Category Archives: Busting the Myths

To Kiss Or Not To Kiss

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My first kiss from anyone other than a relative came in first grade.  It was right after school and this girl named Lori came up on the playground, grabbed me and kissed me. . . ON THE LIPS.  It was scandalous but it wasn’t sex.

I want to write today about kissing.  I want to say up front that I’m not expecting everyone to agree with what I say here today and that’s ok.  I’ve been on every side of this in my 20 years of singleness.  I’ve messed it up on both sides. So let’s get real.

First a brief Justin kissing history.  In high school, I kissed exactly one person.  Not because I didn’t want to, or because I thought it wrong, but because I didn’t know how to go about it and I was not super popular with the ladies.  When I got to college that all changed and I kissed pretty much every girl I went out with, usually on the first date.  It was fun.  I didn’t fool around with them, and I didn’t have sex with any of them.  I don’t think it scarred anybody.

Then came my 20s and what I call the religious dating revolution of the 90’s.  This was led by I Kissed Dating Good Bye and other such books.  As I shared in an earlier post, I dated (courted, talked with, whatever she called it) a girl who went by a book with a chart.  No kissing allowed.  Now a lot of this made sense to me.  I’d seen a lot of people fall into temptation.  Then and now I get the argument.

I went ten years without kissing anyone.  TEN years.  

Now this started out as a religious “date right” decision.  Then there was a time when there just wasn’t many options and my head was buried in ministry.  But when I looked up after about five years I was in a new city, 31 years old, and had no confidence in this area of my life (not to mention no physical intimacy).  I had new reasons for not kissing.  In the back of my head was still the religious reasons, including “guarding the girl’s heart” (which mostly guarded her heart from liking me – ha) and frankly it had been a long time – could I deliver? I think it hurt me and helped keep me single.

Then I went on a date with a girl who pretty much did what Lori did in first grade – except in a car.  It was still scandalous, and it still wasn’t sex.

Sense then I’ve been on a lot of dates and God has walked me through a lot of stuff.  I’ve maybe kissed a couple of people I shouldn’t have and maybe even missed it when I should have.  But here’s what I’ve come to believe.

I think kissing is ok.

In fact I think if you haven’t kissed by the third or fourth date you are in trouble.  You are quickly approaching the no chemistry zone.  Now the exception might be if you have both talked about it and said you don’t want to – that’s totally fine – your call. But I’m saying I think kissing is fine, in fact I think it’s good.  I don’t think it’s sex or has to lead to it.

I’ve already talked about not having sex outside of marriage and I want to talk more later about having some healthy physical boundaries but when it comes to kissing I say yes please.

But. . . some important parameters.

First off, if you are not interested in the girl, then don’t kiss her.  For the love do I need to type that?  We’ve all had dates we just weren’t into. But here is where the third date thing comes into play.  If by the third date you don’t want to kiss her, then probably it’s time to not date her.  Sometimes we are passive about ending stuff.  More on that soon.

This brings us to point two.  This all assumes that the reason you are dating is to find someone to marry.  I’m not talking here about running around kissing different random people.  That is definitely not ok.  I’m talking about you are trying to find a spouse and you meet someone you like and it is progressing.  I think it is ok, good in fact, to kiss that person.

There are lots of traps that you can fall into, for example kissing all the time and never actually talking.  But there are traps with being so religious that you don’t have any physical contact.

So, what do you think?  When is it ok to kiss?  Is it good, bad, or does it even matter? What does a kiss mean to you?

Is It God’s Fault I’m Single?

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So I’ve read a lot of online profiles.  I mean a lot.  I don’t even want to think about the number.  Here is one of my least favorite lines, “I know that everything happens for a reason.”  This usually follows (or is followed by) some sort of statement about not knowing why they still haven’t found “the one”.  I hate this line.  I call it Oprah theology.

A lot of Christians put their own sort of twists on it.  “I know God has a plan” or “God made this happen for a reason” or “I don’t know why but God does” or “God has His reasons” and so on.  I don’t really like those much better.  Especially when it comes to marriage and singleness.

I can’t count the times someone has asked me why God has me single, or “encouraged” me by saying that God has a plan, therefore implying that me being single right now is because God wants that.  Worst of all is when single people use it to hide from dealing with their sin, insecurity, and hurt.  Or they use it to keep from engaging the opposite sex. “It’s God’s deal so I don’t have to do anything.”  That’s convenient.

First of all this is not the point of God’s sovereignty.  God’s sovereignty should be a launching pad not a hiding place.  If God is sovereign then I am free to deal with all of this stuff.  I’m free to deal with my sin.  I’m free to face my insecurity.  I’m free to deal with my pain and loneliness.  If I feel called to marriage, I’m free to actually pursue that.  Because if God’s got it, then I can go for it.

