Busy busy beaver & First Race

FYI, Caltech's mascot is a beaver.

Things have been busy around here. Really busy. I am having a lot of fun playing ultimate and I do a lot of activities over the weekend, but generally my weekdays are a slog through problem sets. I finished two that were due today and am very relieved. The rest of the week should be easier. However, finals start next week. Boy, am I looking forward to Christmas break.

This Thanksgiving I got to go home, which was a very welcome rest. I took a shuttle van to the airport last Wednesday and was in Bozeman by Wednesday night. Over the long weekend I slept a lot, went out hunting just on our property, cut two Christmas trees, ate good food, and played a lot of board games with my siblings. It was relaxing and very peaceful compared to school.

On a different note, yesterday I swam in my first swim meet. I wrote a poem to honor the occasion before the meet. Most of the words are accurate, especially those that refer to thrashing about. :) I still had fun.

First Race

Whack water
Cold and clear
Tumbling, turbulent
Lashing limbs
Pull piecemeal
Arms attack

Eyes ache
Goggles gone
Frantically feeling
Where's the wall
Sensitive strokes
Touch tenderly

Super spin
Kick concrete
Glide gracefully
Attack again
Move mightily
Finally, finish

-Richard Gianforte 12/2/2008

Also, some dudes from my gym posted an awesome, jaw-dropping video of stunts they do around the gym. Wow, it makes my nostaglic. I used to do some of this stuff with them. Here's the link, it's definitely worth watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0kHmKfh4rc#

Midterms

It's midterm time at Caltech. I finished the Chemistry midterm this afternoon and I will take the Calculus one tonight. Because of the honor code here, all the midterms are take-home. If the test says it's closed book, you're expected to adhere by that. I think that this level of responsibility is good. As I've said before, the Caltech honor code is merely a repackaging of the Christian standard of ethics. The school has their honor code and touts it as something new and unique to Caltech, when really they are pulling from something very old, as old as time.

I thought you all might like to see a picture of the type of work that I am doing. This problem is from my math set last week; I think it took me an hour to do this page. I couldn't figure out how to photograph it very well and the resolution is poor, but you get the idea.

Gladiator

Recently, I saw the movie Gladiator for the first time. I loved it. The movie had many amazing themes which were, of course, taken from the greatest story and hero ever. A perfect, strong man is betrayed by those who were close to him, and his friends are killed or disappear. He is tortured and mocked and treated as a slave, when one word while he was in his former state would have leveled all his enemies. Eventually through a series of trials, he faces his betrayer face to face. During that scene, these lines are delivered:

Commodus (evil man): Your fame is well deserved, Spaniard. I don't believe there's ever been a gladiator that matched you... Why doesn't the hero reveal himself and tell us all your real name? (Maximus, the man, is silent) You do have a name?
Maximus: My name is Gladiator. (He turns and walks away.)
Commodus: How dare you show your back to me!?! Slave! You will remove your helmet and tell me your name.
Maximus: (The Man lifts his helmet and turns around to face his enemy.) My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius; Commander of the Armies of the North; General of the Felix Legions; loyal servant of the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius; father to a murdered son; husband to a murdered wife; and I will have vengeance, in this life or the next.

By coincidence, I was reading the book Wild at Heart today and the author referenced this scene. John Eldredge wrote:
"[Maximus'] answer builds like a mighty wave, swelling in size and strength before it crashes on the shore. Where does a man go to learn an answer like that--to learn his true name, a name that can never be taken from him?... You have to know where you've come from; you have to have faced a series of trials that test you; you have to have taken a journey; and you have to have faced your enemy." (101)

Where can a man find his name? From trials, yes, but ultimately from the person we must run to in those trials and the person whom Maximus reveals for us, Jesus Christ.

Um yeah who sleeps like this?

Sun Oct 19 - get up around 10 AM

Monday Oct 20 - go to bed at 5 AM
wake up at 9 AM to go to class
collapse at 9 PM

Tuesday - get up at 4 AM and work until 6 AM
go back to bed and sleep until 9 AM

Wednesday - go to sleep at 1:30 AM
wake up at 8 AM
collapse at 8:45 AM, sleep until 10:45 AM (through class)

Thursday - sleep at 1:00 AM
wake up at 9:00 AM
Yes! back to normal!

I thought I would post some pictures of my room. The first picture is looking in the room (good old Ruddock CCXXXIV) through the door. The second picture is looking down on the room from the corner on the right after you enter the door. My desk is the close one, you can see my roommate on his computer on the far desk. I have the top bunk. The third picture is me with my longboard.

Ultimate

Today I got to play in my first Ultimate tournament. It was pretty cool. The team met up at 7:30 and we drove to Long Beach, where we played five games.

First of all, it was pretty exhausting because we played from 9 to 4, with little breaks between the games. Thankfully, we had thirteen people come and only had to field seven, so everyone could rest for about half of the points. Besides the physical exertion, the sun sapped a lot of our energy. Between running around and the sun, I drank over four liters of water and Gatorade.

The whole tournament was really a crash course for the rookies. About half of the instructions I received were shouted in the midst of play, but the experienced players also took timeouts to explain things. I know a lot more about the game and the technical rules than I did this morning. For instance, what happens when the "pull" (the initial throw) is touched and dropped by the receiving team? What if it goes out of bounds out the back of the endzone? The side of the field? How about landing in the endzone and rolling out? Each of these situations is dealt with differently. Also, there are no referees in ultimate so it was not uncommon for a rule to be questioned. Most of the time these disputes could be settled quickly by a knowledgeable player. The only times things got heated was if the contestation was over a past fact (e.g. he landed inbounds) rather than a rule.

Overall I had a great time. Incidentally, I stopped doing concert band this week because I didn't have enough time to do both. I have finally decided that I want to do one thing well. In high school I struggled through gymnastics and basketball and saxophone all at the same time and had a blast, but now I want to commit to one activity (besides school) and do it well. I do think it's a little odd that I didn't pick gymnastics or basketball or saxophone. Oh well.

Sometime in the future I'll post pictures of my dorm room and my longboard and maybe the campus. Until then...

College has begun

Actually, it began a while ago but I've been too busy to post. If I manage to get to bed within an hour of posting this (before 2 AM); that'll be the earliest I've gone to bed in the past three nights.

The homework at Caltech is challenging (go figure). The problem sets take anywhere from four to eight hours each, and we generally have five in a week. In addition, there are some take-home quizzes each week. The work is interesting though and I know I'm learning a lot; so in some sense I enjoy the effort required of me. Currently I am taking calculus, physics, chemistry, applied physics lab, American history, and ultimate frisbee. This schedule is typical of all freshman at Caltech; the only variances lie in a different humanities or physical education course.

For hobbies, I am playing in the concert band on my alto saxophone, going out for the ultimate frisbee team, and being involved in the Caltech Christian Fellowship here. Right at the beginning of the year I had to make sure that I didn't sign up for too many things, because there are so many things to do at Caltech that overcommitment is a distinct possibility. I just hope that I can continue doing the things I've committed to throughout the year. Also, as a hobby and means of transportation I took up longboarding and bought my own board this week. I have a lot of fun cruising around campus and I have started to feel like I belong here.

