THE BIBLICAL MODEL FOR COURTSHIP

We will construct some basic guidelines for courtship from our Lord's doctrinal statement on marriage.
"For this cause shall a man leave Father and mother, and shall cleave to a wife..." ~Matt. 19:5)
"A MAN..," OR MATURITY
Why did God wait to create Eve? Why did not God create Eve at the same time He created Adam? A wise Bible teacher said the delay was for Adam to prove himself in the garden by dressing it and naming the animals. Adam had both a proven vocation and an education before God gave him a wife. Adam and Eve were full-grown adults when God joined them husband and wife. Dating is almost always too much too young. It is a "man" who is to leave his father and mother for a wife and not a boy going out with a girl. Think with me for a moment.
Today, we often see children going out with each other on dates. It is not uncommon for 12 to 14 year olds to be pushed into some kind of a dating situation by public schools or parents. Dating is almost always too much too young. When children start to date in the early teens, innocence is exhausted too soon. Dating is intimacy and soon creates familiarity and sexual pressure. When children start kissing and petting at 13 or 14, what are they going to do at 18 or 19? When pediatricians start diagnosing pregnancy, dating was started too young. Society has reached the point where elementary children are experimenting with sex. Sexual pressure has moved down from the colleges to the high schools, to the middle schools and is now entering the elementary grades. Some have said that innocence is dead!
At what age should young people be allowed to go out with each other on dates? I guess the age many conservative people set is 16. However, 1 do not think that I have ever met a 16 year old that was ready for marriage and parenthood. I know what some people think, but they are wrong and the figures on teen morality prove that they are wrong, Where did dating come from? I think it came about as a result of the industrial revolution which pushed the age of adolescence up from 16-18 to 21-25. Adolescence is the period of a child's life that he spends in an adult body without having adult maturity or responsibilities. Adolescence ends when a child is able to support himself independently of his parents, family or society. As this age increased with the complexity of society, pressure for some kind of sexual stimulation and satisfaction outside of marriage became a way to provide teens with some sexual cutlet. Dating is sexual. I do not see how that truth can be successfully argued against. Just take almost any dating teens and try to restrict them to dating situations where there is no possibility of any kind of sexual intimacy and see what you run in to.
When young people ask, "When will I be grown up enough to be treated like an adult?" I answer that there are some reliable indicators. Young people start to show some real maturity, not when they can operate an automobile, earn spending money or look down and see the top of mom's head, but when:
7. When you are ready to accept the responsibility for someone else's life, like a wife or child, you are an adult.
If you see some wisdom and logic in these seven guidelines, I think you can also see that there is no set age to consider a young person to be an adult. Some young people would begin to demonstrate these attributes at the end of the teen years, and others do not until the end of the twenties. Mental, emotional and spiritual maturity is a very personal thing. Usually it is like holiness. When you think you have it you do not!
Because dating is almost always too much too young, It is a serious mistake for churches and Christian Schools to have dating activities like "Sweetheart" banquets and hay rides where dating is required or encouraged. Church will not sanctify a worldly activity. Churches and Christian Schools should stick to group activities for their teens and refuse any worldly compromise with dating.
When children and young people are loved and appreciated at home, at school and at church, and when they are away from the peer pressures of public school, they are not as eager to date as their worldly counterparts, who do not have these blessings. Children and young people from a loving, Christian environment that meet their needs are almost always older than their counterparts in the world when they do get serious about the opposite sex.