Now maybe you are reading this and thinking, “I really believe God wants me to be single right now.”  That is great.  If you’ve been engaged with God (preferably in community) and that is what you feel He is telling you, I absolutely affirm that.  Sometimes we are called to singleness for a season. Or maybe you are called to be single for good.  That is awesome. If you are following His call to singleness that is right on. In fact I think it is essential that we ask Him these questions so that’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about is blaming God or hiding behind God.  I’m talking about assuming that it’s God’s fault that I’m single.  What if it’s my fault?  What if at different times it’s been other’s fault? What if it’s because I don’t know how to get married? Heck, what if it’s spiritual warfare (you know that thing that we say exists but never actually live like is happening)?  Do you think there might be a battle over your love life?

There are a lot of reasons that we are single (we each have an unique story) but we need to be careful before we start assigning it all to God.  For one thing, if it is all God’s fault then it is also God’s fault that 49% of Americans are single.  It would mean that back in the day God wanted everyone to be married early but then about 25 years ago He changed His mind.  He said, “You know I’m tired of everyone being married, lets change it up.”

Look, I’m not pretending to know God’s will. But really who does? What we do know for sure is that His grace is big enough to redeem and use any situation for good.  We know that He can use our singleness or marriage (or any other situation) to bring us closer to Him.  That is the whole point – that is the one thing we know He wants.

Are You Disqualified From Marriage?

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One of my favorite movies is Good Will Hunting and my favorite scene comes toward the end.  Will (played by Matt Damon) is meeting with his counselor (played by Robin Williams).  Williams pulls out Damon’s file and talks about all the abuse he has faced in his life.  He then says, “Will, I don’t know a lot, but this, all of it, it’s not your fault.”  Will says, “I know” very nonchalantly.  Williams then says it again, and again, and again until finally Will, after getting very agitated, falls into his arms.  You see Will knew intellectually that it wasn’t his fault, but until that moment he didn’t KNOW that it wasn’t.

I think we do this with forgiveness.  Around a year ago I was having a cigar with a good friend.  This guy is one of the best guys I know – smart, fun, talented and a good friend to people.  Without going much into his story he has some issues with religion.  As we were sitting there discussing this I said, “You know that you’re forgiven right?”  He stopped in his tracks. He kind of tried to skirt the issue but I just kept hammering it.  A month later we met up and he said, “Thanks for screwing up my life – I mean that.”  He knew it intellectually but he just then began to KNOW it.

I bring this up because I think it relates to thoughts we can have as a single person.  We watch marriages around us and we think about all the reasons we are not married.  One of the things that can creep in is “It’s because I sinned.”  It’s as if we think somehow we have disqualified ourselves before God.  Now we probably wouldn’t ever say this but if we are honest many of us have had the thought.  God is not punishing your sin with singleness.

Now if you have unrepentant sin, that could certainly get in the way of getting married, among other things. Let’s say for example you are sleeping around, that might not be the best time to say to God, “Will you just bring me a spouse.”  It’s important to understand that how we are living affects our situation.  But that is not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m saying is that you are not disqualified from marriage because of sin.  God is not holding out on you or punishing you because of it.  It’s not a marriage qualifier.  If it was, no one, and I mean no one, would be married.  All the people you see married – they have sinned too.  You say, “Well Justin, you don’t get it, I’ve done really bad in this area of life.” You’ve slept with 100 people, dated the wrong people, had an abortion, looked at porn, or masturbated a river. . . I do get it.  God’s grace is bigger.  You are forgiven.  God is not holding it against you and keeping you from having a spouse because of it.

I think we kind of understand forgiveness as a means to salvation – which is mainly an intellectual exercise.  I don’t think we get it as a means to freedom in life – we don’t live out of it.

This is extremely dangerous as a single when we assign it to dating.  First of all as I mentioned earlier, you don’t earn a spouse.  Secondly, it can lead us to very bad choices because we have a bad view of ourselves. We can decide that we have to marry someone who has sinned the same way as us, which can lead us to bad situations and rule out people.  We can think, well I’ve had sex so I have to marry someone who has, I’m divorced so I have to marry someone else who is.  The list goes on.  That’s not a very good approach.  It also leads to the idea that singleness is a punishment from God.  But worst of all, it short changes God’s grace.  It basically says that God’s grace is good enough for salvation (a ticket to heaven) but it can’t free me from much here.  That is a lie straight from hell.

If you are in Christ, your sin is forgiven and you’re not disqualified from Heaven.  You are a new creation.  Jesus has paid for it.  Which do you think is easier, getting you into heaven or getting you married?

You know you are forgiven right?  How would you date different if you knew you were free?

God Has Someone For You – Really?!

