Until relatively recently, I've had little to no interest in politics. But now that the two men in my life make it a regular topic of conversation at the dinner table (and pretty much anywhere there's a supply of oxygen that makes breathing and talking possible), I don't have much choice. And these are interesting, albeit frustrating, political times. It's easy to become cynical and discouraged, to wonder if there's anyone in Washington--in government anywhere--who believes in principle, who loves America, who really cares about doing what's best for our country and its people.
And that's why I bought Jonathan Peggy Noonan's biography of Ronald Reagan, When Character Was King, for his birthday last November. I wanted him to know that there have been presidents who stand for something, who have accomplished great things, who have earned the nation's and world's respect, who understand what it means to serve their country rather than use the office of president as a platform for demanding their next multimillion-dollar book deal.
I didn't know much about Ronald Reagan. He was actually the first president I voted for back in 1984. (And lest you're doing the math to try to figure out my age, I could have voted for him in 1980 but was a freshman in college, away from home and not interested enough to get an absentee ballot.) I'm not sure why I voted for him; I really didn't know much about him except that he was a Republican, and that's the candidate Christian, small-town Ohio girls vote for. I probably appreciated his anti-abortion stance at that point. At any rate, he won my vote. And in hindsight, I'm glad he did.
A couple of years ago, a friend lent us a documentary about Ronald Reagan. I hadn't realized what an amazing couple of terms he had served until I saw the documentary. Here was a politician who took a stand and wouldn't be swayed from it, who loved his country, who was dignified yet humble, who actually made this country a better place to live, who recognized evil in the world and wasn't afraid to call it that and fight it.
And so I took a big risk when I chose Noonan's biography for our book group to read. While I was voting for Reagan, the other members of my book group were playing Barbies and learning cursive writing. They had no awareness of hostages in Iran, Mr. Gorbachev (or the other Soviet leaders who preceded him), Reagonomics, or Star Wars missile defense systems.
And yet the book--and Ronald Reagan--was a hit with the book group. Noonan writes with a lovely, flowing, eloquent style that makes you forget that you're reading nonfiction. Her story of Reagan reads like a novel. She begins where his life begins, telling the reader that all presidents come from something. She talks about his alcoholic father and Christian mother, the poverty he grew up in, his conscious choice to live optimistically rather than cynically, the Hollywood years and Reagan's first awareness and fight against the evils of communism.
Noonan, who was a speechwriter for Reagan, is passionate about her subject, and her admiration for this great leader shows as she describes the important events of his presidency. But the thing she wants you to know the most about her former boss is that he was a man of character: he was honest, humble, a man of integrity who kept his promises and served his nation well.
Sadly, there don't seem to be many Ronald Reagans in government today, although candidates in both parties have tried to present themselves as being in his tradition--a tribute to him that he was respected by members of both parties. It's an unfortunate reality that today, presidents aspire to be celebrities unlike in Reagan's time, when a celebrity became a president. One of the interesting points that Noonan makes about Reagan, and true conservatives, is that it's an uncomfortable thing for a conservative to seek power, because in gaining it, he or she will then work to decrease the power of the government. What a striking contrast Reagan makes to the power hungry, self-important, camera-seeking crowd that wants goverment control of every aspect of our lives.
I highly recommend this book, one of the best biographies I have read. It will inspire you to know that America has benefitted from such a great president, but it will sadden you as consider the state of Washington politics today.
3/17/10
3/8/10
Nowhere
About a month ago, our church's youth group came over to hang out in our basement for games and fun. Our basement is a large area with lots of room, and we had set up tables for games and snacks. Jonathan had borrowed his grandparents' Wii for the evening, and we have a separate room with a ping-pong table. There were about twenty people (including the leaders), and there was no shortage of activities. So I found it a curious thing that every time I looked at one of the girls, she was pulling out her cell phone--obviously texting someone who wasn't there.
