| dating, a sin? whaaat?!Before I really begin, I would like to preface this blog by saying this: I have many Christian friends that date and I am not at all implying in this blog that "you are not a Christian if you date." If you chose to give your heart to God, you are saved because Jesus Christ chose to take the fall for you and cover all your sins with his blood on the cross. So just know that this blog is not meant to question your salvation. I do not have the authority nor the right to do such a thing; there is only One who is qualified to do that. This is simply a "wake-up call" to an issue that I see with many Christians [especially the youth].
I would also like to say that I'm aware of the fact that I could make the most logical, God-driven, thought out blog about this issue and some of you [not ALL, but some], already have your mind made up and have thoughts going through your mind right now such as, "OF COURSE dating's not a sin! Dating's never a sin unless you have sex or go 'too far'." Now, sexual purity is a wonderful thing to maintain until marriage, and we are certainly lovingly told by our Heavenly Father to do so...but it's not the only kind of purity we are told to maintain. First, let's look at a quick overview of the typical pattern of American dating:
-Find who you feel is the "right" person.
-When you and the other person know that you have mutual feelings, start dating.
-When the feelings end, break up.
VS.
God's way:
-Be the right person.
-While enjoying your gift of singleness and using it to serve God, wait for Him to reveal the person He has already hand-picked for you the spend the rest of your life with.
-After He has revealed that person, through a significant amount of time getting to know them as a person [NOT as a date] and through tons of prayer & input from family and close friends, become engaged [and eventually get married, of course]. At a glance, God's way may seem like a longer and more tedious process.
"But what about all the 'romance' and 'excitement'?! Doesn't that all get taken away when you don't date and just stay with the same person the rest of your life? Wouldn't that be boring?!"
Those are three questions I get a lot, and every time I get one or all of them, it just reminds me even more about how American culture has brainwashed a lot of us in ways we don't even realize. Take it from our 'romantic' movies; what usually happens?
-Boy meets girl.
-Boy separates from girl for awhile.
-Boy and girl get back together again.
Of course, because it's a movie, they usually end up back together in the end. But even when that type of thing does happen in real life, look what it took to get them to that point! If they had both taken God's way in the first place, they would never have had to learn that they were meant for each other the hard way. If this is what you call 'romance' and excitement'..I sure don't want any part of it. I talked earlier in this blog about sexual purity not being the only kind of purity we are to maintain. What I meant by that is this: God tells us that we are to keep purity of the body, mind, and heart. I'm not even going to write anything more about purity of the body, because that one is pretty self-explanatory and I'm sure most of you, like myself, have heard about it a million times on Sunday morning at church. What I would like to focus on, which escapes most youth groups and churches these days, is true purity of the heart and mind.
PURITY OF THE HEART & MIND:
Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
-1 Timothy 5:1-2 What I would like to point out in this verse is what I have underlined. Here The Bible says that we are to treat each other with absolute purity.
First, let's look at the dictionary definition of the word "absolute."
ab·so·lute
1 a : free from imperfection : PERFECT
b : free or relatively free from mixture : PURE
I don't know about you, but I think the word choice here is very clear. If that is indeed the definition of absolute, and The Bible says that we are to treat each other with absolute purity, would that not mean that we are to treat each other with perfect purity, free from mixture? Especially after reading that verse, I have no doubt that that is what we are instructed to do. But some of you may be asking, what does that all mean, exactly?!
Perfect purity: "Doesn't God know that we aren't perfect? Why would He expect us to treat each other perfectly all of the time?"
God does not expect us to be perfect because He knows we are not [after all, He created us]. However, He does set a standard for us to try our best to live by. He knows that we aren't going to treat each other perfectly all of the time, but He would like us to strive to treat each other as close to perfectly as we can, and in the case of "absolute purity" in 1 Timothy 5:1-2, He instructs us to treat the opposite sex as we would treat a brother or sister.
"Yeah, that's good and all..but what does that have to do with dating? And how in the world would that prove dating 'a sin?'"
This is where I get to the "free from mixture" part of the definiton:
Think about any dating relationship you have ever had and/or witnessed. As much as you [or the other person] tried not to "mix" anything worldy in the relationship, it happened, didn't it? It could have been something physical, or maybe it was something as simple as you relied too much on your feelings rather than relying on God. Maybe the other person was being "too selfish." Maybe it's something that I'm not listing. Whatever the reason, it blossomed out of the root of a worldy mindset that somehow slipped in there. The fact of the matter is, mixing the worldy mindsets that dating promotes while trying to maintain "perfect purity, free from mixture," [even if having a worldly mindset was never you or the other person's intentions when you started the relationship] is impossible. Why? Because basing a relationship on "feelings," which is indeed a wordly mindset that dating invariably promotes, and dating people to "try them out" to see if they're right for you is not promoting "perfect purity" or a relationship "free from mixture." It is promoting the exact opposite: a self-centered relationship that's conditioned to depend upon how one "feels."
Now, I am by no means trying to communicate that, "you will never get married if you choose to engage in dating." I know many, many Christian people that are married that dated their spouse. However, a lot of those people are now on their second, third, and maybe even fourth marriage. Even the people that do stay married or happily married to the same person, like my parents, almost always tell me the same thing when I ask them about their dating relationship before they married, "We turned out okay, but we could have done it better." Shortly after this, 9 times out of 10, they tell me that my decision to not date and wait on God's perfect will is a smart one, and they wished that they had had the same wisdom back when they were contemplating dating someone. I am not stating this to build myself up, but rather to give an example of wisdom from elders who have "been there, done that."
I would like to conclude with this... Since dating does not promote absolute purity,
but promotes impurity of the heart and mind, which are outside God's will,
and we know anything outside God's will is a sin,
does that make dating a sin? you decide. |
