This is something you probably know already: you will probably experience rejection (too) many times in your life. Do not take it personally. If you took the risk to prayerfully ask a girl out (read: Pray while you ask her out), you are an honest, respectable Christian and the outcome will not change that. Recall when you were applying to college or for a job, did you stop applying elsewhere because you get a rejection? No, on the contrary, the fact that you got rejected is reason to apply to others.

God may allow you to be rejected by the wrong girl so that you won't be rejected by the right one
It sounds cheesy but it’s true: rejection is one of life's many challenges that God allows to help us grow spiritual muscles. Challenges expose our limitations and drive us closer to God. Rejection from one girl may be an essential learning moment you need in order to become prepared for the girl God has prepared for you. There are steps you cannot skip. There are prices you need to pay in order to gain.
A rejection may well be a time to stop and reflect. If you keep getting rejection after rejection (say more than 5), something is wrong and you should find that out and change it. Maybe you need to work on yourself, or maybe you need to learn how to pick the right girls to ask (Read: The only thing you can do to boost your chance with a Christian girl should have been done before you met her). This is called growth. It is the necessary process of understanding yourself and what you want and aligning it with what you actually need. The pain you are feeling is growth pain allowed by God for your ultimate good.

She is undergoing rejections as you are... and so did Christ
Sounds tiresome? Sure it is. It is supposed to be. But know this: the girl you will eventually end up marrying is probably undergoing the counterpart of the same process now. This enables her to mature and prepares her for a good relationship with you when you two meet in the future.

Actually, the girl who rejected you today will likely also undergo the same thing. This is called life. Nobody is immune to rejection. However, God will never give us more rejection than we can handle. Because He understands rejection better than anyone does. Christ on the cross was rejected by everyone including His closest friends. He was even cut off by God Himself in order to bear all of our sins. But all this was temporary and served a purpose. He came out of it triumphant. God will never hand us rejections without a larger purpose. He never jests with our emotions for fun!

No girl owes you a date, just like you don’t owe any girl a date
There is something else you need to understand: no girl owes you a date. Just like you don't owe any girl a date. As Christians, we don't owe anyone but God. If a girl you do not find attractive likes you, you are not obliged to date her. Similarly, just because you daydreamed about a girl every 5 minutes, or poured her a drink at every party, or even changed every single bulb in her home, does not mean she owes you a relationship. Entitlement is against Christian faith. Indeed, if a guy believes he "deserves" a certain girl, he loves only himself and it is more likely that God will make her reject him to protect her from a selfish man who is immature in faith.

How about nuclear rejections?
Right, so nuclear rejection in the American Church is very real. To understand and avoid this danger, read: Why Christian girls tend to make nuclear rejections and how to avoid getting hit.

As Christians, we should pray about our dating life and seek God's will, right? Absolutely. However, as a Christian guy, you need to understand that the focus of your prayer on dating shifts with circumstances. This is where a lot of nice Christian guys get confused and stumble.

When you first became aware of your desire to date (and eventually marry, maybe, hopefully), you were praying to meet your potential spouse, right? You were praying that she whom God has handpicked for you will just miraculously appear. And now you met her, this girl you really like. She is attractive, nice, and "Godly" (someday I shall write an article on this confusing term), eligible in every Christian sense. Isn't this what you prayed for all along? Isn't this God answering your prayer? A ball was thrown into your court. What more do you ask for? Shouldn't you at least throw the ball back before asking for more?

But wait, you said, how do I know if this ball is "my ball"? How do I know she is the intended one? Well, my dear sir, that's when your prayer shifts to asking God to help you discern. And you can only discern through interacting with her. You need to pray that you are interacting with her in a Christian way, but without making your intentions known by asking her out, you are not really interacting with her in an honest way, and that is not exactly Christianly. So keep praying while you ask her out. Do not wait for Jericho to fall as a sign that you should ask a girl out. Jericho fell already, and in its present state, it is unlikely it will fall again. In a practical sense, if she is as wonderful as you think she is, some other guy (who probably likes her less than you do) is eying her too. 

Do NOT drag your useless attempt to "know her better" beyond this before asking her out. (Read: Ask her out now: don't confuse initiation with maintenance) Do not let the window of attraction to close and shut you into friend zone. (Read: How you can be friend zoned and nuclear-rejected by a nice Christian girl who really likes (liked) you and would have happily married you)

Still need more pointers to gauge her interest? I don’t blame you. Read: The green light: signs that a Christian girl is interested.

