GOD-DAMNED HYPOCRITES - PART 9
DATING
The focus and intent of dating, for a Christian, is supposed to be with marriage in mind, and marriage itself is an extremely difficult commitment that does not exist in isolation. It is influenced by every other facet of life, and petty power struggles both within and outside a couple's relationship can negatively impact on it, or lead to distractions to obscure more important issues (hopefully the links included in this blog entry can help prove this point). So how should Christians approach marriage? There are no hard and fast rules other than what is required of a Christian and avoiding situations where we may be tempted into sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 5: 12-20, Ephesians 5: 3-7, 1 Thessalonians 4: 3-8). This being said, it becomes obvious God would prefer that we get to know ourselves before rushing into relationships that involve dating, and from this it is obvious that dating should have but one goal: to seek a suitable husband or wife with whom to be united as one in their obedience to God.
Dating is the first step to establish foundations for a successful marriage. It involves the same issues and is affected by the same things. In this matter, it is important for the example to be set by older Christians (Titus 1: 5-16 & 2: 15). If a relationship is entered into before one or both those involved have come to know themselves, then how can they know what it is they seek? If they are seeking a means to make themselves whole, then how can the marriage work? God says that the two shall be made one (Matthew 19: 4-6), so it is not possible for two people to be made one if one of those people is not whole; if one or both those involved do not know who they are or what they want when they begin dating, then the relationship cannot properly grow.
Dating is the first step to establish foundations for a successful marriage. It involves the same issues and is affected by the same things. In this matter, it is important for the example to be set by older Christians (Titus 1: 5-16 & 2: 15). If a relationship is entered into before one or both those involved have come to know themselves, then how can they know what it is they seek? If they are seeking a means to make themselves whole, then how can the marriage work? God says that the two shall be made one (Matthew 19: 4-6), so it is not possible for two people to be made one if one of those people is not whole; if one or both those involved do not know who they are or what they want when they begin dating, then the relationship cannot properly grow.
Paul spoke of this concern on many occasions, fearing the sinful desires that can lead Christians astray (2 Timothy 2: 22-26). It was not their own sinful desires alone that Paul was worried about though, but those of the people with whom they become involved. Throughout the Old Testament (and even in the New Testament) there are many examples of what happens to those who associate with others whose interests are not grounded in the Lord, and even many of the Jewish Kings (including David and Solomon) fell into the trap of keeping bad company.
So what do we do if someone begins to act in a manner that is out of character when they start dating? What should we do if a fellow Christian meets somebody that claims to love them within days of meeting? Should we be concerned if a fellow Christian is under eighteen and spends the night with someone they have just met? What should we do if a fellow Christian begins to act in a contrary manner by spending time alone, behind closed doors with someone of the opposite sex? What should we do if a fellow Christian makes plans to go away for holidays, alone, with someone of the opposite sex?
If you have children, you will have asked yourself many of these questions already. Why do young people insist upon sacrificing family and friends for people they have just met? What is the attraction that allows a person to ignore the warnings of those they have known and trusted for years in favour of somebody who claims to love them within mere days of their meeting? Why do people willingly ostracise and persecute those they have known for years when their new ‘friend’ makes deliberate attempts to alienate them? In many case the answer takes the form of lust and jealousy, but regardless of their reasons, this behaviour is based in human desire and definitely not obedience to the Lord.
Should we simply allow this destructive behaviour to continue, keeping silent in the hope that everything will work out in the end? What if the person you know demands that you support their new relationship and keep quiet about your concerns or what you have witnessed? What if they play the card that if you love them you will do what they want? What would Jesus do? Sadly, many of know what happens first hand, and the outcome is an incredibly painful one, and coping with the loss takes years to learn how to cope.
These relationships are unbalanced, both within the dating couple and between former friends and family; where one person demands more than they return, there is no love. This situation is made even worse by the failure of friends and family to openly discuss their concerns, and to persecute those who try to do what is right. But what happens if the couple surround themselves with people who only tell them what they want to hear and support their ‘lifestyle’ choices, especially if this includes their parents? What happens if they refuse to listen to reason and repent? What happens when they isolate and vilify those who make the effort to do as God asks in order to keep their sins a secret? What happens if they continue to lie about what they are actually doing and manage to get into positions of authority?
Many years ago, the Presbyterian Church I attended maintained Growth Groups. Badly. The Church was riven by factions. Eli Poser had four sons and remained part of the Church despite an ‘incident’ that ensured he was no longer an active Minister. The outgoing Minister had four daughters, one of whom was dating one of Eli’s sons, and another a young man on the path to Ministry. The replacement, who we’ll call Fitch Gamble, was a self-centred, opportunistic, narcissist, a hypocrite with an agenda who masked his ambition for power behind his knowledge of the Bible. They Church had elected another version of Eli.
The secondary Minister, Laurie Crapper, carried the heaviest burden. He and his wife and daughter were not paid a full wage by the Church, yet he performed most of the tasks that did not result in honour, glory and respect, and he did so with humility. And when the wheels came off the Youth Groups, he was sent into the tangled web of teen spirit and petty vindictiveness to sort out the horrid mess. And he approached me to find out what was happening because he knew I neither lied nor participated in what was going on because I disagreed with what was happening. He also knew that none of the others could be trusted.
