For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” - Galatians 5:13–14 (ESV)
The practice of finding and selecting a person to marry is as old as humanity itself, going back to Adam and Eve. The first marriage was arranged. Adam and Eve never dated. The first couple’s first meeting was also their marriage ceremony. The title of this article, therefore, is a little ironic. As counter-cultural, and perhaps shocking, as it may be for those of us in the global West, a quick Internet search reveals that many of today’s marriages are arranged.
If we are going to understand how to date well, then we need to begin by understanding our situation. Dating is not the norm. Dating is an exceptional way to find a mate. If we stop taking this fact for granted, then we will be less surprised by the complexities that arise within dating relationships.
The big idea of this article is the following: love for neighbor must remain paramount in dating. Our desire for a mate cannot outweigh our disposition to love our neighbor.
How to Date
How should we go about dating? “Should” is a tricky word, since dating as we understand it is nowhere commanded in the Bible, nor can we say it is modeled. Adam and Eve met and married on the same day. So did Isaac and Rebekah. Samson and Delilah are hardly models. The case of Ruth and Boaz is a study in itself since the woman is more forward than the man. David and Bath-Sheba are obviously not to be followed, nor are Hosea and Gomer intended to be an example. Joseph and Mary are godly and wise, but their situation is hardly the norm. There is no clear example of a couple in the Bible whose relationship mirrors the modern dating relationship.
What do we do, then? How do we honor God in the way that we pursue a mate? We live in an exceptional time in history where children are expected in our context to find their own mate through a process that can only be considered trial and error. It is not perfect, but I do not believe it is hopelessly broken, either.
This article does not focus on the question of whether or not dating is biblically permissible. Instead, I take it for granted that people will date for the foreseeable future. I have no intention of proposing an alternative way forward. However, I am proposing a corrective reminder not to allow dating to rearrange our priorities. In dating, love must be paramount.
I was reminded of this the other day by a conversation with someone in a dating relationship. We were discussing dating and how to do it well, and it did not occur to me until later that, for all the dynamics in dating, there is a simple biblical command that can serve as a guiding principle and safeguard for the whole relationship: love your neighbor as yourself.
It is easy in dating to make love the whole question. Do I love this person? Do I love this person enough to marry him? To marry her? These are valid questions. But in considering marital love, we need to remember that love for neighbor must always be present, regardless of how or whether the relationship ends. The goal ought to be that the person we date be loved at this fundamental level regardless of where the relationship leads.
By keeping the command to love our neighbor as ourselves in mind as we date, every kind of imbalance can be avoided. Put positively, we can avoid all kinds of imbalances by seeking to love our neighbor as ourselves. How so? There are two common dangers I will consider.
Idols and Objects
One common danger in dating is for one person to treat the other as a need rather than a desire. Boyfriends and girlfriends quickly become idols in our hearts. It is not just that we are attracted to someone but often that we come to believe we need this person. A young man will idolize a young woman or vice versa. Oftentimes, each member of the couple will idolize the other. The other is not a person to love so much as an idol to serve. This idolatrous dynamic causes all sorts of imbalances in the relationship that may be felt years down the road should the couple remain together. If you will treat something less than God as your god, then that something less will disappoint you. That is not the fault of the person for being less than God. It is your fault for expecting them to be something that is impossible for them. Rather than treating your date as an idol, treat them as a neighbor made first in the image of the same God and Creator as you are. Treat them with dignity and not as a divinity.
A second common danger in dating is for one to treat the other more as an object than a person. This can take many forms. If the first danger was making your date into an idol, treating them as more than they are, then this danger is about making your date into an object, treating them as something less than they are. When we idolize someone, we do everything we can to serve them and are disappointed when they turn out to be less than worthy of our worship. When we objectify someone, we do not serve them but expect them to serve us. We may date not with an intent to love the other as ourselves but with the desire that the other will gratify our sinful sexual desires. Or, if the gratification of sexual desire is not in view, we may treat the other as though they should fulfill some other need or desire to quell our loneliness, anxiety, or insecurity. This objectification may take any number of forms. In any case, the problem is that treating someone we date in this way reduces them to the function they serve for us rather than a person with intrinsic value apart from anything they might do for us.
Oftentimes, a person knows when they are being objectified and, when they accept it and continue dating, it is in part because they are perpetrating a subtler kind of objectification or idolatry of the other. People seem to intuit these things at times and learn to play the same game. As long as it works, things are fine. As long as the other’s objectification of one does not conflict with their idolatry of them, things are fine. But when the two find themselves in contradiction, conflict of some sort is the inevitable result. It is at that point that one may tell the other that they have changed, or one or the other may conclude that they are incompatible, or one may say that the fire has gone and they no longer love the person. The root causes are often more patently sinful.
People do not fall into and out of love. Love is not an accident but a choice. And the love that many who claim to be in it is at bottom a desire for the other that they may or may not understand and which may or may not be good. There may be objectification or idolatry in it. That kind of love is fundamentally opposed to the love of our neighbor as ourselves because the kind of love that we can fall into is the kind of love we can also fall out of, and for which we are therefore not morally responsible.
But God calls us to a better way. In Christ Jesus, as those who have been redeemed through a love that was not an accident but a choice, we are called to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called (Eph. 4:1). This command applies to every aspect of life, and therefore also to dating. If we will walk in a manner worthy in our dating, then we must reckon with the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we would give this command the priority and attention it deserves from us in dating, then many of the common conflicts and conundrums in which couples find themselves would be avoided.
Conclusion
Dating is no easy feat. It is fraught with difficulties. But there must be some way for people to discover whom they would choose to marry. Dating may not be the most common way historically or in the present, but it may be done well, or at least much better, than it often is. Christians should commit to loving their date as a neighbor first while they discern whether they are willing to love this particular neighbor as husband or wife. If they marry, then they need only continue on the same trajectory that the relationship has taken from the beginning. If they decide not to marry, there may be fear, heartache, or loneliness, but there need not be bitterness, resentment, or cause to repent.