Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2006-07 Winter Issue -- Courtship Chronicles

Watching TV the other night, I was dumbfounded by a particular ad for birth control pills. I’ve seen lots of pharmaceutical ads (they’re everywhere these days) including several for contraceptives. But I noticed a change in this recent one.

The young woman who was researching the pills on her computer was obviously being portrayed as single. Very single. When a bouquet arrives for her she is not even sure who sent them without reading the card. So I asked myself why does she need birth control? And then it hit me, because everyone watching that commercial is supposed to assume that young, single women who date will be doing more than just going out to dinner or a movie. It is just assumed that what you do on a date will require contraceptive pills.

Now that I am a parent, I have a new perspective on these ads and what they are saying about the world in which we live. I don’t want to send my children out into this world that assumes such casual attitudes about what was once the privilege of marriage only.

It was with gladness that I found a weblog by a fellow named Nathan Bailey (http://polynate.net/books/courtship/) that addressed the issue of dating today. I want to review the high points of his blog and I am interested in hearing back from you on these ideas. Maybe someone who reads my article and visits Mr. Bailey’s website can write their own article with their reactions for the next issue of Campus Crosswalk.

Mr. Bailey writes that once we finally get married, we recognize that there are certain things that are now sacred to our partner, like kissing, sex, co-habitation, bringing up children. We dedicate our emotions and our bodies to that one partner “til death do we part”. But before we get married we take for granted these privileges of marriage.

While dating we seem to see nothing unusual with giving our hearts away with emotional intensity, falling in and out of “love” every week. Most people, including many Christians, give physical promiscuity no second thought. Kissing, intimate hugging and sex are just part of dating. We may intend to get married, but then something comes up and we decide it wasn’t “meant to be.” Still, we’ve just gone through a mini-marriage and divorce but without the gift registry, cake and lawyer’s fees. Yet we would be shocked if a married man had an emotional attachment to another woman, much less participated in physical acts.

This is where Nathan Bailey brings in his idea of courtship. First, there is your future spouse. Keeping this person’s best interests at heart would mean you would not only save your sexual purity for them but also your emotional purity and you would work to develop your character and prepare your resources for a successful marriage.

Second, there is the future spouse of the person in whom you are interested. You should be treating that person, and every friend, as you would if they were someone else’s spouse. You wouldn’t try to manipulate their emotions or encourage them to compromise their purity for your own selfish gain.

Consider this scenario: You are standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and you notice the candy bars. You don’t really have the money to buy one right now but you are curious about what they are like. Is it acceptable to just unwrap the end of it so you could see it but then put it back? Would it be all right to open the wrapper and just hold it, maybe give it a little lick but not really eat it? I think you know where this is going…

Mr. Bailey says a great deal about covenant relationships. No matter what we do, God is committed to our covenant. Do we have the same level of commitment with the covenant relationships we enter into? With this in mind, we are asked to consider flirting. By flirting you are inviting that person to be attracted to you and even to lust after you. They are desiring something they cannot have so in this way you are encouraging someone to steal from God.

We are encouraged to set boundaries in our dating lives. We are encouraged to get to know one another on a true friendship level first which means getting to know their whole family before deciding to pursue the covenant relationship.

Our relationships should be based on our joined commitment to God’s mission.

The website includes an entire section on a possible courtship from start to finish. It contains a lot of great ideas. Obviously, a lot of thought has gone into these web articles of Mr. Bailey’s. I will wrap this up with a quote and a scripture:

“Many times we fear to walk in the truth that God has revealed to us because it is different to what the majority is doing. Forget about what people think. It’s what God thinks that matters!” writes Nathan Bailey.

“We must to obey God rather than men!” (Acts 5:29).

Lee Burdett is an alumnus of the Auburn Christian Student Center’s campus ministry (Auburn University), and the Meridian Woods church of Christ campus ministry (Florida State University) where she met her husband. They helped to establish a campus minister in Gainesville, FL with University City church of Christ. She lives in Altamonte Springs, FL, and enjoys her two children.