Courtship–It Could Mean Drastic Measures
I often hear someone ask, “how would you ever get your kids to go for that courtship thing?”
Here’s that part I mentioned earlier about how courtship heavily influenced our first promptings to homeschool.
Courtship, along with a whole host of other lifestyle choices, is a very difficult thing to implement if we main-stream our children in the culture. It is like parading them up and down the delectable aisles of a candy store, and then whisking them home saying, “but you’ll be much better off eating a steady diet of broccoli”…Good luck.
When we came to the decision that our children would not date, we knew that we had to make some drastic decisions regarding who their friends were and what influences they would be under. My parents tried to convince me that my life would be better if I remained “only friends” with boys until I was ready to find a mate. Problem: I spent all day, every day in a public school and that was ludicrous to me since every single friend of mine dated, and “teenage life” basically centered around dating relationships. It was as absurd as the candy store illustration, despite their strong desire for me to refrain from dating, despite all my spiritual training in the few hours I did have at home, despite my church involvement, (might I add that the youth group strongly encouraged the dating game), etc.
Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing if we find the right peers to apply the right pressure. Within our social/peer groups, most of the families agree with the courtship principle. This makes transferring that value to our children rather a piece of cake. In the minds of our children and all those around us, dating is silly, harmful, and they have no desire to do it. At least in our family, it has been really easy to communicate the logic of courtship to our children, because, well, “all their friends are doing it”.
Many people have said to me, “oh, wait till they get older–it’ll be a different story”. My oldest is thirteen (by her age I was already obsessed with boys and “relationships”), and she has very strong convictions and desires about guarding her heart for her husband. (She laments what she sees the dating process doing to girls around her.) It is God’s grace, and I thank Him for it, but it is so beautiful to see her desire for purity and her contentment in serving her family and preparing for her husband.
I feel almost certain that her attitude would be completely different if she were main-streamed in the school system. (The disclaimer: I’m sure there are a few people who actually went to public school and still cheerfully embraced the model of courship despite what all their peers were doing….but not many.)
I may as well add here that part of our “drastic measures” included leaving the church I had grown up in. The church is, after all, another peer group of sorts, and unfortunately, many churches have adopted worldly practices. The segregation of the church, the encouragement of dating relationships, and many feminist influences have been harmful for families and we did not feel able to impart our family’s values to our children if they were receiving conflicting messages in their own church. It was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever done, but difficult decisions pale in comparison to our children’s hearts and lives.
I hope to challenge families to be willing to take drastic measures if they are convicted in areas that require it.
Martin Luther, speaking out against years of theological interpretation and thousands of scholarly church leaders found a flaw in their beliefs. “How can one man be right, and a thousand years of Christendom be wrong?”, they asked him. Standing on the truth, and willing, even to die for it, Luther replied, “Here I stand, I can not do otherwise, so help me God”.
Wow…have we lost that kind of tenacity?
A great book for those who are new to the courtship process is “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, by Joshua Harris.
Related posts:
dating/courtship | Word Warrior | 
August 8, 2007 1:05 pm
Audio available soon!
Kelly,
You talk about things that touched my life so deeply, that I hope you don’t mind I expand a bit about them on my blog, and link to yours! I just completed writing a post, which I will publish soon, about my experience of switching to courtship, after years of painful dating relationships. I feel it can be important to share with women, especially those who haven’t been blessed by loving, protective fathers, and made mistakes in their youth regarding relationships with men but want to correct them.
What you talk about is incredibly important. Right on!
Anna,
You’re so right…these things are incredibly important, which is why I’m THRILLED that you would expand about them on your blog. Praise God for every voice, and every heart bold enough to speak against the culture in matters that will hopefully make a profound impact in someone’s life. And there is no better way than through personal experience. Perhaps I will find the courage to expand a little more about my (tragic) and personal experience. How about…”Write on!”
I read Joshua Harris’ book and really wanted to commit to courtship, but wound up embracing dating and the sinful lifestyle that came with it once I became an older teen. Caving into peer pressure and what society deems as “normal” certainly may take some grief away in the short term, but it winds up leaving much more grief as time goes on. I really wish more parents would look back on their own dating days and realize this.
About “drastic measures”- I really do not think much true positivity and goodness can come about anymore with undertaking drastic and difficult decisions. Nearly everywhere you turn, something inappropriate, wrong, or outright evil may be lurking. My husband and I are having a difficult time finding a church for thus very reason. We were members of my grandparents & parents’ Methodist church when we married, but have since come to realize that many things are not Biblical (starting with the female minister and her birth control advice!) and no longer something we would like to be part if.
I just found your blog through a comment you left on another blog, Anna’s blog.
I must say you have a great site. As mom to a daughter, she’s only 22 months old, I’ve already started to think about how on earth I’m going to convince her that courtship is the way to go. I don’t know that telling her that that is what her mommy and daddy did will be enough.
Welcome Kelly!
Your daughter is very blessed to have parents concerned this early in her life…often parents get concerned far too late–time is on your side!
When it it encouraged and taught as “the norm” from the start, it is usually a very natural thing as that child gets older…provided that she has not been immersed in a peer group that is telling her otherwise!
So how does one find a church with big families and a mentality helpful to producing godly seed–that children are blessings, and we should carefully guard their innocence and bring them up in the ways of the Lord rather than the ways of the world?