I couldn't help but feel a little bit bad for this girl. With everything that we had to offer here that evening, it wasn't enough. Not satisfied to be here in this moment, enjoying the friends and activities that were here, she kept looking for something or someone else outside, something more.
She's not unlike many other teens and even adults out there who try to escape the here and now. Not satisfied just to be in their cars driving someplace, many drivers must talk on their phone at the same time. Not content just to be shopping, shoppers must be conversing with others on their phones at the same time that they're checking out the clothing racks. The need for constant entertainment has become the school's nightmare, as students leave the now of their classrooms to text their friends--who may be sitting somewhere else in the same classroom.
Henry and I were at a local Indian restaurant Friday night, and we noticed two large flat-screen TVs on the wall. They seemed out of place with the Indian decor. Henry observed, "It used to be that eating out was the entertainment. Now there needs to be entertainment at the place of entertainment."
And that led to his other insightful observation of the weekend, which brings me back to the girl who was here with the youth group and the demand for more and more entertainment. For this young lady, to be here and to enjoy the companionship of her friends and the activities we offered was not enough. Through her texting, she was attempting to be someplace else, with someone else. She wasn't really here, and she wasn't really with her friend. Really, she was nowhere, with no one. She wasn't with the kids here, and she wasn't with her friend.
While I appreciate some of the conveniences that modern technologies have brought to our lives (I'm typing this on my laptop in my comfy chair), it is a little disconcerting to see where some of this is leading us. Clearly many are controlled by the technology rather than controlling it. They are its slaves. And it's never satisfying to be a slave. Slaves desire the freedom to be where they want to be, to be with the people of their choice. And slaves to technology demonstrate this restlessness, this dissatisfaction. The irony is, their attempts to break free of the here and now lead them nowhere, to no one.
Hopefully as this Facebooking, iTouching generation matures, it will break free of the slavery of technology and put it in its proper place. Technology is a good and useful thing, a blessing of God that can make our lives easier and more efficient. As our taskmaster, though, it robs us of our ability to find contentment in the here and now.
I couldn't help but feel a little bit bad for this girl. With everything that we had to offer here that evening, it wasn't enough. Not satisfied to be here in this moment, enjoying the friends and activities that were here, she kept looking for something or someone else outside, something more.
She's not unlike many other teens and even adults out there who try to escape the here and now. Not satisfied just to be in their cars driving someplace, many drivers must talk on their phone at the same time. Not content just to be shopping, shoppers must be conversing with others on their phones at the same time that they're checking out the clothing racks. The need for constant entertainment has become the school's nightmare, as students leave the now of their classrooms to text their friends--who may be sitting somewhere else in the same classroom.
Henry and I were at a local Indian restaurant Friday night, and we noticed two large flat-screen TVs on the wall. They seemed out of place with the Indian decor. Henry observed, "It used to be that eating out was the entertainment. Now there needs to be entertainment at the place of entertainment."
And that led to his other insightful observation of the weekend, which brings me back to the girl who was here with the youth group and the demand for more and more entertainment. For this young lady, to be here and to enjoy the companionship of her friends and the activities we offered was not enough. Through her texting, she was attempting to be someplace else, with someone else. She wasn't really here, and she wasn't really with her friend. Really, she was nowhere, with no one. She wasn't with the kids here, and she wasn't with her friend.
While I appreciate some of the conveniences that modern technologies have brought to our lives (I'm typing this on my laptop in my comfy chair), it is a little disconcerting to see where some of this is leading us. Clearly many are controlled by the technology rather than controlling it. They are its slaves. And it's never satisfying to be a slave. Slaves desire the freedom to be where they want to be, to be with the people of their choice. And slaves to technology demonstrate this restlessness, this dissatisfaction. The irony is, their attempts to break free of the here and now lead them nowhere, to no one.
Hopefully as this Facebooking, iTouching generation matures, it will break free of the slavery of technology and put it in its proper place. Technology is a good and useful thing, a blessing of God that can make our lives easier and more efficient. As our taskmaster, though, it robs us of our ability to find contentment in the here and now.
