Main Point #4: “How-to-Date” that Relies on Jesus Christ’s Life and Death (Colossians 2.19-20)
Okay, so a lot of this sermon has deconstructed how most people date- how I (for instance) tended to swear-off dating, then go to the Lake Campus late-at-night and talk about beauty, listen to music, and tell family secrets (oh, but we were “just friends”…).
Or how I dated at Davidson (life or death fights over how I wasn’t her priority on a Saturday, or how she- not Tere (my current wife)!- needed more emotionally from me than I was willing to give during finals period. The take-away is that the Bible has no hard-and-fast categories or behaviors in dating, but we smuggle dating into friendship or marriage categories of relationship and act out of those.
So, how do I give you some how-to dating thoughts without it turning into more human regulations (like Colossians 2.20-23)? Let me give you just 3 thoughts derived from my observation of 3 modern college dating cultures, a lot of other people’s thoughts, and the study of the Bible on the topic of what love looks like…
Thought 1: How you start to date someone matters
Often, people skip the friendship relationship stage and go from acquaintance
to dating-like-their-engaged/married (you know, the DTR on the 2nd meeting…). That is, we start with attraction (eros) go straight to romance (storge) and then- only then!-investigate friendship (philos) after we have promised a commitment we can’t back-up (something like marriage and agape love). Shows like “The Bachelor” and apps like “Tinder” are just dating caricatures grounded in the truth of this typical progression.
Instead, what if we majored in friendship, and minored in sexual attraction and romance? Start with friendship (philos) then move to romance (storge), then eventually to engagement/marriage (agape) and after that sexual attraction (eros). Of course, please don’t stay in friendship forever; we need a place for making things formal before the DTR. I’d love to see more casual dating on this campus: you know, dating as a verb again (with no pressure & no obligations for more dates). This means more asking and more saying “yes” to dates (it’s not as hard if it doesn’t mean so much…like, you know, pseudo-marriage). But this also means more respectful follow-up: if your friendship is becoming more, you need to try and name that reality- with honesty and specificity about your intentions and hopes. And this is where you’ll need to rest in Jesus’ never rejecting, never letting-go love for your (and for my) awkward soul. This risky love for you enables you to love him or her enough to risk the awkwardness or potential rejection.
This leads me to Thought 2: we need to date with frequent, honest communication and with a “comprehensive attraction”. How you continue to date someone also matters. It is okay for your romantic relationship to have progress: to go from friendship to fun, from non-committal dating to dating with some romantic interest, to dating with definite romantic interest, to dating with exclusive romantic interest, to engagement. I argued two weeks ago that this movement towards union (oneness) is innate; and it goes back to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 and looks like a rollercoaster (the momentum that pulls us up-and-over the 1st hill of a rollercoaster.
But while you both will feel this increasing seriousness, it needs to be communicated frequently and honestly. Why? because what dating is is ambiguous and prone to under-promising friendship and over-promising marriage! And you need frequent, honest talk, because two people don’t always feel the same growing attraction at the same time and to the same degree. Therefore, it’s important to be able to talk about and learn to work through some disappointment; and not just the physical or the emotional, but also the social, mental, and spiritual aspects of your relationship? Instead of spr
