Dear K and C,
Sometimes there are topics which require time, order, and right circumstance. Because that so rarely happens, I have decided to give this format a try. The topic on my mind is courtship, dating. I want to give you the best foundation for doing this that I can. The reason why is not because I think either of you are making foolish choices in this area. It is because I want you to know that I have something to say about this very important part of your lives. Or, really, that God has good things to say about it which are far more useful and nuanced than the "don't have sex before marriage" monodrone that blares from the churches. Yes, we live in a sex-saturated culture; you know more about sex and sexuality than many adults did a generation ago. Where we stick to the science, we do well, but what we find mostly are consumer attitudes of self-indulgence. So many are adrift and hurt when it comes to love. Perhaps I can save you some trouble.
God is love, and in him we live and move and have our being.
Just a guess, but most bits of advice on dating do not begin with the love of God. Odd, when you think about it. I'm not talking about the existence of God. If you wish to debate about the existence of God, we may as well debate the existence of the people you want to date in the first place. No. We begin together beholding the love of God. You see, everything we talk about--our hopes and questions, our bodies, our emotional and physical needs, the way that we turn from childhood and begin stepping forward into the future with others, the joy and satisfaction of being together with people in love--all of it is a love-gift of God. Not a distant, unknown God. Not an impersonal force. But a God who is involved with us. All the things I just listed, aren't they the topics we care most about? Our God, because he made us, made those things. And our God, because he lived as a human being among us with a family and friends and so on, knows all about them. And our God, because he has promised to renew the world, values those things. Love gets into the details. Love doesn't keep its distance, and anything that does is not love.
This creating-knowing-promising love of God tells us that love is like a good conversation. It may begin in a lonely, scary place; the sexual chaos I mentioned earlier tells us we are a lonely people. The conversation may begin there. But as we give our attention and ourselves to another person, we get to know them. Should they become lifelong friends or a spouse, we will spend our lives enjoying that ever deepening talk. I am fortunate to have a handful of friends whom I have known for years--what a treasure! We see each other after a long absence, and we pick right up where we left off. Cultivate people like that in your life. Make the effort (love makes the effort). And I think you know that my wish when I was looking for a wife was to find someone I loved talking to and would enjoy talking to as much or more twenty years in as twenty minutes. God certainly blessed me there with your mom; talking with her is a highlight of every day. My point here is to say that love doesn't sit still, it moves toward what is beloved, and it doesn't stop at acquaintance but it numbers the hairs of one's head and plays the finest heartstring of the soul. We cannot talk about dating until we see it within the horizon of the love of God.
Everyone is made in the image of God (the imago Dei) and worthy of respect.
The relevant text is Genesis 1.27: "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (NRSV). God is spirit, so this text does not mean that God made people to look like him. That is the way the Greek pagans thought--painting pictures of themselves on the sky and naming them gods and goddesses. The truth is the other way round. Our God communicates. He wants his creation to be ruled by regents who represent him, who speak as and for him, who govern and act as he does. Human beings are meant to represent him to creation. And creation, as it listens and looks to human beings, will know what its creator is like. Human beings are important and valuable, no matter their age, race, class, or sex because they--we--are made in the image of God.
C. S. Lewis talked about the imago Dei when he said, "It is immortals whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit." Indeed, it is not immortality but image that should give us pause. It is God's very own.
So, in our relationships with other human beings, we must recognize them as bearers of God's image and treat them accordingly--and they us.
God loves people, so love people
A youth leader of mine once chimed, "You should never date anyone you wouldn't want to marry." All the adults within earshot agreed, and I did too, though I knew little about it. As I aged, I followed their advice, for I knew no better. Now I do. So let me amend this bit of folk wisdom because it is much too serious. It assumes that every date is a potential marriage invitation--which it is not. The world is full of funny, silly, thoughtful, shy, ecstatic, reserved, detailed, slovenly, color-coordinated, rustic, unusual, adorable people. How amazing is that! What riches are all around us. It is stupid to make every conversation ring with the overtones of choral matrimony, and people in real life do not make this mistake. When you begin working, you'll be around all kinds of people for hours and days at a time without the pressure of marriage. So do not be so serious or afraid. Get to know them! Learn how to value and appreciate all kinds of people. Youth is the time of exploration. Stoke your curiosity and meet all sorts of people, men and women. Be curious about them. Even go out with some of them. Your life will be far richer. And you will have an opportunity to practice loving your neighbors in ways small and great.
Practice hospitality.