2/18/10
Earthly Things
Henry and I were invited to a New Year's Eve gathering at the home of some new friends this year, and it was an event that included children and adults. I was sitting with the womenfolk, a couple of whom who tending to their young children while we chatted. P., the little boy whose home we were visiting, had pulled out his prized toys, some kind of little animal figures. He was sharing nicely with one of the other little boys, J., when J. decided he wanted to play with P.'s very favorite. Of course a tug of war commenced, and finally, in exasperation, P.'s mom said, "P., it's only an earthly thing."
I would have loved it if P. had responded, "You're right, Mom. Thanks for reminding me that this little horse thing will soon be corrupted by moths and rust. I'm going to build up treasures in heaven, where thieves don't break in and steal." And even though that wasn't P.'s response and he didn't seem to be overly inspired by his reminder that his toy was only an earthly thing, I found myself wishing that I had thought of that admonition when my own children were small and were tussling over some "earthly thing." I admire a parent who will get right to the heart of the problem, and maybe P. doesn't understand right now the unimportance of earthly things, but someday his mother's reminder will resonate in his memory, and he'll be saved from some financially bad decision or he'll recover more quickly from some material loss . . . which brings me to my own grappling with the concept that something is only an "earthly thing."
The earthly thing that I'm struggling to give up is a little more substantive than a small plastic pony, but the grip it has had on me is every bit as tight as the grip the little pink pony had on P. My struggle began last November. After a little over a year of marriage, we had finally gotten my pre-marriage house cleaned out and fixed up to the point where it was ready to go on the market. It had been a real albatross around Henry's neck, especially since he had been paying the mortgage, utility bills, and insurance for a place that we weren't using--and he had even physically worked hard on several occasions to remove some of the remaining debris from the premises so we could sell it. He was ready to let this earthly thing go.
And so was I. I had a picture in my mind of the new owners--a nice young couple who were going to cash in on the tax credit being offered to first-time homeowners. They'd have the time and energy to fix things up a bit in a way I'd never been able to. Maybe they'd even put a garden in the back yard. And probably they'd turn Jonathan's bedroom into a nursery when that first little one came along.
So we put the house on the market about midweek, and amazingly, before the weekend was over--in this horrible economic mess that is Michigan--five couples went through. By Monday, we had an offer. But it was an appallingly low offer. And I was still reeling from having to set the selling price at over ten thousand dollars less than what I originally paid for the house back in 1998. Henry just wanted to be rid of this earthly thing, but I stood my ground and said I was basically insulted by the offer, and I just knew someone else would come along. It was, after all, a cute house--and there was that tax credit for first-time home buyers.
We countered halfway. At some point, it occurred to me that the people who had made the offer had only gone through the house once. I thought that was a little odd, but who knew what was going on. Maybe it was such a great little house that they were afraid of missing out. They accepted the offer, had already been approved for a mortgage, and were ready to close within a couple of weeks. And they wanted only the furnace inspected. Strange--but maybe that's all they could afford. So far so good.
Somewhere along the line, on some paperwork, we had read the names of the buyers. The names were very Eastern European sounding, and while that wasn't quite the vision of the buyers I had, I had a great new backstory. These people were probably immigrants from Bosnia. They had struggled mightily--back in Bosnia and here in America. But their years of hard work had finally paid off, and now they were going to be able to move out of the overcrowded apartment they were living in and purchase their own home. The American dream. I could hear Neil Diamond singing, "They're coming to America" as I saw the new owners moving in.
So we showed up at the closing, and I was still less than thrilled with the price we had accepted. When we got there, we found out that the buyers would be closing at another title company. We wouldn't get to meet them and see how nice they were and hear about their plans to finish off the basement. I was less than thrilled, and our realtor's rep picked up on that. She said, "Are you missing your house?"
