September 14, 2016 Show with Dennis Gundersen on “Courtship or Dating: So What’s the Difference?”

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet

Earth listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 14th day of September 2016.

I'm delighted to have back on the program Dennis Gunderson, who is a retired pastor.

He's retired from the pastoral ministry anyway, but he continues on in ministry, not only with speaking engagements and writing, but also through his

Grace and Truth Books ministry, and we'll be hearing more about that in a minute. Today we are going to be talking about a very controversial issue, one that all single people should take very seriously, especially if they intend to be married one day, and also obviously all parents should take this seriously if they have children in the home because these children will obviously reach an age when they will eventually, most of them, want to pursue some kind of a romantic relationship, and this will be of great value to parents as they seek to equip their children on making proper decisions in the area of courtship or dating.

And today we are going to find out, so what's the difference? And that's actually the title of a book that Dennis wrote,

Courtship or Dating? So What's the Difference? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dennis Gunderson.

Yes, thanks for having me back. I really enjoyed the first occasion when we talked about my other book

I think last month, and enjoy the show. I appreciate it, Dennis. And before we even get into the book at hand, tell us something about Grace and Truth Books, this publishing ministry that you founded a number of years ago.

Yes, well about 23 years ago now, I suppose, my wife and I decided to make available to really the homeschooling community some of the reformed books for children and for parents that we could see they were not really aware of.

We had been homeschooling our children for a number of years and saw the resources that were commonly relied upon and many of the books that you and I know from sources like Banner of Truth right there in Carlisle or Soledad Gloria or other such publishers, we saw there was a marked absence of those in those communities and those circles, and so we brought them in.

And the company just kind of expanded from there. We've grown into a wider theological book source for believers really everywhere, regardless of homeschooling or anything else.

And why don't you share the website of that book with our listeners?

Yes, sure thing. It's www .graceandtruthbooks .com and the and is spelled out.

And I always tell folks be sure to have the books at the end. Some say after they hear me quote it, they say Grace and Truth, and I don't recall what they find.

Maybe, I think it used to be a Baptist Church in Houston that they'd find, and it may be a different site now, but we are www .graceandtruthbooks

.com. Great. And tell us about some of the other books that you've written.

The last time that you were on the program we had a discussion on your book,

Your Child's Profession of Faith, and it's an interesting phenomenon that even though Baptists were built or supposed to be built on the foundation that baptism is an ordinance of the church that is exclusively to be provided for believers who are capable of demonstrating repentance and a credible profession of faith.

So therefore, that is one of the reasons they historically have rejected the practice of infant baptism practiced by our brothers in Christ who are

Reformed in other denominations such as the Presbyterians and some of the Dutch Reformed groups and some of the

Reformed Anglican groups and so on. But it is interesting that the problem would arise even amongst

Baptists that people were rushing their children at too young of an age to receive this ordinance when they really didn't have any idea what they were doing.

Isn't that the real motivation behind, or at least one of the motivations behind your book? Yes, it really is one of the key reasons that drove me to first preach on the subject years ago and then to gradually work that into a booklet that grew into a book.

You know, even recently I think it was something by Russell Moore, I believe he was the author, since I was on the program talking about your child's profession of faith.

Sometime in the last month since then, I read an article online that showed that the largest, fastest -growing group numerically in baptisms in the

Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, is those five and under of age. That was pretty remarkable.

And then the author was decrying that, you know, do we really have a basis anymore to say that we believe in paedo -baptism?

Are we just effectively baptizing anybody that's around that simply expresses that they want to be?

So he made a good case for that. He said we're losing our basis for having any critique of those who say that your paedo -baptism tends to populate the church with non -believers.

Well, you can practice your alleged believers baptism in a way that does much the same thing, unfortunately.

Well, it's ironic that in essence those Baptists who do that, who baptize very tiny children just because they may, you know, sing

Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so, they are really in essence paedo -baptists because the term paedo really means child.

It doesn't even mean infant specifically. That's right. But this is not to disparage our brethren who we agree with on most of our theology.

I'm speaking of the Presbyterians and the different conservative Bible -believing

Dutch Reform groups and of course there are remnant of Reformed Anglicans and other groups that baptize infants and we love those brothers dearly and in fact often have them in the pulpits of our churches to preach on other issues that we agree on, but it is still a serious issue.

In fact our paedo -baptist brethren would say it's a serious issue as well. But this specific book we are talking about today,

Courtship and Dating, So What's the Difference?, what was the driving force for you initially thinking in your mind,

I've got to write a book on this? Probably my main reason at the time was noticing what

I would call the recreational mindset of many in their romantic relationships.

It seemed that quite a few of the people that I observed who were getting married, even in solid

Christian churches, were primarily coming together in their relationships and marrying largely because they enjoyed each other and had a good time together.

And I noticed that a lot of those relationships were not lasting. Sometimes there would be repeated dating relationships that would break up over and over so that someone might go through four, five, six or more pretty intensely serious romantic relationships before ever getting married and then admitting at some point in marriage that that really was not helping him or her to think biblically about their marriage, all that baggage.

And in other cases the recreational mindset just didn't really make them think realistically about what is our purpose in life as heirs together, the grace of life in marriage and how we are to view one another, how to view service to our church, our community, our extended family.

I think the recreational dating mindset has done a lot of damage to how couples proceed maturely into adult life.

Unfortunately, I think it's a way of life, a habit of forming relationships that has frequently resulted in people who really don't grow up until they've been married a few years and start taking life seriously later on.

And it leads to a lot of major bumps along the way that are sometimes pretty catastrophic, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, sometimes lead to divorce, or if not, awfully near to that, and they struggle through.

And I propose that the ways that young people, the format, if you will, in which they see one another before marriage can have a lot to do with how they think about the lasting nature of the relationship afterwards.

Now, let me put you on the spot here. I mean, people do change in their ideology, their theology, their practice over the years.

Were you courting your, what later became your wife before you were married, or were you dating her?

Yes, I was very much of the same mindset. I'd say that we, you know, we pretty much dated. A lot of our times together were just recreational times.

You know, because we were in a very mature church, I'll say we had the advantage not owing to us so much other than, you know, the grace of God working in us to give us a hunger for this.

But the majority of the time that we spent together was in some connection with our church and its meetings, and that was good.

But I'd say we largely, you know, she was 20 when we married, I was 23. We had a pretty recreational mindset ourselves, you know, about life and many of the views

I have now were formed much later. Well, let me, before I even go into your own family and children, let me,

I guess I should have done this initially. If you could give us a definition of courtship as compared to dating, as you have been repeatedly calling it recreational dating.

What is the stark contrast or difference there between courtship and dating? Yeah. And as I give this,

I'll say that, you know, I am very aware that not everyone who uses those terms will think of it in exactly the same way.

What I often say when teaching on this, I've known people who, parents who will say they're going to let their children date, but they put quite a bit of parental supervision and controls over it to where it's, it really resembles something like a courtship more.

I've known some parents who say, hey, my kids are not going to date, they're going to practice the courtship model.

And after they've explained to me what they will allow or not allow, and it really looks more pretty much common to what goes on today.

So people use the terms pretty loosely, but I tend to view them through a historical lens.

Dating is a post roaring twenties phenomenon. It began around the 1920s as a common practice.

That is, it's not to say that it was never going on before then at all, but one of the reasons that the roaring twenties, the roaring, which meant outrageous at the time was the meaning of the word and the usage.

One of the things that was considered an outrageous change in social norms was suddenly young people were saying to their parents, we don't care whether you like him or not, we're going out.

We're going into the city and we're going out and we'll get home when we want to. And that was not generally common prior to that.

Courting was more common. And the distinctive mark that divides the two, for the most part, is the courting relationship said, uh, we're accountable to our parents, uh, in everything in our romantic choices to, uh, follow their guidance, to consult them for wisdom, to ask them to think through the selection of a partner with us and help us pray about those things and give us some insight and guidance from their experience.

And, you know, hopefully in a Christian home from the word of God. And, uh, with a goal that our, our time with someone that we're romantically interested in, the goal is to prepare us for a

God honoring marriage. Uh, dating does not have as its goal preparation for a

God honoring marriage. That's, you know, and again, that's not to say that two people dating today are not trying to honor

God or that they don't want a God honoring marriage. That is, that's frequently is so, but the, really the roots of the dating tradition began with the idea that we just want to have enjoyable times with someone of the opposite sex.

And it doesn't even have to be serious. Uh, we just, we just want to have some pleasing, uh, pleasant times, fun times, if you will, with them.

And this, this may or may not lead towards marriage. That's really not important. Uh, and parental input.

Uh, in most homes, when I've thought on this, I've asked for a raise of hands. I said, how many, how many of you growing up had, uh, nearly zero parental input, uh, from your mom and dad about your choices in this area and who you went with and what you did and so on and where you went.

And almost every hand in the room goes up when I'm asking that to a group of people say that are 40 or over, uh, they will say their parents gave them pretty much nothing.

Just let, cut them loose to be under their own supervision, you know, for those sorts of choices.

Not the only parental input that was usually given was, uh, frequently a curfew.

You know, we, you can go, go where you want, do what you want. Uh, just be in by 11 or be in by midnight.

But other than that, not what we would call guidance, uh, and not preparation towards marriage, which were two very common features of courtship.

Well, uh, obviously there is a huge population of people that the definition of courtship you gave would not include because you have adults of all ages, even going up into the senior citizen age that do not have parents.

So I'm assuming that the definition of courtship would be, uh, pursuing a romantic involvement with someone of the opposite sex, obviously.

Uh, and that would be for a marriage, uh, for marriage as a goal, but obviously you're not certain when you initially begin the court that that's going to be the, the eventual, um, fulfillment of that, that goal.

But, but I'm assuming with a, without the parents there, would you, uh, I guess, uh, substitute that with your elders or church elders?

Yeah, that is an option. It's, it's obviously an area that changes tremendously in its application.

The older someone is, you know, if you take a, a widower or something, well, one thing that changes is, you know, say if, uh, if my wife was to pass away and I'm 64 years old, well,

I'm not, I'm not really accountable to anyone in particular about who

I seek out a romantic relationship with in the future. If I were to say, well, I want to remarry before I pass on to, uh, not in the same way that I would if I was a 16 or 18 year old, you know, very different.

So to some extent, the topic even fades into, you know, a degree of irrelevance for someone, uh, our age.

But, uh, but it would, it, it might be advisable. You know, people ask me at times, well, what about it?

You know, say, say if you're 20 years old and off at college, what are you going to do then? And what we did with our children was

I recommended to them, said, you know, if you want to spend time with someone of the opposite sex that really interests you,

I would ask you to be accountable for that kind of time to someone older that you have come to respect in your church, whether that's an elder or just someone older that's mature in the faith.

Uh, one of my sons, he chose a professor there at the master's college that he struck up a very close friendship with.

And that was actually an excellent relationship. And there that provided for him someone that would hold him to the same kind of standards, uh, as, as we would, but at a distance.

Now, uh, there are, uh, different, uh, circumstances involved in, uh, people's lives with regard to their parents.

Uh, well, first of all, before I even asked that question, uh, when this book came about in your mind, were your children still either younger than dating age or, or, uh, approaching that age where you wanted to stop the, the possibility of dating occurring, uh, where you wanted to guide them more into the approach of courtship or were they already, uh, married out of the house and so on when you, when you developed this concept for the book?

Yeah, they were actually off still at home. And, uh, I think, uh, without an exact recollection of what year it started,

I think that the book formulated when at least some of them were in teenage years.

And so that made it interesting because some of this was taking shape in my mind at the time. And, you know, it was becoming clearer to me what my own convictions were and weren't.

And, uh, obviously they're in this whole area that it's really easily possible to slip over into some legalisms that are hard to give a basis for.

And, uh, one has to watch oneself and make sure you don't end up making, you know, arbitrary rules, ridiculous rules, or even if you have preferences that you parentally, uh, want to apply into the area of making those into mandates for other families, for instance.

It's one thing for dad to say, well, this is what I'm going to expect. Well, then, you know, one of the things a kid can understand is if your parents insist on this or that rule, well, whether that's been decatable from the word or not, if dad says, that's the rule of the house, that's, that's all you need to know.

God said it'll be him, you know? But, uh, uh, nonetheless, it's important to not that that dad not confuse his preference with a required biblical application that everybody's supposed to do.

And I've, I've seen some of that take place. Yeah. Well, uh, what about, uh, a teenage young man or young woman who come to faith, they are born again, but their parents are not.

And their parents are insisting that they marry somebody of the family religion, whatever that may be.

Uh, or you might even have parents who are racists and they forbid your, their children to debate, to date,

I'm sorry, or even to pursue on any kind of a romantic relationship like courtship with somebody of a different race.

I mean, there are all kinds of things that, that would, uh, give a, a young Christian in an, when

I say young, I mean, even somebody, you know, of college years, if you think that there should be some kind of a, of parental guidance in this courtship decision, uh, you may have horrendous counsel from parents or rules.

Yeah, you sure can. And at that point, you know, a young person who has come to faith in Christ is really going to have to pray for discernment for the individual circumstance and possibly get some godly counsel because there'll be times that parents, you know, lost parents could literally counsel you to pursue ungodly behavior.

Uh, I've known Christian youth who were encouraged by their parents to sleep around, you know, to, well, you'll, you'll know better what makes you happy if you have sex a few times.

And so you should do that. You know, we want you to do that. We encourage you. I never thought

I'd live in an era when I hear that. And, uh, to discover that that might've been more typical with father and son, but, but today you even hear about those kinds of things with mother and daughter, which even in my lifetime, uh, was something that you would never have heard when

I was a teenager or very rarely ever heard a mother encouraging her daughter to do something like that.

Yeah. To be honest, Chris, as for religion, you know, say if you had a, if you had Muslim parents who just insisted that their child, well, you're, you're going to marry someone who's

Muslim and that's that. I think there, there comes a point when an adult child, uh, who's become a

Christian is going to have to say, you know, I've, I belong to a different kingdom now. I'm sorry.

And I'm, I'm going to have to separate myself from your laws, your rules. And, and, uh, certainly it's even best at that point to move out of the house and to, uh, be in a different location.

Have I lost the connection here? Oh, no. Why? Can you hear me fine? Okay. All right.

I heard a couple of beeps. It sounded like something hung up. So that's weird. I don't hear these beeps on my end.

So good. Okay. There were just two of them and it was a while ago. So, okay.

Maybe you have a call coming in or something on your end. I mean, but, um, the, uh, one of the things that, um, that, uh, puzzled me about the issue of dating versus courtship is that it would seem to me that if you have a strict model of courtship to follow, uh, where immediately a, uh, a person of the opposite sex is pursued specifically for marriage and for a permanent relationship.

To me, it would seem that the downside of that is that you would have people targeting only those that they were extremely physically attracted to.

Uh, because obviously in the other scenario where there was more casual dating going on, and when

I say casual, I'm not speaking about sexual relationships or anything like that, but recreational, uh, as you were using that term, it would seem to me that a person involved in recreational dating may be going out to carnivals and the movies and to sporting events and all the other kinds of things that, uh, people do when they're involved in a romantic relationship or even just a recreational dating relationship.

They may find out, wow, this woman that I never would have looked at twice or vice versa.

It could be a woman saying this, this guy who I never even would have given a second thought to.

I, I'm really finding myself falling in love with this person. This is a really godly person. This is a, a person with great depth, a person who has, uh, a lot more going for them than I ever would have imagined.

And, you know, whereas I'm assuming that people who are courting people, they're saying, well, this, this woman

I have been seeing on the other side of the church Sunday after Sunday, she is a knockout man.

And I just can't get her out of my head. I'm going to go after her. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't that kind of make sense?

Yeah. Yes. What I found is, uh, typically in the families that try to practice courtship, there has normally been a lot of training towards the orientation of you.

You need to think about a great deal. What, what attributes would make, uh, does this person demonstrate the capacity to be a good husband or good wife?

And they seem to form, you know, some of those opinions in the context of kind of large group observation, uh, more church life or, uh, interaction as families, or they get to know one another and see them in that way.

There's, there's less of what you'd kind of call one -on -one pairing where they, uh, don't determine what they learned about the other person from just one -on -one time, but they pick up on the signals of learning what that other person is all about from a larger group context.

And, uh, you know, maybe, uh, in addition to being a knockout, this looks like she's going to be, she would actually make a great wife, you know, from what

I can see, these other attributes. And so this could be somebody worth pursuing. So.

And we have to go, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you there. What were you saying? Yeah. I remember when my boys were growing up, there were a couple of times that one of them would admit to me, they'd say, you know, uh, this, this or that girl really attracts me.

She just looks great. But, and they would just say, I, I've gotten to know her well enough, but I can't, um, can't possibly imagine being married to her.

It says life would just be miserable, you know, cause she's just a, she's a mess. They decided not to go there even though they were attracted.

And we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dennis Gunderson and our discussion on courtship or dating.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Dennis Gunderson. We've got 90 minutes to go on a discussion on courtship or dating.

So what's the difference? That's also the title of a book that he wrote that you can purchase through graceandtruthbooks .com.

That's graceandtruthbooks .com and the word end is spelled out.

And there's a whole bunch of other things that are definitely things that you should add to your library shelves or your study shelves.

So go to that website as soon as possible. Our email address here for our discussion is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And we invite your questions for our guests.

And you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, but we would prefer having your first name, city, and state, and country.

We have a first question here is from Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, is it true that courtship and dating aren't explicitly taught in the

New Testament, but God has given his principles how to live a pure lifestyle for his glory?

Oh, yes, I'd say that's absolutely correct. You know, obviously the terms courtship or dating aren't found in scripture.

In fact, when you do a search through the scriptures to see how relationships were commenced between partners of the opposite sex, well, you can find about 18 to 20 different ways in which couples got together.

And it's pretty clear from reading them that many of them are not presented at all with the goal of being exemplary or trying to indicate some sort of path to follow for the rest of us.

So what those of us who prefer the courtship method, say, you know, pre -1900s compared to more of the post -1920s dating tradition, what most of us would say is that it appears to us the biblical principles that are important were more commonly followed in that era than they are being followed now in the era in which dating is common.

Well, Tyler, guess what? You are getting absolutely free of charge a copy of Courtship or Dating.

So what's the difference? Compliments of our friends at Grace and Truth Books. And that will be shipped to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who ship out all of our winners' books and Bibles to them at no cost to you or Iron Sharpens Iron.

So we want to thank both Dennis Gunderson and Grace and Truth Books and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for that gift to you.

And the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, again, is cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com.

We have an anonymous listener from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who asks, the young man that I have fallen in love with is a

Reformed Baptist, and I happen to be the daughter of Presbyterian parents.

My parents, although they are very fond of this young man, do take our differences on baptism very seriously, and they, although not forbidding me to pursue this relationship with this young man, have constantly been trying to direct me towards young men in our own church.

What should I do to be obedient to the Scriptures in this situation? I truly do love this young man, and he loves me.

Yeah, that's a very sensitively asked question, and I appreciate the spirit of everything in it, even from what

I can detect, even what she has said about her parents. Obedience to parents is,

I think, it's got to be clear, is only reasonably to be required where parents have insisted that they be obeyed.

And so if parents express a preference but also a permission, there is no obligation to make a change.

And it sounds like, if I hear her correctly, that they would prefer that she marry someone of the

Presbyterian persuasion, but that they would also permit her to see and spend time with and ultimately possibly to marry this

Reformed Baptist young man. As long as that remains the case, I don't see any reason for her not to feel then encouraged that she may pursue that relationship and, you know, honor

God in her relationship to her parents. So I don't hear anything in what she said that said they are requiring, you know, you're a minor under our care and we just don't want you to see him.

That would be a very different matter for them to say we just simply forbid this relationship and you must marry someone more in these circles.

Well, to get a little personal here, uh, you are a

Baptist and a Reformed Baptist. What would you do as a parent if one of your children was falling in love with or wanted to pursue in a courtship a relationship with somebody who is a

Presbyterian or other kind of Paedo -Baptist? Yeah, you know what, to me the really key thing is that if they were making a godly choice, if this was someone that they were seeking out who

I would have to say, you know, this woman would make a great wife, then

I'd be very hard pressed to do anything but encourage the relationship and say this is a good choice.

You know, the Lord has been merciful to you in bringing this person into your life. There are a lot of good reasons to look with favor on this.

Now, of course, you know, one would have to say, just for fun's sake here, you know, I have it a little bit easy from the vantage point that I've got four sons and so an all probability if my son, the

Reformed Baptist, marries the girl who's a Presbyterian, you know, guess where she's probably going to church. Most of the time he's going to be taking the headship and lead and say, well, if you marry me, this is where we're going to be raising our children.

But if I had a daughter, I don't think I would do this any differently. If I had a daughter who was romantically interested in a

Baptist young man, you know, or a Tato Baptist young man, and I knew that, okay, they may end up going to a

Reformed Presbyterian church and baptizing their children. Well, you know, if he's a godly young man,

I think just as I have much fellowship with great joy with Reformed Tato Baptist brethren,

I don't see why I shouldn't be able to retain that joy if my own family goes through a transition into that and some of my own family members.

How serious would the difference have to be in the religion of your children's romantic interests for you to say, no,

I'm sorry, I'm not giving my blessing to this. I mean, like, for instance, we could go a lot farther afield than Tato Baptist, we could say, perhaps the young person that your son or daughter is interested in is an extreme

Pentecostal Armenian church, or perhaps even someone where you would have differences on the gospel itself, a

Roman Catholic, and on and on I could go. Right, right. Yeah, you know, depending on how much further from the gospel the point got, the strength of our opinion would increase proportionally, you know.

I remember at one point insisting that one of my sons just simply not pursue his romantic interest in a

Roman Catholic girl that he knew, and she was an attractive girl, she was a nice girl, she had a lot of very excellent character traits, but I was emphatic that this was a relationship that was not going to happen.

How about if the person, especially if it was a woman, because a woman, according to the scriptures, is supposed to be the submissive partner in the marriage relationship, obviously equal before God, want to make that clear, but submissive to her husband.

If the Catholic young lady who was interested in your son and vice versa was saying,

I'm not fully convinced of the gospel that you proclaim, but I am willing to submit to your son,

I am willing to go to his church, I am willing to sit under his preaching, I'm willing to raise our children according to your faith, would it differ at all with you?

I think that would only be persuasive to me as a basis for leading to marriage if she had manifested that she really became soundly converted.

Obviously, if she was still immature, had some questions, had a lot of growing to do in her understanding of the scriptures, all that is quite acceptable, but I would need to encourage my son to marry her.

I would at least need clear -cut evidence of genuine conversion where she had forsaken the teachings of the

Catholic church and understood that this is the gospel, that is not, and had turned from those idols to serve the living and true

God. And by the way, to the anonymous young lady in Pittsburgh, if you'd like to give me your name and address to mail you a free book, because you have also won a book,

Courtship or Dating, So What's the Difference by Dennis Gunnarsson. If you'd like that, provide for us your full name and mailing address, and of course

I will not announce that on the air, so you don't have to worry about that. But if you'd like a copy of the book, that would be great to hear from you.

When parents come to faith later in life and they already have children that have not been raised in the faith in their home, they already have relationships that they've developed with people of the opposite sex, it becomes a lot more difficult a situation to manage,

I would assume. But I know for a fact from people I even know personally in my life who have become very godly

Christians and active members of their church, but they came to faith at a point where their teenage children and children in their early 20s were already involved with very serious relationships with people that did not share the parents' faith.

So how do you manage a situation like that? Yes, well, there are so many different oddities and peculiarities that can arise, and that is going to be one of the ones that will be the least possible to manage in a godly direction, for instance.

Here's where I'm going with it, I suppose. If the parents have come to faith late in Christ and their children haven't even come to the faith,

I've got a son who is decidedly not a believer. I would not encourage him to seek out or marry a godly

Christian woman, because he would be wrong to do that. He's not a

Christian man, so there really is no basis for me to encourage marriage to a

Christian woman. I have to hope and pray for the best in his case, that he'll find someone of good character, someone that will be faithful to him, someone that would be a decent and reasonable wife.

And I, of course, pray for both of them, that they would come to faith in Christ. But yeah, there's a great deal that changes when you're persuaded that your children are not even believers, for instance.

If you could, give us some guidelines that you want to share with not only people who are of age to be involved in a courtship, or even those who are younger than that, because eventually they most likely will, and to their parents as well, some guidelines on what type of a person they should be pursuing in regard to, obviously, somebody that shares their faith.

And what would be the actual practical ways of approaching this person and getting them involved in this courtship relationship?

Because I can tell you that as an adult man, and perhaps this has a lot to do with being tainted by a modern pluralistic society and all that kind of thing, and we have all, even as Christians, I think, had our consciences seared to some degree or another just because of the culture.

But I could tell you honestly, it would probably creep me out a little bit if a woman approached me and said,

I believe God wants you to be my husband, and I'd like to start pursuing this, without even having ever had any kind of real meaningful interaction with a person prior to that instance.

And I'm assuming a woman in this day and age, of course, might feel equally as creeped out, for lack of a better term, unless this happens to be the person that they were hoping to be in a relationship already.

If they were seeing somebody from afar that they were wildly attracted to or something, that might be a totally different reaction.

But if you could understand what I'm saying, how do you respond with the nuts and bolts of this?

Yeah, yeah. Well, thankfully, I imagine there have been instances where some families have managed it that way or where some parents have encouraged their youth to look at it that way.

I have not met any advocates of courtship myself who have gone about it that way, who have either parentally approached the other parents or where the youth have approached a girl and said,

I'm interested in you with marriage in mind, and so can we start seeing one another. That seemed to become, you know, evident to the two of them more, as I've mentioned in their general interaction and relationships with large bodies of people, spending time with one another, saying, oh, not only the church, but maybe what we would call youth groups or other social functions where they'd get to know one another in that way.

I probably, I kind of, somewhere in there, I lost track of, there was something in the original question that really interested me that I was going to address, but I lost track of the original question.

That's okay. I was basically asking you to give practical nuts and bolts descriptions of how these relationships begin, and I threw in there the notion of how, especially in the 21st century, it could,

I think it would creep out most people if somebody approached them and said, I believe God has put it on my heart to marry you, or to pursue a marriage relationship with you one day.

With that kind of a thing initially being thrust in somebody's face, in our day and age,

I mean, we're not living in a third world country or something where that kind of a thing would be more common, especially with parents arranging marriages, but in the

Western world, and especially here in the United States, perhaps, that seems like a pretty creepy scenario, and forgive me for constantly using that term, but I'm just being honest about how

I would feel, I think. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we could say at least it would feel peculiar.

Or awkward is a good word that comes to mind, I think, about how it would make many feel. So, probably the, you know,

I have to remain pretty imprecise on this because I've seen these things start in so many ways,

I can't even pin down a particular approach, but I would say that the general mark of difference between how a courtship would start as compared to how a dating relationship would start would be, dating generally begins, say if you're the girl,

I'm the guy, I'm interested, well that begins with me saying, hey, do you want to go out? You know, I'd like to take you out somewhere.

The courtship begins not so much with, well, not at all, it does not begin, let's say, with the approach of let's you and I get alone together.

It begins always in larger social contexts where the two become interested in one another because they're interacting in the context of larger groups of people.

So that probably is the most precise answer I could give and I haven't seen any more detail than that to which to speak to it.

So it frequently starts within their church or, since courtship is probably more common among homeschoolers, it begins often in their homeschool co -op or their homeschool organizations, you know, where they see one another at activities and they spend time together there and begin to express to one another, you know, even having what you would call individual separated conversations from the rest of the crowd, but still in the context of they're with everyone, they're not personally alone out on a date somewhere.

Right. So I'm assuming from everything that you're saying, you completely approve of churches or groups of young people in churches getting together in groups where there are young men and young women recreational, enjoying things like sporting events and theatrical plays and certain movies and, you know, going to restaurants.

Absolutely. I think that's a far better context in which to get to know one another than, you know, is the dating option of just you and me solo.

We have a question that is actually interesting to me because it has something to do even with something that happened to me when

I was a young single man, but CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York says,

I know this might sound like a corny question, but in your opinion, is it ever appropriate for a young man or a young lady to invite someone of the opposite sex out with a group to go square dancing?

And I guess there are still places that do that, and the reason why I chuckled when

I saw that is that my very first Christian girlfriend, she didn't wind up becoming my wife, but my very first Christian girlfriend, that's when we started our relationship, she asked me to go square dancing because on Long Island at Jones Beach, they had, during the warmer weather, they had square dances.

And there was even some Christians involved in the band, and I had never been square dancing in my life.

I'm from New York, I didn't even know people were doing that, and I went, and the relationship did develop.

It wasn't God's will to let it go any further after a couple of years. We did get serious, and we're contemplating marriage, but it didn't happen.

But anyway, what is your opinion? There are some fundamentalists, obviously, who don't believe any kind of dancing is appropriate, but square dancing is really kind of a tame version of dancing, really.

But I don't know, maybe you have a different opinion on that. Yeah, it really is. I don't have a very widely developed theology of square dancing.

Although when you first talked about that first Christian girlfriend,

I almost was tempted to say, Chris, how completely scandalous that she would invite you out. Right, exactly.

That is the other question, actually, that's involved in that. Do you think it's appropriate for the woman to be the one who approaches the young man?

Yeah, I'll come to that secondarily. But on the first issue that the fellow has written in about,

I think that sounds to me like a perfectly permissible activity from what I know about square dancing. It seems like a good group environment to spend some quality time together in that would be both entertaining and you'd pick up a little bit.

At least one would think about how this person interacts cooperatively with others and whether they're the kind of person that can be enjoyable in a group of people and work together with others, or if they're kind of bullheaded and selfish and want everything to go their own way.

In environments like that, you can tell something about people. So activity -wise, yeah, it sounds like a thoroughly, for lack of a better word, use a strange old word, you know, wholesome activity.

So I would see nothing to criticize about it. So on the matter of girls inviting guys out, this may be an area where I seem more old -fashioned than one could give a biblical basis for.

But in general, I'm inclined to think that it's a sounder and better reflection of how relationships ought to be if girls are not initiators of occasions with guys, but rather are more responsive.

So you're actually assigning many of these women to die as spinsters in their 80s, never having been involved in a relationship?

Because I can tell you, there's a lot of Christian men who are totally awkward in that whole area.

But anyway. They are. Yeah, they sure are. Some can be. However, I think if a girl is making herself both attractive personally and then just on the level of being a likable person, the likelihood that no one is ever going to be seeking her out seems kind of dim to me.

But I hope I'm not incorrect about that. The girls that I've known who had a good personality and who took care of themselves were definitely sought out by young men.

And CJ, by the way, you're getting a free copy of Courtship and Dating. So what's the difference by our guest

Dennis Gunderson? Compliments of Grace and Truth Books and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

We'll be mailing that out to you. Thank you very much for contributing to the program. We're reaching the top of the hour.

We're going to go to our next station break. And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, please email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. But as I've been repeating, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Dennis Gunderson after these messages. Hi, I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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And now, God willing, we will have them both on tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron. So we hope that you tune in and we hope that you can go to that conference.

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And the lineup of speakers is absolutely tremendous. I've never seen a lineup this long or this impressive.

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Conrad M. Bayway, who is really, I can honestly say, one of the most powerful preachers of the gospel that I've ever heard in my life.

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitors booth. So I hope to see you there. If you could,

Dennis Gunderson, as we continue on in our discussion on courtship or dating, so what's the difference?

If you could, really lay out some of the serious ramifications of either practice.

For instance, give us some real practical, realistic reasons why dating, in your opinion, can be very dangerous.

Sure. Well, I think a lot of the problems with dating, oh wow,

I'm really hearing, I'm hearing myself now in the background, so. Really? Because you're sounding fine over here.

Yeah, it's distracting enough, I'm not sure I could continue to talk, but I'll give it my best. I'm getting an echo for everything

I'm saying. Really? Yeah.

The worst ramifications I know from dating generally pertain to seeing a relationship as purely about the two of us and mostly recreational, mostly about us going out, spending money and having fun, and without having a sense of not only accountability to parents, are we really responsible to others about where we go and what we do, but also are we, this is a big one for me, does our relationship exist just for us to enjoy each other, or does our relationship exist as a tool through which to honor and serve the

Lord in relation, say, to all of our neighbors?

Are we loving our neighbors as ourselves in our relationship? I remember one of the things my wife and I asked each other, even though we'd never heard the word courtship, and we weren't thinking in terms of courtship at all when we were in our 20s and single and seeing one another, but we did ask ourselves a very courtship kind of question, if you will, at the time, and that was, does it appear that we can serve

God and be a blessing to our community, our church, and our families better together than we can apart?

In other words, are our lives a better ministry unitedly than they are individually?

And we came to the conclusion that we complemented one another enough and that we actively served from that complementary, you know, those roles together.

We used our different strengths and features of our relationship enough in service together that, yes, we would be a greater blessing as a family together than we would ever be individually.

So those are some of the features that I find are important. Too often, in other words, you know, without judging everyone who dates us like this, too often dating couples just fail to see, in fact, that their relationship revolves around themselves.

They go do what they want to do, spend the money they want to spend, have the fun they want to have together, and don't really think about, you know, are there ways we can use this relationship to benefit others and spend, which will mean that we're not spending time just the two of us together.

We're spending our time with others trying to minister to them, so. Thankfully, the echo went away.

I'm glad to say the echo seems to have gone away. Oh great, yeah, because it never was occurring here on my end, at least.

We do have another anonymous listener in Westchester, New York, who says, my daughter has been a childhood friend of a boy in church ever since they were toddlers.

They have both grown to be teenagers and still enjoy each other's company, and they go out for recreational activities together, very often supervised.

Would you consider this an inappropriate dating relationship? Because neither one has yet to express that they have intentions to marry one another.

They seem just like buddies, for lack of a better term, but they are both attractive young people and of the opposite sex, so we don't know where this is going to lead, but what would your suggestions be here?

Yeah, and they've, I think they said they've known one another and enjoyed one another's company since they were very small.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah, right. Well, I would, my main advice for most couples is keep your relationship very much on the open, up and up, you know, before both sets of parents.

Make sure the parents are aware of what you're thinking about one another, how deep this is getting, if you're getting deeply physically attracted to one another or not.

I mean, one of my sons was very clear at one point, he said, you know, he said my physical attraction for her is growing at such a rate and extent that I'm going to need more accountability to make sure

I don't do something I shouldn't do, you know, and so he was very explicit that it's clear that if, maybe we are trustworthy alone together, but my attraction to her is growing to the point where I would rather not go there very much.

Let's do most of our activities with others around, you know, and but that was a very mature self -assessment to be aware of that.

So that kind of brings me to this, when people ask me, you know, if you had one key thing that you would say is really the most dramatic failure of the dating tradition and the strongest benefit of the courtship tradition, what would it be?

And I answer very quickly, openness in front of parents. Just be open about the relationship, communication with the parents, that this is not an isolated thing.

Even more important than not being isolated physically, so that there is the temptation to immorality, far more important is not being isolated heart -wise and emotionally from those you're accountable to.

And that has been a common mark of the dating tradition, unfortunately, that the two pretty much get to decide for themselves what they'll do and how close they'll be and what kind of time they'll spend together, and they just don't really have to talk much about their parents with it.

It's interesting, I was very, very close to my mom growing up, but she gave me no input whatsoever about girls.

She just said, that's just a heart issue, that's up to you, nobody can guide you, you know, love will find a way, you'll know her when you meet her, and all sorts of trite little things like this that were just vacuous and empty of meaning, they didn't mean anything, would have been far better for me to have had the sense, which

I didn't have a time to know just to consult my mother or some other godly people, with good questions and say, well, what are some activities we could be doing that would be better, that would tell us more about each other, that would strengthen our relationship, that would prepare us for marriage better, that would make us better people, that would make us serviceable to others more, just none of that ever entered my mind, and that's just,

I just attribute that to the fact that I, obviously, I grew up around nothing but dating, so I didn't know any other ways in which to engage in a relationship.

When it comes to being very different, you know, the old saying, opposites attract.

Obviously, you have already made it clear, as most conservative Christians I know would agree, that a

Christian should never be pursuing a romantic relationship of any kind with a non -Christian.

But having said that, there are other things that can polarize people that don't have anything to do with the gospel or the specific tenets of Christianity.

Is this a case -by -case scenario where you would think that there was either wisdom or lack of wisdom pursuing a relationship whose personality and culture are completely 180 degrees opposite from you?

I mean, what would the, any advice that you would have in that area? Yeah, that is one of the most interesting areas of, you know, the way of a man with a woman, if you will, like the

Proverbs says. It's a mysterious thing, one of those things the Proverbs writer says that you do not understand, you know.

And the more variable their upbringing, their cultures, the more different and unique those were, the possibility of some significant obstacles to them having a happy, conflict -free relationship, you know, is going to be.

I've known of, nonetheless, of people in extremely different upbringings and cultures and family backgrounds who have managed to make it work.

Sometimes those things make people more enjoyable to one another.

There seems like their joy and delight in one another increases as a result of that, and sometimes it results in increased collisions, you know.

And so much of that depends upon how those people respond to those factors, how they cut themselves.

And some really thrive on being in a relationship with someone who's very different from them, and they manage to enjoy the differences.

Others cannot. And I found that young men, you know, who are trained to think in terms of a very high degree of authority, for instance, in themselves in the marriage relationship, they have a harder time adapting to a young lady that's extremely different personality -wise from them, and they seem to have difficulty distinguishing her differences and how she processes information and thinks things through.

A hard time distinguishing that from just outright unsubmission, when it may be nothing of the sort. It may be just that she approaches a problem in such a different way that you can learn a great deal from her in terms of the family decision that you make.

So yeah, those are really big factors. I minister at a

Bible college in Mexico, and it's among a people group that I won't name here now for this purpose, but I'm aware of a relationship between a white

Christian young woman from Tennessee who married a man from that tribal group, and we believe it was the first marriage of a white

American to one of this particular tribe in history.

And they had some enormous obstacles to overcome. They had some fantastic obstacles to overcome, because his thinking about what it was to be a husband was very different than what she grew up with thinking a good husband was.

And of course, the gospel only very recently reached this tribal people, too, and so they have not gone through a lot of transformation.

Wow, you're talking about real tribal when you use that term. Yes, yeah, very tribal, yeah, and a very small tribe as well.

So that's how we knew this much historically about it, to realize that it was probably the first white

American marriage into that tribe, because there's just not that many of them.

And they had some big hurdles to get over, but they've managed to do it, and I've been in their home, and they do seem to enjoy one another quite well.

Oh, so they have, it seems, overcome, by God's grace, those obstacles.

Yes, yes. Oh, praise God. And of course, most married couples

I know are overcoming obstacles for their entire lives until they're in glory.

That's right, yeah. Yep, I've been married for 40 years, and my wife is still sometimes a mystery to me.

She'll say something, and I'll think, you think what? Are you out of your mind?

Nobody thinks like that. Do you have any words of a challenge, chastisement to parents that have been overbearing, and I would assume,

I mean, I know that this happens with parents and their sons, but I would assume the tendency would be more likely to be with parents and their daughters, where there is just an over -restriction on what they expect from any young man to be worthy of a relationship of any kind with their daughter.

And sometimes, you know, it would be, I mean, I'm not going to mention his name, but I have a friend who's a

Christian, and I couldn't help but just bellow laughing every time he would tell me about these young men who had come calling upon his daughter and he would scare them away constantly over and over and over again, you know, he was showing them his firearm collection and all that kind of thing.

But, you know, I mean, this can really be traumatizing to a young lady,

I'm sure, if this reaches to a point of absurdity, and even like I brought up before, possibly bigotry being involved in it, racial bigotry, or something like that, where couldn't you press a young person to a breaking point where they rebel and they just run away and they pursue whoever they want?

Yes, I've seen that happen. It is possible, I've counseled parents that you must not have unrealistic expectations.

And, for instance, even forgetting yourself, I'll take them back sometimes to themselves and say, you know, how mature were you when you married your wife, you know, and you were that 24 year old or 19 year old or whatever you were?

Obviously, you had a long way to go. But, you know, if some of the basics are in place, what really are you waiting for?

You know, what are you insisting upon that is so crucial that you are making them continue to wait?

And, you know, I know of some parents that have let this go on too long, and they've got some older singles, you know, who don't seem to have any opportunities and any hopeful sutures on the horizon.

And I think some of that can be due to the over -application and extreme application of some of these things.

So, yeah, I have critiqued and advised some parents to lighten up on some of these things and to see to it that they don't view their son or daughter as somehow, you know, untouchable, and that no one is good enough for my child.

It's just an unrealistic way of looking at the Christian life and not helpful at all. We do have another anonymous listener who says, my son is an adult in his 20s who has had a relationship with a woman for years, even before I became a

Christian. They have children together. On occasion, they have spent the evening in my home in the same bedroom and their children, obviously, with them.

Is this ever appropriate since they are not married and I am a Christian, but it's something that has been so much a part of our family structure, even before coming to faith, that I'm really in a, between a rock and a hard place on this issue.

Yeah, in other words, they're still unmarried. Yes, and they don't live with this person permanently.

When they visit, though, they will frequently be in the same room, but the children, apparently, in the same room.

Yes, yeah. Well, it comes, you know, I would leave it to each individual household to practice what they feel compelled in conscience to do in this case.

I've known of some who have told, you know, adult children who aren't married that when you visit here, you are not going to be private in the same room or certainly not going to sleep together.

Others have allowed it. I can't think of any decisive principle that I would bind anyone with and say, this is what you really must or must not do.

One, probably the most important remark, I suppose, I think I could make at this point is merely that I don't see any particular profit in Christians insisting that non -believers behave like Christians.

And within limits, obviously, you know, you're not going to allow your non -Christian friends to come into your home and have an orgy or something.

You're not going to allow them to come into your home and start smoking pot or, you know, shooting up heroin or something.

But there are lines that you would not cross that you have to really ask yourself, am

I gaining anything by requiring non -Christian friends and relatives to be like me when they're here?

Well, I guess in the area of your children, your adult children sharing a room, it may give the impression that you are approving of fornication.

Right. And I think the only way you can make, you know, if you want to avoid giving that impression, then just make sure verbally you've told them that, you know, we're going to allow you to stay in the same room, but we don't approve.

The best way to make sure that you're not giving what appears to be tacit approval is to state your opinion. So, yeah.

And the issue of children brings a whole new scenario into the equation.

What about children, teenage children and children in their early 20s especially, who perhaps are a little older, who, you know, your son is involved with a young lady who is not of your faith and perhaps not even of his faith.

Perhaps he is a Christian, but who fell into sin and he impregnates this young lady.

What obligation does this young man in a Christian home have to the young lady that he impregnated?

And is there any obligation? It even was considered an old -fashioned sign of wholesomeness in some degree for the young man to take responsibility and marry that woman.

That was even considered an old -fashioned virtue. But is that really a good

Christian principle? And what would be the guidelines for what responsibility that young man does have to that woman?

Obviously, he would have to take care of the child. That's almost a given with Christians. It should be a given.

But what about the young lady? Yeah. If I followed all that correctly,

I could only simply say without acquaintance with a particular situation in which

I could give counsel in a real -life family,

I would only say that certainly it's requisite that he be supportive, that he take care of the financial obligations and the costs and the raising of that child in terms of those kinds of things.

But beyond that, I would not see an absolute obligation to marry. That would be something under discussion for those families to decide.

Do you think it would be absolutely prohibited if the person, especially the young woman we're talking about, was not a

Christian? Would that be something that the young man should absolutely not do if he is a Christian? Yes, certainly he should not.

That's right. And that is obviously a heavier issue, but it does exist.

And I'm sure that there are countless numbers of people who may wind up eventually hearing the interview who are in that dilemma.

There's all kinds of things that get more complicated in our modern world.

Even things that have existed for centuries, they still, in our day and age, there's all kinds of insanity going on in there.

Yeah, we're going to face more and more peculiar moral dilemmas that are going to make some interesting bridges to cross to figure out exactly what we would counsel someone to do.

We are going to our final station break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air, we've got about a half hour left with Dennis Gunderson.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a half hour to go has been and will continue to be

Dennis Gunderson. He is the founder of Grace and Truth Books. We are discussing one of the books that he wrote himself,

Courtship and Dating. So what's the difference? If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Another one of the touchy issues today,

Dennis, is age difference. Today, we look scandalously upon people with wide age gaps approaching somebody else romantically, and sometimes there's very good reasons, because the person is an evil individual.

But what you do have a very, you know, the silence in the

Bible is deafening about that. As far as you know, we hear that, for instance, even the mother of our

Lord and Savior was probably 15, and Joseph was probably an older man. So this gets into very controversial waters that we're treading in here.

But I even know of one circumstance where an older man, under the protest of the young lady's family, he married a woman 30 years his junior, and it was done with the protest of the young lady's family, and actually it wound up turning into an unpleasant circumstance.

But what do you say about that? When the Bible doesn't specifically give age gaps that are acceptable and so on, and of course, we're not in any way, shape, or form here talking about pedophilia and this kind of evil, disgusting either behavior or inclination.

That kind of a thing is worthy of, in my opinion, the capital punishment. But I'm speaking of things that are within normal and legal barriers here.

Yeah, well, I like to make it my policy to have very little to say in terms of regulations, you know, about things that the

Scriptures have very little or nothing to say about. And I think that really there's no basis at all for getting alarmed about saying a 30 -year -old who's interested in your 20 -year -old or a 40 -year -old interested in your 25 -year -old.

Much of the time, if they are manifesting traits of mature adults and have enough basis for unity in the

Christian faith and at other points in their thinking where they're compatible, if you will, then

I don't see what there is to be alarmed about. Unfortunately, I think what happens is, you know, any time you've got a culture that jettisons the guidelines of the

Word of God and has cast off the direction that the Christian faith would provide, well, invariably, they're going to try to come up with their own wisdom.

They're going to try to think up their own guidelines that are allegedly wise and sound thinking, and so they'll make up rules of their own.

And cultures do that, and our culture is doing it. Instead of calling evil what the Word of God calls evil and good what the

Word of God calls good, they simply redraw the lines and say, we think this is good and this is evil. And in the name of being, you know, supposedly smart or wise, many have said, well, he's 28 and she's 22, that's just way too big a gap, you know, they can't work together.

Well, that's preposterous, it's silly, and it's not sound thinking. And it's baseless.

Do you think, though, that a man should respect the parents of a woman that he was interested in romantically, he should respect the girl's parents to such an extent that he would implicitly listen to their prohibition?

Because, I mean, you mentioned some barriers that most people perhaps would feel fairly comfortable with.

But, you know, you're going to have situations sometimes where a man in his 50s may be interested in your 18 -year -old daughter.

You know, it could happen. So should the man just immediately back off if the parents of that girl, which

I think most would, say, sorry, pal, no dice, you know? Yes, yeah,

I think he is biblically obliged to respect that.

That's part of his respect for her is to realize that she's in a role where she is to be submissive to her father still.

Well, if that's the case, then you are not to be belligerent and do anything that would interfere with that or disrupt that.

If you love her, you're not going to put her in an awkward spot and impress upon her the idea that, well, you just want her to disregard her father.

I've told young men on a number of points, not just this point, you know, that at any point that you encourage the daughter of a man to disregard her father's counsel, well, guess what you're doing?

You're burning your own house down. That's right. Right now, she's in submission to him.

If you marry her, guess who she's in submission to, you know? That's right. Submission to you. And you trained her how to think about that, you know?

So what's going to happen when she's supposed to be following your leadership? Well, you trained her that that doesn't matter. So you're liable to get some problems out of that.

We have another anonymous listener from Suffocanti, Long Island, New York, who wants to know your opinion on Christian dating websites.

You know, I've never looked at one, but I can say this.

Being a married man, that's a good sign. Yeah, there you go.

Very good sign, yes. I have known a few people that have used them and with some outstandingly good results, and that has led me to theorize a little bit about this.

I, even among unbelievers I've known, I've known some couples, neither of whom trusted

Christ, and I've known some that were believers who met one another in some form or another online, you know, in a chat room or through a singles website or something of this sort.

And I think there can be some real strengths to that, which seems like an odd thing to say, perhaps to some, but what

I have observed is the strength of it, in many cases, is that words communicate the thoughts of minds, and when people are isolated to communicating with each other through words, and I hear how you think, and I see how you express yourself, and I see how you respond to words from others and what you say back, and I'm not looking at you and watching how, you know, your body moves across the room and all of this, where the temptations to lust and being attracted mostly on a physical basis can diminish greatly when most of our relationship is formed simply with verbal exchanges at the outset.

And I think that has resulted in some very strong relationships, because those people understand how each other thought before they ever got attracted on other levels.

And that's one of the things that now has been a problem, say for instance with dating, is that personal interaction that becomes very close physically and then very intimate very rapidly is very possible with dating and very common.

It normally happens within dating, and I've told people that I think that the recreational mindset of dating tends to make young men think very recreationally about the whole relationship and think about just what would be fun to do, and with most young men, there are a couple of things that very quickly come to mind.

But these kinds of things, I'm amazed at how strong the relationships have been among those that I've known who have met through such sites, and that has been my theory about it.

I think a lot of those are verbally based relationships that got strong in the context of minds interacting first.

Yeah, I know one couple, that Christian couple, that were married, and from what

I last heard, they were very, very happily married. I heard about another

Christian couple that got married through a dating site, but I haven't heard from them in years, so I don't know how that developed.

But the one couple, the young lady I knew when she was single, and she was a very sweet woman and was having a hard time finding the right man.

She desperately did want to have a husband and have children, and she eventually met this

Christian man in a different state, and they met and got married, and they're apparently very happy.

Now, I've heard though, from other people, that some of these sites, there's two things.

Number one, some of these sites use the term, even if they identify themselves as Christian sites, they use that term very loosely.

You could be a Mormon or whatever. You could be a

Christian scientist. You could be anybody that just believes that Jesus existed in some shape or form.

And you also, I'm assuming, something that jumps out at me when I think about the concept,

I'm assuming it's a lot easier to lie about who you are and so on, than if you are developing a relationship face -to -face with somebody.

And you know, you see where they go to church and on and on, whereas somebody on the internet, I mean, sometimes, of course, unless you're involved in Skype or something, you're not even going to know if this person is even really of the opposite sex in our day and age.

They could be masquerading as somebody else. They could be a pedophile. They could be somebody who well, at least it wouldn't be a pedophile, but it's somebody just who's a predator looking for a younger person.

And it could be somebody who wants to financially rob someone, bilk them out of their savings account.

And that could be in either direction. That could be a woman predator who was just seeking to financially devastate somebody.

I knew of that happening. That actually happened. In the case I knew of, it was a male predator, but he literally talked a woman into moving to where he was and bringing her money and emptying her accounts and helping him to get a business off the ground, and that was a mess.

But the concept, you're obviously, you're not opposed to it. There's nothing really innately unbiblical about a dating service as long as you are seeking a union with a person who is a true

Bible -believing Christian, so you're not unevenly yoked. That's right. There really is nothing innately wrong with it, and it does have some strengths.

Yeah. And as far as the old -fashioned concept of asking your romantic interest's father for permission,

I mean, sometimes it's for the marriage itself, but sometimes it's even a lot further than that.

May I have permission to court your daughter? Do you think that that should be the rule of the young man doing that, or is that just a nice added factor but not necessarily a requirement?

Mm -hmm. Given that the Scriptures don't put an age on these things for sure, you know, the difficulty in pinning down the rule is we want to train up young people that grow into making good decisions for themselves.

And so, you know, the wise parent puts the rules and regulations on his younger children and then gradually, you know, removes the restraints as they grow older, watching them make more and more good decisions under first training, and then just guidance, and then more hands -off guidance, and then eventually just letting them make decisions.

Well, no one can say exactly what age each of those stages is reached, but all that has been said to say this, that the younger the two individuals are, the greater the obligation of submission is.

And so, clearly, you know, if I had a daughter, I don't think

I would be particularly offended if she was off at college and, you know, at 21 years old, a 24 -year -old guy asked her to spend time with him without consulting me.

But I would be very firmly expecting that if she was 15 years old and still in my home, well, he would have to know that, you bet you've got to me.

Very clear. She is simply not entitled to make the decision as to what guy she will see and where they will go without me.

