I have started a new website Practical Courtship! The goal of the website is to help make courtship work. So in a way it is a critique of courtship but it is also a guide. So far, it has received a fair bit of traffic and a ton of great comments. I encourage you to come by and check it out. Leave a comment and join the conversation.

Also, let me know if you are interested in writing an article for the site.

Here are some of the recent courtship posts:

• Does Courtship Work?
• Courtship & Predestination
• Courtship Definitions
• 7 Reasons Men Wait to Get Married
• Leaving is Hard to Do

There are a lot more to come.

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Yesterday I tweeted “The only difference between creepy and charming is permission.”

Some explanation is in order. No, I did not go on a date last night. No, I did not have yet another awkward encounter with a woman. But there is a story here and an interesting conclusion.

The tweet was the result of three completely unrelated things blending in my mind.

Thing 1: Barrack Obama

There has been a lot of chatter online about this photo of Obama at the G8 summit.

In light of the chatter, I have been thinking about how men ought to look at women. And, how they ought not look at women. The base forces of nature seem to war with the moral law. The specific social rules seem to vary by community. What is appropriate?

Thing 2: Girl in Parking Garage

As I left the apple store yesterday, I walked to my car in the parking garage. A young woman drove past me and as we made eye contact she unconsciously whisked her hair behind her ear. I wondered why she would do that, at that moment.

Thing 3: James Bond

Yesterday my family watched Quantum of Solice. So, as I walked through the parking garage, the movie swam through my mind.

In the movie, James Bond’s credit card gets denied at an airport. He looks deeply into the eyes of the lady at the counter who denied him the charge… and she melts. He asks “in a few moments you will get a call. Tell them I’m going to Cairo.” She smiles at him and he walks away.

Why would she melt? Why is this scene believable? Why can’t I do that?

I started adding up all the differences between me and James Bond. It was a depressing 30 minutes. Then I started eliminating the things James didn’t have to help him at the counter.

He had no gadgets, no money and no bad guys to beat up. But he still had one thing: His striking good looks and crystal blue eyes. If he had been ugly and peered into her eyes she would have looked away disgusted. I know. But James didn’t get disgust. He got permission. The woman gave him permission to look into her eyes because she wanted to look back into his.

The only difference between Bozo and Bond is permission.

So What?

You girls who are probably saying. “I could have told you that!” I know. Several of you already have on Twitter and Facebook. But to me this is a profound truth and I feel it applies to much more than just guy/girl relationships.

Gospel Permission

There is a Gospel application here. Before we can talk to someone about their soul we need their permission. Otherwise they won’t listen. Permission does not need to take long. Permission just takes tact. I find that tracts and humor can help break the ice.

But how did Jesus get permission? He healed people, raised the dead and offered hope. But, he had also something more. He could look into a man’s eyes, say “follow me” and the man would. Permission is power. Jesus’ power is supernatural. If we want permission that goes beyond gimmicks like tracts and treasure lists we need supernatural power too.

Business Permission

I have given Amazon permission to email me book recommendations. The emails are relevant because Amazon knows about the books I buy. If Barns & Noble were to send me an email recommending the same books I would spam it. Why? Because, Barns & Noble doesn’t have my permission to talk to me. They haven’t earned it.

If you want to grow your business you need to stop thinking of ways to spam people and start thinking of ways to earn their permission. Twitter is a good way to learn this skill. It doesn’t take much permission to send 140 characters once every other day.

Political Permission

The more I get around the more a realize that most people actually do care about politics. They just don’t care to hear about my politics. This is an important distinction. It is easy to write people off as complacent when I really just lack permission. Are people apathetic or do they just distrust both parties? A political party needs permission before it can have discourse. It must have discourse before it can sway opinion. It must sway opinion before it can win elections.

How do you get permission to influence someone’s political views?

