1. I Don’t “Get” Dating

For most people it seems pretty simple, as far as I can tell; see person, introduce self, communicate regularly, ask person to spend time one-on-one, repeat step four until mixture is pretty well solidified. Every one of those steps may as well be nuclear metaphysics as far as me getting a clear notion of what they are, entail, and look like is concerned. What is a legitimate, or illegitimate, level of “seeing?” Why are we communicating? What’s being communicated? How long do we communicate the things we should be communicating? How should we be communicating? What should be characterizing this one-on-oneing? What should precede it? What’s too much? What’s too little? All of these, and a myriad of other questions tend to swirl around in my mind when a young woman walks by.

2. I "Get" Dating

Hear me out here. While I may not get the how’s of dating or may not be comfortable with all of my personal motivations and “whys,” I get the goal of it. The goal of dating is for a man and woman to gain the clarity that they need in regards to whether or not they should be married; anything less than dating with marriage as its goal is jet-skiing feet from the cliffs. It may feel safe because we’re good at it, because it feels so satisfying, but eventually the wrong wave will knock us against the rocks and leave us reeling and hurt in distinct and almost irrevocable ways. It’s actually because I understand dating’s goal that I don’t date. I may want it desperately; I may have put my heart out on the water to see if I could just, sort-of putter around, close to the cliffs, only to get as cut up as if I were flipping around at 90 mph. But that’s taught me something. Dating is an incredibly wonderful and blissful experience, enriching and enjoyable all at the same time. But when undertaken without the true safe place for human intimacy in view and as the goal, it’s an exercise in banality at worst and trying to squeeze water from rocks at best.

3. I Don't "Get" Leadership

As men, we are hard-wired to lead. Never mind what we can and cannot do. Per John Piper’s adept parable, I definitely don’t doubt that if my future wife were a top 25 nationally ranked martial artist, she would have no trouble defending herself. But would she be more or less endeared to me, would her heart flutter more or less if I stepped to a mugger and got flattened or if I stepped behind her and let her deal with it? We can lie to ourselves, we can try to believe the counter-intuitive narrative that is so popular today that it’s all a construct, a figment of our collective consciousness, but what do we really feel? We as boys grew up watching stories not simply of violence that we need to be divested of, but mainly we loved the bravery we saw. Ask any twelve-year old boy who the bravest person they know is and they will usually think first of their grandpas, uncles, and dads who were in combat. It’s not just that they killed people, but that they saved people, if they did. The violence may thrill us, but the bravery inspires and delights us. There’s a reason for this. I believe vehemently that “He made them male and female” and to be human is to be possess a feminine or a masculine humanity. These aren’t to say that one is less; the humanity here is the common denominator. To be a man is to have a deep, as deep as our humanity, to be a provider, to be a protector, and to be a leader. But, how do you lead someone? Good question. I’m not really all that sure, yet. I tend to be impatiently domineering, overbearing, and selfish. If not, I swing to the other end of the pendulum of tip-toeing and people-pleasing, weak spined and solipsistic. This feels like schizophrenia at times, and it may very well be something akin to that at a spiritual level. All that, mind you, has come only in the context of high school volunteers and peer groups. Compare that to the bearing-it-all relationship that is marriage, the exposure of all your flaws and failures and foibles, and then still being responsible for directing and protecting the spiritual growth, emotional health, and intellectual enrichment of an equally complex person on this perplexing adventure called life.

4. I Don't "Get" Me

Not only do I not get how exactly to go about doing this thing, while also getting why it exists, I really don’t get myself all that well. This one may seems the most non-sensical. "You don’t 'get yourself,' really?" But would any of us, honestly, feel like we could say we understand why we do everything we do? Would any of us say that, whatever our worldview, we’re always consistent with it? I know I’m not. I know it painfully well. I know a lot of things about the world now, at least compared to what I did when I started dating. I’ve gotten better, I’ve learned, I’ve failed, and I’ve probably forgotten some things. I’ve got a long way to go when it comes to learning about myself better. But, I take hope from the fact that I’m not finding myself The real reason for my beliefs about singleness, dating, and marriage is because we are designed sexually, emotionally, and mentally, and practically to glorify God; whether I’m doing that with my wife, with my abstinence, or with my girlfriend in holiness and purity, that’s really the goal of intimacy. Because, after all, the greatest intimacy you can experience is the one that no woman will ever give me. So, really, learning myself doesn’t start with finding my identity; the goal of the gospel is to indisputably answer that question. Where do I find my morality? Where do I find my maturity? Where do I find my philosophy? Where do I find my views of people? Of money? Of romance? Of food? Of my destiny? Jesus. But while Christ has found me, and despite the fact that he puts all of his perfection onto my life in regards to God’s judgement, I’m still here, and I’ve been here for some time. I still have crusty old layers of sin, falsehood, perversion, misogyny, cowardice, and selfishness that God is rubbing, scraping, and pulling off. So I’ve found myself, in Him and who He is; but I’m exploring myself with Him. I’m walking into the basements and attics of my heart and shining more and more light on what was once hidden in darkness,

5. I Don't Get Money

I mean this literally, (no quotation marks on this one), and I mention this one last because it’s the least important. That being said, it is something that I feels does come into play. If certain people in my life believe in me, and are willing to help my fiance and I, I genuinely feel that God has opened the door for marriage in the season of life I’m in, and I have a reasonable outlook to at least one day providing for a family, then I’m set on this one. Really, if we have to live with a family member, have to rent with someone else, and struggle a little at first, that’s not a bad thing. It’s not wrong, and it’s not what marriage is even about. Marriage isn’t about comfort, compatibility in ultimately trivial matters according to some pseudo-scientific list, or even only about the enjoyment of another person’s deep, shared, and unconditional love for me. Rather, it's true purpose is to be the cooperative adventure of life lived to trumpet and lift high The Christ in the world and to each other, man and woman complementing one another with their unique and inherent strengths and weaknesses. This is the the only truly satisfying and fulfilling end for our romantic endeavors. So it’s not about a social safety net, then, although that is a minor spin off. That being said I’m nowhere even close to that in my life. Not a lot of introspection and soul-searching to be done here. Just flat broke, not done with undergrad yet, no job, and no place of my own. And I concede that financial and material matters are not the primary concern, but they are a concern. It may even be that my future marriage starts out on the financial rocks, with a lot of dependence in the early days on others, but if I want to at least contribute to providing for her, my house, and my children, it can’t stay this way. It wouldn’t just be struggle if I were to get married at this point in my life; it would be starvation.

So pardon me if I say no thank you to the appetizer before I even have a plate to put it on, and perhaps we should all take a look at what we're eating off of as we date and pursue marriage.