Critique:

Joshua Harris,

I Kissed Dating Goodbye

Multnomah Books, Sisters, Oregon, 1997
© 1997 by Joshua Harris

Reviewed by Earl Gosnell

Christian Dating vs. Courtship Debate

• Examination of Christian dating issues.
• Is a Christian "dating relationship" in the Bible?
• What are some good Christian dating tips?
• Answers to Christian dating questions.
• Christian dating ideas, dating advice, principles & perspective.
• What about Christians dating non-christians? is a Christian dating a nonchristian allowed?

Abraham out of a sincere desire to do God's bidding—to birth an heir—, and from a realistic assessment of what was available for him to work with—the deadness of Sarah's womb—, kissed Sarah-in-bed goodbye to embrace a more workable method: Hagar in bed. Similarly, Joshua Harris sincerely wants to work into a good marriage as God plans, and he realistically assesses the immaturity of high school dating, so he kisses it goodbye in order to embrace an amalgum of fellowship-meeting interactions and counsel & advice of his parents and elders. Both Abraham's and Joshua's approaches represent wrong though understandable alternate plans. Hagar was merely Sarah's servant girl, not the one meant to produce the heir. Group social interactions and parents' counsel are in service to the dating couple's learning and deciding interactions, not meant to replace them.

Joshua Harris represents a segment of Christians who have taken upon themselves the critique of dating practice, fulfilling the maxim: Damnant quod non intelligunt—they condemn what they do not understand. In I Kissed Dating Goodbye Joshua tries to justify his position with scripture, but doesn't quote what speaks most directly to the subject, not even First Corinthians 7 [but in speaking engagements he quotes it]—with a single exception (on page 78) of 1 Cor. 7:32 from The Message, a paraphrase so convoluted it leaves one wondering what the apostle actually said. Furthermore, the subject itself is complex enough to throw the uninformed. Where to begin?

There's an important concept given succinctly in William Simon / John H. Gagnon, Psychosexual Development from John H. Gagnon & William Simon, The Sexual Scene (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1973) p. 31.:

We see sexual behavior therefore as scripted behavior, not the masked expression of primordial drive. The individual can learn sexual behavior as he or she learns other behavior—through scripts that in this case give the self, other persons, and situations erotic abilities or content. Desire, privacy, opportunity, and propinquity with an attractive member of the opposite sex are not, in themselves, enough; in ordinary circumstances, nothing sexual will occur unless one or both actors organize these elements into an appropriate script. ...

A belief in the sociocultural dominance of sexual behavior finds support in cross-cultural research as well as in data restricted to the United States. Psychosexual development is universal—but it takes many forms and tempos. People in different cultures construct their scripts differently; and in our own society, different segments of the population act out different psychosexual dramas.

It is because 'in our own society, different segments of the population act out different psychosexual dramas' that Joshua Harris will be following one script and the "world" another. Which script other Christians follow has led to a dating vs. courtship debate.

In my own book on Biblical Courtship Basics I've developed a script from several books of the Bible in the order they appear in the canon. Josh uses biblical references but in an order that suits his subject, so I shall review his book in its own particular order.

I bumped into a friend outside a store at the shopping mall and told him of a chair I'd purchased at a different store. He wondered how much I paid, so I took a step forward and whispered it to him. I said it seemed impolite to shout out the bargains of another store. He said, "It doesn't matter," and I told him small things do matter.

We are told, "You can't judge a book by its cover"—it doesn't matter. But small things do matter and I want to look at the cover. I have a copy of Multnomah Books paperback, 1997. On the front cover is a picture of a squatting man, face covered, looking down, sleeves uncovered; while on the back we see Josh himself face uncovered, looking up, sleeves covered. As a representation of the book, I couldn't express it better pictorially. Basically, the book is two-faced. Josh is blinded to any dating in the Bible, he looks down his nose on it, and he tries to correct it—sleeves rolled up. On the other side he looks in awe at marriage, he respects it, and he leaves God's institution alone, doesn't try to modify it. The only problem is they are connected, the front and back covers are of a piece, and dating is what prepares one for marriage and helps in the selection process.

Next, the title. Bidding dating goodbye in favor of an earlier way of doing things is a bit of an oxymoron as our word good-bye is but a contraction of an earlier preferred "God be with ye." Former editor-in-chief of Random House Dictionaries, Stuart Flexner, tells us, "Slang is as old as English itself ... American kids have been speaking a language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents at Plymouth Rock. ... It offended Pilgrim parents that their Pilgrim children took their traditional farewell—God be with you—and turned it into good-bye."

Moving past the title page, we see that Joshua has used several modern Bible translations as well as the standard King James Version. The modern versions date from 1984 (NIV) to 1996 (NLT). Personally, I don't see why he couldn't have used just the KJV; it's clear enough where he quotes the Bible, and we then wouldn't have to worry about "a new attitude" being derived from a new Bible. I like to feel that any new truth I see is not from some new revelation but merely from new insight into the old.

We come to the Foreword a "preparation for what you are about to read" which tells us, "your point of view [is] to be taken on a ride!" [exclamation mark his] I'll say it's "taken on a ride," the kind of ride gangsters are famous for.

In the Introduction he compares his book to, of all things, dating, cluing us that he expects the reader to be already familiar with dating: otherwise why would he make the comparison? Then he wants us to "leave behind the world's lifestyle of dating," which I have no objection to, "the world's lifestyle." It's the throwing out the baby with the bath water I have a problem with.

Then he gets into What I'm Not Going to Say where he acknowledges there are bound to be strong disagreements—"Get a life, buddy!"—and that he "understands your hesitation." Really, now? If the disagreement is so strong then we can figure not every Christian will go along with him; some will just not be convinced and will continue to date. So what happens then? As Christians we are obligated to follow Romans 14-15:7 allowing different Christians to live out their lives according to their best understanding of God's will, even if some don't understand it as well as others. But we are also to allow Christians to marry in order to avoid fornication. What happens then when there is a mismatch between the sexes on the psychosexual scripts of courtship? Say a lot of brothers have a more mature understanding while a lot of sisters an immature one and these are not compatible with each other. We can't just tell a brother to go have his faith by himself, because then he won't be able to court and get married. We can't tell him to adopt an incompatible script as we are to let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. This is a dilemma.

The fine print resolution is given us in Judges in the Benjamite War as I point out in the second chapter of my courtship book. The Israelites had sinned in not reserving to every man his wife in the doubtful disputation. Their solution applied to New Testament times would be that however hot the dispute, there will be some churches who can accommodate a brother's courtship belief, and he can go there to get a wife, some place capable of necessary compromise. If there are too few women available there, then plan B is to pick one up at a dance where liberty rules and the churches should allow it as they need to let him marry, and, after all, the church is not being compromised when he goes off to do his thing in good conscience. It would have been good for Josh to explain these matters to us.

When we come to page 13, we find that Josh doesn't hate girls but he likens dating them to eating junk food. As I said before, he looks down his nose on dating. He allows, though, that there can be a right time for a date.

Then he goes on to four possible reasons why someone might want to read his book. I read it so I could refute it. I asked the bookstore owner if I were allowed to buy Josh's book to refute it. He said I could, that I couldn't very well argue with another point of view unless I understood it. I needed to read it in order to address the Christian dating vs. courtship debate.

Part 1

Chapter one starts with a persuasive dream of a bride who must stand next to all her groom's exes on her wedding day as they each hold a piece of his heart. I must admit that it is a powerful image and a persuasive way to start his book. However, in God's definition of marriage in Genesis 2, we see that Adam went and named all the animals, not finding a helpmeet, before God presented him with the woman. She could just as well have had the same dream of the menagerie lined up beside her at the alter as each animal also had a piece of Adam's heart. He named them, after all.

Probably what happened was the groom had had premarital sex with several women before his wedding day, that being a forbidden bonding which showed up in the bride's dream. In that case abstinence should be practiced before marriage, not eliminating dating per se.

On page 19 after several frustrations with the dating scene, Josh posted an I'm Worth Waiting For sticker on his NIV Student Bible and promised to stay a virgin until he got married. Great sticker, great promise, but not the best Bible version in my opinion.

More bad experiences and then he's reading Philippians. By page 22 he's starting to consider how his actions might affect others and on the next page how he must wait on God.

Then in Knowing What is Best he talks about issues of "guy-girl relationships." H.W. Fowler in his well respected book Modern English Usage, offers the following tip:

relation(ship). The word relation has many senses, most of which are abstract. It approaches the concrete in the rather rare sense a story or narrative, & it is fully concrete in the very common sense a related person, i.e. a son or mother or cousin or aunt or the like. Now, sonship, cousinship, &c., being words for which there is a use, it is entirely natural that -ship should be affixed also to the word that summarizes them; sonship the being a son, relationship the being a relation—with the extension (due to the generalizing sense of relation) into 'the being this, that, or the other relation', or 'degree of relatedness'. To that use of relationship, then, there is no objection. But to affix -ship to any of its other, or abstract, senses is against all analogy; the use of -ship is to provide concretes (friend, horseman, clerk, lord) with corresponding abstracts; but relation, except when it means related person, is already abstract, & one might as well make connexionship, correspondenceship, or associationship, as relationship from relation in abstract senses.

