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.

The Poor

You may think I'm crazy - just tell me if my imaginative, poetic side has gone off its rocker, but I just wrote a rap song. Actually, I've been working on it for the past few days. I decided that most of Christian music (99%) is about God. Which is nice, but... God was concerned about more than Himself when He was here on earth. I think that Christian artists ought to write more songs about creation, about social injustice, and about the impoverished. As this issue was rolling through my mind, I thought, "I could do better than most Christian artists." Words without deeds are nothing, so I wrote this song. I figured I'd better post it before the current events it talks about fade from everyone's memory (isn't that sad? just think that we forget these natural disasters within a month but the cleanup from the cyclone and earthquake will probably not be completed in five years).

I know that the "song" is roughshod-the lines aren't of even length, the bridge is a different size than the chorus and the verses are different lengths. The rhyme scheme is pretty random everywhere, hopefully it flows well enough. Moreover, there isn't any melody... Anyway, I thought that I should post it because it's time for another post, and I'm not sure how much more work I'll put into it. More importantly, creating a polished song was not my intention for this project; it was a foray into songwriting to check out how hard it is to talk about actual issues. The verdict: it's not impossible, and more Christian artists should do it.

"The Poor"
Verse 1: rap it out
I wake up in the morning
Four hours past the dawning
Get up, stand up, stretch,
Fetch the paper
Sing praises to my maker
Grab my joe and Quaker
Read the front page
and there's...
Civil war hardcore
Drivel ignored, there's
So much more, can't roar
Over the cries of
five million floored
By an earthquake in China
People in airliners
Fly higher, go far as stars
From scarred Myanmars
Who listens? We in the USA
glisten everyday and play
like there's no way we gonna
give our help-hey!

Chorus: 32 make up your own melody, make it sad
Who hears the cries of the poor?
Who gives all they have and more?
Who sacrifices that others might live?
I want to be the one to give

Verse 2: rap it again
Our living Bible says giving
Is a gift - pick your prize, there's
Precious renown here or
Treasured crown there.
Is it so hard to regard
the poor? They're scarred, obscure
Need a cure while
We're so secure
We gotta make sure
we're doing more
Than one five on Sunday
Many survive
on a dollar a day
We need to revive
our stray
Heart for the poor
and display it today;
obey the
Words of our Lord;

He portrayed compassion,
We can't betray his mission

Chorus again

bridge: 26
I will do what I can
Do my part in God's plan
To save the lost and dying...
Failure is not trying

Chorus (bridge silmultaneous in background)

Richard Gianforte 6/9/2008

Senior Class Trip

My senior class, minus one member (or a quarter of us, if you prefer), just took a trip to Yellowstone. As I write, my tent is drying in the yard. You might expect that getting rained on would have spoiled the adventure - who likes camping in the rain? Yet, the trip was one of the sweetest camps I have ever done, and easily my most favorite trip to Yellowstone. Mark, Kimberlee and I were chaperoned by Petra's own Miss K.
Here's a quick run-down of what went down:

Monday morning, we woke up early and tried to leave by 7, but it was more like 7:30 by the time half of us got coffee. We drove through the beautiful Gallatin canyon, reached the Madison campground (laughing at the civilization and the BCTE (Best Campground Toilet Ever)) and set up our tents. We ate lunch, and I was adventurous enough to put mustard on my sandwich, which I had never done before. We drove out and arrived at a waterfall that our escort, Miss K, had always wanted to hike to. (It's not the upper or lower Yellowstone falls, I don't know the name). Problem was, there was no trail - wait, no problem. We parked at the tourist look-out but hopped off the roadbed and started slip-sliding a few hundred feet. The river was high and the waterfall gorgeous. The trek up was not too bad, though very loose. (SKL1 :)

From here on, everything is jumbled together in my mind- we had some many different adventures. I will give a rough approximation of what happened.
We hiked to Ice Lake through a mile of snow and slushy mud; the lake was still partially covered in ice. We looked in the water and listened to the ice melt as we rested (SKL2). On the way back, Mark and I decided to walk only on logs because the trail was so wet. We managed it, and had a blast. The huge number of dead trees in Yellowstone enabled such a crazy thing as not touching the ground for a mile. We got back to camp too early to eat dinner, so we took a walk around some buffalo, passing Mark's frisbee all the way. We watched the sunset and listened to some coyotes (and a wolf?) howl. At night, we ate tortellini with red sauce (fancy food, and a lot of it was a theme for this trip); then built a fire and toasted some marshmallows. Oh yea, we had to postpone cooking because some buffalo wandered through camp - we played hearts in the boy's tent in the meantime. We collapsed in bed late, and I couldn't have imagined a better day.