Scared of being rejected? Read: How to break the Christian friend zone by faith and Why did God allow her to reject me?

When you start guessing and hoping, it is time to ask her out
When should you ask your dream girl (or that girl invading your dreams) out? If you are reading about this, you should probably ask her out already. Today. Now. Actually, more like yesterday. Or a year ago.

When you start guessing whether she is interested and hoping she is, you need to ask her out.

If you are a guy who complains "Why does the guy have to be the one to ask? It is so unfair!", you may want to read this first: Initiation is not work, it is POWER.

Get to know her deeper during the date, not before
A lot of misguided nice Christian guys have this strange and unfortunate notion that he needs to be "good friends" (oh what a heartache of a word: The hallmarks of friend zone) with the girl he likes before he should ask her out. WRONG. It is the other way round. People get to know each other through one-on-one interaction, aka dates. That is when you go beyond small talk ("love the sermon on Sunday", "went to the beach with my pet bunny") into more personal conversations ("I feel a calling to become a Christian bum", "what my bunny and its fox friend taught me about faith"). You know her enough to want to ask her out. The next step is to start the real dating process instead of peeking through the window. You need to show intention to be "in". You show intention by asking her out on a date, not just "hanging-out". If you keep talking to her in a fake platonic way, you will just talk yourself into the dreadful friend zone. (Read: Christian girls don't like jerks, they just like guys who show their intention up front, and they all happen to be jerks)

She has already decided whether she will go out with you before you even realized you want to ask her out
If you, a regular Christian guy, are still protesting that you need to be "good friends" with her before you should ask her out, I, a good Christian girl, will let you in a shocking secret: That girl has already decided whether she will go out with you before you even realized you want to ask her out.

Go ahead, recite that and let it soak in. This is so important for guys to understand if you want a chance with the girl you like.

A girl will go out with a guy she feels attracted to, not a guy who understands her in and out (if she says that, she is still a clueless cotton puff floating in the air, not ready for a grown-up relationship). Attraction is a rapid and intuitive thing, and a girl assesses a guy quickly on whether he is "datable" on qualities he already possesses and displays when they first meet (Read: The only thing you can do to boost your chance with a Christian girl should have been done before you met her). If you find that shallow, realize that you too decided you want to go out with her because you find her attractive, not because you found out that she wants to do mission work in Haiti (although that sounds cool). You know her enough to want to ask her out. That means she knows you enough to decide whether to go out with you.

You can never harvest without planting the seed
Let us be clear, we are dealing with initiation of a potential relationship here, not maintenance of a relationship. For maintenance, yes, you will indeed need to work hard to keep a relationship alive and well. But for initiation, attraction is the spark that starts the dating process. It gives you the chance to have a chance at a relationship.

Think of it this way: you can keep fertilizing the field, watering the soil, and plucking out the weeds, but you will still get nothing if you never planted the seed in the first pace. Initiation - asking her out with clear intention - is the seed you need to plant BEFORE working the field. Sure, you may want to prepare the soil a bit beforehand to ensure it is optimal for the seed, but all your work will go to waste if you never plant the seed. Sadly, many nice Christian guys confuse initiation with maintenance and turn bitter when their "hard labor" (such as texting her at 3am with "Hi there! :)", liking all her Facebook posts about "The Bachelor", staring at her exactly 10.75 meters away, and sneering at every male weasel crossing her path) does not bear fruit. They never started the process.

Of course, as a manly guy, you'd like to believe that you won your dream girl over by saying this or doing that. Don't worry, the time for hard work to show off your biceps and triceps (what do you mean you have none? Shame on you!) will come when you are in an actual relationship. For now, first work on starting the relationship by initiating. Understanding the proper order of work will place you miles ahead of 90% "nice guys" who are totally clueless (except, of course, those who are leading the rockin' worship team or en route to becoming a "Godly" [don't ask me what that means] youth pastor).

But what about prayer? I am glad you remembered to ask. Of course, prayer is critical to dating for Christians! Read: Pray while you ask her out.

Now that you know you need to ask her out NOW, find out how to do it well: The most effective way to ask a Christian girl out.

During my recent visit to the small Chinese Church in my hometown where I was baptized, I found that most of my Church peers have married each other, settled down, and propagated. That place is now infested with noisy toddlers and couples with a drowsy look of mild content. I personally also have to admit to having an alarming number of Asian friends and relatives who met his/her spouse at Church or fellowship.

