Chivalry

When I saw an article titled "8 so-called 'chivalrous' moves that creep us out" on CNN.com, I knew I had to check it out for more reasons than the redundant use of "so-called" with the quotation marks of sarcasm around the key word. I had a hunch it would take aim at genuine acts of civility and decency, and I was right.

I would agree with numbers 1 and 5 on the list, ordering a meal for a woman and carrying her purse, but I disagree with the rejection of pulling out a chair or helping a lady on with her coat. Can she do these things? Of course she can, but these are small courtesies that can show respect. If she asks a man not to do them, he should respect that, too, but in and of themselves, I think these are marks of civility, right along with holding the door open for a lady.

The one that I most stoutly disagreed with, however, was number 6, asking the woman's father for her hand in marriage. Writes the author, "So outdated. Pops just shouldn't be involved in our relationship. No one should know you want to marry them before they do."

To put this in technical terms, wrongedy-wrong-wrong! Yes, I know that this hearkens back to ages and cultures in which the paterfamilias had the ultimate say over the lives of his children. Yes, I know it carries a whiff of the days in which doweries were discussed and marriages were arranged, often without the consent or even the knowledge of those being married.

Yet marriage is never simply between two people, despite that it is two people who are becoming one flesh. Marriage involves the joining in greater and lesser ways of two families. A man shows respect for his in-laws by approaching them about marrying their daughter, and it certainly does no harm for him to have a healthy sense of respect/awe/fear of her father. A man needs to have his father-in-law's face in mind when he thinks about hitting that man's baby girl or cheating on her.

Such a request also honors the bride-to-be. A girl who has grown up knowing the blessing of strong, loving, authentic fatherhood modeled on, yet never attaining, that of God the Father, knows a security of inestimable worth, one from which she can grow and develop in confidence rather than in rebellion, so that she may become the glorious daughter of the King she was designed to be. To move from the loving care and protection of her father with whom she has learned and matured to that of her husband with whom she will lead a family, and all without missing a beat, is, quite simply, how it should be.

The blessings that this new mother and father will then be able to impart to their own children will, like Jesus' proverbial mustard tree, grow and spread many branches. They will be able to teach their son what it is to be a man, not in the way the world teaches by counting notches in a bedpost, which any male can do, but what it means to be an actual man, full of courage, honor, and strength that is rightly used and directed. They will be able to teach their daughter what she should look for and what she has every right to expect in a man, for it will have been modeled well in their family. In so doing, they will have helped in their own small, yet deeply significant way, to turn the tide of base, animalistic acts (they are not rituals) that pass for social interaction between men and women today.