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One of the most annoying things you hear as a single person is when someone says the words, “There’s someone out there for you”.  Ok, well that’s great. Even worse is the Christian version, “God has someone out there for you,” or other fun variations like, “God will bring the person in His timing,” (thanks Calvin), or one of my favorites, “God is just getting them ready for you.”  That one makes me laugh.

I’ve heard some of these from the pulpit believe it or not and of course at conferences when I was younger as well as from many well meaning friends (all married of course).  But well meaning as it may be it isn’t a good idea.  It touches on some things we’ll talk about more such as, thinking God owes you a spouse, thinking that it is all God’s fault you are single, thinking that it is all about you, feeling that God is holding out on you, the whole “This is God’s plan that you are single” thing, and worst of all, having your spirituality tied up in this stuff.  But there are more immediate problems for this post.

First of all when someone tells me that God has someone for me I want to say, “Really?! You know this for sure?  You’ve prayed and God has told you that He has someone for me?  Tell me more.”  Look, I think a lot of people say this stuff because it makes them feel better and/or they hope it will make the other person feel better but it usually doesn’t. Now of course if you’ve actually prayed and felt like God gave you a word about this for your friend then by all means share it.  (I’ve had this happen to me actually – crazy story).

But otherwise this is not great advice.  For starters it’s not Biblical.  No where in the Bible are we promised a spouse.  You can’t read the Bible and think, “God has someone for everyone”.  Now to be sure marriage is set up by God and is a great thing.  It is also part of the original plan and it happens pre-sin so to speak (more on this later) but the problem is there are all sorts of people in the Bible who aren’t married.  There are people called to singleness.  And frankly, we did sin.  And friends, that screwed up every single aspect of creation, including this one.

We should not assume that we, or teach anyone else to assume that they, will get married. It’s just not a good starting point.  This has all sorts of ramifications.  I’ve had a couple of friends recently say to me, “Should this change what I tell my kids growing up?”  My answer would be yes.   As single people we need to have an attitude of submission to God in this area.  “God what do you want for me here?” would be a great starting point. It’s scary because we might not like the answer (either answer can be scary) but we need to ask it.  According to Jesus both marriage and singleness seem to be a calling of sorts. Maybe we should be working that out.

I think about how many times in my twenties that I prayed for God to bring me someone or for that matter to help me land a particular someone.  I don’t remember even really considering if He called me to something different.

We need to ditch the cliche answers that sound nice and actually engage the first questions first.

There Is No Biblical Dating Plan

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When I was coming up into my early 20s there were a series of books about “Biblical Dating.”  Now the funniest part about this is that the number one book was written by Joshua Harris who was 22 when he wrote it.  He got married right after that which leads me to two conclusions. 1. It worked for him so way to go Josh and 2. Harris was never really single.

The general idea of these books was that dating as we know it was wrong and unbiblical. They suggested “courting” because that was biblical.  The idea was that dating/courting is always about figuring out marriage (with them so far), that physical and emotional intimacy should be saved for marriage (ok, still with them at some level) and essentially if you did this right you would get married and not get hurt along the way (whoops!).

There was one book (not by Harris) that went even further.  It literally had a chart in it for how far you should go, emotionally, spiritually, and of course physically, at each stage of the “courtship”.  Yes that’s right – a chart.  Here’s the best part – when I was 26 I dated (courted, talked with, got to know. . . whatever it was) a lady following this exact formula. We talked about it, I read the book and we followed the rules.  But, lo and behold, it turns out that I was not the only one this person was courting (or being courted by as the case may be).  So a few months into this “relationship”, she said basically, “So, I’m going to marry this other guy.”  I wish I was joking.  When I was hurt she said something to the effect of, “I don’t understand why we don’t all feel the same thing.”  In other words, why didn’t the formula work?

There’s so much here I’m not even sure where to begin.  First of all there is no formula to get married.  Every marriage story is different.  Secondly there is absolutely no correct Biblical dating/courting plan.  I mean try to find either in the Bible.  It’s just not there.  Think about ways people in the Bible found mates.  Some examples: Work 7 years for one wife and then 7 more for another, send your servant to a distant country to wait by a watering hole and pick one out, purchase property and get a wife thrown in.  It goes on and on.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how to find a mate.  It does give us important guidelines for our sexual behavior (much more on this later), it gives us some direction on the type of person to marry, and it does, maybe most importantly, teach us the right way to interact with people. But it just does not give us a plan on how to get married.

But the worst part about these books is that they create an illusion that if you did it the way they tell you (it’s Biblical after all), you will find a spouse and no one will get hurt.  This is of course, ridiculous.  This idea that if you do it God’s way then all will turn out the way you want it.  This isn’t true in any area of life and marriage/singleness is no exception.

