I Kissed Dating Goodbye (6 page)

56 joshua harris

"I can't believe you," I said, letting the tone of my voice convey my disapproval. "You mean you and Gloria had...y had.. .1 mean you slept together?"

Jeff could tell I wasn't pleased. He wanted me to be impressed, to slap him on the back like one of his football teammates in the locker room and praise him for his "exploit." I wanted to slap him all right, but not on the back.

"Look, Josh," he said defensively, "we've waited a long time for this. It was really special. Maybe it doesn't meet your morals, but we felt that it was the right time to show our love."

"My morals?" I said indignantly. "My morals? Since when were they mine? How many times have we talked about this? With each other? At church? Jeff, you know that wasn't right. You..."

"We love each other," Jeff said, cutting me off in mid sentence. "If you ever really fall in love, then you'll understand."

The conversation ended. For some reason the stoplight took forever to turn green. We sat silently as the turn signal clicked off and on. I looked out the window.

Four years later, Jeff was going to college in Michigan. "I'm engaged!" he told me over the phone. "Debbie is incredible. I've never been so in love."

"That's great," I said. My congratulations sounded hollow. I couldn't help it. I was thinking of Gloria. I hadn't seen her for a long time. What was she now? Three or four girlfriends back? Love, huh?

the first Kiss

"How does Chinese sound?" I asked as we pulled out of the driveway.

"Hey, that's great," Eric replied with his typical enthusiasm.

looking up "love" in god's dictionary 57 I'd only just met Eric and his wife,

"Sure," she replied sweetly.

Eric and Leslie had stopped by to visit me during a drive through the Northwest. A friend in Colorado had told me about these newlyweds and the little book they had written. Their book told the story of how they had met and grown to love each other without following the typical pattern of dating.

You'd be hard pressed to find two more romantic people. They adored each other, and it showed. Eric rarely took his eyes off Leslie. Sitting in the passenger seat on the way to the restaurant, he slipped his hand behind the seat, and Leslie reached forward and clasped it. Holding hands when one person is sitting in the front seat and the other is in the back? I'd never seen that before.

After dinner, while we cracked open our fortune cookies, I had a question. "You two can't keep your hands off each other," I began teasingly. Leslie blushed. "Was it difficult keeping the physical side of your relationship pure while you were engaged?"

Eric took Leslie's hand and smiled at her before he answered. "Of course the desire for that was present--it always will be," he said. "But no, it wasn't a struggle. Leslie and I decided very early in our relationship that we were going to refrain from physical contact until we were married. Our first kiss was at the altar."

My jaw dropped. "You didn't kiss until you got married?"

"Nope," Eric said, beaming. "The most we did was hold hands. And, Josh, we know that kind of standard isn't for every couple. We didn't make that decision to be legalistic; it came

joshua harris from the heart. Everyone, even our parents, told us we should kiss. But we both decided it was what we wanted to do. It was a way to show our love, to protect each other before we were married." And then with a twinkle in his eye, he said, "Let me tell you, Josh, that first kiss was the most incredible, beautiful thing in the world. I can't even begin to describe it."

Eric and Leslie. Jeff and Gloria. Two couples that used the same word--love--to explain

I am, by my own admission, a hopeless romantic. If such a thing is possible, I am in love with being in love.

There's nothing else quite like it, and if you've experienced it, you know what I mean. Being in love is a patchwork of a thousand indescribable moments. Nervous energy runs through your body whenever you think of that special person, which is every waking minute. You lose interest in the dull chores of eating, sleeping, and thinking rationally. You discover that every love song on the radio was written for you. It seems that someone has removed blinders from your eyes, and you can see the world full of wonder and mystery and happiness.

I love love. But I've come to realize that I don't really know

looking up "love" in god's dictionary 59 much about it. Oh, I can tell you all about the warm, fuzzy side of love. I can throw myself into romance with all the passion of Romeo, but in God's school of true love, I'm afraid I'm still in kindergarten.

To me and other romantics who share a "love for love," God wants to give a higher, grander view. He wants to deepen our understanding. Romance can thrill us to our core, but it's only a small part of true love. We've been playing in the sandbox-- God wants to take us to the beach.

aphrodite or christ?