I Arrived at College

Hey everybody

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. When life is the busiest and friends most want to know what's going on, I have the least time to post. Anyways, since my last post I packed for college (mostly the morning I was leaving) and flew to Burbank without hassle. All of the stores and offices were closed for the weekend, so I got close to nothing done the first few days I was here. Soon, though, I was whisked off with a bunch of other Caltech people to go on a week-long backpack in the Sierras. The trip was strenuous and the people were interesting. Our group, the most advanced of the three, covered 52 miles in six days (and 14 in one day!); it was the most I had ever hiked. As an added bonus, we did the backpack in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park, so I got to see the enormous trees there. There's a mighty big difference between these groves and the lodgepole forests back home.

Once the five hour, harrowing shuttle bus ride back to Caltech was over, I took a shower and procrastinated. Hey, it was the weekend again, and again, nothing was open. Today, however, orientation started in earnest and the entire day was spent walking from office to office filling out different paperwork and retrieving important information. All in all it was very productive, and I feel like a real student here now. Tomorrow the entire freshman class will leave to go to an off-campus orientation retreat. From looking at the schedule, it's structured like a conference with meetings throughout the day with different speakers. Thankfully, there is free time available for going to the beach or hanging out.

Next week, I will go through Rotation Week. This time period at Caltech enables the entering freshman to experience the different cultures of the eight houses here. After eating a meal in each house throughout the week, I will rank the houses according to my preference; and be assigned to one. The whole process should be pretty fun, though I hope it becomes clear to me which house would be best - I really have no idea what their distinctives are.
P.S. Rotation Week is also the first week of class... but I hear that the professors don't really assign any homework that week.

Gymnastics

Well, this week is my last at Lone Mountain Gymnastics. I am going to miss it a lot, and am going to try to go to a gym in Pasadena. School might be too crazy, though.
As a last hoorah, I managed this trick last night (the first time I've ever done it). Some things are just too exciting not to share. Enjoy!

I Feel Like I've Been Here Forever...

July 16, 2008

Today I played an Ultimate Frisbee game in the morning, then worked at St. Joseph's, the hospital here. I failed to make a database enhancement, and broke the entire databse in the process. After this amazing success, I worked on a powerpoint presentation (and eventually got the database working again). By lunchtime I felt productive; hopefully I can finish the presentation on Friday.

After lunch, I went over to the orphans and played with them some more. The little girls are very cute and like piggy-back rides and hide-and-seek. The boys' soccer ball (that our group had given them) had been taken by the students at the school next door, so we threw around a frisbee and jumped rope.
Also, I helped Menzi start to learn standing backflips; he can already do roundoffs and is pretty athletic. I had him stand on top of a pile of sand that was there; it worked nearly as well as a wedge-shaped mat except the jump up was difficult. I doubt he'll be able to do them alone before I leave though.

July 17, 2008
I think that it's worth making a note on the food at this point in the trip. All of our meals are eaten at the Cuddle Company, a factory that employs women (60% of whom have AIDS) to make stuffed animals for children. They sell an eccentric parrot crossed with a Zebra in Holland, and for each one they sell, another is given to a child in Africa. The " Company" is run by a Dutch businessman as a charitable venture. (If you would like to read more about this non-profit, here is an article I found in the Times: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=586462).
So, our meals are cooked for us in the cafeteria of the Cuddle Company and we eat them buffet style. One of the ladies there is named Dina, of "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dina" fame. She didn't know the song so we sung it to her :) The food is good but very repetitive. For breakfast there is usually eggs, toast with jam, and some variation of oatmeal. Dinner is sausage or chicken, rice, gravy, some vegetable (beets, squash, potatoes), and possibly a salad. Lunch is some mixture of these courses. Because our group is large and eats like athletes, it is hard to get enough food. I try to show up early or at least ontime for meals (most people are 5 min late for breakfast) so I can go back for seconds.

July 17, 2008
Today I took a shower after breakfast and watched people play Ultimate. I was pretty tired and didn't want to have to take another shower right away. One of the girls was also watching, and we talked about athletics in college. (I had earlier shared with the group about wanting to do some sport, especially being around all theses atheltes.) She told me that college athletics had meant a lot to her, but that a debilitating blood clot after her senior year in high school meant that she couldn't do any athletics. Even now, she can't play ultimate or any sport where there is a possiblity of contact. For her, athletics had been everything but she realizes now that not doing it let her do many different activities that otherwise couldn't have done. I liked hearing her perspective because she's on the other side of this issue I'm facing.

After this the Boston crew went to the University of Pretoria (main campus) with the explicit purpose of evangelism. I went with Zach and Zach and we talked to four Afrikaans men. Afrikaans are the Dutch settlers who make up most of the white population here. Also, Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, is still widely used. These men were all 5th, going on 6th year engineering students in four year programs. They smoked cigarettes and seemed to be the chill dudes on campus. Though happy to talk about spiritual things, they were not receptive to the gospel. Two were syncretists/relativists and two were dissilusioned christians. This made it hard to talk to them all at once, the conversation kept jumping back and forth between worldviews. The main contention of the first group was that all religions teach the same thing (and who are we to call someone else wrong?). One of the relativists also asked, on hearing that we didn't follow the Catholic church, why we had left what had been the Christian church for hundreds of years. He asked when the next major theological change was so that the world could plan to switch all its beliefs =P. The bone of the second group was how are we, as engineers who understand how the world works, supposed to believe dogmatically and unconditionally all that stuff in the Old Testament? One guy mentioned the impossibility of Noah's Ark. Overall, they knew the Bible and brought up some tough questions. I was happy that Petra had enabled me to answer them (it worked, Mr. V!!).

The second conversation that I had was after a prayer meeting with students from the University of Colorado, also on a missions trip. Zach S. and I talked with three black guys who were receptive to the gospel, one very much so. He said that in the prior year he had relinquished his previous authority (his father) and had become a slave to girls and drinking. Now, he was searching for a new authority and so we shared why God should be his ultimate authority. We gave them "Knowing God Personally" booklets and our email addresses and drove back to Sizanani.

That night we had worship and a talk like most nights, but for worship we went into the disabled clinic. The children that could dance tried, and those that could move any limb did so; they loved the music.


Dana's 2nd quote, from JFK: "We do these things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. They measure and test our strengths and abilites."

The Adventure Continues

July 15, 2008

Today, for the second time, I read the Bible with one of the male group leaders.  I liked doing this a lot, I want to find a person or group that I can do this with at college.  It helps to get someone else's opinion and views and knowledge and experience on a particular passage.  As an added bonus, if you've committed to meet someone to study the Bible, you can't postpone or neglect it.

After this, I went with the Boston group to the Mamelodi campus again.  While there myself and another girl talked to a security guard about her faith, and tried to witness to her.  The testimony she gave was a testament to how powerful and gripping spiritualism and ancestor worship is in Africa.  I won't go into the details here, but some of her beliefs were unerving, if not downright creepy.  There were some students at the campus, but not many.  In fact, next year it will be shut down or used only for science classes as an extension of the Praetoria campus.  For these reasons, and because the students' schedules have minimal free time, we decided to focus much of our efforts at the main University of Praetoria campus.  We drove there in the afternoon.

