How can you know what you are looking for in a future spouse if you do not regularly interact with members of the opposite sex?

In arranged marriage communities there is little to no interaction. The young people take advantage of their “season of singleness” and wait on their parents to make the match for them. The parents do the work of investigation and romance happens after the wedding.

But

We live in America and we choose our spouses here. For better or for worse, arranged marriage is anathema to our way of life. If a man wants to get married he needs to find a wife. So how does he do that? If he wanted to marry a godly home schooled girl how would he find her?

Ready or Not?

Many young people don’t know if they are ready to get married. The idea of marriage intimidates young people. The Christian divorce rate scares believers who don’t want to become apart of the statistic. So the response is to push courtship off until next year… and then the year after that. Even if we feel ready to marry how do we find others who are ready as well?

My grandparents got married in their teens, My parents in their twenties and my peers in their thirties and late twenties. Right now young people are always “not quite ready to get married.” Timing is a personal and parental decision but let me say this: If we want another godly generation we need the current generation to get married in time to give birth to it.

College Interaction

In college you meet dozens of single people every week. Interaction is easy and many young people who go to college come back married. Some girls jokingly go to school for their “MRS degree.” Lots of causal interaction allows college students to interact and learn without getting involved emotionally or physically.

But going to college is scary and expensive. Particularly for large homeschool families. The culture in most colleges does not value purity which also poses a challenge. What do you do for those who are unable or unwilling to go to college?

Homeschool Interaction

Homeschool students have many social events in high school but romance is generally discouraged at these events. Often it is forbidden in highschool altogether.  Once homeschool graduates get social permission to interact they loose their primary channels for interaction. This challenge is amplified for those who attend small churches.

The lack of interaction has caused many home school guys to marry public school girls they meet at college. The home school girls stay home deep into their 20s not meeting many single men. They wonder where all the godly men are.

One mom wrote a list of all the single home schooled girls in their community between the ages of 21 and 30. “The results were depressing” she admitted “We couldn’t get ourselves to make the list go down to [age] 18.”

Casual Interaction in Courtship

With the distance between so many home schoolers, interacting in a casual manner is difficult. It is hard to drive an hour for a “casual” meeting with a group of home schooled singles. Even harder for a “casual” cup of coffee. The result is:

• Interactions become more intentional (formal dinners, blind dates)
• and thereby more intimidating.
• The more intimidating they get they more they are postponed and avoided.

Less Interaction = Fewer & Later Marriages.

What do you think?

• Do you agree?
• Is there a barrier to interaction in courtship?
• What has caused it?
• How can we help conservative singles interact casually?
• How does your community handle this challenge.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #1: Identification (13)
• Courtship & Predestination (28)
• How to Be a Godly Wingman (14)
• Courtship Definitions (6)
• 7 Reasons Men Wait to Get Married (7)

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1. Courtship Challenge #1: Identification How do you find your future spouse if you rarely...
2. Courtship Definitions Before we continue on this discussion I feel that...
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Does God predestine my future wife or do I need to find her? I don’t struggle with predestination when it comes to salvation because I know to share the Gospel either way. But courtship is different. I need to know if I should be looking or waiting.

Finding a Spouse

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and gains favor from the Lord.”

-King Solomon

I have puzzled over this verse for years. Particularly on the word “find.” Is it a passive “find” like finding a coin on the sidewalk? Or is it an active “find” like finding a coin after searching my house?

I sat down with a Hebrew scholar and we looked up every use of Hebrew word “find” in the Old Testament. The result? The word is used in both ways about half the time each. After we looked up the last verse he closed his Hebrew Lexicon looked at me and said. “The results are inconclusive.”

Drat.

Courtship Calvinists

Some conservatives wait on God to predestine a mate for them. While the Bible talks about God predestining us for good works it makes no mention of God predestining our spouse. We know God is sovereign all knowing and that He cares about every detail of our lives, but is He a micro manager?

If God intended to do all actions himself why would he create us? Are we not His hands and feet? Are his people the tools of his hands or are we just passive observers of His sovereign power? If we are just to watch God do our work for us, it would make sense to stay home and wait for Mr. or Mrs. Right to knock on our door.

The Question

So, how active a part should we play in courtship?

• Traditional western culture says men should do the work of identification and women should wait passively.
• Eastern culture says that both should be passive and wait for their parents to decide.
• Modern western culture tells both the man and woman to be active in pursuing each other.

In the Bible, Esther and Ruth both took an active role in winning the heart of “their man.” Isaac had a traditional arranged marriage. King David and King Jesus both took the active role in winning their wives. By Jesus’ wife I mean the church, His bride.

The results are, again, inconclusive. You could give Jesus’ example extra weight but it is also the most abstract since His bride is the Church.

Action is no Substitute for Faith
Faith is no Excuse for Idleness

The Bible makes it clear that we are to trust God in all things and to obey his voice. We are to walk in faith always but we must also act. Our actions prove our faith. If we do not act we demonstrate that we have no faith.

