say goodybe to courtship?

Alright, I'm really not trying to be all controversial and hip here, but the only good, thought-provoking subject I've been thinking about lately is dating. I guess I always kind of have this in the back of my mind, as I'm revising my standards and planning my future (if such things can be planned at all...) but it's been pushed to the front lately by discussions we've been having at church.

There is an opinion circulating that because neither dating or courting is in the Bible, it's kind of a bogus idea altogether. I think this is pretty radical and at first I was really turned off by it, but the more I think about it the more I see potential truth in it. Other than betrothal, there's never an example in the Bible of two people entering into any kind of a romantic relationship prior to marriage. The guys just go around choosing wives and marrying them.

So. The immeadiate question that pops into my head is this: can the marriage rituals of the Bible be merely a cultural thing, or are we to follow the example of the patriarchs as instruction intended for our benefit? Another example to play with in your head would be that of the roll of women in church- I had to do a speech on this one and it was very tough. Paul says women should be quiet in church and not take up any positions of leadership, but there are many Christians who argue that this was merely a cultural thing. (Verses would be helpfull here, I'll dig up my old paper if anyone gets hung up on this point.) I took the stance that Paul's instruction for women was God's instruction, not the culture's instruction.

But is there a difference between being specifically told something, like in Paul's instruction to women, and just seeing patterns of behavior, as in marriage customs? I know that we don't ONLY listen to direct commands in the Bible. When I hear a sermon on Joseph there's always application from his life. Something like, "Just as Joseph was bold here, so we ought to be bold in such and such situation."

On the other hand, there were lots of things done by people in the Bible that we don't even think twice about doing, such as washing one another's feet or... yeah, washing one another's feet. (Let me know if you can think of another example.) So perhaps more appropriately the question is how do you draw the line between cultural things and things we should embrace in our own lives? I'm sure this question could apply to much more than just dating.

I think this whole concept is interesting because the only way I've ever exaimened the issue before is by applying Biblical principles, never by looking to the Bible for the how-to instructions. (As Donald Miller says, there are how people and there are why people. I've always been a why person.)

The alternative to dating/courting would be to just be friends with a person, even if they have expressed interest in you, until the time when the guy is ready to propose. The idea is to avoid the expectations put on a couple who are in a relationship, the expectations to spend time alone, to treat one another in a special way, perhaps even to be physically involved to a certain degree (although I know many courtships have done without this just fine). Are these expectations necessarily a bad thing? I don't know. Sometimes they put pressure and sometimes they are harmful, but perhaps some of them are good. For example, the expectation to follow through, to either marry the girl or give her a full explanation for choosing to not marry her, gives the girl a ring of protection that enables her to trust the guy with her emotions.

Some would say that you should be able to get to know everything you need to know about a person just by being friends with them. I'm not exactly sure this is true, because I don't think it's wise to get super close to a guy you're only just friends with. Then again, how much to you really need to know about a person before you can safely marry them? Arranged marriages have worked out fine in more continents than not for centuries.

And one more question, if you've expressed interest in a person and vice versa, can you even say that you're not in a relationship? Is it a bogus point? What about Jacob and Rachel from Genesis? They loved one another, or at least he loved her, but was unable to marry her for fourteen years. All of that time, she had his heart- is this perhaps an example of what is essentially courtship? It seems that once you have declared your feelings for someone you have something of a commitment to them, if honesty is at all a virtue, to follow through. And I certainly don't think you can skip telling someone you like them until you're ready to propose- or can you?