Why I Kissed Uhealthily Guarding my Proverbial Heart Good-Bye

Among the many "glad-that's-over" Christian-youth-sub-cultur

e trends that I've had to endure during my time working with college students was the "I kissed dating good-bye" fad.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my quirky part of Americana, 'I kissed dating good-bye' was a book that had several basic tenants that I became very familiar with while boycotting the book itself: dating is not in the Bible (true). It is a product of our culture (also true) and it's loaded up with all kinds of questionable cultural baggage (also true).

Therefore, a more biblical way to approach relationships is through "courting"--here's where I start to question the veracity of the whole deal.

What exactly "courting" was always was a bit fuzzy for me (probably should have sucked it up and bought the book). When students described it to me, it mostly sounded like some healthy principles of dating with some extra stuff thrown in that made it sound like the only thing serious Christians should do.

The concepts themselves certainly weren't all bad. It was just the opportunity for more self-righteousness that concerned me.

Real Christian students didn't date--they courted. Which meant that the guys especially had more excuses to run from relationships rather than engage them. If people were "dating" rather than "courting" there were questions about their commitment to God. Silly, I know, but that's our hearts, isn't it? Always looking for some new way to be better than someone else around us?

The other day I came across an oft-quoted piece of Scripture used to prop up the whole courting idea when I was reading Proverbs (one of my favorite books of the Bible, so glad to be soaking in Proverbs for the next month or more).

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." Proverbs 4:23.

This, of course is true. Jesus leans into this throughout his ministry as he calls people to move past superficial obedience to heart-level repentance.

But there's better and worse ways to guard our hearts.

If we're "guarding our hearts" out of fear, that's not the Holy Spirit. That's not faith, hope, and love. That's fear. Fear is not of God. Fear is our flesh, fear is our own anxiety, fear is a hijacking of our faculties rather than the freeing, glad obedience that we're invited to live into that then causes our hearts and indeed our whole lives to flower rather than be choked out and whither.

If we "court" because we're "guarding our hearts" and that's really just a smokescreen for "I'm scared of getting hurt" that's not holy. Or even worse, if we're courting because "I'm just trying real hard to be more spiritual and really intense all the time" then that's just spiritual arrogance and stupidity. Arrogance and stupidity aren't from the Spirit, either. Proverbs has plenty to say about that as well.

We must guard our hearts. But we must do so not out of fear or self-righteousness, but in a faithful certainty. Some of us are prone to giving our hearts away too easily, foolishly, recklessly. We must learn the discipline of not giving our hearts away in ways that are self-destructive.

But we must not fall prey in this to either fear or pride that would rob us of the real point: trusting God to be both our protector and our righteousness. That's the whole point of all our disciplines.