Surprisingly, I’m incredibly stubborn from time to time. This frustrates my friends to no end because often, we will have long discussions in which I refuse to change my mind about something only to change my mind several days later when I have had time to read, write, and think about the subject in question. That’s why before I write this post, I should apologize to a couple of people who have been trying to tell me the following conclusions for quite some time.

I just finished this book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. The argument of the book is that dating is a broken vehicle for finding real love and romance. I’m still not sold on that whole idea. But I must say that the alternative Harris gives is very very attractive. He says if we actively stay away from dating, if we fill our time with other things glorifying to God, then God will take care of the rest.

A couple of nights ago I had a very long argument with a couple of good friends about this concept, though. If I choose to actively ignore romantic relationships with members of the opposite sex, how am I ever supposed to meet anyone? My friends accused me of not trusting God. I do struggle with trusting God. I struggle with trusting in general. But I can at least intellectually and rationally understand trusting someone or God when their behavior follows the rules of logic.

I can trust God with my career because while I am waiting for it to become obvious what I am supposed to spend the rest of my life doing, I can go to school and learn. And at the end of my time in school, I am going to apply to a bunch of different grad schools and jobs and see where God and life take me. But I don’t think that’s what I am supposed to do with dating.

So I was about half way through Harris’s book; I was thinking about quitting it because I didn’t think I would ever figure out how to properly think about what he was saying; and then I thought about Boethius. Boethius is kind of a strange writer to think about when you are thinking about romantic relationships.

Boethius was pretty wise.

Boethius wrote a book called The Consolation of Philosophy in the 6th century. In it, he gives a pretty famous argument for reconciling free will with God’s omniscience: he calls it God’s eternal moment. For Boethius, God experiences and sees all of eternity in one moment, in one snap of His Almighty fingers. Boethius is important to dating because to God, everyone who is single is also already with their spouse. For God, there is no waiting. Everyone is already in the arms of people who love them.

So that’s how it works, maybe.