I’m not sure. Striking good looks don’t hurt. Why else would Hollywood celebrates and Ann Coulter get such power? Humor seems to work too. I’m not sure what the answers are here. I know I often get into a political conversations on Facebook after sharing a link to a political YouTube video. What do you think?

Take Aways

• Permission is more valuable than money.
• Money can’t buy love, but permission is an ingredient to love.
• Money can buy spam, but spam can’t build a relationship between you and your customer.
• Money can’t buy votes, but permission can get attention and attention can change minds.

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Grace and I live about an hour away from each other. Grace works in Austin an hour from her home and mine forming a giant one hour triangle of doom. I call this triangle of driving "a middle distance relationship." We are to far to see each other daily and to close for week long visits. This causes unique challenges.
Whenever I want to spend an hour with Grace I must commit two hours to the road. As you can image we hardly ever have short visits. This changes the way we interact.

Challenge #1 The Elimination of Spontaneity.
I’m a spontaneous guy and like surprising Grace. I have tried to surprise Grace in the past but it is not easy. Driving an hour only to find out she already has plans is the pits. I have to pre plan times to be spontaneous and work out conspiracies with her co-workers which, while fun, ends up not being very spontaneous.

Challenge #2 Non Intersecting Circles of Friends.
The center of our relationship socially is Belton. This means that we don’t have as much time to be with Grace’s friends. There is no way to adequately accommodate both communities as well as both families. We are courting not running for elected office. The result is that we can’t please everyone and must disappoint. The members of Grace’s church are not happy with me for pulling her away from their congregation but we need to go to the same church. Unfortunately, that means picking one not to go to. We hate disappointing people but we can’t see any way around it.

Challenge #3 Finding "Life on Life" Time Together.
Our time together usually turns into a big event because of the amount of planning. This is courtship not dating so we not just try to mesh our schedules with each other, we also mesh our schedules with over a dozen family members.

The result is that we don’t spend much time doing regular life stuff like folding laundry and doing chores. I think it is important to interact in these sorts of environments in order to get to know each other better. It is one thing to have a meal together and talk about deep things. it is another to spend several hours working together.

Yes I know we could make working with each other a scheduled event of some sort but that would in some way defeat the point.

Challenge #4 Expense
Unlike a long distance relationship in which couples hardly ever see each other, medium distance couples see each other regularly but at a great expense in both time and money. While talking about money on a courtship blog is unromantic, it is a part of real life. With gas at approaching $4 a gallon, driving long distances is not cheap.

The cost creates a paradox. We have to work more to afford to see each other, giving us less time to see each other.

Challenge #5 The Phone
Before courting Grace I never talked on the phone for long periods of time except to check in with my mom to let the family know how I was doing. Paying by the minute kept my phone calls short, punchy and too the point. The result is that I am somewhat awkward on the phone. Sharing what is going on in my heart is much easier for me to do in person than it is over the phone.

If an issue emerges on the phone between Grace and me we both feel more comfortable resolving it in person.

If you are a baby boomer and don’t understand why the phone is so awkward for my generations please see my post Generation Y and the Demon Phone.

Challenge #6 Serving Each Other
It is hard for me to serve Grace in the day to day stuff because she is so far away. If she needed help with a big project I could help her but it does not make sense to drive two hours to help her with a 15 minute task. This also means that it is tough to serve our families together.

Challenge #7 Bingeing and Purging
Grace and I tend to spend a lot of time together on the weekends and hardly anytime at all during the week. This creates predictable emotional high and lows. Not exactly preparation for a day to day married life.

We Are Thankful
We don’t mean to complain. In fact there are several unique benefits to medium distance relationships. But, if you want to get into a medium distance relationship these are the pitfalls you should look out for.

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So, what is courtship anyway? How is it different from dating?

Grace and I get this question a lot. Here is our official answer.

Courtship: If Jesus ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy.