The main campus was intimidating; it was huge and packed with people.  Here's a photo of one of the quieter parts of the quad, and the admin building:

At the campus we talked with a couple groups of people and tried to "decode" the campus.  This involved learning where students hung out; what the religious atmosphere was like; how students liked their school; etc.  The conversations we had were good, and with some groups we discussed heavy religious issues.  I was amazed, however at the amount of racial separation there was.  Particular parts of the quad were almost exclusively black or white; some of the students pointed out to us which sections the races generally occupied.  It was rare to see a group of blacks and whites together.  Nevertheless, there was no awkwardness for us to approach a black group; so the separation seemed passive and almost a matter of habit more than anything else.  Hopefully this will change over time as the apartheid-era mindset expires.

Some Words, and Another Week

So, I think most of the maintenance group was a little disappointed about the amount of work we did in our first week. These feelings were naturally accentuated because the other groups had amazing stories about getting to know children or adults with hard lives, and witnessing to them. Anyways, Dana knew that this was going on and so he shared a quote with us from Pascal "Do small things as if they are big things and big things as if they are small things." The reason for this is that everything is done to serve Christ. If we do a small thing and do it well, serving God, then we have fulfilled our telos. Moreover, when we do "big things" we shouldn't puff ourselves up over how great our work is, but instead do those big things as if they are small things. Dana also talked about how important our work really is: cleaning up Sizanani is an admirable end; our work in one week would have taken the one groundskeeper a month to complete. This talk helped me feel a lot better, and of course feel slightly ashamed at thinking that manual labor is somehow inferior.
A friend sent me these verses:

1 Corinthians 12:14-25 (New International Version)

"Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

"The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other."

July 14, 2008

Another week has begun, and I've switched to the orphans group. Today was great. I woke up, had breakfast, spent some quiet time, played a competitive ultimate frisbee game, went to St. Joseph's and worked on a slide presentation and database enhancement, and spent some time (well, all afternoon) with the Sizinani orphans. I am totally exhausted, but feeling good. The orphans had an unending source of energy and loved soccer. Also, we taught some of them how to throw a frisbee. A few of the girls from our group brought fun toys like parachute men, marbles, bubbles, chalk, and jump ropes for the children as well.

Still, those of my group who talked to the orphans about their lives said that they universally wanted to be adopted. They did not enjoy life at the orphanage. That was pretty sad. They seemed happy to me, but I am sure it was because we, their big playmates, were there. It must be lonely at the orphanage day in and day out; nothing breaks their schedule and they never travel anywhere.

Apartheid

July 13, 2008

On Friday, I spent my last day on the Maintenance group, doing typical things. We cleaned out gardens, mowed, raked, and weeded. I know that I chose this group first, but I had second thoughts when I figured out what the group does. Since I am only able to be on two of the four groups (maintenance, orphans, St. Joseph's, and disabled children), maintenance would be the weakest one for impacting me. I had hoped to have a large impact on this group by fixing things (which I have a lot of experience in), but this is simply manual labor. It is disappointing to me, especially given how much work and money it took to get to Africa.
P.S. We never did the control burn - if it happens, another group will get to do it.


On Saturday, we went on an excursion to the apartheid (uh-par-tide) museum in Johannesburg; and visited a flea market. The apartheid era in South Africa was a time in the 20th century when the white population oppressed the blacks. It is very similar to the Jim Crow laws of the American South - segregation in schools, toilets, and living areas. The 20% white population owned 80% of the land (even though 80% of the population was black), and forced the blacks to live in separate areas, which are still present today in slums called "townships." The squatter camp I saw this week was the Mamelodi (Mother of Melodies) township. The museum was interesting and shocking; not on par with the Holocaust museum, but similar. There were many unjustified arrests, unfair trials, tortures, and concentration camps in South Africa.

The craft fair was cool; I bought gifts for my family and a couple things for me. Everything was extremely cheap. This may have been a curse; the belt I bought to replace my old broken one is already going the way of its predecessor. Oh well, it didn't cost much anyways.

On another note, here is a good quote I heard: "Coincidences are instances in which God chooses to remain anonymous."

Later today, and in another post, was Dana's talk to the Maintenance group (and everybody really) about the unfulfillment we felt in our work. His words helped me substantially.

Mamelodi

July 10, 2008
Today, I went with the Boston group to the University of Pretoria's Mamelodi Campus. It is a satellite campus with only a few hundred students. On the way there (in fact, right outside the gates of the school) we passed the largest squatter camp in Pretoria - it was just miles and miles of cardboard and tin shacks all smashed together. Just look at these pictures, and contrast the shacks to the University next to it. They are literally across the street from each other.

See the mountain range in the back of these photos? You can't exactly tell with the photos at this quality, but the shacks extend up onto the base of the mountain without intermission.

Maintenance

July 8, 2008

"Well, it's night and the first two days of work are done. I am on maintenance this week with Trent, Natalie, Dane, Caroline, Stephanie, and Katy (K-Ry). These last few days, we pruned garden beds, cleaned a tennis/basketball court, and helped get a soccer field ready for a control burn. The burn will be tomorrow, if the wind is down. It should be exciting.

Oh, by the way my small group is Trent, Dane, Paul (little Paul), Zach (M), and the Nate who just arrived." If you can't tell, we had a lot of people on this trip with the same first name.

-This is a short entry, I found very little time to write. Later in the trip a "quiet time" was established for a portion of the morning, which helped.

Comet

There will now be a break in the regular programming to deliver you this - a video of a crazy kitten my family got while I was in Africa. His name is Comet, and he's a ball of fun. He likes sleeping in my ski helmet and chasing invisible gnomes in the garden. As a video of him sleeping in the ski helmet would get boring pretty fast, I chose to tape him catching gnomes.

Pretoria

July 5, 2008

"OK, now something happened. In free time during the morning I played kickball and read more of That Hideous Strength, which is going slowly due to the copious notes I'm taking. Half of the athletes ran, and the other half made conditioning stations in the courtyard and worked out that way.
In the afternoon, we took a trip to a huge mall to get on the internet and buy things that we forgot. Here's a couple photos:


Um, yea, there are malls like this in South Africa. This one was about six stories tall and had a skateboard park on the top.

Then, we looked at the executive building in Pretoria and walked around some amazing public gardens. The city of Pretoria filled the skyscape. Again, pictures tell the story:


Oh, and I tweaked my knee in a race through the gardens, it's not so great.

Poverty Makes All Men Criminals

First, I haven't posted for a while because I was traveling back to Bozeman and because I just joined the Facebook world. If you are part of that world and I haven't contacted you already, go ahead and friend me. I think there's only one Richard Gianforte.

On with Africa...
July 3, 2008
"poverty makes all men criminals

"Dana, our in-country host, explained the moral dilemma a cleaning lady in Sizanani Villlage would encounter if we left our cash or ipod out in the open. Assume she is a single mom, trying to feed ten children she is raising because her siblings died - would it be wrong for her to take our things to keep those kids alive?" This discussion with Dana really began to open my eyes to why crime is so high in South Africa. Moreover, by the end of the talk I wouldn't blame the lady for stealing. Not all criminals steal from necessity, but in South Africa I am sure that it is an entrance into crime for many.

