Sisters

I remember watching an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S., in early high school, where Joey was very passionately explaining to "the girls" that no guy pursues a relationship with a girl without wanting sex or hoping for sex one day in the future. He explained that even his relationship to them was initiated on the hope that he could have sex. Turns out they all became very close friends. While F.r.i.e.n.d.s. was not a show that anybody should base standard relationships on, it was certainly the last place to look for sound philosophy. However this statement stands true for many guys out there today.

This thought that men can only invest in women for physical pleasure or advanced prestige among their peers has even bled into the church structure. We call it dating. It looks a little different in the church than it does out in the secular world, but not by much. We, as the church, have historically drawn the line at "making-out". Anything past that is undeniable sin. Some liberal groups would say that if you can make-out without lusting in your heart your doing just fine. The problem is that Christians have defined what God calls dating without ever using the Bible. When you look up in the concordance for the word, "dating"....you always close the book with disappointment as it never has advice on the issue. The Bible simply does not have advice on relationships before marriage.

I'm not a fan of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye", as it was written by a guy who was given the gift of marriage pretty early in his life. I'm glad it worked for him, but it is not a universal "formula" that cures the sickness of loneliness. It has some great truths in the book, but cannot be taken as The Way to Get a Wife.

God and I have a pretty good relationship. Some days He satisfies all my loneliness problems without a fight and other days my emotions war against my faith. The battle for "present contentment" in someone who is called to marry is a hard battle. Many of the battle scars and unattended wounds will carry into the future marriage and quite possibly scar some people on the way. The way the church has taught dating thus far has been vague and lax.

I say all that in order to wonder "out loud"....what is dating anyway? The world says it's sparks and fireworks. It's trying to find the magic kiss that awakens the sleeping beauty and turns the ugly frog into a valiant prince. It's the search for the one person who brings perpetual bliss and unyielding passion. It's the voyage to the utopia of relationships. The Church has historically agreed....at least they have never argued against it. The world and the Church have disagreed on how to obtain those things within a relationship, but have never disagreed that total happiness is what it is all about.

The Apostle Paul calls marriage "The Great Mystery". We find that the Bible outlines marriage as a paradox of selfless service. The husband is to submit his life to serving his wife and she is to submit her life to serving her husband. Marriage is quite the dichotomy when adjacent to Dating. Dating has been all about finding my needs...and hoping that my needs being filled work well with what I have to offer her.

What if Joey was not correct in his assumption. What if men could in fact treat women as a sister rather than a brother. My good friend Michael Luna and I were brainstorming on this thing called dating. He eventually tossed his palms into the air and said, "I just don't know! I guess you should just learn how to love them as sisters. Learn how to serve them in that way first." In his desperation of giving up, he may have hit a key point!

What if we treated women as sisters? They might take it wrong at first...because most men take Joey's philosophy. What if we learned how to serve them without the intention of anything more than a great friendship? What if we actually practiced for marriage by serving, rather than consuming? I'm not pretending that this is the Universal Formula....there are plenty of guys who could take this idea and really mess it up. This has the potential to destroy a girl's ability to trust in men. The only way to do this and it benefit everyone is to have an extremely strict accountability. Maybe this is one reason God designed us for community.

This is the longest post in the world....so I'm going to stop here and pick it back up later in life. :)

"God, help me understand how to serve my sisters in ways that honor them rather than objectify them. Do I fear You enough to understand You when You speak? Help me Father...I am completely lost in how to approach this."