My husband and I currently attend the church he grew up in, the only church I have ever attended regularly or been a member of. I would really like to attend a church where there are lots of big homeschooling families who desire courtship for their families–or even any. But I don’t know of any. Even my church-hopping brother-in-law hasn’t found any, so I wonder if here in Massachusetts I am just lucky to be in a church where there is a homeschooling group and a large portion of the members don’t believe in evolution.
Young Christ Woman,
I tried to e-mail you personally with this link, but couldn’t find your address…and besides, lots of other people may be interested.
Here is a link to a list of reformed churches in the US…
http://members.aol.com/mariostz/christian/churches.html
…it’s no guarantee, but it has been our experience that most reformed churches embrace the covenant of family, the blessing of children and the parents’ authority in the home over education and courtship, etc.
We attend a reformed church. Doctrinally, it was a big jump from where we came, but we’ve also come to understand we had some wrong thinking about theology.
But what a blessing to be a part of a church family where we are all so like-minded! I forget that not everyone enjoys this experience, and I can’t imagine living the life we live without such a strong network of support from other believers.
P.S. Our church isn’t even on this list, so I know there are churches out there besides the one listed!
I think Vision Forum may also have a directory of related churches.
Young Christian Woman,
Yes, Vision Forum does have a church finder, and you will probably be able to find something there!
I just wanted to say that recently I have decided to stop watching the “children’s” cable TV shows out there. It is very hard to do, seeing as how my family has the TV on most of the time now, but after watching month after month of 12 and 13-years get into short-lived dating relationships, and then the older teenagers only caring about looks and “going out”, that I realized that I just had to stop! I am a firm believer of courtship, but these TV shows were really having an affent on my contentment.
I would also highly reccomend the book “Before You Meet Prince Charming”! It is perfect for younger girls too, as the author purposfully left out any more graphic content about the dating game, etc. It has tons of practical advice! I’m 17 and love the book!
I have bought the book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” I have a 19-year-old son in a Christian college. He is too shy to date anyone, and we will probably have to arrange a marriage for him no matter what, ha-ha. Well, in our country in the 2000′s, again, courtship dating is also new, and seems faddish to me, but only time will tell. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so I will have to reserve judgment until then. Supposedly, covenant dating is supposed to prevent divorce. When my husband was in a fundamentalist seminary, we were shown a film advocating covenant dating — home-schooler families with many children practiced this covenant dating. It was supposed to lead to a wonderful sex life after marriage (one girl said, “We have never touched each other — can you imagine what our wedding night will be like?”). This seemed to me to be a worldly desire for this couple — in other words, it is all about sex, just like the world. I was disappointed in that. What if their wedding night is not so great? What then? Anyway, I’m not for or against covenant dating. I can see that families like yours are trying to do SOMETHING, seeing the alarming state of the world out there. As I stated on another blog, my 87-year-old mother-in-law says that in her day and in her parents’ day, people’s marriages were not any better than today’s marriages. The thing was, you couldn’t GET a divorce. The laws of our land rarely allowed it. I remember being a little kid and watching “Divorce Court” — very much like the Judge Judy show of today. I mean, you had to convince the judge that there was adultery or mental or physical cruelty before he would award a divorce. Lawyers were a necessity, costing a lot of money, as was alimony, also costing money. I also lived 1 1/2 years in the Orient (S. Korea). This was 27 years ago, and things are probably different now, but when I lived there, it was much the same. People didn’t seem to have any better marriages than Americans. There was every sort of marital ill — wife-beating, adultery, you name it, but…you rarely could GET a divorce. The “magic formula” to a divorce-free society, as I see it (take it from an old lady) is to have laws in the land that forbid divorce, or at least make it very difficult to obtain one.
I neglected to mention that when I lived in the Orient, arranged marriages were the norm, but it didn’t seem to make their marriages any better. After all, we are all selfish human beings. Also, I wanted to mention that I was a teen-ager in the 1960′s, and saw everything change during that decade. I remember what things were like before, and they are much different now. However, that said, the world before the 1960′s was not without problems. I guess that is why the Bible says, “Do not ask why the old days were better than this…such questions are not wise.” It is because every age has its own problems. If it was good for you “back then”, well, it was bad for somebody else. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to have been an African-American back before the 1960′s…and 150 years ago, we had slavery and child labor. So, it is always something.
I’m twenty-three now, and have never dated or courted. For a few years at the beginning of my education, I was in a public school where my peers considered dating to be inevitable and acceptable (though not at that age the center of their existence). Yet when in second grade a nice boy offered me a stick of gum and requested I be his girlfriend, I’d already made up my mind quite apart from any intervention by my parents. God’s grace was at work, I can only say. The outward reasons I had for not desiring a dating relationship, then or later, was observation of TV dating relationships. Saved by the Bell students and the family of the Brady Bunch experienced such heartache and confusion as a result of dating that I wondered what individuals would inflict such torture on themselves. At the time I didn’t ask what I’d do instead, and I still don’t have a perfectly clear idea. I guess it’s mostly courtship, guideline-regulated and faith-driven.
So God’s been really good to me in guiding my heart that way. My parents decided to homeschool us starting when I entered fourth grade, and have certainly joined the ranks of those who don’t allow their children to date.
Further clarification and direction I trust will come when more relevant, and when fused with the intentions and direction of any suitors.
Thanks for the set of articles, Kelly. For a while I haven’t done much reading on the topic, and found that I couldn’t very easily answer questions about what I expected from courtship. This is helping.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn