What is life for? If the answer is only our own self-actualization, there is no better to strive for or worse to avoid. But, if the answer is found in the goodness of creation and the ultimate purposes of God’s kingdom, dating has a context and a purpose, as does marriage, work, sex, friendship, procreation, and yes, singleness.
In a recent episode of the podcast, 30 Minutes with The Perrys, she discussed with her husband Preston Perry concerning the struggles Christians have while they are single, including loneliness.
I am 27, dating for the first time in the Kingdom, and if I could boil down the relationship advice I received before I started dating, it would be this: "Don't have sex before you're married." And I'm not saying that purity isn't essential. But I am saying that there is so much more to healthy relationships other than physical purity. And now that I've been dating a wonderful man for 11 months and have picked up a thing or two in the mess of figuring it out on our own, I want to draw our attention to 3 things that I wish I was taught about dating, besides purity:
What if the church has a role to play in creating contexts for relational connections, even romantic ones? What if the current relationship dearth being filled by apps could be filled by Christian matchmaking communities instead?