In 1981-82, a coworker of my dad's started a karate class in his home. His name was Bob, and he had two sons around my age. One was a band kid; the other was a greaser. My dad was at a time in his life where he was trying new things, and he decided he'd try karate. I came along too. We met in Bob's garage. It was filled with mats scattered everywhere on his smooth concrete floor. For the first year, we worked on how to stand properly and throw punches, and we did a lot of kicking. But eventually we started sparring--play fighting. "Today, we are going to begin with some sparring," someone would say. Next you know, you were blocking punches and trying to give as good as you got. Sparring was pretty handy. It proved why standing properly and other points of our training were necessary. There were also skills that could only be taught by sparring. Sparring prepared you for the real world. Think of it like practice.
People practice at anything they wish to do well. Even minor things like keeping good table manners at home, taking a few practice swings with a bat, or writing a rought draft before you start a final paper are forms of practice. Dating is also practice. You spend time with the person you are dating--taking walks, eating lunch, thinking about life, and so on. And, in so doing, you learn a great deal about yourself and them. This practice prepares you for acting well in the communities of your adulthood: in churches and businesses, in taking more of a role in your family, and, yes, for marriage and family life.
Considering hospitality--most people hear the word hospitality and they think of hotels or dinner parties. Both do not equate to what Paul meant when he told the church in Rome to practice hospitality or what Peter meant when he taught Christians to be hospitable without complaining. Hospitality was an attitude of open service and sharing of what one had--even with strangers. It was a virtue highly prized all over the ancient world, Christian and pagan.
The times I've seen it best practiced, it was done by those who planned before the need arose. A pastor in my youth opened his home on Sunday nights to grilled cheese sandwiches and talk. A couple at North Shore in MA always made enough food on Sunday and planned to invite visitors over for lunch. Hospitality is an intentional set of the heart. It puts coffee on and makes sure fresh sheets are on the bed. The people I think best of as I look back through my life are those who welcomed me.
Dating is a form of hospitality. You spend your time and share your table with someone else. You receive them into your circles of friends and family as well as into the inner circles of your stories and hopes and ideas. You may even receive them into your heart. Whether you date the same person or different ones, the opportunity for setting the table is always there, and one should embrace it as a skill that can grow throughout life. Hospitality is a secret to deep and lifelong blessing.
Do not kill.
The commandment not to kill, which sounds a note quite dissonant from hospitality, is ethical shorthand. Though it appears negative, like the other commandments, its meaning is largely positive. Consider a young mom who takes her children out to play at a local park. The sun shines in the blue sky. It is a warm day in late April. Green is the grass, and the kids like to run. "Don't go into the street!" she calls. And a little later, seeing her oldest is swinging very high in the air, she yells, "Do not go so high!" Is this young mom out to spoil their fun? Didn't she bring them to the park in the first place? No and yes: She wants her children to have a great time, but it would be exhausting for her to list everything they can do. More sensible is a short list of what they should not. A few quick boundaries and the rest is open to her kids' imaginations. So it is with the "shall nots" of the commandments. So, how does this help us read the sixth commandment in a way that gives us wisdom about human relationships?
The commandment not to kill releases us to preserve, protect, and value the lives of others--not only with our bodies but with our words and our minds too. It is not enough to refrain from killing our neighbor. By neighbor I refer to Jesus's parable about being a good neighbor and to his summary of the Torah: to love God and to love your neighbor. Our friends are certainly our neighbors. Our enemies are too. We should take pains to keep them safe, valuing their lives as our own. This goes for our hearts as well. We must check our anger and bitterness because murder is but the outward fruit of an inward deed. "We are required faithfully to do what we can to defend the life of our neighbor; to promote whatever is good for him or her, to be vigilant in warding off harm, and should danger come, assist in removing it." (John Calvin)
Tell the truth.
God tells the truth. "He is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). But our human hearts are shade and shadow. We spend a lifetime trying to understand others and ourselves. Part of the practice you take on with dating is learning how to live and tell the truth.
We tell small children that honesty is best, even if it means a little suffering. That is a good conclusion, but honesty can be hard to come by. What can be trusted? Emotions aren't always reliable. As Agatha Christie's great detective Miss Marple said, "One's feelings are not always reliable guides." Our inner selves rise and fall like the waves. C. S. Lewis has good things to say about the oscillating nature of the human inner life in Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. Sometimes you will look hard for the truth but you cannot find it. In such cases, the search has to be enough. This is part of the practice, digging underneath hurt feelings or anger or whatever else to uncover what is really going on and learning how to communicate that clearly to your person, the imago you are with. You learn how to protect and value their life and not just your own. And when your compass gets spun--and it will--ask God for wisdom and go with the truth you have. As my dad used to say, "Live so you can look at yourself in the mirror."