July 4, 2008
"Nothing much to report. The past few days have been spent doing evangelism training, team building, and playing during free time. Our favorite sports are ultimate frisbee, football, and soccer."

Sizanani Village

July 3, 2008 at about 12:30 AM

"I arrived, the flights were long, I am not really tired. I tried watching some popular movie on the plane, but all the jokes were crude and it was worthless. I went for a kid's movie instead; it was decent.

"The most interesting part of the day was the conversation with the guy who drove me back. Here are a few facts - oops, lights out. thoughts will come tomorrow.
- apartheid (white rule) ended in South Africa about 10 years ago
-at that time there were about seven million whites, now there are about three million (24,000 or more leave per day)
-this man's car was broken into three times for the radio, so he stopped replacing it
-his house was broken into also; he caught the man but his friends encouraged him not to appear in court to testify in case the man or his friends came back to kill him
-four of his group of six friends have left the country, and he is considering doing the same
-South Africa has trouble with illegal immigrants"

All in all, the man told a story of crime and fear. He said that all officials could be bribed; those citizens who had money didn't need to fear jail time. Also, those with money lived in gated communities and had extremely secure houses. As we drove around later, I believed him. His outlook was a little pessimistic, but he or his friends had personally been the victims of crime.

Charles de Gaulle Airport

July 2, 2008

"I'm more tired than I realize, I think. Maybe I'll feel better once I'm in South Africa.

"I met all of the team, and like them a lot - Nicole, a gymnast at Stanford; Cody, water polo at Stanford; Zach and Dane, brothers at NorthEastern University; Jasmine; Sarah [lacrosse]; Brett, Corey, children Jonah and Christine Ogburn; Katy; Alisha; Alicia; Domino.

"But the sadness - I'm not feeling very confident right now. All but two or so of these students are athletes, in one sport or another. They have workouts and programs to do while in South Africa. (Some of these kids would not have come if they had qualified for the Olympics) While that might seem to be a nuisance, I want it. I feel like I missed my oportunity to do college athletics.

"It doesn't help my feeling of separation from all of these confident Christians that I don't know any of them. All of them seem to know at least a few other people; and there are two main groups (Stanford and [Boston]). No wait, I shouldn't put it like that - everyone is very welcoming and there are no exclusionary groups - they just know each other already, that's all. It didn't help that I sat by myself last flight, and will probably for the next one.

"Oh, one of the girls was on the phone crying when we left, so after she calmed down I told her I was praying for her, and I did. This is something I learned from one of my friends - it is such a help when you are down just to know that someone cares. I wish someone would do that for me now. I went on a walk in the Paris airport trying to think but it was pointless, and I wandered back..."

Yea, I was feeling pretty down when I wrote this. I felt outclassed by all these amazing students and Christians and athletes whom I didn't know very well. The only bright spot was cheering someone else up. But don't worry, the trip gets better :)

Made it to Boston

Here begins the epic tale of my trip to South Africa. Most of the content will be taken from my journal that I kept (quotes will signify journal material). Enjoy.

June 30, 2008
This entry was written on the second floor of the Wilson House, a large mansion similar to the Story Mansion in Bozeman. Campus Crusade operates out of here; and Pat and Tammy McLeod, two of the group leaders, live here.
"I made it to the Wilson House, where members of the team are trickling in from all over the country. I am meeting a lot of people and trying to remember all of their names: Rebecca, who is ferrying people here from the airport; Stephanie, who runs track at Stanford; Mike, who graduated ? [NE Univeristy] in criminal justice; Susie, a beautiful graduate student at Harvard; Paul, who almost qualified for the Olympic swim team [by .03 s]; and all the McLeods- Mr. and Mrs., Chelsea, Zach, Nate, and Sorren.

I was pretty nervous on the flight out (it was my first time flying alone), but everything went smoothly. My connecting gate in Minneapolis was extremely far away, though as that was the biggest hassle I encountered, I'm OK.

All of these college guys and girls make me feel humble - many are athletes attending top-ranked schools (Harvard, Stanford, and NorthEastern). I'm just a pre-frosh [or pro-fro] who hasn't yet been tested. I am a little concerned that the consensus says Caltech is an extremely hard-working campus where a ton of studying goes on. We'll see.

One more thought - I wish now that I was going for the entire five weeks, not three. It seems too short to do any quality work, and I'm afraid it'll be awkward to leave half-way through. If I did this again, I would go for a longer time. Yet the decision was made when I felt overworked and overwhelmed with graduating, the plane tickets are purchased, and a family trip back East is planned over the last week of the mission; so it will stand. I didn't realize that this would be a break from the work at home.

Staying in Africa

After some deliberation and a last-minute travel change, I am staying in South Africa until July 28. I am flying right from here to a family vacation in Delaware, so I won't be back to Montana until August 10. I will post my exceedingly voluminous journal then. I am writing about five pages a day.

Here's a brief recap: I am spending some days a week evangelizing on the University of Pretoria campus. The conversations I have had are good. On the other days, I am playing with orphans in the afternoons; and working on computer issues and a powerpoint presentation in the mornings. I am having a great time. The people are wonderful. Talk to you all later.

Working in Africa

July 9
Hi all

I made it to another internet cafe, so here's another memo. I have been working this week on the maintenance of grounds at Sizanani village, which is semi-boring compared to what the other groups are doing - working with AIDS orphans, helping disabled children, caring for people in the hospital who have AIDS, and visiting the surrounding townships. It would be more fun is I was doing skilled carpentry or electric work, but we're mainly raking a lot of grass and leaves. Next week should be better, as I will switch to one of the other tasks.

I still like the people a lot, and I think they like me too, though that is somewhat unexplainable. I have been completely adopted into the community, which feels good. A few more guys arrived who had been swimming at the Olympic trials, it is good to have them here. One is 6' 6'', and nicknamed "Gangles." All the guy are wonderful - I think I said this before, but it is worth repeating.

Today, we visited the University of Pretoria's Mamelodi campus, and spied around. Our group is trying to set up a campus crusade group here, so we were just gathering information and talking to people. The school is on break right now, so the main work of this project will start next week when the students are back.

I'm in Africa

July 6
Hi everybody!

I made it to Africa safely, and the flights were good. We arrived right around bedtime and so experienced almost no jetlag. The team is really awesome, I love all the guys. And the girls are amazing too. Almost everyone is an athlete, and so most of our free time they spend working out, or playing a game. We have had some sweet ultimate frisbee, football, kickball, and soccer games. Right now we are working on team building exercises and evangelism training. On Monday the real work starts. We are staying at Sizanani village, I think that they have a website you can look up. Most of our work will be done there, but as they do a lot of outreach in Pretoria and the surrounding region we will get to travel outside of the compound. The "village" is gated and walled around and it feels safe - the only problem would be petty crime. Pretoria is a big city - right now I'm on the sixth floor of an enormous mall - it feels weird; but our guide said that this is as much Africa as the mud huts.
I am keeping a journal though which I plan to post on my blog when I get back for you to read.