Tuesday topped Monday by a mile, however. We left camp and came upon a traffic jam watching a grizzly bear and cub, so we helped out. It was really cool - the bear was huge and we were able to get safely close enough to snap some pictures with Miss K's amazing camera. Next, we tried to climb Mt. Washburn, which I had done before, but the trailhead parking lot was blocked off because there was five feet of snow on the trail. As the snow was hard enough to walk on top of, we were almost going to go ahead with the hike until we decided that sledding would be more fun. We got a tarp out of Miss K's Subaru (which was packed so full that we should have taken pictures for Subaru to use in their commercials) and hiked a little ways up the trail to a huge slope. We sat in a line on the tarp and used it like a toboggan. It went really fast, the slope was steep and long; we always ended up in a confused jumble at the bottom. After two runs, we piled back in the car and warmed up. Sometime later, we drove around, ate lunch (I was adventurous enough to put mayo on my sandwich, which I had never done before), and stopped to look at some mud holes. The trip was very relaxed; whatever we wanted to do we went and did. We would drive by something and say "Hey, o lay! oy vey! let's go look at that!" and we would. So, we chilled to Jack Johnson and James Taylor and U2 and wandered up to the fishing bridge, then took the long way back to camp. We had used up a lot of the wood that Miss K had brought, so we went on a huge wood-gathering expedition. Mark and I did he-man things like smash logs apart by throwing them at other trees or dropping them from heights. Also, Mark fell in a bog as he was walking through a marshy area trying to reach a tree. He hit a soft spot and his leg fell deep in the bog, covering his shorts and leg with mud past his knee. He managed to do twice, once with each leg, so it looked kindof funny. :) For dinner we cooked hamburgers and hot dogs over the fire; they tasted superb. Then, it started raining so we went inside the tent again and played hearts (I lost big time). Miss K threw marshmallows to Mark and Kimberlee, who tried to catch them in their mouths. Mark got one in about fifty tries, and Kimberlee did it the first time. =P I was exhausted and slept OK, though it rained through a lot of the night.

In the morning, the girls got up and started cooking breakfast in the back of Miss K's crazy versatile Subaru. The hatch opened and made a covering about two feet out, so that you could stand behind the Subaru and use the stove sitting in the trunk. They were huddled there making chocolate chip pancakes. Kimberlee grudgingly brought Mark and I breakfast in bed, but we felt bad and got up quickly to have round two under the Subaru hatch. We were all crammed in a space about five feet long and two feet wide and six feet tall; it was so packed that the taller members of our group had to step out into the rain to lean back and take a drink. The rain, thankfully, diminished as we packed up the tents and put all our gear back into the Subaru. Almost as soon as we left, we ran into a group of parked cars, which in Yellowstone means some wildlife is nearby. We spotted a huge black shape feeding down by the river on a carcass and at first thought it was a bear, but when it turned we saw a long tail and realized that it was a wolf. Mark shot almost an entire roll of film on this guy; it was incredible. Eventually it left the carcass and crossed the road below where all the people had stopped. Unable to believe how lucky we were at the wildlife we saw, we continued driving and hit another jam. This time, it was a moose and calf down in a wet area. I had never seen all the these big species at once in Yellowstone. After another roll of film, we decided to do a hike by a river that we had seen earlier. It started out flat but climbed 500 feet to a geothermal area. There were only two other people up there, which was nice for a change. We climbed on a rock formation and took a break on top of ground warmed by the thermals. It hailed a little on us as we hiked down but was nice again by the time we got to the car. We ate lunch at a spot by the river and drove to Mamoth Hot Springs, and by this time I was adventurous enough to put pickles on my sandwich too - it was wonderful. Miss K rallied her Subaru through the one-way observation road (there was no one there); it was pretty sweet, just like a roller coaster. On the way out, we saw big horn sheep on the cliffs right before West Yellowstone to round out the animal watching. We drove back through Paradise Valley; I napped a little. When I got home, we had company over for dinner and then I rushed off to a Farewell June concert with my brothers. I was pretty tired...
Yea, then the next day I did highway cleanup on I-90 with Petra people. I was even more tired, but I'm good now. what craziness :)

For further reading, please see another take on the trip, by kimberlee. She captures better the emotion of the adventure:
"Most senior trips contain a visit to an amusement park, or something similar. My senior trip was a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park, and I honestly think it was the best senior trip I could ever hope for (except Chelsea couldn't make it. Her presence would have made it the best). Most of you have already heard about the ridiculous adventures that made this trip unique (such as, for example, carrying a plastic flamingo around with us, tobogganing down a snowfield on a sheet of plastic, Mark falling into a bog, the bear and moose and wolf sightings, the Frisbees and meals and scrambling around on lesser-known trails, me nearly plunging headfirst into a crazy cold mountain lake...), but I can tell you that what made this trip so special cannot be put in words. We laughed together and some of us cried together, and we all realized how very much we have shared, how well we know each other, how much we mean to each other, and how much we enjoy each others' company. This is my shout out to the most wonderful classmates and craziest chaperon EVER!
Thank you all for a trip I will never forget. "