• Courtship has a purpose and happens to be a lot fun. As opposed to being fun and happening to have a purpose.
• Courtship is about identifying martial compatibility.
• Courtship about honesty and intentionality instead of playing manipulative games.
• Courtship includes family and friends (in that order) instead of excluding community.
• Courtship spurs couples towards Christ instead of distracting them from Him.
• Courtship is about standing alongside each other serving Christ instead of facing each other thinking primarily about the couple.
• Courtship is not about rules. It is about identifying the true motivations of the heart.
• Courtship is about accountability. Not secrecy.
• Courtship is about pleasing God in physical and emotional intimacy first and pleasing each other second.
• Courtship is about treating each other like a son or daughter of the King. Not like an object to be used and used up.
• Courtship is about thinking of the other as more important.
• Courtship is about bringing families together, not about excluding the parents.
• Courtship is fun. Anyone who says it isn’t hasn’t tried it.

Happiness is a side effect of courtship. Not the goal.

Specific differences from dating (for us):

• Most of the time we have spent together so far has been with our families or with groups of friends.
• We see our families as allies, not as enemies or obstacles. Grace’s siblings are becoming my friends and my siblings are becoming Grace’s friends.
• We keep our parents in the loop and are accountable to them. I am learning that moms are a good source of advice when it comes to what women want. And more importantly what they don’t want.
• We don’t touch each other much. As a single guy, watching unwed couples hang all over each other made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to perpetuate that. If this courtship ends in a green light then there will be plenty of time for touching. If it ends in a red light we will be glad we kept our hands to ourselves. This doesn’t mean we don’t touch at all. Grace and I went to the Spring Formal Dance for instance. But we don’t touch much.

You may think we are a couple of fuddy duddies for our lack of physical contact and you are entitled to that opinion. But I will say that this has been one of the most exhilarating times of my life and I don’t need to have my hands all over Grace to have a good time with her.

I think Grace says it best:

“Courtship is allowing God to be the focus of a relationship instead of the couple being the focus, or the world of couples (culture).”

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I am unaware of any generation at any time in the last 6000 years that has done as poor a job at marriage as the baby boomer generation. They have the most staggering divorce rate in the world. So why do we listen to their advice when it comes to our relationships?

The typical baby boomer advice to young people is to set high standards for a future spouse. No standard is too high for our parents and in the communities where young people heed this advice the marriage rate is plummeting. In one generation, marriage has gone from the rule to the exception. The New York Times recently reported that according to census data 51% of American women are unmarried – up from 35% in 1950. This rate is especially alarming since we have had no major war that has killed off a generation of men.

The Broken System
The marriage gap is shown most drastically among young people in conservative evangelical churches. In my church, for example, we have between 50 and 60 college students. Of those students, I can think of only 5 or 6 who are in defined relationships. I can think of only one married couple under the age of 25. And my church is just representative of what I have seen among evangelical churches. The situation is even worse in homeschool communities.

Of the hundreds of homeschoolers I know I can think of less than five who are married.

The generations before us have poured out an unprecedented amount of prayer for our generation that God would use us to turn the nation back toward Him. But, if we fail to produce another godly generation, we will inevitably become another England. Like Europe authentic Christianity will become history instead of reality. We need to take our heads out of the sand and examine this issue while there is still time to fix it.

The Problem with High Standards
I believe our unreasonably high and misplaced standards help perpetuate this problem. Many singles think that marrying the “right” person will lead to happiness. So, they proceed to get out a piece of paper and describe an ideal person who may or may not exist in reality. But even if he or she did, why would they be interested?

If I want to marry someone who looks like Nicole Kidman I need to look like Tom Cruise. I don’t, so I won’t, end of story. But if my standards insist that I marry someone who looks like her, I will never get married. I use this outlandish example to make a point but if we are honest, our standards look like this more than we would like to admit.

This thinking is crazy in any other facet of life. If I refuse to go to college unless I get into an Ivy League school I will never get a degree. To get a college education I must come to grips with the fact that while I can’t get into Harvard I can handle UMHB.

