The Dating Idol

Imagine that you lived in a cookie factory, so you could learn the cookie making process. You spent your days roaming the factory admiring how these cookies were made. Every morning you would start the day by watching the staff make the dough, and get the cookies ready to be baked. Then, mid-afternoon, you'd see all the cookies being taken in and out of the oven. The smell was intoxicating. At night, after the cookies cooled, the milk was poured and the cookies sat on the counter tops, ready to eat. You could practically taste the cookie even though you hadn't even put one near your mouth. It seems like such a wonderful picture doesn't it? Well imagine now, that there are lots of people closely trailing behind and around you eating cookies, saying, "You can't have any of these cookies until later. I know you live here, watch them be made, and smell them everywhere, but you absolutely cannot eat these cookies, because you probably couldn't handle the amazing flavor. Boy, do they taste good though. Oh and if you do eat one too soon, you'll explode. But wow, these are the best cookies I've ever had." Those cookies would become the only thing you wanted. And waiting until you could have one, while watching them be made, would be extremely tempting. They would be the only thing you thought about. Learning the art of cookie making would no longer be your focus; eating a cookie would.

Anyone who entered Master's Commission knew full well that they were going to be asked to refrain from dating, and I was no exception. At the beginning of the year, I willingly signed the "covenant" that all of the first year students were required to sign. In short, the "covenant" was a promise and commitment to spend the next nine months focusing solely on your relationship with God... oh, and abide by all their rules. The "no dating your first year of Master's Commission" rule was the biggest focus and therefore received the most emphasis. It was also a rule that I assumed would be easy to live by since I had stayed away from dating anyway.

Just for kicks, some of the rules included...

1. No talking on the phone past 11:00- even to your family. Unless you got permission from your house leader.

2. Strict 11:00pm curfew.

3. No hanging out in even numbers of guys and girls.

4. No talking on the phone with the opposite sex for more than 5 minutes.

5. NO DATING!

You don't have to tell me how ridiculous those rules were. Believe me, I know.

The first two months of the program went great. I followed those rules in my sleep. Then I met Bobby, and I knew that the remainder of the year was going to be tough. It didn't take me long to fall in love with him, though I didn't admit it to myself for at least four or five months. I noticed that I had feelings for him in early December when he went on a mission trip with a group and I felt his absence heavily. I had never missed someone like that, and I knew I was in trouble. It was the first time in my life that I actually wanted to be with someone, and the only time that I couldn't. We kept our covenant the entire year, not breaking any of the rules set before us, but it was brutal. Bobby and I often look back and laugh, saying that if we didn't have the no dating rule, we would have been dating by Christmas. Or that we should have just secretly dated. From the start, we just knew that we wanted to be together.

From the time that I started to care for Bobby, the word "covenant" quickly became synonymous with the word bondage, for me. It was used about 456236574945 a day to remind me of what I couldn't have. For someone who was already hyper conscious of rules and boundaries, no reminders were needed. I put enough pressure on myself. My first year was no longer about getting closer to God, it was about waiting out the time until I could be honest with how I felt. "Covenant" meant that I had to stare at what I couldn't have. It meant temptation was thick. It meant I had to suppress. The bottom is line is that I became a slave to the rules. I spent more time feeling guilty for caring for Bobby, and asking myself if I had followed the rules perfectly for fear of some impending doom, than I did building the kind of relationship with God that I thought I had come there for. The rules and dating became my idol.

This brings me to the cookies. The cookies in the story, were dating in Master's Commission. We were told day in and day out that we could not date, and that if we did, our marriages wouldn't be blessed.  But here's the crazy thing...what did they think would happen when you stick two hundred 18-25 year old students together in a controlled bubble? People are going to connect. People are going to lean on each other for survival, and for sanity. Dating was like the cookies. Don't date, but let's all live in the same apartment complex. Don't date, but let's all do ministry together. Don't date, but watch how others date because they're second and third year students and are clearly more ready. All any first year student wanted to do and talk about was dating. The precise thing we weren't "supposed" to be focusing on that first year, became the main thing that was talked about the entire year by staff and students alike. Dating was everywhere. Dating was our end game- or at least being able to have a normal conversation with someone. I may not have technically broken my covenant, but I was definitely practicing idolatry.

Here is the point to this entire post, and what I've learned through this. An attempt to set students up for a pure experience with God, turned in to a breeding ground for the opposite. It's one thing to choose not to date based on your own preferences, but to make it forbidden, yields very different results. The insane and unnecessary amount of control that was in place, practically threw people in each others' arms. The more you try to control an environment and those in it, the more you create a ticking time bomb. I think that not allowing students to date actually caused more harm than good. The "no dating" policy left you with idea that you cannot be close to God and care for someone simultaneously. That attraction is a bad thing. It left you thinking that if you did care for someone while you were under this covenant, that you had committed an unforgivable sin. It left you feeling like you needed to squelch desire. It left you feeling guilty and ashamed. It left you feeling like a failure. I spent most of my first year trying to fight the way I felt for Bobby because I was under this umbrella of rules, and I know that was not healthy. Who has the right to tell me (or anyone for that matter) not to love another, or say that God would withhold blessing from me because of that? They may have been trying to stop the craziness that dating can cause, but in turn they created a whole new monster- one of legalism, which produced guilt, shame, and secrecy. Letting students date would be way less destructive.

I truly believe God saw and knew how my heart was aching my first year. Not just because I had begun to care for Bobby and had to wait to be with him, but because of the oppression I felt I was under. He graciously walked with me, and loved me through a very difficult and confusing year. Bobby and I spoke the night of "graduation" and have been inseparably since. Not perfect, but fully committed. Because I love Bobby, I've found that loving another is beautiful. It opens doors you didn't even know you had. Love makes us do things we wouldn't have done otherwise. Love illuminates parts of you that have need light. Love gives you strength to walk through any valley. Love gives you hope. Loving another magnifies the Greater love that created us. Love saves. I have been with Bobby for about 8 1/2 years, and because I have loved him, I have experienced the vastness of God's love. Now, I don't even care that I loved him during a time where I "wasn't supposed to," because loving him that year ultimately showed me more about God than anything else did.

In every fiber of my being, I believe that Christ died to set us free. In the last year and a half I have experienced that freedom deep within my soul, and because of that, I can recognize times in my life where I was in deep bondage and may not have fully known it. I'm discovering my first year in Master's Commission was one of those times. I'm speaking about it to bring myself more freedom. The bottom line is anything that causes you to jump through hoops, and follow a set of standards, as the means to getting closer to God, is bondage and idolatry because they aren't Christ them self. You don't need rules and regulations to have a deeper relationship with God- you need desire. And loving someone doesn't make you desire God less. You need love. I learned about God's love for me in Master's Commission because I loved Bobby, not because I followed every rule that was set before me. Under a covenant or not, I can't see how caring for someone is a bad thing. My covenant threw me into loving Bobby (that, and he's quite the looker.) I know it sounds ironic, but that's exactly how it happened. And cookies are delicious.