First I must apologize to you. I promised to finish a couple of blog entries by the end this week but alas, life got on the way. I will try to get to those as soon as I can. In the meantime, I found this on Facebook today and I wanted to share this with you.
A pastor wrote "So You Want to date My Daughter" giving his views of what he expects of the guys that want to date his daughter; the post did not give details like how old she is, etc. In any case after I read it, I thought about this and I asked myself: should fathers take his advice? Two things came to mind:
1) I can sympathize with not wanting to see our daughters hurt because they could be dating morons and idiots (**I say 'morons and idiots' with love**) since most fathers do not want to see their daughters (or their sons) in either physical and/or emotional pain. And yes, we all know the jokes of fathers with shotguns and other weapons...yet, there is a fine line between a father who wants to protect his daughter and one that will not let her live.
2) It is important to remain realistic and pragmatic and in the end trust our daughters to make the right choices.
I cannot recommend or support the steps/views given by this pastor on this. Since I do not know him I can only speculate that this could be one of those situations of 'You have your opinion and I have mine' but again: I cannot recommend this for a lot of reasons and if you would like to hear a few of them I would be happy to share them with you.
So here is the posting, and I would love to hear your feedback, comments, and ideas about this; if you are a father or a daughter I would specially love to hear from you but of course if you are a mother or a son I would also love to hear from you as well!
peace,
Mario :)
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So You Want to Date My Daughter?
1. You must love Jesus. I don't care if you're a "good Christian boy." I was one of those too. So I know the tricks. I'm going to ask you specific, heart-testing questions about your spiritual affections, your daily devotional life, your idols, your disciplines, and the like. I'll cut you a little bit of slack because you're young and hormonal and your pre-frontal lobe isn't fully developed yet, but I'll be watching you like a hawk. I know you. I was you. You will think you can fool me, and you likely have fooled many other dads who didn't pay much attention to their daughters' suitors, but I will be on you like Bourne on that guy whose neck he broke. Which guy was that? Every guy. So love Jesus more than my daughter or go home.
2. You will install X3Watch or Covenant Eyes on your computer and mobile devices and have your regular reports sent to me.
3. I will talk to your dad and tell him I will hold him responsible if you don't treat my daughter like a lady. If he thinks I'm a crazy person, you fail the test and won't get to date her. If he understands what I'm saying, that bodes well for you.
4. You will pay for everything. Oh, sure, every now and then my daughter can buy you a Coke or something and a gift on your birthday and at Christmas. But you pay for meals, movies, outings, whatever else. Don't have a job? I'm sorry, why am I talking to you again?
5. You will accept my Facebook friend request.
6. If it looks like you need a belt to hold your pants up, I will assume you don't have a job. See #4.
7. Young people dating are putting their best face forward, so if you appear impatient, ill-tempered, or ill-mannered, I know you will gradually become more so over time. I will have no jerks dating my daughters.
8. If I am not your pastor, I will talk to the man who is. If your pastor is a woman, why am I talking to you, again?
9. You don't love my daughter. You have no idea what love is. You like her and you might love her someday. That's an okay start with me, so put the seatbelt on the mushy gushy stuff. Don't profess your undying love, quote stupid love song lyrics to her, tell her you'd die for her, or feed her any other boneheaded lines that are way out of your depth as a horny little idiot. A lady's heart is a fragile thing. If you play with hers, I will show you yours.
10. If you ever find yourself alone with my daughter, don't panic. Just correct the situation immediately. If I ever catch you trying to get alone with my daughter, that would be the time to panic.
11. It may sound like I'm joking in threatening you harm, and while I might not physically hurt you if you offend my daughter or violate her honor, when I am addressing the issue with you, you will not be laughing.
12. You may think all this sounds very legalistic. That's fine. You can be one of the many antinomians not dating my daughter.
Mario,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post. I think you have the appropriate reaction this the pastor's blogpost. I'm particularly concerned with #8 (I'm obviously opposed to number one. Faith has no bearing on how one will act), but mostly because I've known many, many female pastors who have been dynamic and powerful positive influences.
Ok, all that aside.
I am not a father, but I hope to be one someday. I would like to think that when that day comes, when my hypothetical daughter is able to date, that I'll be able to be composed and remember that I need to let her live, and balance that with my desire to keep her save (as well as my desire to describe to her significant other in detail about my second degree black belt, Brazilian Jiujutsu experience, and knowledge of fencing).
Cheers to this post.
Thank you for for your feedback Ross :)
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