So, and you, the young man, have no right to bypass that. So, yeah, the earlier the age is, the more that requirement,

I think, is in place. Later on, I think a sound thinking parent increasingly and very purposefully leaves more of those decisions up to his adult children.

Do you have any other warnings to listeners that they should take heed to in areas

I may have overlooked or that our listeners may have overlooked? No, I think we've really covered the bases really well.

I can't think of another area that has been left. I've kind of looked through my book even, you know, as we've been talking to see if there's anything else subject -wise that we haven't covered.

And the themes, at least, that I brought up there have been discussed. So, in terms of a two -hour radio program, we get to cover a lot of territory.

Yeah, well, that's a rare thing in our day and age because most Christian radio stations want soundbite kind of information.

They don't really want people to get into depth on issues and especially theology.

That is an area that I know that a lot of major Christian radio stations could care less about.

They are more, depending upon what network it is, some of them would be much more happy if you stuck with conservative politics because it seems that a lot of the networks could care less about offending political liberals.

But once you start stepping on the toes of people with heretical theology, then that's something they don't want you to do.

Many times they feel they've been really thorough and covered a lot of ground in a 15 or 30 -minute program when they've really just barely scratched the surface.

Right, exactly. One thing that I've heard, I was actually somewhat surprised to hear from a brother in Christ that I know who was married.

He was raised and married in India in an arranged marriage. He is a Christian and he was married.

I can't remember if his family and his bride's family were Christian or if they became

Christian later. I don't remember that factor. Anyway, he is thrilled that he got married that way.

Of course, he got the winning lottery ticket as far as that's concerned because he happened to be providentially blessed by God with somebody that he is still after many years, even maybe several decades of marriage, he's still madly in love with his wife.

He actually is happy that he was married in that way. But that is the kind of a thing that is also not mandated in the scripture.

But was that a part of the culture of Jesus's day or was that not necessarily a part of every family's habit in regard to arranged marriages, especially when you're talking about obedient Jews?

Do you know the biblical atmosphere of marriage in regard to that, arranged marriages?

Yeah, I don't have a deep acquaintance with what it was like in the days of Jesus. Earlier in more patriarchal times, you know,

I think that arranged marriages were extremely common. So, you know, going back to the book of Genesis, for instance,

I think by the time of Jesus's day, traditions like that were lingering and frequently practiced, but I don't think they were the only model.

I think there were other situations as well, and probably in many cases, a single was even free to, you know, pursue and express an interest in someone of their own choosing probably quite often.

But I haven't read a lot of history on that to really pin that down. One of the things

I do like to make clear to families, however, about today is that I do get asked by young people at times, does courtship imply or include arranged marriage?

And I give them a resounding no on that. It's not that I think the arranged marriage process has been a complete failure in the cultures where it's been done.

You know, in some of those cultures, they have a much lower divorce rate than we have. Could be because, though, they would die if they got divorced, especially if it was a woman.

They've just got to stay in the relationship. In other cases, the fact is that some parents have made better choices for the young people than the young people would have made.

In other cases, there are just extreme penalties or there are no options for the woman if she were to get out of the marriage.

But I don't see any reason to pursue the arranged marriage process in American culture at this point, and our views on courtship don't cross into that territory at all.

Tell me something about your personal thoughts on the importance of physical sexual attraction to the person that you intend to marry.

There may be some, it's probably a tiny minority of people, but there may be some who perhaps even going through a fad where they may even consider themselves a martyr for love.

They may very deeply care about a person that they have no physical or sexual attraction to, and perhaps in an attempt to either be very pious and overtly religious and putting their faith before anything else, they pursue a marriage with this person.

But would you say that that is unwise if you look at a long -lasting future free from as many conflicts as possible and even temptations from those outside the marriage, that sexual attraction should be an important factor in this?

It looks biblically as though it is. If someone told me that I see great qualities, take a young man telling me

I see fine qualities in this young woman, she would make a good wife, but I'm not the least bit attracted to her physically.

I would certainly at the very least encourage him to be careful about whether they should move forward or you know, if he really wanted to marry her, if it was a strong desire on his part to marry her because of her qualities,

I would probably even encourage him to pray that the Lord will work in such a way that that will at least develop, because one of the reasons

I think there's some warrant for saying that is so often in the scriptures you find that preceding a couple being married there's some remark made in the historical narratives about, you know, he found her beautiful, you know, and he looked on her and, you know, he was pleased, and that comes up quite often, and that's not been remarked upon by the

Spirit of God merely by accident. It appears to almost be part of the process that, well, you know, his heart was worn towards her because she was beautiful, so to him, you know, to his eyes.

Yeah, the Songs of Solomon certainly are, even though they have other pictures, bigger pictures in mind, it's certainly using the passionate love and even attraction to the spouse.

And we do have Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, who says,

Do you believe God has one person in mind for each of us in marriage, or merely one who falls into biblical principles?

I don't think, I may be wrong, but I don't think Aaron means that with polygamy as an option, when she's one person, it may be more in the realm of predestination.

Do you believe God has one person in mind for each of us in marriage? So if you could,

I have a feeling I know where you're going with that, but if you could comment. Yeah, yeah.

Well, as one who believes in the sovereignty of God over all of life, and I may state this in a way that's not exactly how he might expect, but believing in the sovereignty of God over all of life,

I would say, does God have a plan for our lives, and, you know, have your wife chosen out for you ahead of time?

Well, certainly, I think so, just as He has each step of our lives planned, I believe, in an absolute thorough predestination of all of life, and yet, at the same time, does that mean it's your mission that finding the will of God somehow involves a quest where, uh -oh,

I've got to go find her, and if I don't find her, I really messed up, you know? Well, I've told people for years, they say, what's the sure mark of what was the will of God?

You know, well, the will of God is what happened, in terms of the plan of God.

You know, you will find her, because that's God's plan for your life.

However, the obligation on you is not, it's not as though you've got to locate who this mystery woman is that God's picked out.

Your obligation is to, you are free to pursue among godly women anyone who is available, and doing the will of God for you merely means pursuing godly

Christian women and making a choice from among them, and you will find when you have done that that ultimately you'll have done the will of God, and you'll end up with who

God designed for you to have. Right, right, and it's somewhat connected to the whole issue of evangelism.

We don't know who the elect are, but we're supposed to evangelize knowing that God's elect will come forth and will receive the gospel.

Obviously, that doesn't mean we're supposed to be pursuing romantic relationships with any woman, and I'm hoping that God would just pull the elect ones out of the crowd for us.

I don't mean that, but I'm saying that there are certain things that, since we do not know the mind of God, we are finite and sinful while on this earth.

We have no idea what the secret things of God are, and that would include that issue, and it could be a dangerous thing to think that you have, by revelatory means, been given some kind of knowledge from God.

Yes, this is the woman that you are supposed to marry, etc., but I can tell you,

I know one brother in Christ, a dear friend who's a pastor. He met his wife, and it was one of those rare circumstances of love at first sight.

He approached her. He said, I believe that God wants us to be together. She thought he was nuts.

She avoided him like the plague for a certain period of time. Then they started courting, and they got married, and they've been married for probably close to 30 years now.

Yeah, and I've heard that story again and again where one or the other was completely convinced that, you know, you are

God's will for my life, and sometimes the other had to say, well, God hasn't shown me that yet, but we'll wait and see.

Right. Well, Aaron, you've got our last copy of the book, Courtship and Dating, so what's the difference?

For the rest of you listening who would like to purchase this book, go to graceandtruthbooks .com,

graceandtruthbooks .com. Thank you so much, Dennis Gunderson. I look forward to having you back on the program in the near future.

Yes, thank you so much again. I've enjoyed it, and Lord willing, we will do it again. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.