The central tenet to Ron Luce’s courtship process seems to be that finding a spouse should be a process governed by our minds, not our hearts. We should make objective decisions NEVER clouded by emotions.
To that end, Ron preaches strongly against the idea of “falling in love.” He speaks about it in a derogatory manner and notes that the term “falling in love” is not in the Bible. (Newsflash: neither is the term “emotional virgin.”) He says that “falling in love” is the same thing as simple infatuation (i.e. a crush).
This statement is dishonest at best, and if it reflects the reality of his life then I feel sorry for him.
While I’d be the first to say that we should never abandon wisdom and objective thinking, to suggest that this is the ONLY criteria for selecting a mate makes the entire process sterile and impersonal. There is something mysterious that happens between a man and a woman when they fall in love that cannot be measured or documented. To deny these realities is ridiculous! If you don’t like the term “falling in love” you don’t have to use it – but it reflects a reality that goes deeper than finding someone who meets the demands of your checklist and then mentally deciding to love them.
In an effort to eradicate all emotion from the courtship process, Ron actually goes so far as to praise arranged marriages. He holds it up as a model to follow and suggests that interns “arrange their own marriages.” These slides were provided by a current intern and are from his 2011 relationship talk.
Since my childhood best friend was an Indian girl nearly forced into an arranged marriage two different times and I was the only white person at an Indian wedding just last week, I actually know a thing or two about the arranged marriage system in India.
First, Ron is right that the Indian ethic is “we grow to love each other.” I think that is a beautiful sentiment and something great we can learn from their culture.
But the rest of it is a naïve idealization of an imperfect and flawed system. Like many Eastern cultures, arranged marriages have as much (or more) to do with the potential spouse’s income, job opportunities, and family background. Ron’s characterization of arranged marriages as free of emotional bias is stupendously naïve – especially when parents are trying desperately to marry off their daughter before she is considered an old maid at the ripe age of 22. In arranged marriages, the emotional bias just comes from those arranging the marriage instead of the bride and groom.
For some reason, Ron is incredibly terrified of the idea that, at least in America, our emotions are involved in selecting our mate. (Which I find incredibly ironic, given how he so often manipulates his followers to make decisions based on emotions.)
I honestly don’t understand where this perspective comes from. If this is really so important, then Scripture is strangely silent about it.
In fact, I find this perspective so bizarre, that I don’t even know how to argue against it. Telling me that I shouldn’t have “fallen in love” with my husband before marriage is like telling me not to breathe air. I can’t help it. If I’m alive, its what I’m naturally doing. I just thank God I wasn’t afraid of it – because I would have missed out on of one of the most amazing, wonderful, exciting, breathtaking experiences in my entire life.
27 comments:
I would like to point out that in Ron’s 40-something slides (I actually went through and read the whole thing), he uses all of TWO Scriptures to reinforce what he’s saying… and I would argue that those Scriptures are largely taken out of context.
Anyone else have a problem with RL telling interns to remain “emotionally distant” from other people? Last I checked that’s not exactly a Biblical or healthy model for relationships. Geez, no wonder it was so hard for me to develop close relationships with people (especially in the context of dating) after the HA.
This truly is bizarre teaching.
Also, Ron? It’s aisle. You walk down the AISLE.
This is a picture of people walking down an ISLE: http://img.trekmovie.com/images/sfs/lost-3-small-012009.jpg
(Apologies, I’m seemingly unable to get a link to work today.)
Interestingly enough it was LOVE that caused Joseph to take Mary as his wife. He could have walked away THAT DAY before the Angel got to him… He could have walked in a way that killed her THAT DAY, that’s what most arranged marriages of the day are historically suggested to have done, but he didn’t he loved her. So if LOVE is a bad precedent then the the entire life before Ministry of Jesus was influenced by a marriage that was “wrong” if it was then God wouldn’t have blessed it the way he did.