Off to South Africa

Tomorrow, the trip to South Africa begins. I am flying to Minneapolis and then Boston, staying the night, and continuing to Johannesburg via Paris. I am almost packed, and am starting to feel excited. It is hard to look forward to something when a lot of work remains before it can be accomplished - now that all the prep work is done, I am invigorated by the thought of going to Africa.
I do plan to write a journal every day, and post the entries on this blog when I return (I might have very limited access to the internet while I am there). I return to Bozeman, if all goes as planned, on July 22. Look for the journal entries a few days later.

A Camera! and Books!

I am wrapping up my thank-yous for graduation gifts, finally. I received a substantial amount of money, so I bought a digital camera to take pictures while I'm in South Africa (not that I instantly spend all the money I get, it just worked out). The picture above was taken with the camera last night.

Also, I am really excited about all the books that I received as graduation presents. There is everything from African hunting books to political theory. If I get through all of these before I go to Caltech, I will be extremely lucky.
Here is a list of the books, in no particular order:

*Stop dating the church Joshua Harris

*The Truth War John Macarthur

*The Intellectual Life by A.G. Sertillanges

*Don’t Waste Your Life John Piper

*When People are Big and God is Small Edward T. Welch

*Wild at Heart John Eldredge

*The Cost of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer

*The Artist’s Way Julia Cameron

*Death in the Long Grass by Peter Hathaway Capstick

*The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark

*Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris

*Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism by George Weigel

Courtship and Dating

I had a few people ask "Where's your other thesis, the one you did in your junior year?" So, here is my junior thesis on Courtship and Dating (Note: it is longer than either of my senior theses). Also, I am reposting my poem "Gliding Over Rough Waves" because it is my favorite and it happened to be instantly buried by both senior theses. In conclusion, I present to you: some really old material and a re-run.

Gliding over rough waves, surf
Lapping on hull; colors matched
White ship and white clouds pushed and snatched,
Skudding over blues of sky and liquid turf
Fluxing, rolling, wave-tops frothy and beleaguered
What larks! What joyful days remembered!

Just two, joying with all our souls;
Sehnsucht at its pitch - I smile, it breaks
Over faces as waves break the bow nor slakes
The speed! No runner, no thought of another
World on shore can catch the moment, no breather
We are free of freedom, beyond this world
In ecstasy unmatched. My heart is twirled
As glorious past through my mind again rolls.

Richard 5/22/2008
http://musingsofthepetrafiedone.blogspot.com/2008/05/gliding-over-rough-waves.html


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Courtship and Dating

Romance and marriage are important topics in the minds of young adults. Needless to say, many parents also spend a lot of time thinking about their children’s future spouses. For a Christian, the choice of whom to marry is the most important decision in life, second only after accepting Christ. Biblical mandates against divorce are very clear (Matt. 19:3-9), so a Christian’s entire life will be impacted by his decision. Even the wise king Solomon was led astray to worship idols because he violated God’s commands and married many pagan women (1 Kin. 11:1-8). The marriage covenant is a holy spiritual and physical union that needs to be taken seriously.

Sadly, many young Christians today are apathetic or ignorant when it comes to romance. They have accepted the lies of secular culture that claim that love is too powerful to control, that divorce is fine if things are not running smoothly, and that a romantic relationship will provide lasting satisfaction. When emotions run high, they forget what God has said about romance in the Bible. They run after sensual and temporal love as they ought to run after God alone, and they do not find satisfaction. But does romance always have to end in failure? The answer is no. God has provided His Word to guide us in every aspect of our lives, including love. If we as Christians want to follow the Bible completely, we must reject culture’s erroneous teachings about romance. Christians need to have a knowledge of how God views love, a commitment to honor Christ in everything, and a method to follow that will lead us to godliness. To the chagrin of many, the Bible does not propositionally lay out a specific way to get married.

In our day and age there are two main schools of thought in the Christian community on how people ought to approach romance: courtship and dating. By romance, I mean that nearly inexplicable, powerful, beautiful, emotional affection shared by two people. In this paper I will discuss romance mainly in Christian circles, so any references to non-Christian America’s current model for romance will be explicitly labeled as secular dating. We should note again that neither Christian dating nor courtship per se are taught in Scripture’s pages or even illustrated in its narratives (Winner, et al. 137-139). Neither camp can claim that Jesus explicitly sanctioned their method in his Sermon on the Mount. Both merely use and apply Biblical principles; they take their substance from a plethora of verses. Because we get no clear-cut answers straight from the Bible, the actual practice of these systems varies among Christians a great deal.

We’ll discuss dating first. Dating as a system for romance is very new. It appeared just in the last century with numerous changes in society, including the advent of the automobile, the accelerated speed of communication, and the increased interaction between males and females outside the home (Winner, et al. 21-23, 134, 155-156). New ‘rules of engagement’ evolved because girls were working outside the house and therefore spending more time in the company of men, and men gained the ability to take women on dates. The entire romantic system moved out from under the parent’s supervision, and like an eloping couple, it never wanted to go back. Dating has remained at the forefront of popular culture ever since. It should come as no surprise that many Christians have modified and ultimately accepted this model as their own.

A synthesized definition of modern Christian dating is this: a romantic relationship that follows godly principles, may include some physical interaction, and is repeated with new partners. Hopefully one of these relationships will finally end in marriage. The dating couple spends a lot of time alone together, and while the exact circumstances differ from couple to couple, holding hands and kissing is generally accepted. The intent of dating ranges from “I just want to know you better” to “I want to marry you someday.” Depending on the daters, they may be supervised by their parents or their church in a loose way.

In contrast, courtship is a relatively old system; its etymology harkens back to the age of chivalry. From the Latin word cohors, or enclosed ground, we derive our English words court and courtiers, then courtesy and courtship (Wilson Hand 15). Courtship also links to the days of earlier American history, when it was widely practiced. A suitor would ride his horse to the girl’s house, ask her father’s permission, and then “court” her at her house under the watchful eyes of her parents (ibid). Modern Christian courtship is the descendant of this model.

Christian courtship today is a romantic relationship based on godly principles, overseen by the parents of the courters, and intended to end in marriage (though, admittedly, this does not always work out). Physical contact between courters is typically kept to holding hands, even through the engagement. As the avid courtship proponent and esteemed writer Joshua Harris states, “the joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment” (Kissed 31). Courters involve themselves in each other’s lives slowly. They increase their emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy as they come to know one another better. Romance is closely guarded until they both are sure that they are ready for marriage. As a corollary, time alone together as a couple is rare until the engagement is eminent.

Courtship is a standard and a guide for romance that was created using the Bible. Its foundation is verses like 1 Thess. 4:3-4, “For this is the will of God… that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor”; Exod. 20:12, “Honor your father and your mother”; and Eph. 5:22-33 which deals with the roles of husbands of wives.

On account of the individuality of people and circumstances, courtship can’t (and shouldn’t) be nailed to a specific set of rules. No strict times or events mark new thresholds in a courtship, but major stages worth discussing do exist. First, before a courtship begins, the guy and girl must be friends and know each other on a somewhat deeper level than “Hi. My name’s Richard. What’s yours?” During this time of friendship, group interaction where the two are not seen as a couple is very important; for example, inviting a third-party friend or taking younger brothers and sisters to a concert is merely disguising the fact that the guy and girl are a couple. As friends, flirting or trying to attract each other’s romantic interest is off-limits, as it involves hearts outside of any commitment. Moreover, flirting is a cowardly and unmanly way for guys to test the girl’s feelings with no risk to themselves (Harris Boy 22; Wilson Hand 14, 41-43).

