golden fruit.  

What is the source of meaning and joy in a hot messy kitchen?  I knew that the knowledge of God is all the difference.  Taking thoughts captive grows into a habit of the mind and heart, a constant counterpoint to all the little melodies and great harmonies in life.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, His word says.  So ... the fear of the Lord is the hunger to know Him in everything, the insatiable desire to have the mind of Christ.  There is a greater power in this than in glorifying the trivial merely because poetry and music are tools that enable you to do it.  To some it is given to know the fear of the Lord among kings, to others, to know it among blades of grass.  Trivial, in fact, are all the issues of men, kings and grass alike are but small things.  Yet, wonder of wonders, neither are small issues in light of the kingdom of God.

Some take this merely as comfort.  But I was looking for more than comfort.  I didn't really need comfort, after all.  Comfort is the knowledge that one is spared the curse of death through the power of Christ's gospel.  Purpose is the working of that gospel into ever fiber of one's being like kneading leaven in a lump of dough.  There it was again, the mundane kneading of bread dough threads it's humble fibers through the master plan of the cosmos.  How does He do that?  How do the things that are small become great?  The knowledge of God again.  All at once I was overwhelmed by a sense of privilege...and shame.  What am I, mere dust of the earth, that He should stoop to give me pleasure in the greatness of the little threads of his plan.  Who am I to revel in the glory of a peach?

Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you;
he has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah must have been wondering at it too, when his heart overflowed with the poetry of God's faithfulness. The comfort of salvation we love...but there is the wonder too..."let not your hands grow weak..."? He knows our weakness...our tendency to fear everything but Him, to forget the glory behind the song.

Is the Lord God in your midst...while you can peaches?  Yes!  Mighty to save calloused hearts as well as hands and give joy to long days on your feet and pour quiet into your hurried tasks and exultation into your solitary work.  The unseen is beautiful in its own right...because it is seen by Him. Is this about as cliche as it gets?  Here my brain was sorting backwards.  I don't suppose most who use that "cliche" even know what it means.  The fact is, I don't presume to suppose that anything needs to be seen apart from the fact that He sees it.

There are serendipities every day in our lives that God makes to touch the eternal right before our eyes.  And here I was, a very small thing that He should notice.  He stoops to give us joy in the flavor of a ripe peach.  He bends His greatness low to carry my heart out the window on the sound of a violin.  Of course I knew David was right to wonder that the Creator of the Universe is mindful of us, but everyday wonders are used by the Spirit to teach us more and more how much of a wonder it is.

I was a little girl the first time I saw the Teton Mountains.  We were driving towards them across the vast western plains when Daddy pointed out their distant peaks and the car was filled with little gasps of excitement: "Mountains!"  There was wonder then...true wonder.  But I felt like I was growing up just watching those mountains get closer.  I had never seen anything that big before.  They became higher and more terribly beautiful with every mile, until, when we finally started climbing the foothills, I could no longer see the tops.  My little-girl gasp at the first glance was forgotten in absolute awe.  The truth is, I hadn't even known what awe was when I first looked.

I was climbing those mountains of awe over the peach peelings those few short days ago.  At first I thought to myself that you couldn't expect to go can peaches and have an epiphany every day.  That would be another cliche, right?  But again I wondered, why not?  Every day, the Spirit of the Living God is living in us.  And while we walk about and classify every act as "normal" or mundane, He is working His perfect and awesome will.

So...Its not every day I climb spiritual mountains over the canner, but as the Lord enables, I will.  And all the while, I'll turn, again and again, in His merciful kindness and at His continual prompting to live in the light of the kingdom...where even a peach is epic.  This is the fear of God all the day long...the perpetual awareness of His presence.  The ever-turning of our hearts to Him...the seeking of His face continually.  A few will know what I mean when I say that "I am just stating the facts."  The more whimsical and intangible one's thoughts are, the more matter of fact one needs to be, as I am daily proving.  So here I have perhaps even trivialized the matter with my words... so that I will not forget and complain.

"...but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Jeremiah 9:24