Beyond that most of the “courtship” relationships I have seen have come from a stance of unknowing in not giving your whole self to the relationship even with God as a partner most somehow miss meeting the person’s real heart before the wedding. One of my friends actually has had four years of separation (not all at once) in her now 8 year marriage. This happened because they used the Courtship model and didn’t share the deepest part of their hearts with each other BEFORE the wedding. As a result the couple got married when they were not a good fit. How is that sound marriage advice.
If you look at Ron and Katie’s relationship you see a woman who generally stays in Texas while her husband is gone what 90% of the time? When they are in the same place they are in different offices or Ron stays long hours at the office and when I was there could be heard saying “I don’t want to deal with them tonight so I will stay here till they go to sleep”. I am certain that is not a marriage I would want mine modeled after.
hearts,
Really?? He SAID that?!? Wow.
Honestly, I don’t blame him for *feeling* that way; I’m sure at some point every husband/father (and every wife/mother, for that matter) has those feelings, but it is at that point that your character should shine through. Tell a close buddy or a therapist you feel that way, but don’t say it where your employees can here you. And you should most CERTAINLY still go home and be with your family, even if you don’t want to. They still need you, and they trust you when you say you were too busy at work to come home earlier. Using work as an excuse to ignore your family shows an enormous lack of integrity.
@LizBR: half of what annoys me about Luce’s stupid Power Point slides is how crappy they are! Misspellings, random font changes, cluttered information…is that *really* God’s best?? 😛
(The other half being the terrible, terrible things the PP slides say.)
We had this Scripture read at our wedding (among others):
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)
Of course that’s about agape, but it’s very relevant to romantic love all the same–Just try having a romantic relationship without exercising agape and it will fall apart pretty fast. Ron Luce says “Don’t show love to anybody,” John says “Well then, you don’t know God.” Love doesn’t make you “damaged goods”; it makes you more like God.
On slide 6, Luce states, “The words ‘in love’ are never in the Bible.” Except, it seems, for the 65 times that they are. Yes, some of them even refer to romance–Judges 16:4, for one, “He fell in love with a woman named Delilah…” (NIV). Unfortunately, that’s about the level of Bible scholarship I’ve come to expect from Teen Mania. The word “ignoramus” comes to mind.
@Eric totally not surprised by their lack of research.
@LGG Yep he said stuff like that often usually when shift had ended and I was still there trying to work extra to make sure I was seen as “being excellent” I wasn’t healthy during my time at TM so trying to show excellence by beating my body looked like I was slacking so I made up for it by working “overtime” often.
I’m so glad RA is delving into this because I sincerely believe that courtship can be a toxic teaching. Firstly, anything that tries to suggest there is some kind of “formula” or “right way” to have a relationship is ridiculous. Everyone is different, every relationship is unique and trying to force them into a mold is damaging.
Also, in my experience repressing irrepressible feelings/emotions until you KNEW if that other person could be “the one” was damaging emotionally because your feelings were never validated. There are several guys I refer to as my “ex-boyfriends” these days because anyone not familiar with the insanity of courtship would not understand how I could be so close to someone but not be dating, even though we reciprocated feelings. Trying to “court” forced something natural into a very unnatural place.
There’s a difference between teaching wisdom/caution and teaching fear and unrealistic formulas.
I also saw a show last night on forced marriages of British nationals from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The sole purpose of these types of marriages is to uphold family honor. I hope that this is now what Ron was talking about.
Nice little prepackaged steps for everyone to follow… too bad God didn’t make us all Ron Luce…. It doesn’t work for me that way it works for you Ron, sorry. I think Ill work this one out with God him self.
Infatuation and “being in love” are the same? No.
Just because those who are infatuated *think* they are in love does not mean that “in love” = “infatuated”. It’s like that statement, “a square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares”.
And if you stay emotionally distant, you’re setting yourself up for, potentially, a very distant relationship — because it’s difficult to start out distant and become close.
So many things wrong with this teaching.
I particularly like Eric’s point about “falling in love” being in the Bible.