The second phase starts when the suitor asks the girl’s father to begin a courtship. The guy’s explicit purpose is for them to discover if they both want to marry each other. The father acts as an initial, protective screening test and ultimately makes the decision, though his daughter’s input should be very influential. Once a courtship begins, the guy and girl should be included in each other’s families. They ought to understand, through experience, each part of the other person’s life as much as possible. Moreover, good communication between the couple is key to keeping expectations about feelings and time spent together mutual. Third, if everything is moving forward, the couple can begin to spend time alone together, in situations where they can be held accountable. These include walks after dinner at home, public concerts with a curfew, or dinner alone in public places. Some romantic gestures like flowers or cards are perfectly appropriate now. Fourth, with the father’s final approval, the guy proposes and the girl accepts. Fifth, they are married and hopefully live happily ever after.

Now I will be the first one to admit that love is powerful, and romance is like a beautiful fall sunset that simply cannot be described in words. Yet the Bible warns us in Jeremiah 17:9 that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” People in love certainly don’t understand the deceitfulness of their emotions. Lovers need their parents to watch out for them during this time, when emotions work overtime and thinking is on vacation. Honestly, Romeo and Juliet would not have been a tragedy had they both brought their intense feeling into submission. Also, Christians must realize that simply stating Biblical commands without applying them is utterly ineffective. All people are sinners: just because they know the good does not mean that they will do the good. Courtship recognizes this sinful tendency in humans to do what is pleasurable and so prepares carefully watched steps that lead a couple into marriage at the right pace.

The direct contrasts between dating and courtship are obvious. Dating claims that dates are an excellent way to get to know other Christians; courtship says that romance must wait on commitment. Courtship advocates warn that close emotional and/or physical attachments to other people will have ill effects when the couple breaks up; daters claim that these heartaches develop maturity. Daters maintain that following culture is acceptable as long as Biblical principles are followed; moreover, godly dating is a healthy influence on culture. Courtship proponents retort that secular dating has too many inherent drawbacks and built-in deficiencies to be profitable for Christian singles. Courtship also claims to adhere more to the Bible concerning the roles of men and women, the authority of parents, and the purity and unselfishness of love. Daters counter that general Biblical principles are sufficient. Which model is correct? Because of its Biblical basis and its protection of the courters, I propose that courtship is a healthier and more God-glorifying method for Christian romance.

Joshua Harris tells the sad story of two young Christians, Ben and Lisa, who were very active in their church youth group. They liked each other and so began dating. Ben took Lisa to innocent events: movies on Friday or mini-golf. However, they began to get more and more physically involved until they slept together. Very soon afterwards they went through a traumatic breakup that still haunts them (Kissed 36-37). Now, they were “good” people before this and certainly knew that fornication was a grievous offense against God. Yet they caved in to each other because their relationship lacked a set purpose. Without a track to follow or involved parents to keep them accountable, they fell into sin. While courtship can’t guarantee that lovers will not sin, it provides a purpose, steps to reach marriage, and accountability through the parents of the courters. Much of the wayward sin, physical or emotional, that occurs even in Christian dating can be prevented through courtship.

Courtship avoids premature love by employing the much wiser and un-muddled parents as guards of purity to limit romance correctly. This means prohibiting it altogether when marriage is not feasible and restricting it appropriately until the two courters express commitment. Courters should not presume to control each other’s hearts until they are married and their bodies belong to each other (Harris Boy 100). What many Christians don’t realize is that becoming emotionally attached to someone results in many of the same problems that going physical does. Breaking up is painful, scars are left, and purity is trampled on. If a couple never even holds hands but instead gives their emotional selves completely to each other, have they really preserved their purity? Courtship protects the participants’ emotional and physical well-being by putting it under God’s Word first, and then the loving guidance of their parents. Using these two powerful and sufficient tools, both types of interaction are limited until levels of maturity in the relationship have been reached. Sadly, Christian daters lack this protection. They have thrown out the extreme physicality of secular dating but accepted the intense emotional attachment and the very possessive love. It is as if they removed bugs from a bad apple and then proceeded to eat the apple. Dating leaves Christians open to emotional attachments that can cause as much damage as physical ones.

Furthermore, courtship honors marriage and protects the guy and girl by creating the mindset of one romantic relationship (Wilson Hand 10-11). Courters are not looking for “the next thing,” but instead are focused on honoring God and their partner now. In contrast, Christian dating today is corruptive to the sanctity of marriage because it trains people to form a series of romantic involvements that have few liabilities or commitments. Somehow, dating Christians are expected to sequentially attach to different partners when they date and then settle down with one spouse when they are married (ibid). If this actually happens, the daters’ love will have been diluted by their multiple romances. For example, Andrew spent his first dinner date with Abigail, his first moonlight walk with Sally, his first kiss with Madelyn, then married Katie. The old memories, romances, and pieces of his heart had already been given to someone who was not his spouse, and Andrew could never take them back. But what if Andrew had saved all his love for his spouse and could give himself to her pure and blameless? Ought not men to strive to live purely so that they can resemble Christ in His marriage to the church? Courtship tries to accomplish this. All of the courters’ love will be given to the one person that God intended them to marry. This in no way means that courters cannot have friends of the opposite sex or spend time with them. It does mean that romantic time alone together or acting as a couple is out of bounds before a courtship is begun. Young Christian singles ought to establish a one-woman or one-man mindset by courting (1 Timothy 3:2; Winner, et al. 144).

Moreover, some Christian dating begins even before marriage is an option. Dating has led young people to pair up earlier and earlier; some Christians now date in high school and even junior high. It seems cool to have your boyfriend or girlfriend a phone call away, ready to go to any event. Dating, especially for teenagers in high school, has been glorified out of proportion. The secular philosophy claims that if you don’t date, you’re too unattractive to get a date or are from Mars –either way society treats you like an alien. Yet this thinking often hinders teenagers from fulfilling the best plan that God has for their lives. By spending time maintaining an unnecessary emotional relationship, daters are not spending time on other things. These could include youth group, sports, other friends, homework, hobbies, a part-time job, devotional time, sleep, and family. There are many constructive and productive things that teenagers can do with their time, so it is pointless for a dating couple to talk for hours on the phone, spend multiple evenings a week on dates, or thinking and worrying about their future with someone they probably won’t marry. Besides, Christians don’t need to worry about their future spouse because God is the ultimate matchmaker – He’s already set us up with someone who will complement us perfectly. We can prepare ourselves for marriage by growing spiritually and serving God as a single (Harris Kissed 43, 51).