What I'm driving at is Josh throughout his book in talking about guy-girl relations such as boyfriend-girlfriend uses the forty dollar word guy-girl relationships. As a man and a wife are actually related, they have an actual relationship, but to talk of unrelated couples, i.e. boyfriend-girlfriend and the like, as in relationships is to confuse them with marrieds. We have enough of that confusion already in what many allow themselves physically, so I recommend using the shorter term guy-girl relations which is the correct one anyway.

There are a couple other grammatical errors in the book, namely at least twice who is used instead of whom in the objective, and he uses the word chauvinism to refer to a simple male ordering. I point out that chauvinism by definition is excessive devotion to a cause or an ideal. As long as a male cause/ideal is not excessive, it is not chauvinism. Such a misapplication is referred to by Paul Fussel in Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (1983):

But it's the middle-class quest for grandeur and gentility that produces the most interesting effects. As we've seen, imported words especially are its downfall. It will speak of a graffiti and it thinks chauvinism has something to do with gender aggression.

No, the grammar in I Kissed Dating Goodbye (1997 version) is not atrocious, but it is weak, probably for not having been reviewed by someone with enough training.

Now we come to a line I've starred in my copy as it is most telling. Page 23f. "Try looking up 'dating' in your Bible's concordance. You won't get far. ... How do we find answers to these questions? ... God wants us to seek guidance from scriptural truth, not feeling." Date is a modern word. He's got all the modern versions. Why can't he find—don't they use—the modern up to date term? This is not my problem. I devote a considerable portion of my book Biblical Courtship Basics to what the King James Bible says about dating. If you have trouble finding the modern word in your concordance, please read my book. It's in electronic form (HTML for your browser) and inexpensive.

Here's a quick rundown: First, how do we define date? In a scene from the movie Say Anything, some recent high school grads, while exploring meanings in the adult world, defined a date as "prearrangement, with the possibility of love." That's consistent with how Joshua Harris uses it in I Kissed Dating Goodbye: something planned in advance—(Page 34) "The right move in terms of scoring a date [was] he called her up and asked if she'd like to go out to a movie the next weekend," and that allows one-on-one intimacy—(Page 37) "By its very definition, dating is about two people focusing on each other." In the book of Esther, King Ahasuerus to select a new queen meets evening by evening a selection of maidens from around his kingdom. Then it says, (Esther 2:14b), 'she came in unto the king no more, except the king delighted in her, and that she were called by name.' In other words the ones he liked he arranged dates with. It's in my Bible. Reading further, Esther who became queen makes a date with the king to attend a private banquet where indeed Haman tries some one-on-one bonding with the queen to request a favor. The lessons in this book are that prearrangement allows God to intervene in a dream, and physical bonding helps one sex to understand the other.

In the book of Ruth, negotiations involving her marriage were carried out at the gate in the presence of the elders. The word date being the place where Christian couples are to effect all important negotiations—fulfilling the first and second greatest commandments as per Esther—is concocted from the middle letter of elder and the ending of gate, which wouldn't be listed in an alphabetized concordance going by the first letters.

In the Song of Solomon we see snippets of previous dates in flashback form, for example a beau arriving to pick up his date (ch. 2:7-17) and a maiden returning from a date ch. 8:5).

On page 25 we come to conflict of standards between never-been-kissed Ben and kissing-for-sport Alyssa. Josh presents Ben as having "caved in," but they were still virgins (technically) and on the plus side it was good preparation for marriage in which one's body is not one's own and we are expected to "cave in" to our mates. A lot of the "impurity" (p. 27) Josh wants us to avoid seems to me to be more in Ben's mind than in actual fact.

Then he gets into negativity about dating. I shall remark in turn on each of the "seven habits of highly defective dating."

1. Dating leads to intimacy but not necessarily to commitment. According to Josh commitment is a climbing partner's rope on a two thousand foot mountain while intimacy is icing on a cake. Well, we know where he stands: "As I see it, dating is a product of our entertainment-driven, 'disposable-everything' American culture. ... ¶At the turn of the century, a guy and girl became romantically involved only if they planned to marry. If a young man spent time at a girl's home, family and friends assumed that he intended to propose to her. But shifting attitudes in culture and the arrival of the automobile brought radical changes"—page 33. The history of dating he gives as starting with the automobile is incomplete as it was developed on the frontier long before Henry Ford. In fact, if we haven't always had dating, what has it always been like? I might add that historical changes in the institution of marriage paved the way for our dating customs today. Rather than simply swallow his teaspoonful of history, let's look a broader picture.

From: Andrea Hopkins, The Book of Aourtly Love (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994) pp. 10, 13.

Courtly Love developed during the twelfth century in France, becoming an ideal of courtly society, both real and literary, throughout Europe for the rest of the Middle Ages. It celebrated an intensely idealized form of sexual passion—the kind of "falling in love" with which every society in every age is familiar—in a highly elaborate, sophisticated, and aristocratic code of behavior. It permanently influenced our culture and society, and the way we think about romantic love. ...

By the later decades of the twelfth century the ethos of courtly love was codified and written down. In the first century B.C. the great Roman poet Ovid had composed his Ars amatoria (The Art of Loving). This was a collection of precepts illustrated by tales and legends intended (tongue in cheek) to instruct its readers in the arts by which men could seduce women. In the late twelfth century, probably between 1184 and 1186, this well-known literary classic was reinterpreted for modern times by one Andreas Capellanus—Andreas the Chaplain—in a Latin treatise called De Arte Honesti Amandi (On the Art of Honorable Loving).

In the Middle Ages Catholic sacramentalism and agrarian society tended to make marriage an institution for the perpetuation of families and the preservation of properties. The romantic revolution of the Courts of Love in France was at first extramatrimonial, and the combination of romance and marriage was effected only during the Renaissance.

To these currents Luther was entirely a stranger. His ideal was Rebecca who accepted mate selection for her by the family. Jacob was reprehensible in his eyes because after receiving Leah, who bore him children, he worked yet seven other years out of infatuation for the pretty face of Rachael. Luther was glad, however, of this failing because it proved that he was saved by faith and not by works. But if in this he followed the medieval view, on other counts he broke with it, and notably in the rejection of virginity as an ideal. By this move the way was open for the romanticizing and refinement of marriage.

When we look at Protestant moral codes the change in values is obvious. Matrimony, which during the Middle Ages had only been a minor institution as compared with the monastic way of life, was moved right into the centre of the new concept of true Christian life. It was held that living in matrimony, in contrast to an "unnatural" Catholic virginity that violated human nature, was truly "chaste". The relationship of men and women in matrimony was supposed to be the "natural" condition of all adults, as instituted by God himself.

In recent years the so-called companionate or affectionate marriage has become one of the great movable feasts and arguably one of the most imprecise concepts of Western historical scholarship on marriage and the family. ... Although Lawrence Stone spoke of the companionate marriage not appearing until the eighteenth century (in England) amongst the upper classes, it would appear that in Reformation Europe the idea that a marriage should be based at least partially upon affection and companionship was not uncommon.

The mythmakers completely missed the essential character and spirit of the Pilgrims. Their portraits of the latter are little more than self portraits, all done in the pale and sentimental manner of the nineteenth century at its worst. Under their brushes the Pilgrims appeared as a group of anemic Victorians doing a sort of pious charade in costumes out of grandmother's closet, which is the general impression of them that still persists. Nothing could be more unfortunate, for the popular and almost universal conception of the Pilgrims as a meek, drab, and uncomplaining lot, with eyes ever humbly fixed on the ground at their feet or turned tearfully upward toward the Pearly Gates in misty rapture, is a caricature at which the Pilgrims themselves would have been first to laugh—and they were not much given to laughter, least of all when at their expense.

The Pilgrims were not nineteenth century pietists, or quietists. They were not pale plaster saints, hollow and bloodless. They were men—and women too—of courage and conviction, strong and positive in their attitudes, prepared to sacrifice much for their principles, even their very lives. Far from being Victorians, they were children of another and a greater age, the Elizabethan, and in their lives reflected many of the qualities of that amazing age—its restlessness and impatience with old ways, its passionate enthusiasms, its eager curiosity and daring speculation in all fields, its boldness in action, its abounding and apparently inexhaustible energies.

The Pilgrims were Elizabethan, too, in their acceptance of the simpler joys of life. ... They were not monks or nuns in their intimate relations as their usually numerous families and more than occasional irregularities attest. Fond of the comforts of connubial bed and board, they married early and often and late, sometimes within a few weeks of losing a mate.

The individualism that has been so devoutly upheld as the basic principle of American economic life has extended to marriage. Marriage is primarily an individual matter, largely devoid of any broader social implications. Like so many other aspects of American culture, this situation may be explained in part by the continuous and pervasive influence of the frontier.

Under Old World conditions, young people were subject to family authority in all matters, including the choice of a mate. In the New World, this authority was undermined from the beginning by the fact that the young people moved westward and left the parental family behind, perhaps forever. Husbands and wives chose each other, rather than accepting their parents' decision. Individual considerations early became the primary criteria for a happy and successful marriage. ...

The equality of frontier democracy made it theoretically possible for almost any man to marry almost any available woman. Class distinctions were at a minimum. ...

Life in the New World emphasized freedom for the individual in all matters — freedom to move from place to place, to rise in the social scale, and to choose his own wife from all available candidates. ...