Falling in love is a timeless sentiment. Just because some people fall in “lust” does not mean that people don’t fall in love! I mean – talk about making marriage absolutely boring. His version of marriage sounds more like a job interview!
There’s another flaw in his theory … isn’t the 6 month period so you can get to know someone? But, they aren’t allowed to show you their heart, or vice versa?? How do you get to know someone who is hiding something?
His teaching is convoluted and circular.
Bury your emotions and come follow me …
The constant push to bury emotions makes me think that Ron himself has some major psychological issues he hasn’t dealt with. Sad and scary that he is in a place to influence so many people.
Here is something that struck me when I read these posts about relationships. I have been very good friends with my husband for 14 years, and we have been married now for a little over a year. When we got married, I knew darn well that he was the one.
And YET…some little tiny voice inside me whispered, “but he was never an intern! What if he isn’t as committed to God as you are? What if he never understands what you went through at the HA?” Obviously I knew that my husband loves the Lord very much, and I banished those thoughts from my head immediately. However…I do remember where that idea came from. TM breeds relationships and they do it intentionally. I remember DH and RL both talking about NOT even glancing at your fellow interns, but maybe on alumni weekend when you were all graduated….hmm. It’s a weird little community they are trying to build over there…
DH and RL are trying to breed future paychecks for their little cult.
mouse
Speaking of “arranged marriages,” I remember Hasz referencing the Moravian model of missions and focusing on how members of the missionary college would have marriages arranged for them based upon their “callings” in life (i.e. a young man and a young women who both felt called to missions in Africa would be married solely for the purpose of completing their mutual callings together).
Now, I am not too familiar with Count Zinzendorf or the Moravians, but I do recall a rather strange emphasis on marriages arranged solely for the purpose of completing one’s “calling” in life. This was further emphasized by the many teachings to the young men on campus on finding a wife who would fully support their calling and purpose – even to the point of women giving up their own to further their husbands’. Not Luce, granted, but part of the entire paradigm of skewed views on marriage taught on campus.
@ Anon 9:04: I remember asking Dave about that after that lesson, because I remembered from another class that he was dead set on going into missions when he married his wife–he said he was looking for a woman who would be willing to “birth our babies on the jungle floor.” Well, he never went into missions, did he? I asked him about that, and he said through prayer God would lead us down the path He had for us, even after we were married, as long as we married the right person. So the whole lesson he had just given about marrying someone to “complete your calling” was entirely moot. I never realized until just now how contradictory that was.
I’m not sure if it was a moot point exactly. He wanted someone who was willing to birth their babies on the jungle floor. That may be Beth. He simply asked for willingness. I don’t know anything about Mrs. Hasz, so I don’t know the circumstances… but that could be a possibility.
When my husband and I started dating/got married, we were both teaching, leading Bible studies and very focused on discipleship. That was our “calling”. But that has changed shape over time… and our “calling” looks differently these days, though we both still feel like we’re pursuing as a family what we’re supposed to be pursuing.
So, I definitely see your point… but Hasz didn’t say that he was kept from going into missions because he married a woman who was unwilling… but seemed to insinuate that after praying for a woman who would be willing to do something specific… God redirected his “path”. I’m trying to avoid getting too entangled with the Christianese lingo… but maybe from Hasz’s perspective it might have still somehow been totally appropriate (and spiritually imperative) that he pray for that specific characteristic in a wife. Maybe God knew it wouldn’t be used on the mission field… but in other ways.
Anyway, the weird “don’t share your vision with the opposite gender” but “make sure you marry someone with the same vision as you!” conundrum was always beyond exhausting for me. I just married the most awesome, attractive and basically bad-ass guy I could find. So far so good…
Maybe I understood Renae’s comment incorrectly, but I took the contradiction to be between first, Hasz’ lesson on marrying someone to “complete your calling” and second, his telling her about marrying the right person. Even if that wasn’t what constituted the moot point for her, it definitely seems like a major contradiction to me!
And then, next to Ron’s “arrange you own marriage”, Hasz’ “marry the right person” — Uh, how does that reconcile??!?
