LIFEWORD: Letters to My Children: When to Date (Part 1)

By Joyce Parker

To My Children:

      You are entering the age where you are wondering if it’s okay for you to start dating. Many parents will not have this conversation with their kids; they will just assume it is right for their child to start dating when their child becomes interested in the opposite sex. That could be as early as 9 or 10 years old (although I’ve seen children acting as “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” at an even younger age — scary, I know!). The Bible, however, paints a different picture. In fact, the Bible adjures us in the Song of Solomon to “not awaken love until it pleases” or until the time is right. So, when is it the right time?

      To figure this out, we have to ask some questions. First: Are you at a point in life where you could feasibly get married soon? Why do I say married? Weren’t we just talking about dating?

      The Bible gives four categories of major relationships:

         • Marital Relationships — A marriage between a man and a woman;

         • Familial Relationships — Relationships within a family, like a parent and child or uncle and nephew;

         • Friendships; and

         • Authoritative Relationships — Relationships such as a boss and their employee or governing authorities like mayors and police officers.

      There are no notions of dating relationships in the Bible — casually hanging out unsupervised and sharing physical affection without a legally binding commitment to one another. That type of relationship is a perversion of one of the biblical relationships, taking them outside of their God-given boundaries — either of friendship by taking it too far or of marriage by not moving the emotional and physical affections into the committed, safe haven of marriage. God would simply call both of these perversions sexual immorality. It is simply playing pretend — doing the activities and reaping some of the benefits of a married couple but forsaking the responsibilities and vows that come with marriage — while living in sin.

      The apostle Paul says you are either single (and live a life dedicated to serving the Lord) or married. There is no gray area in between. Now, obviously, our social customs are not the same as those of the first century — our idea of engagement is about as close as we get to their idea of betrothal. Still, engagement in our day is not legally binding, requiring a divorce to annul it.

      So how should you get to know someone to see if you should marry them if it is not by dating? What I think flows logically from the types of relationships in the Bible is something I will call friendship with purposeful intent. That means being friends with someone with the expressed intent of finding out if this person should be your future spouse. Some people might call this courtship, but that word has a lot of negative baggage. However, the wording is not as important as the biblical picture.

      So back to the first question: Are you at a point in life where you could feasibly get married soon? Why do I say soon?

      Paul warns about temptations to sexual immorality. In fact, that’s one of the reasons he gives for people to get married instead of remaining single in I Corinthians 7. The longer the dating or engagement period is prolonged, the higher the temptation to become physically intimate. You are naturally attracted to the person, and rightly so — God made you with the ability to have those feelings, but those feelings are not supposed to be acted on until marriage. Dating for four to five years, even two or three, can become very dangerous when you are trying to resist temptation and maintain sexual purity.

      Think about these things for now. We will investigate the when further in my next letter, dear children.

      I love you. Grow in godliness and your love for God.