I cannot overemphasize the importance of gaining God's perspective on love. We can link all of the negative habits of dating to adopting a fallen world's attitudes toward love. And the conflict between God's definition of love and the world's is not new. Christians have always had a choice to either imitate the Master or slip into the more enticing pattern for love provided by the world. The apostle Paul understood this struggle when he wrote his famous chapter on love to the Christians living

joshua harris

The bustling, cosmopolitan, port town had elevated sex to a religious pursuit. The temple of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, employed one thousand prostitutes. How could these people possibly understand the true meaning of the statement "God is love" (1 John 4:16) when on every street corner and from every brothel someone offered their version of "love"--sensual pleasure--to them? Would they see the truth and beauty of real love in the midst of the seductiveness of its counterfeit?

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5).

Would Aphrodite or Christ triumph in Corinth? Would sensuality push out servanthood? Would sexuality have priority over selflessness? Would the readers of Paul's humble letter choose the everlasting or the fleeting pleasure of the moment?

Today Christians endure the very same struggle. Though separated by some two thousand years, similarities abound between our culture and that of Corinth. More than ever, sex is a commodity. Sensuality and exaggerated sexuality shout at us on every corner, if not from brothels then from newsstands and billboards. "Love is sex," a Calvin

Klein ad whispers. "Sex is pleasure," a movie tells us. And on the radio, "Pleasure is all that matters" is sung sweetly in our ears.

In the midst of this harangue, God's quiet message of true love still speaks to those who choose to listen.

Can you hear it? Put down the magazine. Turn off the VCR. Pull the plug on the stereo and listen...

looking up "love" in god's dictionary 61 fashion nightmare

Like the Christians in Corinth, we have two styles of love to select from--Gods or the worlds. Which will we choose?

I have an image that may help us understand our role as followers of Christ and therefore the style of love we should adopt. You may think it sounds strange at first, but stick with me. It will make sense as I explain. I think we should view love as something we wear.

From the day Adam and Eve disobeyed God then donned fig leaves in the Garden of Eden, the world has experienced something of a fashion nightmare, not in terms of clothing but in terms of love. When sin marred God's original design for love, the human race began "wearing" a twisted, corrupted imitation based on selfishness and irresponsibility.

But because God's love is perfect and enduring, He created a way for us to experience His design for love once again. He sent Jesus Christ to set things straight. In fashion terms, we could call the Author and Finisher of our faith the Designer and Model of a revolutionary expression of love. Christ gave His life for a world that rejected Him, and he told us to love our enemies. He washed the feet of the men who called him Master and told us to serve each other in humility.

He gave us the pattern-- "As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (john 13:34)--and told us to share it with the world.

super models

You may never model high fashion in New York or Paris, but as a Christian you model God's love to the world. Understanding this role profoundly affects our approach to relationships, especially

joshua harris our dating relationships. When dating we represent God's love, not only to the other person in the relationship, but also to the people watching us.

As Christians, we need to remember that Gods perfect love is not only for our benefit. A

I love me

I believe that we can model God's perfect love when we avoid the negative habits of dating. And doing this requires recognizing and rejecting the world's pattern of love. First we must understand that all of the world's deceptions flow from the belief that love is primarily for the fulfillment and comfort of self. The world poisons love by focusing on meeting one's own needs first and foremost.

We witness this poison in the boyfriend or girlfriend who pressures a partner into sex. You've heard the line "If you really loved me you'd do it." In other words, "I don't care about you, your convictions, or how this could damage you emotionally-- meet my needs!" Or what about the person who dates someone because it will boost his or her own popularity but then dumps

looking up "love" in god's dictionary 63 that person when someone in a higher social stratum comes along? While the first example is more extreme, both examples illustrate self-centered "love" in action.

Next we're told that love is primarily a feeling. At first glance this seems innocent enough--we often feel love, and this isn't necessarily wrong. But when we make feelings the litmus test of love, we place ourselves at the center of importance. By themselves, our feelings don't do others one bit of good. If a man "feels" love for the poor but never gives money to help them or never shows kindness to them, what are his feelings worth? They may benefit him, but if his actions don't communicate this love, his feelings mean nothing.

By inflating the importance of feelings, we