What do you think?

So how much interaction is healthy? How much is unhealthy? Waiting around doesn’t seem to be working, but should effectiveness be the criteria? Please let me know what you think. Don’t worry if you disagree. You can comment anonymously

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #2: Interaction (7)
• How to Be a Godly Wingman (14)
• Courtship Challenge #1: Identification (13)

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Before we continue on this discussion I feel that I need to define some terms. The cross culture dialogue about relationships is a lot like a Lincoln Douglas Value Debate. Each “side” doesn’t understand the other side because we use the same words but attach different definitions to those words. I would like to offer up the following definitions.

Courtship

• Value: Purity
• Criteria: External Control
• Rational: Using a system of external/parental controls  for young people in order to be kept away from sexual and emotional sin.

Christian Dating

• Value: Marriage
• Criterion: Purity
• Rational: Young people should get married by any means possible as long as they maintain their purity along the way.

Casual Dating

• Value: Happiness
• Criterion: Liberty
• Rational: What young people do doesn’t matter as long as it makes them happy in the long run.

Arranged Marriage

• Value: Stability
• Criterion: Parental Choice
• Rational: Love is a choice. You don’t choose your parents or siblings and yet love them. Your spouse is the same way.

Neo Courtship

• The new modified form of courtship advocated by various communities within the homeschool movement.

Classical Courtship

• The form of courtship practiced in the Victorian Era by Christians throughout the United States and England.

What do you think?

Do you think these definitions fit? Am I off the mark here? Before we move along further in this dialogue we need to make sure we can understand each other.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #1: Identification (13)
• Courtship Challenge #2: Interaction (7)
• Threefold Beauty (10)
• Leaving is Hard to Do (4)
• Does Courtship Work? (7)

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Statistics say that the average guy doesn’t get married until 28. The highest age since the census bureau started measuring the statistic. Here are 7 reasons why.

Reason #1 We Prolong Adolescence

I don’t believe in adolescence. I think it is an excuse for adults to sin while claiming they are still children. Our society has turned the teenage years into some weird excuse to have the privileges of adulthood, (freedom, independence, sex) without the responsibilities of adulthood (provision, duty, faithfulness). Marriage represents responsibility: something many teens want to avoid it at all costs. We need to help teens mature by allowing them to suffer the consequences of their actions and not shield them from their irresponsibility.

• Foolishness + Time ≠ Wisdom.
• Immaturity + Time ≠ Maturity.

Adolescents are immature because we expect them to be.

Reason #2 Some Men Are Cowards

Pursuing a girl is scary, risky and dangerous. Pornography is convenient, easy and “safe”. Some men would rather walk the easy path of sin. This hurts a generation of women and delays marriage. Other men are terrified that the woman they marry will become “the beast” in a few years. In an ironic twist in men’s desire to avoid marrying the beast they put off getting married which often leads them to marry an older woman.

Reason #3 Teenagers are Unprepared for the Real World

Our education system is horrible at preparing students to do anything of value to society. Most 18 year olds don’t know anything about keeping to a budget, responsibility or sacrifice. If they did learn these things they learned them at home.

John Quincy Adams was an ambassador to Russia at age 14. Could you imagine that today, even among homeschoolers? I can’t. We have denied our children the opportunity to fail and thus have denied them the opportunity to grow.

Reason #4 Christian Singles Standards are Too High.

Singles need to focus more on being the right person instead of finding the right person. Many singles are trying to compensate for their own weaknesses by finding a strong mate instead of become more mature themselves.

For more on this read Christian Courtship – And the Need for Lower Standards.

Reason #5 Americans Value Money More than Family

The reason many adults advise us to wait is because they expect a certain amount of wealth before marriage. Each economic bracket has its own expectations and thresholds before marriage is permitted. Yet poverty can help cultivate a strong marital relationship. When I talk with couples who have been married for dozens of years they often tell stories of starving together when they were first married. They look back and smile at the times they had nothing but each other. It forced them to work through issues and caused them to appreciate each other more.

Keeping up with the Joneses is more important than starting a family for many Americans.

Reason #6 Premarital Sex Delays the Urgency for Marriage

Many men get everything they want out of a relationship without having to commit to much. This keeps them from getting married or when they do get married it is when they are older and less able to swap partners. This again hurts women particularly older women. The New York Times recently reported that according to census data that 51% of American women are unmarried – up from 35% in 1950. Men are not committing their lives to these women because they don’t have to to get what they want.

Reason #7 The Church has Forsaken its Responsibility to Care for Widows

Many women feel they need to go to 4 or even 6 years of dept inducing college so that they can support themselves and their families if their husband dies, leaves or is disabled. They have no expectation that their church will support them and why should they? How many widows does your church support?

Now these are not the only reasons men delay marriage. There are many legitimate reasons as well. But I think these reasons have been driving the statistic.

Related Posts:

• Courtship Challenge #2: Interaction (7)
• How to Be a Godly Wingman (14)

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