It seems like there are SO MANY mixed messages at TM. Man, they could just say, ‘Do whatever it is that I feel like saying right now’ whether it’s for their own immediate gain or because they just feel like it and save everyone the trouble… but that wouldn’t be so glamorous, and TM definitely likes to put on a pretty front.
/end rant 🙂
Ambre, that makes a lot of sense.
I definitely see the contradiction between what Hasz teaches and Luce teaches. That seemed to happen a lot during my year. Whatever I may think of him now, when I was an intern I preferred and respected (I know…) what Hasz had to say. On the flip side, Character Development class was dreaded, especially since we knew it would take us 20-30 minutes into our small amount of free time 🙂
The contradiction I was trying to point out was the fact that he was hammering home the idea that we had to marry someone who had the same calling we did… but even though he ended up marrying someone to “complete his calling,” they didn’t end up going into the mission field. It seems contradictory to me because he way laying out this whole formula of how God works and how you’ll go on to be this “great follower of God” if you do all these right things, and God will grant you the desires of your heart (going out on the missions field, etc), but it didn’t even happen in his own life. God had his own plan, despite the fact that Dave wanted to go to the mission field, and specifically picked a wife who would go with him. It seems to me like Dave and Ron have all these formulas, but when they don’t work out in their own lives it’s “God working out His plan.” But when it doesn’t work out in your life, it’s because you weren’t doing everything right. Does that make more sense?
Yes… that makes a lot of sense. They always seem to give themselves more spiritual allowance than they give to everyone else.
I haven’t dealt much with any issues as a result of this backwards teaching. I refused to come up with a five year plan… so five years after I graduated I didn’t feel the need to “retcon” the last five years of my life to fit in with how things were “supposed” to be. I didn’t pray for a man who would “fit my calling”. I just prayed to find a man that I could respect… as I wasn’t too crazy about men in general in my post-TM days. However, I’ve had friends who shaped every decision and interest and moment around this idea of what they were called to be… only to have things change, with devastating consequences. So I totally agree with the idea that these “one size fits all” formulas aren’t doing anyone any favors.
I’ve been holding off because I haven’t been in exactly the same boat as you folks, but there is a lot here that seems very familiar to me. 🙁 Just as I’m certain that Luce’s video that shows that it’s ok for a new Christian to hit his friend in the face over secular music will produce thuggish and stupid followers when fruit is brought forth, not to mention the abused followers (especially wives IMO)who get hurt by their thugs.
Ahem, back to the point….
Since Honor Academy commonly advocates it’s students being taught how to brush off parents and other relatives for supposedly spiritual reasons this arrangement doesn’t produce the kind of arranged marriages I’d respect out of cultural considerations at all. Instead what it produces are marriages where the only advice that will count is the advice Luce or his cronies give to HA students.
Boy, can’t see anything going wrong with that! (Heavy sarcastic tone)
Especially since RA is doing such a good job of showing that Luce’s doctrine really isn’t biblical at all with these threads.
Falling in love is Not In The Bible????????
This man has not read Genesis. Jacob and Rachel anybody?
Or, obviously, Song of Solomon. I’m sure their marriage was arrange, and they grew to love each other. Merp.
I did not attend HA, but did participate in ATF and Global Expeditions. Ron Luce’s daughter went on a Global Expeditions trip and was essentially exempt from many of the rules that everyone else participating was required to follow. She brought secular music, magazines with racy photos, and did not follow the dress code. I would love to know her reaction to arranged marriage.
I hapened to find your ” My Teen Mania Experience” and I realized that after reading some of your comments that I am able to find the truth by reading the opposite of everything you have written. I just see that you are in offense and are trapped! Hope you come to the realization that Jesus wants to set you free, so you can live a life free of ofense and full of love and joy! A friend that prays for you! Angie
Angie,
Are referring to someone specifically? There are a variety of individuals here…. All with different beliefs. Some are Christians with backgrounds in ministry. Some are atheists. Some are just people who love Jesus.