I truly was not. The house Henry and I now have is spacious, beautiful, in a wonderful neighborhood with a park and sidewalks--more than I ever hoped of having. I hadn't missed that little single-parent-with-two-kids-home for a minute. I responded, "I'm just disappointed about the price we're getting. And I had hoped we'd at least get to meet the buyers."
"Oh, they're nice people," she said. "And they already have renters lined up to move in right away."
Renters? In my cute little house? The house I had stepped out on my own to buy--a single mom with two kids? The house we had just dropped a lot of money on, having it painted and putting new flooring in the bathrooms? The house that I had paids to have professionally landscaped after we moved in in 1998?
And so I try to remind myself to be grateful. So many people who are trying to sell their homes have to wait for many months--even years--before they finally get buyers. We didn't even have to wait a week.
And yet the horror stories from those I know who have owned rental properties continue to haunt me: walls with holes in them, stained carpets, strange smells, rusted appliances on the front porch, overgrown yards that haven't seen a mower in . . . too long. And then the poor neighbors--the value of their properties probably has been drug down because my house is owned by a slum lord. They're probably putting up with loud parties and empty beer cans and cigarette wrappers that somehow make their way over to their yards.
Andwhenever I think about this, I get kind of crazy and mad. A nice young schoolteacher bought Henry's house. And you know it's cuter now than it ever has been. And renters live in mine.
And then I think about P.'s mom, and I tell myself, "It's only an earthly thing."
But it was a huge step for me. And a courageous one. I was a single mom, and I bought that house all by myself.
It's only an earthly thing.
We have some great memories in that house--birthdays, Christmases, fun in the backyard . . .
It's only an earthly thing.
It looked so nice when we finally had it ready to sell. Clean, lightcolored walls, new flooring in the bathrooms, a new light fixture in the dining room.
It's only an earthly thing.
I'm working on it . . .
I would have loved it if P. had responded, "You're right, Mom. Thanks for reminding me that this little horse thing will soon be corrupted by moths and rust. I'm going to build up treasures in heaven, where thieves don't break in and steal." And even though that wasn't P.'s response and he didn't seem to be overly inspired by his reminder that his toy was only an earthly thing, I found myself wishing that I had thought of that admonition when my own children were small and were tussling over some "earthly thing." I admire a parent who will get right to the heart of the problem, and maybe P. doesn't understand right now the unimportance of earthly things, but someday his mother's reminder will resonate in his memory, and he'll be saved from some financially bad decision or he'll recover more quickly from some material loss . . . which brings me to my own grappling with the concept that something is only an "earthly thing."
The earthly thing that I'm struggling to give up is a little more substantive than a small plastic pony, but the grip it has had on me is every bit as tight as the grip the little pink pony had on P. My struggle began last November. After a little over a year of marriage, we had finally gotten my pre-marriage house cleaned out and fixed up to the point where it was ready to go on the market. It had been a real albatross around Henry's neck, especially since he had been paying the mortgage, utility bills, and insurance for a place that we weren't using--and he had even physically worked hard on several occasions to remove some of the remaining debris from the premises so we could sell it. He was ready to let this earthly thing go.
And so was I. I had a picture in my mind of the new owners--a nice young couple who were going to cash in on the tax credit being offered to first-time homeowners. They'd have the time and energy to fix things up a bit in a way I'd never been able to. Maybe they'd even put a garden in the back yard. And probably they'd turn Jonathan's bedroom into a nursery when that first little one came along.
So we put the house on the market about midweek, and amazingly, before the weekend was over--in this horrible economic mess that is Michigan--five couples went through. By Monday, we had an offer. But it was an appallingly low offer. And I was still reeling from having to set the selling price at over ten thousand dollars less than what I originally paid for the house back in 1998. Henry just wanted to be rid of this earthly thing, but I stood my ground and said I was basically insulted by the offer, and I just knew someone else would come along. It was, after all, a cute house--and there was that tax credit for first-time home buyers.
