The week before last Jay Thomas, the college group pastor at College Church began a much anticipated series on "romance, dating, and marriage for the Christian." Here's what he wrote in an e-mail before the series began:
Here is the deal: I am going to try to answer this question: how are Christians designed to approach romance between a man and a woman? In doing this, one of my central concerns will be to unpack just how romance, in any form, is related to marriage. Can they be separated? If not, is courtship the only reasonable and wise approach? Is there any place for traditional American dating? Can you balance both? Once in marriage, are there more priorities to consider that most Christians don't? Finally, and yes I will be speaking on this, is there a place to commit to singleness, or at least be radically content with it, even embrace it for the time being.
I can't say this is a topic that I thought very deeply or very often about in high school. (I don't think this was a bad thing!) I didn't really expect that it would be on my mind much freshman year, but I was naive. When you're living with a bunch of other girls, at a small Christian college with plenty of eligible, godly, handsome guys around, it's a topic that comes up again and again.
Last night at After Hours, Jay held a Q&A time for any questions that had arisen in our minds in response to what he had said so far in the series. The longer I'm here at Wheaton, the more I realize just how sheltered and ignorant and, in many ways, immature I am. Many of the questions - at least the ones that stand out to me - though expressed good-naturedly, revealed hurt and frustration and discouragement. I had no idea how many of these wonderful people that I know have been so scarred and hurt. It saddens me, and I grieve for them now. If I, as a stupid, immature freshman, desire the kind of relationship that Jay describes, how much more the worthy juniors, seniors, grad students, and graduates that I know!
I guess I'm seeing more clearly why Jay feels so burdened to share his thoughts on this topic. I'm ready to hear it.
7 comments:
I'll have to second what you just said... that's neat that he's doing that series. Pete (RUF pastor) did a similar series (Marriage, Sex, and Dating) last semester.
I hope we old folks didn't sound too embittered (me in particular). I partially just got into argumentative mode with Jay.
Dating can be a messy thing (it can also be surprisingly clean) but the testimony you're going to get from most of us is that God always uses it, good and bad, to teach you immensely about yourself—and more importantly, his grace. Fear not!
This comment took me about three attempts with the hard to read letters, so you should appreciate it.
Thanks for persevering, David. (old folk?!) I didn't come away feeling that you were embittered - perhaps frustrated, correct me if I'm wrong. This shouldn't have been so shocking, but I've been sheltered and optimistic.
In my wiser seconds, I'm not so fearful or fretful - I'm grateful to be a Calvinist and glad that during this time of actively waiting I can be maturing and learning and trusting and such. Other times, I'll be honest, I'm impatient. But honestly, thanks for sharing your thoughts last night and here.
Hey, does anyone know why when I try to use block quotes for one portion of the text, the leading of the rest of the text gets narrower too?
It's because you aren't supposed to use block quotes in a blog. You're supposed to leave it unpunctuated. Capitalizing your I's is bad enough, but when you try to indent correctly, the program has no choice but to punish you severely.
Try typing your whole post, then selecting the text you want to be a quote and hit the quote thing at that point. That usually makes the blogger thing happy. Or you can use html.
Hmm. That is what I did; I can't figure out what's wrong in html. Perhaps I should assume Sarah's right. or that blogger has something personal against me.
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