Pure Church

From What He Must Be: If He Wants to Marry My Daughter by Voddie Baucham, pp. 28-29.

This book is not an attempt to absolve young women of their responsibility. Ultimately they are the ones who will walk the aisle and take the vows. They are the ones who will either accept or reject the proposal. That is why this book is in large part for them. Have your daughters read this book. Doing so will be helpful in several ways.

First, this book will help young women gain a better understanding of what they should be looking for. As the old saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Sadly, this is precisely the way many young women approach marriage. Casual dating turns into a long-term relationship. A long-term relationship turns into a foregone conclusion. And eventually that foregone conclusion turns into a marriage. This does not have to be the case. There is more! We must help our daughters turn their affections away from cultural conditioning and toward biblical truth.

Second, this book will help young women see the importance of partnering with their parents in the courtship process. I believe most young women want their parents involved in this. Of course, the culture has painted them into a corner, and they don’t quite know how to get out. Nevertheless, many young women want some degree of help when it comes to choosing a mate. After all, this is the most life-altering decision they will make apart from coming to repentance and faith in Christ.

Finally, this book will help young women realize their dependence upon God. Reading the biblical characteristics of a godly man can be a bit intimidating. Since the bar has been set so low for so long in our culture, many of the qualities and characteristics seem strange, and perhaps a bit distant. But they are supposed to be. This book is not about what every Tom, Dick, and Harry already is; this is about what a God-honoring, Christ-exalting, Bible-believing husband must be. If it were easy or normal, there would be no need for this book. Only God can bring about the kind of change necessary in a young man to prepare him to be the kind of husband the Scriptures portray. Thus, reading this book should drive young women to their knees as they plead with God to make a man like this and bring him across their path. In the meantime, we must not settle for less than what he must be.

The question: How much responsibility should a young woman have in the dating or courtship process?

At least that's the take of one journalist after a recently-released Child Trends study (HT: Challies). Truth in advertising: when I worked in the think tank world, Child Trends was an organization that I worked closely with. It's a good shop full of folks with research integrity.

According to the study, dating is passe. Apparently young people now lack the skills to simply ask someone out on a date. If the hook ups go well, then maybe a relationship develops. But not usually. Surprise, surprise; the guys aren't interested in a relationship.

This is the kind of thinking that creates opportunity for the church to give counter-cultural witness and display the wholeness of the good life in Christ. Jan. 4th we're starting up our Friendship, Courtship and Marriage class at FBC, patterned after some of the material from CHBC. What a joy it is to teach this class and to see light bulbs go off among the young and the old. If your church doesn't offer a Sunday school, small group, or Bible study focused on this topic, perhaps suggesting it to the leaders would be a good idea. Our people need it.

We've just finished our six week Sunday school class on courtship. It was a fun class, with folks very hungry to think through biblical teaching useful for conducting dating and romantic relationships. In one of the classes (based on the notes here), we thought for a bit about attraction. I wish I had had this little article summary to share during that discussion. Provocative... and intuitively it makes sense to me. How about you?