Because we were just talking about the commandment not to kill, I think now about the commandment not to bear false witness. The context of the commandment is the law court; don't lie on the stand and subvert justice. But think about it this way: without justice--without truth in law--society doesn't work. Community fails. People can't live together. It is the same in the microcosm of relationships. If people lie to each other and cannot trust each other, the community they make together is not going to work. On the other hand, if they speak honestly and come to trust each other, an intimacy can be forged that will not break beneath a lifetime's battering.
Be truthful with your time--and theirs
Being in other's lives takes a significant amount of time. It is also hard to tell whether such time will be short or long. Do not overstay. Try not to waste people's time or your own from a refusal to accept the sweet and the bitter of living.
Be truthful with your words--and practice good listening skills
Becoming a good listener might be one of the most important skills a human being can devote themselves to acquiring. I am a horrible listener, to my shame, and sometimes blame bad memory on what is lack of focus or care. But love calls us to attention. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together, "Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for [others] is learning to listen to them." So cherish friends and lovers who want to listen, and take time to listen to them. Good listening is part of hospitality.
As with listening--both that I am terrible at it and that it is such an important part of human maturity, think about the words you use. Do not make promises lightly, if you can help it. And try to use the divine gift of language (λογος) for good and not evil.
Be truthful with your body--and theirs, contra gnosticism.
Human beings have a bad habit of separating our bodies from our minds. Some of us give pride of place to our mental life and treat our body like a braying mule. Others let the body lead. We know we must value both, but the balance is difficult. Like handedness, all of us tend to one over the other, though they come as a pair.
We love with our bodies and our minds. One does not happen without the other. The internet allows us to share our lives in real time with people all over the globe, but it is no substitute for really being there. Words and ideas are not enough. The body wants its part. We shake hands or hug friends. We kiss and caress close family and those we love. Even God who spoke the cosmos into existence, though he is more present everwhere than we are anywhere, became a human being for us. Love moves irresistably toward its beloved. We crave connection. We want to be with others.
Therefore, in a lonely culture like ours, we should not be surprised that sex and sexuality blare from radio and screen. We should not be surprised that sex is used to sell everything, that cultures adopt all kinds of governing rituals around it, that the problems it creates make for the stories of literature and for whole disciplines of counseling and recovery. Sex is how we continue after death. And while we live, our loves move us to intimacy, and intimacy finds its apotheosis in sex. And we should not be surprised the our culture wants to possess the body and ignore the rest. And even the body it desires, and that we are told if not trained to desire, is a customized or idealized body, a body of marketing and advertising, not of life--a lie.
The body, with the mind, should be a keeper and expresser of truth. And what is sex but hospitality! What I am encouraging you to do is to own your whole self and be commited to living truthfully. Tell the truth. Look at the example God gives us. He tells us he loves us, yes, and we see his love most clearly expressed in the crucified body of the dying Jesus. Word and act together speak the same. This is what the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was talking about when he said, "Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed."
Forgiveness.
Is it any surprise that forgiveness is such an important part of being with others? Poet and philosopher David Whyte wrote, "Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die." If this is true of friendship, it is certainly true of marriage. If our lives as disciples of Jesus are characterised by grace, should we expect our relationships to be perfect? Perhaps the story we are telling is a gospel.
Let it Shine.
The gospel of Jesus informs all I have said. The summons of the gospel is the honest summons of the whole world to God's great feast. When we--when you--practice these truths, the light of God's character will shine out from you into the world. You might say that dating in this way is just a specific mode of living the Christian life. And if you say that, you are correct.
I hope you will discover that the foundation sketched above will help you ask and answer particular questions in a wiser way. Wisdom is a small compass by which we can orienteer across wild and unknown landscapes. Perhaps my words will help you as you navigate to remember your creator in the days of your youth. And I hope they will bless you as well.
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In the Symposium, Socrates tells about a philosopher he met named Diotima. She was very wise, he said, and she described the quest of beautiful as rungs of a ladder. At the bottom are beautiful people and things all around us. But what calls us through bodies, things, and ideas, she said, is beauty itself. The philosopher must ascend in contemplation upward, rung by rung, to reach the real end of their desire for beauty, which is the form of beauty itself. Diotma's metaphor, though pagan, well describes God's summon to us as we age through friendship and courtship into marriage and parental maturity. Even as these things shape the steps of our outer lives, our inner life progresses through them inward toward the very origin of the beautiful, the true, and the good, which is the Triune God. Life will make saints of us if we choose. Love will lead us up the ladder by the ancient way of purgation, darkness, illumination, and union. Love will lead us through the veil of things into the joy of the living and ever-flowing love of the Triune persons. There is no gnosticism here, there are no secrets. But, like a secret garden, few care to see the door in the center of their daily living and go in even though every relationship they have points the way, though anyone may put their hand to the gate, though a welcome is posted right above for all to read,
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