Misplaced Standards
The problem is not just that the standards are too high – they are also misplaced. Finding a wife is not like shopping. It’s not about comparing the features between disposable products. No one is perfect. Marriage is about finding someone to grow with, not someone to consume.

Paul Washer once said that God will give you a wife that is strong in all the areas she needs to be so that you are not tempted beyond what you care bear but weak in other areas so that you can learn to be more like Christ. If you ever find someone who meets all the conditions how can you ever learn to love unconditionally?

If you ladies want to marry someone as passionate for Christ as Eric Ludy you have to be as on fire as Leslie Ludy . It doesn’t matter how attractive Eric may or may not be, you won’t see him with Nicole Kidman because on a scale of passion for Jesus I would imagine she ranks around a negative zero.

The converse of this is true as well. If I am selfish and prideful, I will attract selfish and prideful girls. If am I unattractive, I will attract unattractive women. If I am emotionally unstable, the girls interested in me will likely be emotionally unstable as well.

Instead of focusing on external standards for who we want to marry we should focus on our internal standards for who we want to be.

My goal is to become the kind of man who will attract the kind of woman that I want to marry.

There is nothing wrong with high standards as long as we are first willing to live up to them ourselves.

Courtship is a lot like evangelism. Most Christians are so focused on getting “decisions for Christ” that they often overlook the plowing, planting and watering needed to bring about a plentiful harvest. Likewise, most singles are so busy asking, “Is this the one?” that they overlook the process of personal maturity.

What I am not saying:
I am not saying we should ignore the advice of our parents. While the baby boomer generation as a whole has blown it that doesn’t mean all the individual members of the generation lack wisdom. If there is one thing I have learned it is that I am not near as wise as I think I am and that age does not guarantee wisdom. Our self-centered humanistic culture makes it easy to grow old without ever growing up.

I am not advocating that singles should start slumming it and marry the dregs of humanity. I am calling for balance between external and internal standards. We must lower our external standards and raise our internal standards if we ever wan to walk away from this problem.

In response to the sins of our parents, we as a generation have made some drastic changes to our culture, most of which were wise and some were ill advised. It is time for a reevaluation. Feel free to join in on the conversation by commenting on my other posts regarding Christian Courtship .

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment. You can also subscribe to my blog via email to get new posts delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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I am setting of on one of the biggest, most exiting and dangerous adventures of my life. And I am not talking about my trip to Ecuador.

Grace Chambers and I are now officially courting. And by official I mean Facebook official. After several meetings with her dad he asked her if she was interested in starting a relationship and she said “yes.” If you don’t know Grace yet I’ll just say you’re missing out on an amazing friend.

I don’t really know much about courtship having only observed it from a distance. In other words I have no idea what I am doing. It is fun though, in that top of the roller coaster looking down afraid for you life kinda way that is..

You know when you are about to jump out of a plane and your realize that 10,000 feet is a lot farther down than you thought? You know that as soon as you step off that plane you will feel sheer terror and then either either a happy landing or splat.

Splat is not an ending of the relationship. Splat is dishonoring God. We don’t want splat.

I want this courtship to be fun and God honoring. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive but blending them is a challenge. We live between two cultures. One values hedonistic pleasure over holiness. The other looks down on others with contempt and pride and sees most pleasure as some form of sin.

I will be blogging occasionally on what I learn as we go. Maybe you can learn from us and avoid our mistakes.

Risk
One thing I do know about relationships is that they are risky. I think the guy especially needs to take risks and that can be hard. When it doesn’t work out it can hurt, a lot. A good friend of mine took a risk in courtship and it didn’t work out. And while he honored God he is still in a lot of pain.

If relationships were easy would we value them as much? Or does the risk and the danger make them special?

Grace and I officially started courting on Wednesday March 12. Since then Grace has the flu and I am leaving for a different continent. The challenges of long distance relationships has just been multiplied by a factor of $2 per minute phone rates and 3000 extra miles.

I can’t wait to get back to Texas

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