Dating promoters often try to show that dating is an excellent way for people to work on communicating effectively; to practice relationships before they are married; to love in a sacrificial, Christ-like way; and to have Christian fellowship (Winner, et al. 54, 158). However, dating does not create many wholesome situations for building friendships, just romances. First, a date is typically based on how pretty a girl is or how handsome a guy is (Harris Kissed 39-40), and maybe secondly on their character. When a couple begins dating, they aren’t getting a clear picture of each other, because they are only observing each other in certain settings (Harris Kissed 45). Anyone can look lovely and speak sweetly on a date, but the real question is about how they act elsewhere, when they’re not trying to make a good impression. Joshua Harris writes that “Being fun on a date doesn’t say anything about a person’s character or ability to be a good husband or wife” (ibid). Dating isn’t a wise path towards friendship or fellowship because it does not resemble real life; it is one guy and one girl in an isolated environment paying attention only to each other. This is a simple example of the difference between appearance and reality. Daters, removed from any prior context, can create any appearance they want. It is almost as if they were chatting over the internet with someone who didn’t know them well. They could create any number of false personae that only later examination would reveal as false.

Over and against this, courtship is reality; there are no masks used to cover up flaws. Because the courters come to know each other in the context of each other’s lives, their real character is immediately recognizable. When Christians reach marriageable age, then they can seek a spouse within God’s will. Until then, young Christians ought to fellowship with guys and girls in group settings, which are much more constructive to learning about other people in a healthy way. An intimate and isolated dating relationship is only the appearance of a friendship. Lovers wear rose-tinted glasses that make it hard for them to see their lover and themselves clearly, but when they interact inside the community their real characters are exposed (Harris Kissed 45). To sum up, the premature romance of dating interferes with the godly development of young Christians by monopolizing their time and focusing them on attractiveness, not godliness (Harris Kissed 43).

Moreover, if Christians truly desire to practice Christ’s love, they had better start with their family and friends, not a date! Daters generally only have to deal with the good aspects of their date, but their conflicts with family and friends offer real times for potential growth. These arguments prepare us for the conflicts of marriage. In the end, marriage will only amplify the character a person already has; it will not perform a radical change (Wilson Hand 83). The extremely close living proximity forces out the true nature of a person. If Christians do not treat each and every acquaintance as they should now, they will not love their spouse as they should later. Do not expect anyone to magically change after the altar – if the guy is abusive or selfish now, he will be so later. If the girl spends too much and smokes now, she will do so later. Christians must practice loving others as ourselves in every relationship, just like Jesus commanded in Luke 10:27. Furthermore, it is much healthier and protective of members of the opposite sex to treat them as brothers or sisters in Christ, and not as potential dates (1 Tim. 5:2; Harris Kissed 50). There is no hidden romantic expectation; girl and guy friends can be treated exactly the same, barring different gender roles. An example of extra attachment is a guy’s daily depression or joy based on whether or not a certain girl says “good morning.”

Another reason that dating is a poor way to experience the type of love expressed in Luke 10:27 is that it often mistakenly identifies intimacy for true love. Just because two people kiss often doesn’t mean that they are in love, and just because they know everything about each other doesn’t mean that they are in love. Romantic intimacy alone is not conducive to true sacrificial love, because it clouds the senses. A guy may claim he loves a certain girl, but what he really means is that he loves the feelings he gets when she’s around. He is not interested in her well-being, only her ability to turn him on. He really loves only himself. Dating more often than not embodies this hideous type of self-serving intimacy, and calls it love. Since daters tend to avoid conflict and consider physicality equivalent to love, dating is not a suitable practice ground for self-sacrificial love. A better way to practice relationships before marriage is in a non-romantic way with friends and family (Harris Kissed 39-41).

Another way courtship honors god is by helping men and women take their god-ordained roles as men and women. The Biblical role of men is as the initiators and the servant leaders (Eph. 5:23-29; Harris Boy 110-111; Wilson Hand 12). Women are to follow their husband or father (not all men); and have the “inner beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (Wilson Hand 50, 12; Prov. 31:10, 30). During a courtship these roles are honored and encouraged. The male suitor must initiate by asking permission of the girl’s father, thereby acknowledging the father’s authority (Num. 30:3-5); he must also lead by clearly defining the purpose of the relationship. It is the suitor’s job to provide direction for the relationship and to initiate most of the couple’s times together (Harris Boy 110-111). The daughter ought to obey her father’s (hopefully) wise direction and not proceed emotionally past the limits the suitor and her father have set (Harris Boy 84, 118-119).

Dating, on the other hand, has our world’s egalitarian thinking of men and women built right in. Feminism and the belief that men and women should have equal authority in marriage are reflected in both secular and Christian dating. Although it is usually still left up to the guy to ask the girl out, generally whichever dater feels more strongly leads the relationship – so many times the woman leads. In dating, no one commits to taking any role, much less the one God has chosen for him or her. Dating reverses or throws out the roles God gave to the different genders.

In addition to adhering to biblical gender roles, courtship promotes biblical love: self-sacrificing devotion that is described in 1 Cor. 13. It does not wish to exploit another’s mind, emotions, or body. It sacrifices, it waits, it serves. It guards and protects the other person by maintaining supervised, biblical boundaries. Even if, halfway through a courtship, the couple decides that they should not marry, they can separate knowing that they have preserved each other’s purity. They have honored themselves and God during their relationship by protecting each other even when lust was a temptation. Nothing is lost except time, and they have preserved so much of themselves by maintaining their purity.

However, daters’ love often contradicts God’s vision of love. It wants, it takes; it is seeking to be loved by someone, to have its own needs filled. Christians cannot scotch-tape Christ’s love over the corrupt dating game and hope to redeem it. Admittedly, a few daters have managed to practice biblical love during their relationship. Yet they are far outnumbered by the many who have been led astray by dating’s sinful tendencies. Each aspect of dating, from the isolation to the physicality, was built to fulfill the ungodly, selfish love that our culture practices. If we truly want to preserve the chastity of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we must abandon it altogether.

Besides all of these excellent arguments for courtship, the greatest is that Christian courtship was derived directly from the Bible; its principles and foundation are Scriptural (Harris Boy 26). A plethora of verses concerning love, the roles of men and women, the authority of fathers, sexual immorality, marriage, etc. were all used to make the most God-honoring system possible in our modern world (1 Cor. 13, 1 Tim. 3, Prov. 31, Num. 30:3-4, 1 Thess. 4:3-4, Gen. 2:24, etc.). Each aspect and each stage of courtship is designed to obey God’s laws. In stark contrast, secular dating is all about satisfying sinful pleasures now. It is all about hedonism, selfish love, and superficial physical attraction. While Christian dating changes the façade of this awful system, it does not fix the faulty groundwork. Joshua Harris writes of dating as a vehicle with a faulty steering mechanism: “dating has tendencies to swerve that don’t go away just because Christians do the steering. And even those Christians who can avoid the major pitfalls… often spend much of their energy wrestling with temptation” (Harris Kissed 46-47). Daters may know that they should love God above all (Mark 12:30); honor their parents (Exod. 20:12) not have extramarital sex (1 Cor. 6:18); etc., but often their emotions and the tendencies of dating lead them to do other things. We should cease trying to fix up dating and instead follow a model that naturally tends to lead us to godliness.