We countered halfway. At some point, it occurred to me that the people who had made the offer had only gone through the house once. I thought that was a little odd, but who knew what was going on. Maybe it was such a great little house that they were afraid of missing out. They accepted the offer, had already been approved for a mortgage, and were ready to close within a couple of weeks. And they wanted only the furnace inspected. Strange--but maybe that's all they could afford. So far so good.
Somewhere along the line, on some paperwork, we had read the names of the buyers. The names were very Eastern European sounding, and while that wasn't quite the vision of the buyers I had, I had a great new backstory. These people were probably immigrants from Bosnia. They had struggled mightily--back in Bosnia and here in America. But their years of hard work had finally paid off, and now they were going to be able to move out of the overcrowded apartment they were living in and purchase their own home. The American dream. I could hear Neil Diamond singing, "They're coming to America" as I saw the new owners moving in.
So we showed up at the closing, and I was still less than thrilled with the price we had accepted. When we got there, we found out that the buyers would be closing at another title company. We wouldn't get to meet them and see how nice they were and hear about their plans to finish off the basement. I was less than thrilled, and our realtor's rep picked up on that. She said, "Are you missing your house?"
I truly was not. The house Henry and I now have is spacious, beautiful, in a wonderful neighborhood with a park and sidewalks--more than I ever hoped of having. I hadn't missed that little single-parent-with-two-kids-home for a minute. I responded, "I'm just disappointed about the price we're getting. And I had hoped we'd at least get to meet the buyers."
"Oh, they're nice people," she said. "And they already have renters lined up to move in right away."
Renters? In my cute little house? The house I had stepped out on my own to buy--a single mom with two kids? The house we had just dropped a lot of money on, having it painted and putting new flooring in the bathrooms? The house that I had paids to have professionally landscaped after we moved in in 1998?
And so I try to remind myself to be grateful. So many people who are trying to sell their homes have to wait for many months--even years--before they finally get buyers. We didn't even have to wait a week.
And yet the horror stories from those I know who have owned rental properties continue to haunt me: walls with holes in them, stained carpets, strange smells, rusted appliances on the front porch, overgrown yards that haven't seen a mower in . . . too long. And then the poor neighbors--the value of their properties probably has been drug down because my house is owned by a slum lord. They're probably putting up with loud parties and empty beer cans and cigarette wrappers that somehow make their way over to their yards.
Andwhenever I think about this, I get kind of crazy and mad. A nice young schoolteacher bought Henry's house. And you know it's cuter now than it ever has been. And renters live in mine.
And then I think about P.'s mom, and I tell myself, "It's only an earthly thing."
But it was a huge step for me. And a courageous one. I was a single mom, and I bought that house all by myself.
It's only an earthly thing.
We have some great memories in that house--birthdays, Christmases, fun in the backyard . . .
It's only an earthly thing.
It looked so nice when we finally had it ready to sell. Clean, lightcolored walls, new flooring in the bathrooms, a new light fixture in the dining room.
It's only an earthly thing.
I'm working on it . . .
2/11/10
Keeping Romance Alive
The people who know us well know that most Friday nights for Henry and me are date night, a feature of our courtship that I insisted must be carried over into our marriage. There isn't anything especially novel or radical about date night, but I think that it was key to our pre-marriage romance, and it certainly is an important element for us now.
When Henry and I were dating, we reserved Friday nights for each other. He would choose a restaurant, come pick me up and bring me flowers, and then we would have a lovely dinner with conversation. After we'd been dating for awhile, we'd go back to my house and have coffee and a special dessert that I picked up at a bakery. That was date night. And date night now looks very similar. He doesn't buy me roses every week (people ask if he still does), but often the roses he buys last more than one week, and he knows how they're looking now when Friday night rolls around. And when we were dating, the bouquets were a nice reminder throughout the week of Henry. Now I have him throughout the week, which is much better than roses.