What was going on? Petty, bitchy teen-angst and power-struggles that should have ended years earlier given many of those involved were close to twenty or a few years beyond. In their wisdom, the leadership of the Church had allowed the Youth Groups and younger Growth Groups to be led by leaders of the same ages. One of Eli Poser’s sons, Drew, led one group, while Kaylee Jensen led another. The problems really took root when Drew decided to grow the group by inviting young people from another Church to join.
Drew decided to hold the Growth Group meetings at the house his brother, Martin, rented with myself and another friend. Within just a few weeks the group had grown from about a dozen to twice that number, the meetings becoming little more than parties, and tensions with neighbours reached breaking point as they began making complaints to the rental agency. The behaviour of Drew and the new members divided the group, forcing original members to leave as the new ones staked out claims on leadership positions.
Drew and his brothers had a habit of taking control of funds for activities. They would insist the group fund events, like special dinners for the girls in the group that required all the males to chip-in, even if they and any girlfriend they had could not attend, promising to include them in the gifts that were given. Then they would pocket whatever cash remained. They did the same with the Church soccer teams. But it went beyond that. Drew also claimed control over who dated who, insisting there was a pecking order whenever a girl broke-up with her boyfriend and became “available”, as if the girl had no right to make her own choices. He himself was dating a daughter of the former Minister. It was all very disturbing. But it got worse.
The new group came from a Church that had recently come apart. The father of two of the girls had been a Minister until his behaviour toward younger female members resulted in his dismissal. With them came the vile trend that had swept across the US that a couple should agree to marry before they began dating, with absolutely no idea if, or regard for how, they would get along. There was also the usual no premarital sex agreements, but none of them kept to that arrangement at all. In fact, the eldest daughter of the Minister from the new intake encouraged girls in the Church to use sex to ensure their targeted male married them.
And she was not alone. Kaylee Jensen, suddenly finding herself challenged for the role of most popular girl at the Church had been preaching the same secret messages to the girls in her Youth Group, even offering them ‘safe’ places to do it… in her parent’s home when they were out. To avoid pregnancy, and maintain their ‘virginity’, she and many of her little following only practice oral and anal sex. But the new girls had the future in mind, seducing and marrying into what they thought was the Church leadership: the Poser sons and their closest friends. They didn’t realise that the Poser family were not part of the Ministry, deceived by the arrogance and boasting of Drew, his brothers and father.
The whole situation rapidly devolved. Girls who had grown to adulthood in the Church were driven out as the rot set in. The squabbling came to the attention of the Ministry and Laurie Crapper was sent in to sort it out. Fitch Gamble set upon a plan to make an example of a transgressor, to bring the others to their senses. My wife’s brother was all of sixteen and wanted to become a leader, but he was dating a non-Christian girl. His father was an elder at the church. Laurie Crapper’s daughter, who shared her bed with her boyfriend, under her parent’s roof, had gossiped about a party where my wife’s brother and his girlfriend shared a mattress for the night after a party. They’d been dating for three months. It was the perfect opportunity.
Despite his protests that they had never had sex, he was instructed to break-up with the girl and forget his ambitions to become a leader. He left the Church, betrayed and discouraged. His girlfriend later left him, the pressure on their relationship too much to bear. The example had been set. But the rot remained. Drew would not only continue in his hypocrisy, but be elevated to the role of Minister. He married his girlfriend, and her brother-in-law also became a Minister, both couples having preached the evils of premarital sex, yet both couples practising it for years before they finally married.
Martin married one of the new girls, her sister marrying one of Drew’s friends, and one of the other new girls marrying another of Drew’s friends, both within only weeks or months of starting to date, despite many warnings from people that were soon after driven out of the Church. The last two marriages failed, spectacularly, after only a few years, along with a third marriage to another new member. The three males involved soon found themselves ostracised, excluded from the Church by the puritanical hypocrisy. And amongst all of this, perhaps the greatest example of the hypocrisy was revealed.
My wife’s younger sister began dating a friend of a friend when she was just sixteen. He was a couple of years older, the son of a wealthy family and anti-Christian to the point of dabbling in the occult. The second time they met, he told her he loved her. They started dating. A week after they met, he took her to a party where she got drunk and spent the night with him. Within just three months, her entire personality changed. She was part of Katlee Jensen’s Youth Group, and that influence was as apparent as it was destructive. My wife expressed her concern and reminded me of a promise I had made to watch out for her sister, but by then whatever friendship had existed between the three of us was reduced to pretendship, if any friendship had ever really existed at all.
My wife had spoken with her sister and received nothing but defensive aggression and an instruction to mind her own business. After a few weeks, I made the error of speaking to her and expressing concern, not only about what she was doing with her boyfriend, but the way she had treated her sister. I tried appealing to her by using the very same things she had once said about people doing what she herself was now doing, and what had happened to her brother. She responded with the same defensive aggression and demands to enable her she had unleashed on her sister, her behaviour little different to a drug-addict.