Of course, dating advocates have a lot to say on this topic and their points must be considered. First, they assert that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with dating; it is merely a “social custom” with no inherent morality (Winner, et al. 157). For example, Rick Holland holds the opinion that dating is perfectly acceptable so long as the daters follow ten biblical principles he has outlined (Winner, et al. 91-94). I do admit that Biblical principles are mandatory for any romantic relationship, and indeed for all interactions. However, the problem with dating is that it encourages ungodly behavior, like immorality and selfishness. It is not merely a “social custom”; it advances its own agenda. Christians cannot avoid the fact that dating as a system promotes quick, temporary physical pleasure. It lacks a purpose beyond the present. Remember the story of Ben and Lisa, the Christian dating couple who sinned physically? While it can’t be said for certain that they would have kept their virginity had they been courting, it is a fact that their isolated dates opened the door to temptation (Harris Kissed 36-37).

Daters also criticize courtship as being unrealistic. Courtship, they say, assumes that the couple has two sets of godly Christian parents to watch over them, and doesn’t consider real situations (Winner, et al. 25). Indeed courtship does work best with godly parents, but in our cursed world of sin and death, this is not always possible. So, in the absence of God-fearing parents, the church becomes the spiritual leader in the young person’s life. Of course, not every member of the congregation needs to know what is going on in the romantic relationship, but the courters should surround themselves with a few Christian mentors who can hold them accountable and give them guidance. Also, if the courters’ parents aren’t Christians the courters should seek out spiritual mentors. God has still given these non-Christian parents authority over their children, but young Christians definitely need the mature godly wisdom of their elders. If either of these authorities in the courters’ lives says “no” to a certain relationship, the courters should think very hard before moving forward.

Tragically, many Christian parents shirk their duty to safeguard their children in the romantic process. Where were the parents of Ben and Lisa? Couldn’t they have seen what was coming, and why didn’t they stop it? When we look at the Bible, the law in Deut. 22:13-31, Exod. 22:16-17, and Num. 30:3-4 tells us that under Mosaic law a father was responsible for his daughter until she was married and moved into a new household. For sons, Gen. 2:24 (repeated by Jesus in Mark 10:6-8) implies that a son does not leave his parents’ oversight until he is married and united with his wife (Winner, et al. 147). Nevertheless, there are many excuses parents have for not interfering with teenagers’ love lives. Number one: “Well, we didn’t court, so we don’t see why our son and daughter should.” Thankfully, nowhere in the Bible does God say that parents must teach their children from their own experience (Wilson Hand 85-86). They are required to teach their children in the “training and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). If the parents, who are the God-ordained guardians of their offspring until they move into a new household, see their children straying from the Bible, it is the parents’ duty to try to correct them.

Parental excuse number two states: “They’ll get through it; dating is part of growing up. Besides, it’s kind of fun and everyone else expects them too.” Yet this is exactly the lie that secular daters would have all Americans believe. Dating has never been and never will be a requirement for growing up. Moreover, peer pressure is a poor reason to do anything.

Excuse number three is employed especially after the kids have left for college: “We can’t be controlling every aspect of our kids’ lives now, they’re growing up. They’ll figure it out.” This one sounds good, but it’s not Biblical. Parents certainly ought to treat their children differently as they grow up, but when the season of romance begins, kids desperately need guidance and wisdom just as much as when they got in their first fight at school. They are entering a new stage of their lives, one in which they have no experience.

The last bastion of Christian dating is the belief that dating in a godly manner is a light to the hedonist world of secular dating. Daters think that their counter-cultural methods can redeem dating as a whole. They declare that with the aid of the community and established boundaries (Winner, et al. 45, 98-100, 172), dating can be carried out in a wholesome way without endangering the couple’s purity. Yet why should we need to add godliness to the system of romance we want to use? Why don’t we want to use a godly one? Why should we settle for trying to fix up the broken dating method? Anyone can take a fancy car with a seized engine and paint it so it looks nice, but why not get a new car that actually functions? Christians try to add community and boundaries to our culture’s method of romance, and some add and subtract so much that they end up with courtship. It is much easier to start with Christian courtship, a model that has been founded on the Scriptural principles of parental authority, self-restraint, patience, purity, and protection.

A current secular myth asserts that leaving dating and undertaking courtship somehow means that all signs of affection must be suppressed, that love must be stifled until marriage. This is simply not true. Courtship’s main premise is to undertake romance once commitment is possible, that is, to be ready and able to satisfy the passions created in another person (Winner, et al. 131). Courters act as Solomon’s lover requested in Song Sol. 2:7 – they respect each other and don’t excite their hearts before they are ready. For many courters, not exciting passions they can’t satisfy means never intentionally stirring their romance until marriage. They often save their first kiss for the altar, merely having held hands before that. They know that kissing or touching before marriage often leads to further intimacy or lust, both of which they wish to avoid completely. This outward rejection of physicality does not signify an absence of love, but quite the contrary. Chastity is a loving commitment to respect each other’s bodies until they belong together. I contend that this resolve to not kiss until marriage is much more powerful and affectionate and loving than our culture’s obsession with making love. Courters, who honored each other’s bodies, often can have more romantic and loving marriages than people who became physically involved with many partners, outside of wedlock. The guy who has been lip-locked to twenty girlfriends cannot cherish a kiss as much as the man who has saved his first kiss for his wife. Joshua Harris insightfully writes that “The longer your ‘no big deal’ list is before marriage, the shorter your ‘very special’ list will be after marriage” (Harris Boy 161). Because courters have cherished and respected and preserved each other outside of covenantal marriage, they fully appreciate the preciousness of love inside of it.

The question still stands: if courtship is as good as I have proven, why do daters still wish to cling to and repair dating? It seems to me that there are two reasons. The first reason is the love of pleasure. Dating often provides emotional or physical rushes that can become addicting. Yet Galatians 5:16-17 commands: “walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit.” God’s enabling power and self-control are necessary to remove ourselves from these types of situations. The second reason is acceptance. Humans in general desire to fit in, to be an accepted member of society. Having a date draws the smiles of society. It is a sad thing that Christians will desire the praise of men more than the praise of God.

This issue cannot be decided at some later date. To enter the romantic stage of life without a plan is to leave the will and mind open to culture’s standards. It is imperative that Christian singles decide how, when, and with whom to pursue romance as soon as possible. Their parents also need to keep themselves informed of their kids’ feelings and thoughts so that they can carry out their God-given duty of guardianship. Furthermore, they need to have an open and trusting relationship with their children so that the children will listen to their parents’ advice when their emotions are saying the opposite. The parents need to be prepared to make hard decisions and wisely guide their children who are maturing into adults. I urge you all to study these things for yourself and to read what God has to say about love. You may find that you need to change your thinking, or that some of your past actions didn’t glorify God as they should have. Of course, no one is perfect, especially in the realm of romance and understanding the opposite sex. Our passions tempt us to do things we know we shouldn’t, and we can be blinded by our feelings to the reality of our wrong. We must seek to educate ourselves and practice self-control. Ultimately no system, not even courtship, can make us more godly in and of itself. It can only set the course for us to follow; we must do the work.

Bibliography

Extreme Teen Bible NKJV. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999.

Harris, Joshua. Boy Meets Girl. Sister, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2005.

---. I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2003.

Wilson, Douglas. Her Hand in Marriage. Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 1997.

Winner, Lauren F.; Wilson, Douglas; Holland, Rick; Lindvall, Jonathan; Clark, Jeramy and

Jerusha. Five Paths to the Love of Your Life. Ed. Alex Chediak. Colorado Springs,

Colorado: TH1NK, 2005.