Anyway, we still go out most weeks (unless something else comes up), and he still suggests the restaurant. (These days I feel a little freer to suggest an alternative, but many times when I arrive at home and he makes his suggestion, it's often a restaurant I was thinking of.) I usually stop at a bakery on the way home from work and get some dessert. After dinner, we come home and have coffee and dessert and watch a movie that we've gotten from Netflix. And that's date night.
It's not date night, per se, that is such a unique idea. What is important is that we've set this evening aside for each other, and it's something we look forward to all week. And it truly keeps romance alive. And so on this Valentine's Day, I'd advise every married couple to adopt some form of date night and make it a regular part of your lives. Date night will look differently from couple to couple based on interests and circumstances. Couples with young children who don't have a lot of extra cash for babysitters and nice restaurants might have to adapt date night to their situation at this season in their lives. Maybe it just means having a glass of wine or a dessert and watching a movie at home after the kids have gone to bed. It may require some creativity and planning, but it will be worth the effort.
Here are some suggestions for date nights from an article in Christianity Today:
1. Take in a local concert or theater production. We've really enjoyed some productions at local community theaters, and they don't charge as much. One of our favorite local theaters where we've seen some great performances is Master Arts.
2. Read a book of short stories aloud to each other. Or anything that interests you as a couple. Read a novel together. The point is that you're sharing time doing something you both enjoy.
3. If you have children, ask them to plan your date! But don't be surprised if you find yourself at Chuck E Cheese.
4. Make it a three-course progressive dinner. Have an appetizer at one restaurant, main course at another, and dessert at another. Would require lots of time and money.
5. Give an encore performance. Do something that you did on a date before you were married that you really enjoyed, or take up an activity that you enjoyed before you were married that you aren't doing now.
6. People watch. It costs nothing. And Henry and I have had some of our best times making up stories about the people we see when we're out.
7. Just go for a drive together. With no destination in mind.
So this year, commit yourself to celebrating Valentine's Day every week rather than once a year on February 14. Valentine's Day won't be nearly as special when it rolls around, but that's because every week will be special.
1/28/10
Jane Gets It
I'm getting off to a bit of a slow start this year with my reading list. It's the end of January, and I just finished my first book last week for my book group: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. It was an interesting read from the perspective that it was Austin's first novel, and reading it was a study in the growth of a great writer. While it wasn't a well-crafted book, the seeds of Austen's greatness were there, and it was intriguing to see how far she'd come in creating fascinating characters by the time she got to Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility.
Perhaps because the characters and the plot weren't that compelling, though, I paid closer attention to the manners and behaviors of the characters in the book, and it made me wish that our own approach to male/female relationships, courtship/dating, and marriage resembled that era's approach more closely.
Several observations that are neither profound or new from Austen's era:
On several occasions in my singleness I talked with my former pastor about the strangeness of the dating scene, and one of his observations was that Scripture doesn't depict men and women in an intermediate, try-each-other-out-for-size phase of a relationship. He observed that Scripture speaks about brothers and sisters in Christ and husbands and wives (and familial relationships, of course), but it doesn't ever protray an in-between category where we enjoy many of the benefits of marriage (and I'm not just talking about sex--but companionship, emotional intimacy, and some levels of physical intimacy) without being married or without any intention of being married.
I've tried to discourage my children from getting involved in dating relationships until they're in a position in life where they're ready to get married, but the frustrating thing is that no one, even in the church, seems to think that way. We teach our young people--sometimes by what we do say and sometimes by our silence--that pairing off with a member of the opposite sex is just a reasonable, normal, and, in fact, fine thing to do as we grow up--kind of like getting a driver's license. And so, despite Henry's and my best advice, our daughter has a boyfriend, and, as freshmen in college, they're several years away from even beginning to think about marriage. But to suggest another way is to be countercultural, old-fashioned, and unrealistic.
But what if we taught our young people the Austen/eighteenth-century approach? What if we taught our sons that they really shouldn't think about a relationship with a young woman until they were prepared to get married--agewise, careerwise, and emotionally? What if we taught them that a girl who isn't their family member is a sister in Christ, and she should be treated with respect and dignity? What if we taught our children what we adults all know is true--that it's nigh unto impossible to maintain sexual purity in a male/female relationship where we've invested our emotions, our time, our bodies to some extent? And for that reason, we should wait to make that kind of investment until we're prepared to get married? What if we encouraged them to be friends with one another until they had achieved a maturity level where they were ready for marriage? What if we taught them that the relationship they should be building during their teen and early adult years is their relationship with Christ--which would help them one day to have a healthier marriage relationship?
And now you may be thinking that all of that is unrealistic, old-fashioned, impractical and would never work. And yet I've had dating relationships the modern way, and I've had one--the best ever--the Jane Austen way. Modern dating led to frustration, disappointment, and hurts. The Austen way led me to the most romantic courtship and marriage I could have ever imagined.
Perhaps because the characters and the plot weren't that compelling, though, I paid closer attention to the manners and behaviors of the characters in the book, and it made me wish that our own approach to male/female relationships, courtship/dating, and marriage resembled that era's approach more closely.
Several observations that are neither profound or new from Austen's era:
- Men didn't consider marriage as an option until they were settled in a career and were confident that they could provide financially for a wife and family. In this novel, the male love interest was in his late twenties and was a minister and Catherine, the female interest, was seventeen.
- If a respectable young man approached a respectable young woman and asked her to dance or otherwise spend time socially with him, that young woman could reasonably assume that he had an interest in marrying her. Not a done deal, mind you. But that was clearly a possibility. Otherwise he wouldn't have approached her. It was all taken very seriously.
- Young men and women who were getting to know one another typically didn't go off by themselves. There was usually a chaperone--a sister, brother, friend--who accompanied them.
- There was a concern for behaving properly and a healthy consideration of what others might think.
On several occasions in my singleness I talked with my former pastor about the strangeness of the dating scene, and one of his observations was that Scripture doesn't depict men and women in an intermediate, try-each-other-out-for-size phase of a relationship. He observed that Scripture speaks about brothers and sisters in Christ and husbands and wives (and familial relationships, of course), but it doesn't ever protray an in-between category where we enjoy many of the benefits of marriage (and I'm not just talking about sex--but companionship, emotional intimacy, and some levels of physical intimacy) without being married or without any intention of being married.
I've tried to discourage my children from getting involved in dating relationships until they're in a position in life where they're ready to get married, but the frustrating thing is that no one, even in the church, seems to think that way. We teach our young people--sometimes by what we do say and sometimes by our silence--that pairing off with a member of the opposite sex is just a reasonable, normal, and, in fact, fine thing to do as we grow up--kind of like getting a driver's license. And so, despite Henry's and my best advice, our daughter has a boyfriend, and, as freshmen in college, they're several years away from even beginning to think about marriage. But to suggest another way is to be countercultural, old-fashioned, and unrealistic.
But what if we taught our young people the Austen/eighteenth-century approach? What if we taught our sons that they really shouldn't think about a relationship with a young woman until they were prepared to get married--agewise, careerwise, and emotionally? What if we taught them that a girl who isn't their family member is a sister in Christ, and she should be treated with respect and dignity? What if we taught our children what we adults all know is true--that it's nigh unto impossible to maintain sexual purity in a male/female relationship where we've invested our emotions, our time, our bodies to some extent? And for that reason, we should wait to make that kind of investment until we're prepared to get married? What if we encouraged them to be friends with one another until they had achieved a maturity level where they were ready for marriage? What if we taught them that the relationship they should be building during their teen and early adult years is their relationship with Christ--which would help them one day to have a healthier marriage relationship?
And now you may be thinking that all of that is unrealistic, old-fashioned, impractical and would never work. And yet I've had dating relationships the modern way, and I've had one--the best ever--the Jane Austen way. Modern dating led to frustration, disappointment, and hurts. The Austen way led me to the most romantic courtship and marriage I could have ever imagined.
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