The democracy of the frontier was supplemented by the individualism of the large city, which furthered the element of free choice and romantic love. The family in a peasant society (and to a somewhat lesser extent in an open agricultural society) is held together by property, economic interest, and social status. In the urban community these ties are relaxed and social relations are based upon more secular and ephemeral considerations, such as physical attractiveness, economic success, and fascinating "personality." Many of these same factors bring two persons together in romantic marriage and may also serve to draw them apart in romantic divorce.

With industrialization, the declining importance of extended families fosters growing individuality and more personal choice in courtship. Therefore young people need to gain extensive experience in courtship because they will have a greater say in selecting their partner. ...

Despite some variation, marriage concludes a long period of dating. Courtship generally begins as group dating, in which several girls and boys interact together. In time, group dating gives way to couple dating. In the United States today, courtship frequently involves a period of sexual experimentation. ...

Sociologists have long recognized that Cupid's arrow is aimed by society more than individualistic Americans like to believe. Even today, most married couples are about the same age and of the same race, religion, and social class. This pattern is called homogamy (literally, "like marrying like"), marriage between people who are socially alike.

Homogamy is common, first, because people of one social background tend to interact in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, and frequent the same recreational settings. Second, a common socialization encourages similar tastes and interests, so that we are likely to be attracted to people with the same social backgrounds as we have. Third, parents and peers often discourage marrying an "outsider."

Dating is an American invention, and it is proving to be one of the more diffusible inventions of our civilization. It is being borrowed widely throughout the world wherever American films and American soldiers are to be found. ...

Perhaps one can blame the American frontier for too much, but certainly it was responsible for banishing caste lines. A man on the frontier came to be measured by his performance; a woman, by her ability to hold her own in meeting the challenge of an untamed environment. ...

To the influence of the frontier as a factor in breaking class barriers and institutionalized marriage forms we must add the growth of urban industrial culture and of a mobile population — all developments that have made dating, as a way of getting acquainted, a necessary innovation in mate choice. ...

In the horse-and-buggy days, "keeping company" was standard practice. Dating as it is now known was not a part of the accepted pattern of life. Taking a girl home from church was almost the equivalent of being pinned and engaged today. The reason was that everyone knew everyone else, their families, their reputations, their economic status, their character. When young people "walked out" together, they already knew a great deal about one another. Intentions could be and were more or less serious from the beginning. A boy and girl seen together more than once were assumed to be "courting."

Dating is a social engagement between two people for the sake of the date itself, and without marital intentions. Dating has evolved as the natural and logical product of the anonymity, urbanization, individualism, secularization, and the emancipation of young women from chaperonage that has gradually come to characterize American society. While many of the transplanted families tried to maintain what they considered the "high standards" of their rural past, this usually meant isolation and loneliness for the young people of the family. After all, a girl in a large city who was forbidden to go out with anyone she had not known for years, usually found that, in effect, this meant she did not go out at all. ...

It is possible for a person to date through high school and/or college without ever having any serious intention to select a mate. Although potentially any date may develop to the point of serious interest, dating as such is now a part of the normal social activity of young people. By dating, they size up members of the opposite sex and extend their close acquaintance with them long before they have any inclination of choosing a partner for marriage.

The "New" Woman of the 1920's:
Image and Reality

Perhaps the single most important factor in changing the way most Americans lived in this era was the automobile. When asked about the changes that had taken place in his lifetime, one longtime Muncie resident replied, "I can tell you what's happening in just four letters: A-U-T-O!" The automobile offered the freedom to live farther away from one's place of work, visit other nearby towns, and go away for vacation. For young people, access to an automobile meant freedom from chaperons or curious neighbors, as serious courtship was replaced by casual dating. ...

The new woman had begun to emerge well before World War I, but in the 1920's, popularized by the media and cartoons of John Held, Jr., a single stereotype began to dominate: the flapper. The flapper, so called because of the short-lived fad of wearing unbuckled galoshes that flapped when one walked, had short "bobbed" hair and wore cosmetics, short skirts, and dangling beads. She often smoked and even drank in public, and she presented herself as a "good sport" and "pal" to men of her own age. Flirting with and dating many different young men, she often seemed to care only about dancing and having fun. Older Americans were appalled by the appearance and outraged by the behavior of this 1920s woman. Worried and upset about the practice of "petting," Americans complained that the new woman was completely immoral.

Revolution in Manners and Morals
Frederick Lewis Allen

During those early years of the 1920's, men and women were still shivering at the Red Menace when they awoke to the no less alarming Problem of the Younger Generation, and realized that if the Constitution were not in danger, the moral code of the country certainly was.

This code, as it currently concerned young people, might have been roughly summarized as follows: Women were the guardians of morality; they were made of finer stuff than men and were expected to act accordingly. Young girls must look forward in innocence (tempered perhaps with a modicum of physiological instruction) to a romantic love match which would lead them to the altar and to living-happily-ever-after; and until the "right man" came along they must allow no male to kiss them. It was expected that some men would succumb to the temptations of sex, but only with a special class of outlawed women; girls of respectable families were supposed to have no such temptations. Boys and girls were permitted large freedom to work and play together, with decreased and well-nigh nominal chaperonage, but only because the code worked so well on the whole that a sort of honor system was supplanting supervision by their elders; it was taken for granted that if they had been well brought up they would never take advantage of this freedom. And although the attitude toward smoking and drinking by girls differed widely in different strata of society and different parts of the country, majority opinion held that it was morally wrong for them to smoke and could hardly imagine them showing the effects of alcohol.

The war had not long been over when cries of alarm from parents, teachers, and moral preceptors began to rend the air. For the boys and girls just growing out of adolescence were making mincemeat of this code.

The dresses that girls—and for that matter most of the older women—were wearing seemed alarming enough. In July, 1920, a fashion-writer reported in the New York Times that "the American woman ... has lifted her skirts far above any modest limitation," which was another way of saying that the hem was now all of nine inches above the ground. It was freely predicted that skirts would come down again in the winter of 1920-21, but instead they climbed a few scandalous inches farther. The flappers wore thin dresses, short-sleeved and occasionally (in the evening) sleeveless; some of the wilder young things rolled back their stockings below the knees, revealing to the shocked eyes of virtue a fleeting glance of shin-bones and knee-cap; and many of them were visibly using cosmetics. "The intoxication of rouge," earnestly explained Dorothy Speare in Dancers in the Dark, "is an insidious vintage known to more girls than mere man can ever believe." Useless for frantic parents to insist that no lady did such things; the answer was that the daughters of ladies were doing it, and even retouching their masterpieces in public. Some of them, furthermore, were abandoning their corsets. "The men won't dance with you if you wear a corset," they were quoted as saying.

The current mode in dancing created still more consternation. Not the romantic violin but the barbaric saxophone now dominated the orchestra, and to its passionate crooning and wailing the fox-trotters moved in what the editor of the Hobart College Herald disgustedly called a "syncopated embrace." No longer did even an inch of space separate them; they danced as if glued together, body to body, cheek to cheek. Cried the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati in righteous indignation, "The music is sensuous, the embracing of partners—the female only half dressed—is absolutely indecent; and the motions—they are such as may not be described, with any respect for propriety, in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say that there are certain houses appropriate for such dances; but those houses have been closed by law."

Supposedly "nice" girls were smoking cigarettes—openly and defiantly, if often rather awkwardly and self-consciously. They were drinking—somewhat less openly but often all too efficaciously. There were stories of daughters of the most exemplary parents getting drunk—"blotto," as their companions cheerfully put it—on the contents of the hip-flasks of the new prohibition régime, and going out joyriding with men at four in the morning. And worst of all, even at well-regulated dances they were said to retire where the eye of the most sharp-sighted chaperon could not follow, and in darkened rooms or in parked cars to engage in the unspeakable practice of petting and necking.

It was not until F. Scott Fitzgerald, who'd hardly graduated from Princeton and ought to have known what his generation was doing, brought out This Side of Paradise in April, 1920, that fathers and mothers realized fully what was afoot and how long it had been going on. Apparently the "petting party" had been current as early as 1916, and was now widely established as an indoor sport. "None of the Victorian mothers—and most of the mothers were Victorian—had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed," wrote Mr. Fitzgerald. "... Amory saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have been impossible: eating three-o'clock, after-dance suppers in impossible cafés, talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness, half of mockery, yet with a furtive excitement Amory considered stood for a real moral let-down. But he never realized how widespread it was until he saw the cities between New York and Chicago as one vast juvenile intrigue." The book caused a shudder to run down the national spine; did not Mr. Fitzgerald represent one of his well-nurtured heroines as brazenly confessing, "I've kissed dozens of men. I suppose I'll kiss dozens more"; and another heroine as saying to a young man (to a young man!), "Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is. I'm hipped on Freud and all that, but it's rotten that every bit of real love in the world is ninety-nine per cent passion and one little soupçon of jealousy"?

It was incredible. It was abominable. What did it all mean? Was every decent standard being thrown over? Mothers read the scarlet words and wondered if they themselves "had any idea how often their daughters were accustomed to be kissed." ... But no, this must be some especially depraved group. Nice girls couldn't behave like that and talk openly about passion. But in due course other books appeared to substantiate the findings of Mr. Fitzgerald: Dancers in the Dark, The Plastic Age, Flaming Youth. Magazine articles and newspapers reiterated the scandal. To be sure, there were plenty of communities where nice girls did not, in actual fact, "behave like that"; and even in the more sophisticated urban centers there were plenty of girls who did not. Nevertheless, there was enough fire beneath the smoke of these sensational revelations to make the Problem of the Younger Generation a topic of anxious discussion from coast to coast.