No matter what you call it, dating, courting, or whatever, it is only going to work out one time – if ever.  And most of those other times someone is going to get hurt.  That’s ok. That’s part of trying.  It can be part of learning that at the end of the day Jesus has to be our number one love.  That’s true even if we do get married.  That’s Biblical.

Don’t Be Content In Your Singleness

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One of the Myths of Singleness is the idea that if you are content in your singleness that you will then somehow find someone to marry.  I don’t how many times someone has told me things like, “I wasn’t looking and then I met my wife” or, “stop focussing on it and then it will happen”, or my favorite, “when you are content in your singleness, then God will send you someone.”

Now there’s an underlying truth here that is good – and I’m going to get that – but on the surface this is kind of ridiculous.  And it is even worse when it comes from married people – so marrieds should pay attention here as well.

Now there would be nothing wrong with being content in singleness.  It is ok to be single and sometimes God calls us to singleness.  This can be for life as a second vow – in other words you make a vow to walk with God and then you give your life to ministry – as a priest, nun, single pastor, or lay single person.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Paul talks about it.  For many years (as in over a thousand) this was seen as a higher calling than marriage in the Church.  But if you are called to it then you are not looking to find a spouse – you have vowed to not get married.  You can also be called to be single for a season.  Sometimes God calls us to certain things for certain times.  (It would be good by the way to ask God about this stuff – don’t ask if you have the “gift of singleness” but more “God are you calling me to be single?” or, “Do you want me to get married?”  Those are brave prayers in our Christian culture but worth asking).

But striving to be content in order to be ready or good enough to find a spouse is not good. First of all it’s a little dishonest.  If I’m trying to become content so that I can get married then I’m not really content.  Secondly what about every person who gets married early in life without really entering singleness – were they content in singleness first?  I’m gonna say no.

Now here’s the underlying truth that many of these people are getting at.  When you are working on who you are as a person (which we all should be) and focussed on following Jesus and becoming who He has made us to be, then guess what – you are way more confident, comfortable, and attractive to the opposite sex.  This is a good thing.  If we are focussed on finding someone to marry or constantly letting that impact every decision we make, it can begin to control us – which makes us desperate, needy, and unfocussed on the Lord.  That is of course unattractive and gets in the way.

But we have to be careful of the “I’m not going to look” line of thinking.  It can lead to at least two dangers.  First we can just shut down rather than actually working on our own lives. In other words it can be an excuse to hide from real reasons we are single.  Second it can cause to grow cold and not pay attention to people around us that might be potential spouses – kind of a self protection plan gone wrong.

What we need to do is work on finding our identity in Jesus regardless of marital status.  As a bonus (not as the goal) it makes us way, way more attractive.

You Don’t Earn A Spouse

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About ten years ago I was having lunch with a friend who was 24 and had been married about two years.  We were meeting for work but we ended up talking about life.  At one point my young friend (who I was supposed to be mentoring but who was about to mentor me) asked, “Justin why do you think you are still single?”

I sat for a minute trying to come up with something wise to say.  Then I said something like, “I don’t know exactly.  Maybe God still has stuff for me to learn first.”  I sat back satisfied with my “Godly” answer.

He responded, “How come I didn’t have to learn any of that stuff first?”

Bam!  I was in trouble.  In one sentence he had just taken out my religious answer.  I mean he was right.  He was a mature 24 year old but did he know more than me at 22 when he got married?  What was it exactly that I needed to master first before I was “studied up enough” for God to go ahead and grant me a spouse?  Yikes.

This is one of the subtle things that can sneak into our minds.  This idea that if God is waiting for us to get something so that we are now “ready” to be married.  Even typing that seems ridiculous now but in the back of my mind I’ve spent a lot of time there.  Especially in my 20’s.  This is dangerous on so many levels.  It can lead to earning God’s favor which takes out grace.  It can lead to bitterness towards others, “How come God gave that heathen a spouse when I’ve been over here trying to stay pure and do it right?”  It can lead to following God’s plan in an effort to earn a gift from him instead of simply to follow Him.  And, because of that, when we get tired of trying to earn it, it can lead to sin, especially sexually, because obviously God is not delivering on my hard work of staying pure.

No where does God say that a spouse is earned.  In fact all through history, including in scripture (e.g. just about everyone in the Old Testament) you could make the case that horrible people get married all the time.  A spouse is a gift, not a prize.  If your motivation to please God is so He will give you a spouse you’re in trouble.

Now it is sure fair to ask God, “Are you teaching me something here?” or, “Is there something I’m doing that is preventing me from having a spouse?” But the idea that I’m going to earn one is bad news.  Any married guy can tell you, they don’t deserve their spouse.

Where has this idea of earning a spouse crept into your thought process?

Where are you bargaining with God by following certain rules with the hope of a payoff?