† The Courtship Dance †
Welcome! I'm glad to see you are interested in this sometimes
misunderstood word. I hope you will learn something, and become more knowledgable by the
time you reach the end of this page, on the subject of courtship.
Okay, So What Are You Talking About?
Courtship is probably not much like what you are thinking.
Immediately most people bring to mind knights and maidens; honor, chivalry... It is the
same, and yet not the same.
Before I go into courtship totally, let's find out why we
should want to court in the first place! Here are twenty-five reasons that should make
anyone run from the 'dating game'!
25 Reasons You Shouldn't Date
 | Dating promotes lust and moderate sexual activity, opening the door for fornication. |
| Dating develops a self-centered, feeling-oriented concept of love. |
| Dating creates a permanent endorphin-bond between two people who will not spend their
lives together. |
| Dating teaches people to break off difficult relationships, conditioning them more for
divorce than marriage. |
| Dating creates a standard of comparison by which mates are first chosen, but after
marriage rejected. |
| Dating develops an appetite for variety and change, creating dissatisfation within
marriage. |
| Dating causes late marriages, leaving more time for falling into sins associated with
singleness. |
| Dating destroys fellowship, leaving Christians alienated and ineffective for cooperative
ministry. |
| Dating lacks the protections and guidance afforded by parental involvement of courtship.
|
| Dating doesn't prepare children to face "life's realities" -- it warps
life's realities! |
| Dating devalues sex and marriage. |
| Dating leads to intimacy but not necessarily to commitment. |
| Dating tends to skip the "friendship" stage of a relationship. |
| Dating often mistakes a physical relationship for love. |
| Dating often isolates a couple from other vital relationships. |
| Dating, in many cases, distracts young adults from their primary responsibility of
preparing for the future. |
| Dating can cause discontentment with God's gift of singleness. |
| Dating creates an artificial environment for evaluating another person's character. |
Pretty bad, huh? Well thank the Lord there is an alternative!
Yup, you guessed it, Courtship!
This is a quote I took from a great website by Nathan Bailey, where I also got
the above 25 reasons. He sums the word up beautifully:
"Courtship is a word that has been adopted to
describe a biblical model for the relationship leading up to marriage. In the Bible, the
parents were always involved in the marriage process. They did not arrange the marriage
without the childrens' consent, although they were certainly involved in the arrangements.
Sometimes the parents found partners for the children, and then the children were
consulted for their opinion. Other times the son would approach the daughter's father and
make arrangements with him."
I'll be adding more soon!