The forces of morality rallied to the attack. Dr. Francis E. Clark, the founder and president of the Christian Endeavor Society, declared that the modern "indecent dance" was "an offense against womanly purity, the very fountainhead of our family and civil life." The new style of dancing was denounced in religious journals as "impure, polluting, corrupting, debasing, destroying spirituality, increasing carnality," and the mothers and sisters and church members of the land were called upon to admonish and instruct young people. President Murphy of the University of Florida cried out with true Southern wrath, "The low-cut gowns, the rolled hose and short skirts are born of the Devil and his angels, and are carrying the present and future generations to chaos and destruction." A group of Episcopal churchwomen in New York, speaking with the authority of wealth and social position, proposed an organization to discourage fashions involving an "excess of nudity" and "improper ways of dancing." The Y.W.C.A. conducted a national campaign against immodest dress among high-school girls, supplying newspapers with printed matter carrying headlines such as "Working Girls Responsive to Modesty Appeal!" and "High Heels Losing Ground Even in France." In Philadelphia a Dress Reform Committee of prominent citizens sent a questionnaire to over a thousand clergymen to ask them what would be their idea of a proper dress, and although the gentlemen of the cloth showed a distressing variety of opinion, the committee proceeded to design a "moral gown" which was endorsed by ministers of fifteen denominations. The distinguishing characteristics of this moral gown were that it was very loose-fitting, that the sleeves reached just below the elbows, and that the hem came within seven and a half inches of the floor.

Not content with example and reproof, legislators in several states introduced bills to reform feminine dress once and for all. The New York American reported in 1921 that a bill was pending in Utah providing fine and imprisonment for those who wore on the streets "skirts higher than three inches above the ankle." A bill was laid before the Virginia legislature which would forbid any woman from wearing shirtwaists or evening gowns which displayed "more than three inches of her throat." In Ohio legislature aimed also to prevent the sale of any "garment which unduly displays or accentuates the lines of the female figure," and to prohibit any "female over fourteen years of age" from wearing "a skirt which does not reach to that part of the foot known as the instep."

Meanwhile innumerable families were torn with dissension over cigarettes and gin and all-night automobile rides. Fathers and mothers lay awake asking themselves whether their children were not utterly lost; sons and daughters evaded questions, lied miserably and unhappily, or flared up to reply rudely that at least they were not dirty-minded hypocrites, that they saw no harm in what they were doing and proposed to go right on doing it. From those liberal clergymen and teachers who prided themselves on keeping up with all that was new came a chorus of reassurance: these young people were at least more frank and honest than their elders had been; having experimented for themselves, would they not soon find out which standards were outworn and which represented the accumulated moral wisdom of the race? Hearing such hopeful words, many good people took heart again. Perhaps this flare-up of youthful passion was a flash in the pan, after all. Perhaps in another year or two the boys and girls would be all right again.

They were wrong, however. For the revolt of the younger generation was only the beginning of a revolution in manners and morals that was already beginning to affect men and women of every age in every part of the country.

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The principal remaining forces which accelerated the revolution in manners and morals were all 100 per cent American. They were prohibition, the automobile, the confession and sex magazines, and the movies.

I'm not even sure if the automobile isn't overrated as an instrument of change; or if it were in fact instrumental, there were not other factors at work alongside it. From: Willison, pp. 322-4.

In 1640 the General Court decreed that "In every Constablerick there be a paire of stocks erected and a whipping post." To judge from the first three entries in the records for 1633, the Saints evidently recognized a great and growing need of these.

2. John Hews & Jone, his wife, adjudged to sitt in the stocks because the said Jone conceived with childe by him before they were publickly married, though in the time of contract.

With the entire community watching eagle-eyed for evidences of sin, many a hapless young couple went to the stocks "for having a childe before the natural time of women after marriage," which the Pilgrims assumed to be exactly nine months. Occasionally they made an allowance of a few days, but never more than a week or two. The phenomenon of premature birth was not recognized in their book, and the advent of a child in the seventh or eighth month of marriage was always a disaster—conclusive proof of illicit relations before marriage and always promptly punished as such, for "fornycation" was a legal as well as a moral offense. After a time, learning something of the facts of life, the Pilgrims liberalized their attitude, adopting the "seven months' rule," but only after hundreds of innocent couples, as is now evident, had suffered public shame and disgrace for natural causes quite beyond their control.

But from the records it is also evident that many of the younger generation were as curious as Adam and Eve to taste forbidden fruit. And with many opportunities afforded them under a curious institution long in favor among the Saints, the wonder is that more did not indulge—or, at least, did not get caught.

The institution was known as Pre-contract, and under it an enamored pair could assure themselves of an unusual degree of privacy by appearing before two witnesses and formally announcing their intention to marry in due course. This was more than an engagement, carrying almost the weight of marriage before a magistrate. Essentially, it was a semi-marriage, entitling the betrothed to almost all of the intimacies of wedlock—all but the last and most intimate. But this exception, as might have been expected, was often more than aroused desire could brook, a fact recognized even by the Saints, who drew a distinction between a lapse "in time of contract" and plain fornication, so to speak. The latter was more severely punished, ordinarily with the stocks, the lash, three days in jail, and a £10 fine.   ¶ This, however, did not seriously dim the bright lustre of Satan's wares, and many succumbed to temptation.

In Claudia Kalb's Science article on DNA in Feb. 6, 2006, Newsweek, page 47, we read about, "Brian Hamman, an avid genealogist, could trace his patrilineal line back to 19th-century rural Indiana, but there was a glitch in the family records. Great-Grandpa Lester, the documents showed, was born before his parents were married. So was Lester really a Hamman? Was Brian? Three years ago DNA tests confirmed the lineage and a simple family mystery was solved: Lester's parents had hooked up before they walked down the aisle on July 25, 1898. Lester was indeed a Hamman, and so is Brian."

In Nelson George's novel Seduced, pages 196-7 an old man reminisces courting his future wife circa 1932:

"The next day, I saw 'Naptown through her eyes. Now normally a woman in that time would never have gone anywhere with a man she just met. She would have sat in her family's living room and talked all day. But Emily Lee was ahead of her time. While we clashed about it sometimes, I gotta admit I'd never met a woman like her.

"That evening we went over to this ballroom where a local big band was playing. She danced much better than I did. You know, I was really just a well-read country boy and she was real worldly by comparison. I was stumbling around on that damn floor, but Emily Lee didn't comment. She kept me moving along and smiling. Then the band played an Ellington tune. The 'Royal Garden Blues' it was. And well, we came together on that. It was just fine. We moved along with the clarinet and it was fine, fine, fine."

One wonders if attributing too much change to the automobile "is just a lot of sentimental rot—it has taken us apart and put us together again, and changed the backdrop."—E.B. White, One Man's Meat (New York: Harper Colophon, 1983), p. 109. At any rate, Joshua is treating a long-developed cultural form of dating and such as if it were an historical glitch when in fact its roots go back at least as far as a Roman poet in the first century B.C. Rather than discount our history in favor of a new message, I believe we should be following the example of the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill. He saw what was happening around him—the idolatry, the inquiry—, and after chiding them for being "too superstitious" (Acts 17:22), he refers to their own altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD (vs. 23) and declares this unknown God, that men "should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live, and move and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring'" (vs. 27-28). He takes their own poet, their own altar, their own seeking as his opportunity to present the gospel; he doesn't sweep their culture under the rug.

Our Western society and its notions of romance venerate "falling in love" much as the Athenians did in their altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. I mean, the couple for such and such a time, and they "fall in love" to our cheers. Bravo! But let's take a lesson from Paul here and take some romantic literature as our starting point.

The movie Moonstruck [© 1987, Metro-Goldwin-Mayer Pictures] shows a people altogether too superstitious about romance: from bad luck, to curses, to confession, to the full moon. And we can see ourselves all too clearly, our society, how in romance we are guided as much by superstition as by reason. And yet in all that there is the kitchen scene near the end where Rose sincerely asks Johnny, "Why do men chase women?" Johnny's reply:

Well ... There's the Bible story. God ... God took a rib from Adam and made Eve. Now. Maybe men chase women to get their rib back. When God took the rib, He left a big hole there. A place where there used to be somethin', and the women have that. Now. Maybe, just maybe, a man isn't complete as a man without a woman."

That's a real good starting point from our society's own media. It remains then to consider that the romance counterpart to "seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him" is to go out on dates to help find the right one—"though he be not far," dating from among one's own acquaintances. And isn't the joyous experience of falling in love akin to "in him we live, and move and have our being"?

2. Dating tends to skip the "friendship" stage of relations. Joshua brings up issues of moving beyond friendship into romance. It was never expressed better than by an old man I heard on the bus: "Marriage can ruin a friendship." I don't risk valuable friends by initiating romance with them but will ask out on dates acquaintances per the scheme in Esther. If something goes wrong I've lost but an acquaintance, and if things go right, then I've gained a girlfriend. Josh does it different.
3. Dating often mistakes a physical relationship for love. This is about lust and our culture's mind set that confuses sex with love. "A physical relationship doesn't equal love." Yes, yes, yes, but in fact that is what the Shulamite learned (Song of Solomon 8:7) after her mother's instruction (vs. 5) changed her immature viewpoint (vs. 1-4). It's not dating that need be abolished but instruction needs to supplement it.
4. Dating often isolates a couple from other vital relations. Yes, but it's supposed to as God's formula in Genesis 2 was for a man to leave father and mother and cleave to his woman (Hebrew Ishawoman), in other words to go out with her, eventually becoming one flesh, married.
5. Dating, in many cases, distracts young adults from their primary responsibility of preparing for the future. Brother, marriage is their future, for many of them, and how better to prepare for it? Try saying the title to the Beatles song Eight Days several times in a row, real fast, and you are saying, "Date, Date, Date." A date is credited to an extra day in the week as all of society recognizes the need for it and those "primary responsibilities" will arrange themselves around it.
6. Dating can cause discontent with God's gift of singleness. Earlier in the book Josh critiques dating for not necessarily leading to marriage and now he's critical because it might. To be fair, though, I think what he meant was it can limit one's independence. His little brother played with the Christmas present box rather than the bicycle that came in it. The thought here reminds me of the feminist saying, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." That thought has been reevaluated and men were found to be needed. Again, we see where Josh stands.
7. Dating creates an artificial environment for evaluating another person's character. Yes, but we're supposed to make allowances. A small thing a person says or does in such an "artificial" environment should speak volumes to how he'd behave in a real situation. What would Josh have us do to examine them in the real thing? Living together? Trial marriages?

Then he goes on to considering his unmarried years a gift from God. Here it would be good to think of what the Apostle Paul said, all of it, pros and cons, pluses and minuses, options and requirements.

On page 51 he unfortunately lumps all of one's relations with the opposite sex in with the "things" of lesser importance per Matthew 6:33. That verse talks about things as food and raiment, but marriage is more the subject of Psalm 128 in which the marriage is blessed for the godly person, but so is his crop that he must labor to produce.

On page 57 we see Eric and Leslie whose first kiss was at the wedding altar. Fortunately it was a good one, because now they are stuck with each other. Not everyone would be willing to take that chance.

On page 62 Josh points out that our love for our "other half" must be tempered by love of others, motivated ultimately by love of God. This is good, I must say.

"Falling in love" as a concept is critiqued on pages 63-65, that according to the world, "love is beyond our control"—emphasis by Josh. He then compares falling in love to falling into a pit or being taken by a mental disorder.

Here I wish that on Josh's appearances on Dr. James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio show, the psychologist Dr. Dobson would straighten him out on some matters. Dr. Dobson says he had a good dating experience leading up to his own marriage with his wife Shirley. He says he needs to give Josh's approach more thought. Then he has other guests on who give advice on the accepted practice of dating.

My psychology textbook doesn't list falling in love as abnormal psychology. To my knowledge psychologists don't think of it that way, despite similarities of the two in brain chemistry. Since Dr. Dobson is still mulling over what Joshua has said, let us take a look at this "mental disorder."

First, we shall applaud Joshua for discrediting overindulgence in the name of love. From A Phrenologist, "On Rights and Government," United States Democratic Review, an 1841 issue:

There is a wide difference between the rational gratification of human desires, and the abusive indulgence of them. There is the same difference, as between drinking and drunkenness—between mirthfulness and satire—between justice and vengeance.

Paul in First Corinthians distinguishes between the allowable marriage and the forbidden fornication. Although "falling in love" is not mentioned per se in this chapter, dealing with emotional attachments is in the case of the spiritual betrothals or virgin marriages. These were "marriages" in which there was no consummation, the couple keeping themselves pure. Not all of them felt they could continue that way. Addressing this desire to consummate, Paul advises: (I Cor. 7:36-38) "But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry. Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well. So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better." There are two approaches here that can apply as well to "falling in love": the man who "hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart" not to be distracted by it, and the man whose "need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them [proceed to] marry." Some people can control the power falling in love has over them, and others, if they let it lead them down the path to marriage, they have not sinned.

Joshua thinks he has some better ideas than to get caught up in "falling in love." I don't know. Am I mistaken, or didn't Adam fall into a deep sleep when God took his rib?

For a psychiatrist's opinion—from a woman's perspective—, I shall quote from Dr. Paul Dobransky, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love (New York: Plume Books, 2007) pp. xiii, xvii, 15.

The right way—the time-tested, clinically proven, scientifically supported way—is in this book. There is a system for understanding and mastering the world of men, dating, and romance. ...

¶I've spent years ... fitting together pieces of the grand puzzle of dating and relationships ... leading me to a system that would help men and women diagnose and solve dating and relationship issues with precision and perfection.

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The three ... phases of courtship are psychological and sequential. ... In general, the Attraction Phase begins even before hello and lasts up to one month as an initial process. The Bonding in Friendship Phase tends to begin at or just after > the first date and tends to develop completely in three months. The Commitment Phase usually begins in small ways around the first month and under the best circumstances can continue for life. ...

You'll start getting into trouble if your phases with each other jump around wildly—for example, bonding strongly before attraction grows.

While Dr. Dobransky's methodology is eminently adaptable to different cultures and religions, including presumably ones that don't date as such or set much store by "falling in love," nevertheless he presents it here to us in the framework of dating and romance, which Joshua Harris rejects, and the Doctor warns us against mixing up the order of courting which is precisely what Joshua does, to the extent of promoting one that the Doctor's first example cautions against. I don't think psychology is as much on Joshua's side as he would have us believe.

Joshua reminds us that "the Bible offers a very different perspective" from how "the world may define and defend love," but how different can it be if the world is going to know we are Christ's disciples by our love to each other?

Let's take an example from popular music. Pop singer Bobby Day and his wife of 25 years had a ceremony to renew their vows. Singer and writer Donnie Brooks showed up with the Shirelles to sing the Pop song "The Ten Commandments of Love." Let's list them here compared to the "very different" perspective of the Bible.

I'm not sure the difference between's the world's definition of love and the biblical one is as great as Joshua Harris makes it out to be. He does, though, raise a valid concern—in my opinion—that the world can excuse behavior motivated by "being in love" that otherwise it would censure. That is, we might behave in ways otherwise unconscionable but for the sake of "love." This can best be addressed with an example. I shall take one from A.J. Zerries, The Lost Van Gogh (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006) pp. 149ff. In this story an aspiring artist arrives in Paris in the 1930s to find he lacks the talent to be a good artist, but he has a knack at stage design, so he draws beforehand the sets he will use.

"Every time he had a new script, he'd wander around the city for inspiration. Museums, antique shops, the flea markets—he knew them all like the back of his hand.

"[He] thought the rue de la Boétie was the most irresistible street in Paris. It was lined with art galleries where he could see paintings by his favorite artists—all far beyond his means, of course. Their drawings cost only a fraction as much, but they were way out of reach for someone still getting established. One day he fell in love with a Van Gogh sketch of an orchard. On a whim, he asked the gallery owner if he could buy it on time payments. The dealer considered, then agreed. As soon as it was paid off, he put down a deposit on a Lautrec pen and ink. He was working seven days a week, juggling a couple projects at once, and his sole extravagance was collecting quality drawings. Before long he had, he had an installment plan going at one gallery or another at all times. And that brings us to the Trabucs."

He fell in love with a Van Gogh drawing. It's understandable. A guy just starting out in employment has various girls he likes, all a bit beyond his means, but he makes do, and finds one he falls in love with, and she becomes his one extravagance. We are leading up to Joshua's objections. This set designer Paul goes to another city to get material, and ends up drawing a lot of buildings.

Paul was making a sketch in a rundown farmhouse. It belonged to an old fellow, all alone, badly crippled by arthritis.

He looked over Paul's shoulder at his drawing. As usual, he was putting it all down: dirty dishes, cobwebs, broken chair, the whole sorry clutter. He's shocked: "Mon Dieu, is that how it looks? So shabby?"

Paul started to close his sketchbook. He was afraid he'd unintentionally insulted the old farmer. But no, he urged him to carry on: "It's a good thing my wife isn't alive to see it ... this was her family's home." Eventually, he asked Paul, "You paint colors, too?"

Paul tells the truth, that he used to, but wasn't all that good.

"Too ugly?" Before Paul can think up how to answer a question like that, the old man says, "I bet they're not as bad as some. Come, I'll show you."

He walked Paul over to a half-door, like a cupboard set in a wall ... pretty common in the South. The kitchen was so cluttered, Paul hadn't noticed the knob. "Go on, open it," he says. But the wood was swollen in the frame. Whatever was inside that door hadn't seen the light of day for years.

Struggling with Herculean effort, Henri opened it after repeated tries.

At last, Paul's hit by a rush of cold air and a smell like a wine cellar. Inside, he sees stacks of empty canning jars. The old man points inside, to the right of the door.

Paul reaches in, feels something stiff and light ... two canvases, roughly the same size. They'd been facing the wall, so he saw the backs first. The old man warns him how ugly they are.

As soon as he turned the first one around, Paul knew instantly! No one could have painted it but Van Gogh! He faked coughing from the dust inside the cupboard, to hide his reaction. Then he shifted the rear canvas to the front—another Van Gogh! Two masterpieces! A portrait of a man and of a woman, locked away God knows how long! Paul kept coughing to compose himself. "Ugly? Thank God there are only two! They keep getting worse! Should I put them back with the jars? Out of sight?"

The farmer gives that some thought, then says no, he might as well use them to start the fire in the cookstove.

Paul tells him no, that's like committing suicide! He makes up some story about how the oils they used back then give off poison fumes. At the very least, he warns, they will permanently damage the lungs. He advises the old man to bury them, instead. Of course, the farmer was so feeble, he couldn't dig a hole to bury a mouse. Then Paul tapped the woman's portrait with his finger. "This canvas still has a little life left to it. Actually, a wash of white paint, and it could be reused, painted right over. Hopefully, with a prettier picture. Naturally, only the poorest artist would buy a used canvas. Three francs for the two."

The old man countered with five, and they settled on four. Paul paid him from the coins in his pocket, and put the canvas under his arm, trying to act nonchalant. "By the way," he asks the farmer, "whose faces will I be covering with white paint?"

Some relatives of my wife's aunt. Don't ask me their names. There's no one left to remember. The man, I think he worked in hospitals. Maybe the crazy house, too."

"Crazy house?" Paul asks.

"Twenty kilometers or so from here," the old man says. "At Saint-Rémy."

Paul gets the Van Goghs but is stricken by his conscience for having swindled the old farmer. His advisor tells him the farmer considered them worthless anyway. Then it all becomes moot when the farmhouse burns down two years later killing the farmer. If Paul hadn't rescued the paintings, they'd be gone.

Here is an illustration where being in love (with a Van Gogh painting) caused a man to act contrary to his conscience. Many such things happen with people in love. Joshua Harris raises this concern, and I think it is a legitimate one, although sometimes events conspire to make it all work out anyway. I don't have the answers, at least not for every situation. However, Joshua's solution, to eliminate this "falling in love" altogether and follow his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye has its own drawbacks. It would be like Paul actually whitewashing the paintings and then drawing his own (prettier) pictures on them: this resolves those qualms, but then the world is left without those masterpieces of love. I mean, yes, we could just discount "falling in love" as being worthless and ugly, and then paint Joshua Harris's picture of a pretty approach over top of the blank slate, but some would think we had lost something valuable. I can't fully explain my objection, but this illustrates it.

Okay, on page 66 "with these truths in place, ... God's love pretty much nullifies dating as we know it." Here he is talking about the world's attitudes. So we have to go about it differently. That I can concede.

On page 69 practice makes perfect, and we'll take patterns we've formed with us into marriage. Yes, but where better to practice and iron out behaviors—and even mate selection—than on dates?

On page 70, "We cannot love as God loves and date as the world dates. God's grand view of love pushes out the pettiness and selfishness which define so much of what takes place in dating." That I agree with. It's the "kiss dating goodbye" I have a problem with.

On page 77 the author concedes, "we can learn worthwhile lessons from dating relations," but he belabors the analogy of "shopping for an outfit when you don't have the money." I sometimes will check out a neighborhood yard sale and then go home for the money if I find something I like. I can shop when I don't have a cent on me.

Coming up to the Direction of Purity, we find on page 91, "We have to understand purity as a pursuit of righteousness. When we view it merely as a line, what keeps us from going as close as we can to the edge? If sex is the line, what's the difference between holding someone's hand and making out with that person? If kissing is the line, what's the difference between a goodnight peck and fifteen minutes of passionate lip-lock?" These questions have been gone over again and again. Here is Bishop Pike's take, in James A. Pike, Doing the Truth: A Summary of Christian Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1965) pp. 139-40:

Where Draw "The Line"?

What forms of sexual expression are appropriate to what relationships? ... People on dates, more frequently than not, kiss goodnight—these days, even on the first date. As the relations become closer, a couple may move into contacts generally grouped under "necking" and, then, into those categorized as "petting." ...

Scripturally, we have to start with three categories per Esther, the first being the getting acquainted stage, the second dating, and the third marriage. Paul gives us the perspective in (Col. 2:21) "Touch not; taste not; handle not." That is if you want to be a eunuch and not ever acquire any interest in the opposite sex, not even the first stage—touch—, then "It is good," Paul says in First Corinthians 7:1, "for a man not to touch a woman." If (stage 3) you get married, then you owe your spouse due benevolence (vs. 3)—"handle yes" the genitals for stimulation. Stage two, what concerns us here, dating, is the "taste yes," the tongue being the implement of taste. There are, to be sure, different kinds of kissing, yet it is good not to do tongue kissing before you are on a date, and not to do genital stimulation before marriage. For the kissing part we see in Song of Solomon 8:1 that kissing her date is okay: "I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised."

These biblical guidelines are useful, and without them we'd be at sea: "Where to draw the line?"—Bishop Pike, "What keeps us from going as close as we can to the edge?—Joshua, "Lack of clear demarcation as to the behavior between men and women. Everyone at times has impure and lascivious thoughts and desires that lead him into questionable acts and often into disputes, fighting, injustice and wickedness,"—Buddha (Ref. Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, Tokyo, The Teaching of Buddha, 640th ed., p. 192.)—Used by permission.

Perhaps an illustration of actual lasciviousness would help. From: George F. Willison, pp. 276f:

What Morton's poem meant was all too plain as it was chanted in chorus by Morton's men and laughing Indian maids dancing hand in hand about the Maypole "whiles one of the company sung and filled out the good Liquor, like Gammedes and Jupiter."

Drinke and be merry, merry, merry, boyes;
Let all your delight be in Hymen's joyes;
Iô to Hymen, now the day is come,
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.

Make green garlons, bring bottles out,
And fill sweet Nectar freely about.
Uncover thy head and feare no harme,
For here's good liquor to keep it warme.

Then drinke ...

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Give to the Nymphe that's free from scorne
No Irish stuffe nor Scotch over-worne.
Lasses in beaver coats, come away,
Ye shall be welcome to us night and day

To drinke and be merry, merry, merry, boyes; Let all your delight be in Hymen's joyes ...

All of this, said Morton, was "harmlesse mirth by young men who desired nothing more than to have wives sent over to them from England." But he quickly learned that this was not the view of those in control at Plymouth, who did not intend to put up with his "idle or idoll May-polle" and "lasciviouse rimes." What made him think that he would be allowed to revive in New Canaan the "feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practises of ye madd Bacchinalians!" Under this "lord of misrule" the Mare Mount settlement was nothing but a "schoole of Athisme," with Morton and his men "pouring out themselves into all profanenes, ... inviting the Indean women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither (like so many fairies, or furies rather), and worse practises."

In this case the Pilgrims were quite right to object to the "fornication, lasciviousness, idolatry, drunkenness, revelings, and such like" which are categorized as the "works of the flesh" by Galatians 5:19-21, and those who do such things not in line for the kingdom of God. But it is something else entirely to indeed engage in "harmless mirth" while waiting for marriage in due order, which is all a date need be. And I think the readership of Josh's book can pretty much tell the difference, with but a little guidance, so that singles do not have to cease altogether from having fun just to be safe.

But for sake of argument let's take Josh's position. We have a sincere brother (or sister) who knows enough to kiss his (or her) date good-bye at the end of it, and who knows that naughty drunken frivolity is wrong. Yet he does not know exactly where to draw the line between them—and who can blame him as we now see through a glass darkly. Furthermore, there is a human tendency to try to closely approach that line. The end of Ephesians 1 tells of "the spirit of wisdom ... enlightened understanding ... the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward." Might we not expect a little bit of help?

Let's look at (Job 36:5-16). Taking it a verse at a time, (vs. 5) "Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: he is mighty in strength and wisdom." Our test Christian here might not have a great deal of strength to stay away from that fuzzy line, but God is mighty both in strength to call a stop and in wisdom to know where these lines are. No problem for God. Furthermore, he "despiseth not any." God doesn't say it's beneath him to get involved in the physical mechanics of a date. No, he'll get involved anywhere.

Vs. 6: "He preserveth not the life of the wicked: but giveth right to the poor." Why, here we are reminded of Esther where God in fact did not preserve the life of wicked Haman but gave right to the poor Jews.

Vs. 7: "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted." God's eyes were on the righteous, in this case on king Ahasuerus, in sympathy with his approach to date women before selecting the queen, so this obscure king in history is exalted to a place in the canon of Jewish and Christian scripture where the form of dating is a lasting precedent. I think we may have missed the invention of dating because it was overshadowed with the life and death drama of the Jews vs. the wicked, but as verse 6 above shows us, such heavy dealings are business-as-usual with God.

Vs. 8-10: "And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; Then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity." If on a date—the form of which God knows as he included it in the Bible—our hapless fellow gets excessively involved physically, why, God will show him his fault, make it known to him. How could it be otherwise?

Vs. 11: "If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures." If the righteous brother heeds God's warnings, he'll have fun galore on his dates throughout his dating career.

Vs. 12-14: "But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge. But the hypocrites in heart heap up wrath: they cry not when he bindeth them. They die in youth, and their life is among the unclean." And the brothers who don't obey, or the hypocrites in heart, they will experience the censure of society; the ones who are set in their ways will reap the reward of their uncleanness.

Vs. 15f: "He delivereth the poor in his affliction, and openeth their ears in oppression. Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a broad place, where there is no straitness; and that which should be set on thy table should be full of fatness." Someone in Josh's place—or the one who is supposed to identify with Josh in his troubles—, we would ordinarily expect to have found deliverance, that he would not be in some narrow strait between right and wrong, tottering close to some fuzzy line, but that his "table should be full of fatness," plenty of good dating experiences.

It seems to me that Josh in being put off, by all the talk of where to draw the line(s) on dates and how to prevent oneself from going too far, is denigrating the collective wisdom of mankind under the influence of a mighty God who leaves us neither clueless nor without correction. God gives us plenty of guidance, the end result of which is an altogether worthwhile dating experience. Josh in wanting to dance away from it seems again to have misconstrued what dating is all about.

You know, I was doing the dishes the other day with a pile in the sink. First I washed and rinsed a glass, no problemo. Then I picked up a knife but in rinsing it I caused the water to overflow a pan at edge of the sink and onto the floor. Bright idea! I had to do the pans first. Sometimes our best schemes have unintended consequences.

This "direction of purity as a pursuit of righteousness, viewed not merely as a line" sounds good—like washing that knife with a frying pan under it, on top of a heap of dishes—but what about the unintended consequences? Let me give an example—on the graphic side, sorry—, from Steve Thayer, Wolf Pass (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003) pp. 89, 129f.

Having a POW camp in the heart of Kickapoo County proved to be a challenge from the start. Half the folks in the county came from strong German stock. In fact, many of them still spoke German. Had relatives in the old country. Needless to say, this provided them with a sympathetic connection to the prisoners. Women particularly felt sorry for them. Old ladies sent baskets of food up to the camp and young girls were constantly driving by the stockade and flirting with the POW through the barbed-wire fence. The reverend of the Lutheran church offered to give services every Wednesday in German. A Catholic Mass, in German, was held on Sundays. All this had the effect of dividing the town of Kickapoo Falls into two warring camps of its own—five thousand people who hated the thought of Nazis living in their midst, and five thousand people with German blood in them who felt sorry for young soldiers half a continent and an ocean away from home. ...

---

She was not a cheerleader. Not a troublemaker. Not a snob. Patty just liked to have a good time. I guess you could have called her a party girl. She certainly knew she was sexy, but she kept her reputation short of slutty. ...

You see, Patty Best was one of the town girls who liked to drive by the barbed-wire fence and flirt with the prisoners. It's not exactly clear when she and Soldat Stangl first met, or how they managed his escapes, but he was usually out at nightfall, and in by dawn. Sometimes when her Pauly needed an entire weekend, Sheriff Fats would be hauling his German ass back to the POW camp on a Monday morning. It was during these morning drive times that Fats, perhaps out of some sense of patriotic duty, would pump the escaped prisoner for vital war-related information.

"Are those tits of hers real?"

"Oh—mein Gott! You would not believe them. So real. And so soft. I suck on them like I am the little child."

"You've actually sucked on them?"

"Ja, ich mochte mich verschulden, sie habe meinen Mund ..."

"In English! In English!"

Yes, yes. I want to choke, they have filled my mouth with so much pleasure."

"Okay, what then?"

"We are in a field in the grass by the big river with a full moon sailing across the sky. I have this big teats in my mouth, and I slip my hand down her panties until my fingers go to the inside of her."

"You're shitting me, right?"

"No, Sheriff. No shitting you. But this is as far as she lets me go ... for now."

"But you actually sucked on those tits? Both of them?"

"Ja, Sheriff. I actually sucked on them. Both."

"Damn. I'm going to have to rethink this war, because you are one hell of a soldier."

Now, take the old way of thinking, in terms of lines. Say, Patty is thinking of becoming a Christian but first wants to count the cost. For her sex life, we tell her, she as a Christian would want to be a little further removed from sluttishness. Fine, she would draw the line further back, and the boys would respect that.

Now, say a Patty becomes a Christian who reads Josh's book and decides not to think in terms of lines but of pursuing righteousness. We ask her how she's doing and she says fine. Her boyfriend is passionately pursuing righteousness.

How can she tell? By his excited talk under God's moonlit sky. Well, what does he say? She can't tell because it's all in German. Then how does she know it's about God? Why, because his speech is frequently punctuated with, "Oh—mein Gott!."

See, it's very useful to think in terms of lines as there is a geography of two people involved in such liaisons, and while she can never be certain that the mind of her beau is actually on God, she does know were his hands are. Or from the man's point of view let's look at Harry Turtledove, Breakthroughs (New York: Ballantine Pub., 2000) p. 295.

When he waved his glass again, Consuela brought him another refill. She looked better, too. A moment later, she plopped herself down in his lap. Coyly, she spoke in Spanish: "Te gustaría chingar?"

He had a pretty good idea what it meant. Chinga tu madre was one of the things Hip Rodriguez yelled at the Yankees when he ran out of English. To leave Jeff in no possible doubt, Consuela wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss. He wondered whom else she'd kissed lately—and where. After a few seconds, though, his blood heated and he stopped worrying.

"We go upstairs?" she asked, coming back to English. Then her voice got amazingly pragmatic: "Ten dollars. You have a hell of a good time."

It helps the man know where things are going if there are benchmarks along the way: sitting on lap, hug around neck, big kiss. Lines help us orient ourselves to better make decisions. In Ruth 3 Naomi advises her daughter-in-law Ruth to put on some perfume and a nice dress, wait until the man is sated with food and drink, has fallen asleep, then lie down next to him, uncovering his feet. He'd already heard good things about Ruth, and it was in fact his duty as a near kinsman to this widow to marry her, but he wasn't galvanized into action until Ruth exercised some gentle persuasion including crossing a line of familiarity—though not of virtue.

Before we chuck out these lines altogether, we may want to take a look at how God used lines in one place: the law of the king. (Deut. 17:15-17) "Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: ... But he shall not multiply horses to himself, ... Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold." Let's see how one king did: (I Kings 10:26-27,11:1-3) "And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, ... And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, ... But king Solomon loved many strange women, ... And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart." It is evident that Solomon violated the command not to multiply horses or wives, and yet we are not told the exact number he was permitted. One wife, sure. But other men of God had two or more without being rebuked for it.

Let's look at king David. (II Sam. 5:12-13) "And David perceived that the LORD had established him king over Israel, ... And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem." Fine. Then: (II Sam. 12:7) And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, ... And I gave thee ... wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things." The way I read the story, God would have given David more wives rather than let him fall into adultery to his discredit. Not only is there not a fixed number of permissible wives for a king before he is considered to be multiplying them, but it seems the number can be increased to meet personal need.

We better look at it in modern terms. From Henry Bromell, Little America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) pp. 25,15,26f.

The king, his first week home, started buying cars. A Ferrari, a Jaguar, a Corvette, an Alfa, a Triumph, an MG. They were shipped out from Europe and America. He stored them at Hamzah Palace, on the outskirts of Hamra, each with its own garage and mechanic.

---

The king was an English-educated playboy, a speedster with a fleet of powerful sports cars and a heavy foot, a sybarite with a seemingly endless appetite for young women, preferably European or American.

---

"The king ran amok again last night. ... He crashed one of his sports cars into the statue of his grandfather in the middle of Jebel Hamra Circle. Not one but two girls with him. Swedish girls. Fifteen-year-old girls. Fortunately, Major Rashid got the king home and the girls onto a plane back to Sweden before this escapade became public knowledge."

This might be considered a modern example of a king multiplying horses and women. Considerations of his reputation play a major role in modifying his behavior. Although the king's "heavy foot" and "endless appetite" were causing him problems, God did not in Deuteronomy address heavy spurs and an endless appetite for women, but instead numerical multiplying, even though the number was not fixed, but was even subject to modification by both public opinion and individual need. In some ways that doesn't make sense, but in the same ways, as Josh brings out in his book, it doesn't make sense to treat morals in terms of lines. I'm not sure we're supposed to try to improve on the Bible, and in fact Josh has a goal to be biblical; he just doesn't always achieve it.

A good point to consider is that such morals have been thought of in terms of lines throughout our history as illustrated above. It might be a good idea not to summarily change that. (Prov. 22:28) "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set." A more balanced approach than the one Josh takes might be the one mentioned in, "Petting: No. 1 Problem" from Picture Week, March 13, 1956, "If a sound and healthy attitude towards petting were taken by parents, so that our young people ... might realize just 'how far to go,' then petting would not be so much a hush-hush, nasty activity, but the normal release of nature's strongest drive."

Josh on Page 93 goes into one's rights, and such responses need to be evaluated before one is married for life and finds a partner unwilling to fulfil his or her duty. The right to touch is seen in touch dancing with a new partner, whether she will readily accept a dance. The right to a good-bye kiss at the end of a date allows one to evaluate his partner in the area of being able to respond to physical obligations long before any marriage contracted.

On page 94 in order to present us with "God's view" of "activities such as kissing, necking, and fondling" he finds it necessary to quote from an ultra modern Bible version (Hebrews 13:4, The Message), "Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband," which is a different sentiment than found in my King James Bible, (Heb. 13:4) "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." My Criswell Study Bible lists a note:

13:4 The first clause has no verb in Greek. If "marriage is honorable in all" is read, the statement becomes a refutation of asceticism, which downgraded marriage. If the imperative is supplied, "let marriage be," the statement becomes a call to purity within marriage.

I have a scriptural basis for complaining about the rejection of the traditional wisdom in scripture. (Jer. 8:7-9) "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the LORD; and what wisdom is in them?" Jeremiah, to be sure, was complaining about the loss of traditional wisdom in the aural passing of God's word, but the same can be said about the loss of traditional wisdom in established text. These new versions have just lost their way. Traditionally marriage is honorable in all, even the courtship stages with their attendant scaled down intimacies. It is whoremongering and adultery that God judges.

Let's look at examples of these last. From: Werner Keller, The Bible as History (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1964) pp. 301-2.

"But the most vicious practice of the Babylonians is the following," wrote Herodotus in shocked astonishment (I:199). "Every woman in the country must take her seat in the shrine of Aphrodite, and once in her life consort with a stranger.... And only when she has been with him, and done her service to the goddess, is she allowed to go home: and from then on no gift is great enough to tempt her. All the women who are tall and beautiful are quickly released: but the unattractive ones have to wait for a long time before they can fulfill the law: some of them have to wait three of four years."

The abominable temptations and enticements which were part of everyday life in Babylon remained indelibly fixed in the minds of the exiled Jews. Through the centuries until the time of Christ the brilliant metropolis was for them "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." (Rev. 17:5) The idea of Babylon as a cesspool of vice is rooted in the vocabulary of every modern language.

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(Jasher XVIII: 11-15) In those days all the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of the whole five cities, were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord, and they provoked the Lord with their abominations, and they strengthened in acting abominably and scornfully before the Lord, and their wickedness and crimes were in those days great before the Lord. And they had in their land a very extensive valley, about half a day's walk, and in it there were fountains of water and a great deal of herbage surrounding the water. And all the people of Sodom and Gomorrah went there four times in the year, with their wives and children and all belonging to them, and they rejoiced there with timbrels and dances. And in the time of rejoicing they would all rise and lay hold of their neighbor's wives, and some, the virgin daughters of their neighbors, and they enjoyed them, and each man saw his wife and daughter in the hands of his neighbor and did not say a word. And they did so from morning to night, and they afterward returned home each man to his house and each woman to her tent; so they always did four times in the year.

Yes, God judges the whoremongering and adulteries of places like that, but if he judges America, it won't be because the young people went out on dates or even that they kissed their dates. That is an honorable part of preparing for marriage and of selecting a mate. The marriage bed is honorable, and so is kissing one's date.

I do agree with Josh's suggestion on page 96, that, "Maybe you think I'm taking this idea too far. Maybe you're saying, 'You've got to be joking. One little kiss won't have me hurtling toward sin.'" That's exactly what I do think.

Part 3 starts some practical advice. I like the one about the nail puller on page 112. Seems it should be used when crooked construction is first found, before the rest of the building gets thrown off kilter as well. Seems to me we should go back and fix our understanding of dating in the Bible before finishing Josh's mixed up book.

On page 116f he goes into establishing boundaries which I agree with. "Setting boundaries ... will allow you to respond with confidence in different situations. For example, I have committed to avoiding situations that could lead to temptation. For me, being alone with a girl in an empty house is one such situation. So I've created a boundary about the issue: I will not go to a girl's home if no one else is there." Bravo! When I was on the Christian mercy ship, we had a rule that when the opposite sex visited our cabins, the door had to remain open. I now live in a little cottage with a picture window across one whole side which faces a public access shortcut through the property. A girl comes over, the drapes stay open. I can still invite dates over, though.

Friendship leads to romance.

Chapter nine involves building friendships. To skip ahead to his formula on page 205, "These stages are casual friendship—deeper friendship—purposeful intimacy with integrity—engagement. My stages per Esther would be: Acquaintanceship—dating—girlfriends—engagement. Compare the two rough charts above. I base my approach also on (Prov. 18:24) "A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Because friendships require effort to build, the deeper the friendship, the fewer those kinds of friends. We end up with a pyramiding effect, and if one seeks romance only with close friends, why, he will have a really small pool to choose from. But per the proverb, non-platonic friendships are possible. If one dates from the large pool of acquaintances, then his or her girlfriends or boyfriends will develop from those dates in their own category without disturbing his regular friendships.

On pages 130f he wants us to "be inclusive, not exclusive," concentrating on "fellowship, service, prayer, or Bible study—then seek to involve others." That sure brings back memories of differences of opinion I held with the Bible school I went to. They pretty much disparaged dating, thinking we should get to know the opposite sex through church type activities. To maintain my sanity, I took up as a theme song, written by E. & P. Bruce, sung by Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson:

               Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

       Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
       Don't let 'em pick guitars and drive them old trucks;
       Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.
       Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
       They'll never stay home and they're always alone,
       Even with someone they love. 

Christians getting to know the opposite sex exclusively through church activities, with their signature music ("pick guitars") and the van to get there ("drive them old trucks"), will end up unable to have intimate relations with their eventual spouses ("they're always alone,/Even with someone they love.") No, they are better off as "doctors and lawyers and such." Doctors and lawyers have money. They go on dates.

Let's look at an example of someone "always alone, even with someone he loves." As Jesus used evil fathers to illustrate the giving of good gifts, and a judge who feared not God nor regarded man to illustrate forthcoming answers to prayer, I'm going to use a man of questionable morals to mark a lesson in intimacy. From: Keith Ablow, MMurder Suicide (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004) p. 60.

The part of parenting that Clevenger was least equipped for was the fact that raising a teenager really was isolating. You focused a lot of your time and energy on one other person—a person who wasn't your friend, who wasn't supposed to help you through your bad days or bear your lousy moods.

Clevenger was finding out how alone you could feel in the room next to your child, even when you loved that child as much as he loved Billy. And he couldn't make the loneliness go away in the easy ways he once had.

Take women. Clevenger had had love affairs during the past two years, including an on-again, off-again relationship with Whitney McCormick, the FBI's chief forensic psychiatrist, who had worked the Jonah Wrens case with him. But he couldn't abandon himself to romance, even with her, even though she still appeared in his dreams. He couldn't pour himself into a woman and dissolve his anxieties in the haze of passion. Giving your son the very decided impression he was your main focus in life meant going to sleep and waking up by yourself. It meant managing love affairs like part-time jobs.

Let's look at biblical friendship which with Billy his was not. (Prov. 17:17) "A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." Clevenger's non-friend couldn't "bear [his] lousy moods"—"loveth at all times"—or be the "brother born for adversity"—"to help [him] through [his] bad days."

Let's contrast that with the most notable friendship in the Bible, that of David and Jonathan. David's lament at news of Jonathan's death included, (II Sam. 1:26) "I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Their friendship was on the brother level (recall Prov. 18:24 above) and exceeding that of girlfriend, i.e. "passing the love of women." But that deep friendship included as a hallmark a commitment made on a sort of date (I Sam. 20) where the prearrangement allowed time for a sign from God (vs. 7) and they had in-person bonding (vs. 41). In fact their friendship was of a kind where (I Sam. 18:1b) "... the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul," which is just the kind of union which Josh so discourages in his book, where he "couldn't pour himself into a woman."

The remaining facet of such boyfriend-girlfriend relations, "closer than a brother," is the physicality which Josh so discourages, to "dissolve his anxieties in the haze of passion," which passion should be tailored, of course.

Clevenger's complaint was that he was "managing love affairs like part-time jobs." There is something to be said for that description. Courting a girl entirely by friendship and church activities, without going on dates, without any physicality, and then going into marriage with her would be like applying for an important job when all one's experience in the field is but part-time. I mean, an important element in the preparation just wouldn't be there.

On page 131 we are asked to think about "what can you learn about someone by sitting next to him or her in a movie theater?" Well, first of all, because so little is required it is an excellent activity for a first date. Secondly, we should not devalue movies. I refer to John W. Whitehead, Grasping for the Wind (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001) p. 267:

GOD AND FILM

In this chaotic age, people are increasingly seeking something outside themselves to give order and meaning to their lives. While painting once tackled these questions, modern film now addresses this search, which inevitably includes the subject of God. Of all the artistic forms throughout the ages, film may be the most suitable forum for the discussion of religion and God.

After the movie one may discuss with his date, either then and there or at some future time, what they saw. See Sweet November and afterwards discuss how each of the Ten Commandments was represented in the movie. Watch a bit of Catch and Release and discuss the various meanings of a woman's no. See Chicago and discuss how Amos was reminiscent of the apostle Paul for first appearing as a saint to his wife, then having "bought the twine" to string her up, then being hit hard with the truth in the lawyer's office, and consequently becoming a means to her salvation, all the while not being well understood. Or discuss the roots of American Beauty found in Ecclesiastes 3:11-22 as presented in my review in Vox pop in the Ticket section, page 20, of the Oct. 22, 1999, Register Guard newspaper.

On page 139 Josh adds himself to a long list of people who have appropriated Peter Marshall's famous sermon on "The Keeper of the Spring." Now, it seems, the keeper has assistants. Page 140: "You and I are the Keepers of Our Hearts." Peter Marshall's idea, however, was:

       Do not think me fanciful
      too imaginative
        or too extravagant in my language
       when I say that I think of women, particularly of our
       mothers, as Keepers of the Springs. The phrase, while poetic, is
       true and descriptive.

That corresp