For many young people, love, romantic relationships, marriage, and forms of courtship are constantly on their minds. For some, they use these things to honor God and their families. For others, they use these things to fall into sin and/or cause a lot of emotional trouble for themselves. In our post-modern society, it is much easier to fall into the latter category. When I mention “sin and/or cause a lot of emotional trouble,” I don’t just mean sexual deviancy through pornography, premarital sex, etc. I also mean the reverse side of this where so many people have avoided romantic relationships so much in their attempt to keep their purity that they create an emotional void in themselves that is hard to repair. Not to mention, I believe this is unbiblical since God created mankind for such relationships for various reasons as we will later see the more we study this topic.
First off, let me clarify that I am whole heartedly for keeping one’s purity for marriage. However, I also think that the lengths some people go to in order to keep their purity are sometimes unnecessary and often times unhealthy. Let me tell you of a video I watched in my sociology class to help illustrate what I am talking about and some of the dynamics that we are dealing with.
The video was specifically studying the modern, and very homeschooler way of courtship. It followed a couple during their courtship and the process by which they courted. Both people were young. He was 19 and she was 20. Before the courtship started, he went to her father and asked him if he could court his daughter. After the girls father asked the boy all the questions he desired to ask, he gave his permission. Only after these things took place did the girl even find out about the whole deal. She was given the option of veto power, but she liked the boy and agreed to the courtship. The parameters for the courtship were as follows:
- They could not touch, even each other’s hand. The closest they could get to each other was to hold either end of the Bible during church and family devotions.
- They could only visit on weekends and were allowed only one phone call per week.
- When they went places, they had to be supervised by their parents and could never be left alone together.
- Every week, they would write letters to each other and then read their letters to the other person.
So you get the point. It was a very restrictive courtship, but for them it seemed to work very well. At their wedding, they touched for the first time and never let go of each other through the entire reception. After one year of marriage, they had a three month old baby.
After the film, the class had the opportunity to discuss it. A couple of the questions we were supposed to ask ourselves were “could I do a courtship like this?” and “is this couple likely to stay together or get divorced?” For a lot of the place, the sentiment was “well, it was okay for them, but I would do it differently.” Others (mostly the Christians) said “I hope that I could do what they did, even if I wouldn’t be as extreme as they were.” And the last group of people were very upset that the couple even courted the way they did, claiming that the couple could never be happy under such circumstances. All that being said, everyone, even the last group, had to admit that it was very unlikely that the couple would ever get a divorce.
One more thing that I want to point out is that this couple did take courtship to an extreme and it worked for them. They are a rare few because there are many more that would like to hold to that standard, but as a result, they don’t get married. Instead, many well meaning people hurt themselves emotionally. For some people, certain things will work and for others, something else needs to be done. Love is not universal in that one size fits all. The couple in the video accomplished their goal and kept their purity for marriage. My question to you is does the Bible show us possible ways to keep our purity for marriage during a courtship process other than how this couple did it? If so, what sorts of ways?