Her boyfriend had been inserting himself into my friendships for months, gradually edging me out to the point he would step into a group and slowly move in front of me until I was pushed out. Then people began to look at me in a manner that was unsettling, stopped speaking to me, or spoke rudely to me. A Minister I had never met before looked at me with contempt when I spoke to him, as if there was something I had done to offend him, and then ignored me. Between the behaviour of Drew and his little cult, and my efforts to express disagreement with the actions of the Ministry concerning my brother-in-law and what was going on, it soon became apparent I was no longer wanted, or tolerated, at the Church. My wife hadn’t attended for over a year by the time I stopped going altogether.
But it got far, far worse. My sister-in-law’s boyfriend began demanding I publicly support his relationship with her and when I refused my wife’s parents began to put pressure on my wife to force me to do so, saying we had no right to interfere in their relationship. We were told that what they chose to do had nothing to do with us and we should mind our own business, stop expressing our concern for what they were doing and provide unconditional support. When I pointed out this defied God’s instructions and refused, the pressure increased, almost destroying our marriage. Apparently the respect for their youngest daughter’s relationship did not extend to what their son did or to the marriage of their eldest daughter. The hypocrisy was sickening.
After almost eighteen months of this nonsense, I spoke with Fitch Gamble, revealing everything that had been going on and referring to the many, many supporting passages in the Bible and asking for his help. He responded by accusing me of being at fault, demanding I get down on my knees in a public place, confess to lying about what they had been doing (which would have been a lie), testify about what great people they were and how righteous their relationship was, and beg their forgiveness. I had heard the same thing from both my sister-in-law’s boyfriend and her parents. The look in their eyes was the same as the one in Fitch’s, a look of absolute hypocrisy, utter corruption, and pure evil.
My sister-in-law got engaged about six years after they began dating. They had each been living with their parents. He worked for his father and she walked straight into a high-pay position. His parents helped them purchase their own home, paying off a large chunk of the purchase price. Now obligated, she married him a year or so later. They had both been elevated to leadership roles within a year of meeting, both providing services to the Church as well as ten-percent of their income. None of the leadership was the least bit concerned that this was setting a bad example of hypocrisy, sanctioned adultery where her brother had been cast out after unsubstantiated gossip began circulating just three months into he and his girlfriend had started dating. My wife, her brother, and myself have never returned to that cult. Most of our older friends have also left the Church, but we no longer stay in contact. Laurie Crapper left the Church for another, much further away, and also shunned people like my wife and me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4254414/Pauline-Hanson-hits-Australia-Post-Ahmed-Fahour.html
Drew and Swindel are now Ministers. Many of the people that joined the Church and participated in the corruption are still members, even part of the leadership team. Drew no longer speaks to his former friends whose marriages failed. My wife and I have almost nothing to do with her sister. We are unwilling to risk the safety of our children in the company of someone who so ruthlessly sacrificed family to get what she wanted. The Church itself has escalated its fanatical zeal, opposing marriage equality and homosexuality with the usual defamatory slander, and an unbending faith in a literal interpretation of Genesis that opposes Evolution or any scientific approach to the age of the Universe and life.
And all this isolationism, hypocrisy, and entrenched culture of corruption rode in on the back of sexual immorality within the Church. The community grew not because of the new, trendy ‘coffee club’ approach to late Church for young people, but because the Ministry was rotten. Fitch and his hypocritical leadership team not only happily turned a blind eye to the problems, they actively enabled those committed by those they favoured, and drove out anybody that did not bend knee to their treachery. They even gave the modern day versions of Tobias a place in the Temple and corrupted the weak-willed women in the Church.
But why was this possible? How could a Church become so infested with hypocrisy and corruption? Again, the Bible provides the answers to this and on how to deal with the source of this problem: situations where couples are not pursuing a Godly relationship. Those who are dating are not protected by the sanctity of marriage with regards to their behaviour, and it is our duty as fellow Christians to ensure that love is the focus and not lust or other sinful desires.
The fact of the matter is, the more time people spend with one another, the more influence they have upon one another (be it an example of dominance, submission or whatever), and the longer the duration of the relationship, the more likely a dating couple will become sexually active. What is the solution to this issue? The Bible tells us we must set examples for those who are dating, and we must love them enough to speak honestly and openly about any concerns we may have. Our leaders must ensure that couples not be placed in positions of authority unless they are married, so as to avoid setting any bad examples should they fall into temptation.
We should not favour anyone over another, or apply the Bible unfairly, for this would be contrary and hypocritical and set a bad example for fellow Christians and non-Christians alike. If we fail to do our duty as Christians for our brothers and sisters, then how can we claim to be Christians? And if we only tell couples what they want to hear, then there is no honesty in their relationship and they will not have the good foundation upon which a marriage should be built. If we allow couples to isolate and vilify those who prophesy and rebuke them out of love, then we teach them that their desires are more important than obedience to God. If their relationship fails and they have dishonoured themselves, then those who support them in opposition to Christ’s teachings are just as responsible for this failure.
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