His servants went to Carmel and said to Abigail, ‘David has sent us to you to take you to become his wife.’ She bowed down with her face to the ground and said, ‘I am your servant and am ready to serve you and wash the feet of my Lord’s servants.’ Abigail quickly got on a donkey and, attended by her five female servants, went with David’s messengers and became his wife.
1 Samuel 25:40-42 NIVUK
Before we got married, my wife and I studied the UK immigration conditions for a spouse visa in great detail. There was one condition that I agreed with and was anxious to keep:
I had to prove that I had spent time getting to know my prospective spouse.
So what did I do? I travelled to the Philippines twice a year and took photos – photos that show my newborn niece growing up so that the immigration authorities could see time passing. We presented that photo album with our documentation when we applied for our visa. I’d like to think that it helped. We got my wife’s visa processed in two weeks.
Getting to know someone is absolutely essential. After all, the target for dating is to find someone you can spend the rest of your life with. As it says right back in the beginning:
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 NIVUK
It also says this:
Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Genesis 2:25 NIVUK
The big question you have to ask yourself is if you're willing to go this far with the person you are dating. Are you willing to expose the true you – no holds barred, no stone unturned, no skeletons in the closet – to this person?
That’s absolutely why you need to get to know them as a person before you start to take things more seriously. After all, what we’re talking about here is making yourself very vulnerable. You need to know you can trust them first. Otherwise you are opening yourself up to a whole world of pain.
The Bible teaches us this about the marriage relationship:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no-one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:21-33 NIVUK
In other words, what we’re talking about here is a mutually submissive relationship of love and respect – not just one way, but both ways. Dating is not something we do just for kicks or for a laugh. It can’t be. Dating is the entree for a life-long marriage feast. Unless you want to deliberately cause someone hurt, don’t go there unless you could see yourself taking things more seriously eventually.
Which is why it's always better to get to know someone first before you date. Get to know their likes and dislikes. Get to know what makes them happy and sad. Get to know their opinions on things and where it comes from.
Get to know them as people, not just pretty faces.
My daughter has been together with her boyfriend for several years now. They had met when they were toddlers, but were too young to remember it. They met again when his family came back to our church after an absence of more than a decade.
I can honestly say that I was the first one in our family who spotted something was going on.
When we were preparing to leave after the service on Sunday afternoons, I would look for her. Invariably, she would be standing near to the piano in the main church hall, chatting with a boy – the same boy every time, with his little brother nearby, as if trying to put others off the scent.
It was fairly obvious what was happening. They were getting to know each other.
I asked her about it. Of course, she denied anything was going on.
But it was no surprise at all when they got together.
I didn’t teach her to do that. I doubt he knew either. Let’s just say dating wasn’t his strong point at the time. But she did the right thing. She was not someone who played around. She was taking it seriously, even in her teens. And I applaud that.
Two generations before her, my uncle used a similar approach. He met his prospective wife at church. They spent time getting to know each other in larger groups before they decided to date, and then get married. Now they are grandparents.
Before anyone asks why I’m advocating this approach, let me say that it isn’t Biblical – although I can safely say that taking marriage seriously definitely is. If we look at the example of David and Abigail, on the surface it seems a lot more impulsive and superficial. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Abigail’s previous husband had died (1 Samuel 25: 36-42).
However, we need to understand two things about marriage in Bible times. Firstly, women did not have anywhere near the rights or value then that they do now. A woman was very much seen as a lesser human being.
Secondly, marrying a woman like Abigail saved her from a life of poverty as a widow.
It definitely is not like that nowadays.
What I am saying is that these are different days. What I am saying – particularly as the father of a girl (now a woman) – is that the dating scene today is just plain dangerous. Women have to contend with drink spikers, ‘loverboy’ conmen, misogynists, and numerous other dangers.
The secular dating scene seems to be focused more on meaningless sex and one-night stands than meaningful, long term relationships.
Dating is quite an intimate act. It is letting someone get to know you one-to-one with the possibility of a deeper relationship.
It’s a place in our life that we should manage carefully and only let the very best people come into.
For their safety and ours.
Questions
1. Why does it make sense to get to know someone before you date them? What risks does this approach mitigate?
2. How can you get to know a prospective partner better without dating them?
3. How does this approach honour and value your prospective partner as a person?
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