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Originally Posted by Zenas  In my experiences, courtship has been an extremely one-sided endeavor. While I have benefited from the experience, I have also been hurt by it as well, and I feel I was not even remotely protected as much as my fiancee' was. I don't think this is due to anything inherant in the notion of courtship, but rather inherant in the parents. |
I totally agree. Biblical courtship is not intended to determine if a young man will prove to be a "super-husband" for a young woman, but rather to determine if the match looks promising. To me, biblical courtship is more a matter of proper "match-making" with the parents' consent than a crazy Mennonite "courtship trial" as was mentioned earlier. When looking in the Bible, we do not see Isaac put on trial by Rebecca's father, nor was Jacob put on trial by Laban. The puritans were also concerned about finding a proper match, as when Matthew Henry lost his first wife when he was 25, his mother-in-law sought to find him another good lady who could replace her deceased daughter. She did find one and they got married. I do not know where this crasy attitude of "patriarchal-regulated courtship" comes from, but it does not appear to be Scriptural. I would almost label it as a new feminist movement among fundamentalists.