Why the Church has a Dating Crisis

What can be more American than dating? Boy likes girl. Girl flirts with boy. Boy gets the nerve to ask out girl. Girl says yes. Boy wants to kiss the girl. Girl wants it to be like a fairytale. Remember, it is first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes their spawn in a baby carriage. And of course, they will live happily ever after. We laugh at this story, but I think deep down we believe it. But I’m not sure if the Church should be believing this story.

What kind of stories does the Church believe in? What do we believe about people? I think we enter a danger zone when we act as if the destiny of Church members is to get married. I am not saying that marriage is not good. Surely it is good! Jesus may have been single, but he retained the rigor of marital fidelity. Paul too was single and he promoted singleness first and foremost while also building up marriage. And clearly, Genesis tells us that leaving and cleaving with a spouse is good. But I’m not sure if getting married, having 2.3 kids, a well-paying job and a house in the suburbs is one of the promises that God gives to us.

God gives us many promises. I, the Lord your God, will never leave you and will never forsake you. I will remove your sin as far as the east is from the west. I will give you eternal life. I will send you the Holy Spirit. I will make you, as a member of my Church, my bride. These promises are good. These promises are eternal. But the promise that is made in marriage is to death do us part. We will always have God, therefore our primary relationship is the one we have with God. And although our faith is not contingent on our keeping of God’s commands, the law, but Jesus summarized the commandments as loving God and loving neighbor. These two things we can do without being married. So this is the goal, not marriage, though marriage may be one aspect of living out the Great Commandment.

Instead of asking what marriage is, I think we have to start the conversation with what we believe about God and what we believe about humanity. Perhaps a good place to start is to insert a statement of faith, the most broadly accepted among Christians being the Apostle’s Creed. This is a good starting point for understanding what we as the Church believe about God. As far as humanity goes, we find that we are messy. We are made in the image of God, We are sinners, We are Saints and are becoming Saints. We are living in the in-between of Jesus coming to save us and the Kingdom which is coming on earth and already is in heaven. This in-between stuff is just messy.

I’ve made the claim that the Church has a dating crisis, and here is why. I would suggest that we don’t love God or our neighbors very well in the ways in which we date. Too often we give baggage to one another in ways that does not build up the Church. Forgiveness, redemption and transformation builds up the Church, but too often I think that we say that those words are too “heavy” for the casualness of our culture’s dating habits.

Here is one real-life scenario:

By the time Elinor entered the evangelical dating culture, she had waited to date, assuming that Christian dating meant that one had eyes on marriage and taking things slow. So she dated Isaac. Isaac had already dated Melody. When she first got to school, she had a crush on Evan who at the time was dating Melody. Melody eventually married Frank who was a Senior member of their college fellowship. Frank had dated Mary, another Senior, two times. Mary was best friends with Scott, who tried to date Elinor once things didn’t work out with Isaac. Scott was also friends with Frank and Evan. Scott made Elinor think he wanted to marry her, but snuck away and married Heather. Scott and Heather eventually showed up to be small group leaders at a Conference, where Mary was in charge of setting up small groups. Out of the awkwardness, Elinor ended up hanging out with Celia, Scott’s ex-girlfriend, who she had met at the Conference the year before when she still thought he wanted to marry her. Elinor and Celia never knew or spoke about their Scott connection. Meanwhile at the same conference, Elinor’s friend Anne was dating Ken, who she at one point in time also had a crush on. Ken broke up with Anne the night before Elinor and Anne headed on a mission trip that included Isaac, who still had not really resolved things with Elinor. Meanwhile, Mary started dating her eventual husband Matthew, who was best friends and co-workers with Michael. Elinor had had a crush on Michael since the year before, so she thought about asking Anne to hook her up with Michael as Anne’s job transfer made her Michael’s co-worker. A few months later, Michael and Anne start dating and yes, eventually married. And to make it all that much more bizarre, they were all part of the same Christian fellowship group.

Such a scenario looks more like a who-dunnit puzzle than the Church. Although there are safeguards about physical boundaries in dating in that subculture, dating creates a trainwreck for those relationships. And it seems that relationships, how we treat our neighbors, is what is important to God. I think it is more than just “not having sex.” It is about loving our neighbors. I’m not sure how to quell the relational awkwardness that American-style dating can have for the Church, but I think it is definitely worth thinking about the effect it has on the Church and how it narrates what we believe.