This unromantic state of affairs (as are most things Asian) is shockingly anti-climatic compared to the American Church I know, where large droves of single eligible girls and guys produce sob stories of love (or lack thereof) and agony. Indeed, I don't know of any young(ish), Christian, non-Asian couple who met in Church. Analyzing the underlying mechanisms of this American phenomenon is beyond the scope of this post that is already too long.

What does friend zone have to do with the Christian faith?
But all these beg the important question: what does friend zone have to do with the Christian faith? I guess the point is, they don't. At least not theologically. I am not going to list all the arguments on how friend-zoning is unBiblical or aBiblical. I am just going to state the effects. If you are Christian and you find yourself identifying with the hallmarks of friend zone, you are either using your fellow Christian or being used by your fellow Christian. Friend-zoning is based on dishonesty - one side is pretending to not have romantic intentions when s/he is dying to marry the other, while the other is willfully feeding that illusion to feed his/her own selfish ego. A dishonest relationship is frustrating, unfulfilling, and detrimental to your spiritual well-being. Dishonesty with yourself results in dishonesty with God. A dishonest person cannot receive God's blessing, because he cannot distinguish between blessing and curse.

Friend zone sabotages your chance to a real relationship
No matter how you spin it, friend zoning is a cruel and inhumane sport, and a gigantic waste of precious time. For the "giving" side, pining after someone clearly uninterested obviously leaves you mentally unavailable for someone else who may be interested. But don't think that the "receiving" side is having a sweet deal. No matter how many times you declare that you two are platonic (actually, it is precisely because you feel the need to make these random declarations), almost everyone else will take you two as a couple or at least an ambiguous pair (because it is harder to fool others than yourself). No respectable Christian, heck, no respectable human will want to be in a relationship with someone in another ambiguous pseudo relationship. Due to denial, the receiver may not even realize this. But the effects are real, so off the receiver goes to the giver again to whine about his/her lack of dates, while the giver is comforted that s/he is still available.

A jolly cycle, or orbit. Or maybe I should say, a black hole that is best avoided. If you are in it already, you can and should end it now (read Why the American Church is one giant jolly friend zone and How to break the Christian friend zone by faith - ...eh sorry haven't gone round to write these awesome posts yet :p So run along now and read my other awesome posts).

One curious term that I learned in American culture, especially American Christian culture, is the dreaded "friend zone".

For sure, "orbiters", the American term for hopeful (or hopeless) eligible gentlemen hovering around and pampering pretty eligible ladies, are common in Asia, but typically (as I recalled in my time), the romantic intentions of Asian orbiters are more or less transparent. I suppose orbiting, which involves guys evolving around one girl, is universal, while friend-zoning, which involves a guy and a girl going round and round in circles, is distinctly American (Read more on Friend zone is not Christian).

The hallmarks of friend zone
It took me a while to grasp the American concept of friend zone; indeed I cannot say I have fully comprehended this strange phenomenon. To this alien, friend zone seems to mean an otherwise nice guy and an otherwise good girl faking a half-baked platonic friendship over a long period of time (months, usually years) while one side harbors hidden romantic intentions, presumably in an often successful attempt to waste their fleeting youth. Some contrived hallmarks of friend zone include:

• Long hours of texting, phone conversations, and hanging out that doubles as uncanny  energy-transfer sessions, ending in one side feeling empowered and rejuvenated and the other feeling completely drained
• One side feeling a strong constant urge to proudly announce to everyone who may or may not care that they are just friends and shall forever be friends blah blah blah, while the other remains silent with soulful, sad eyes that would have been cute on a wrinkly little pug on an organic diet (but alas, s/he is not a puppy, so they only look sad, period)
• One side feeling extreme comfort and security that by definition, an actual romantic relationship can never provide, while the other feels intense discomfort and insecurity that is strangely comforting and hope-inducing
• Both sides, who otherwise may have commitment issues, silently committing to each other in such arrangement with inhuman loyalty
• The secure side generously doling out pseudo compliments such as "you are such a great friend/pet/plant/whatever" or "a girl and/or guy (but not me) will be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend/girlfriend/carpet/whatever" whenever s/he sensed a slight hint of waver or doubt on the other side regarding the comfortable arrangement
• The insecure side engaging in endless internal monologue documenting his/her pain and struggles and the 100 reasons (which usually boils down to just one) why leaving is absolutely not an option, in the grand tradition of the Great Dostoevsky (if you don't know who he is, now you know you should)

Did reading that give you a lovely headache? Why, writing it gave me a headache. In fact, friend zone is one giant headache and heartache, and the American Church seems to have become one giant jolly friend zone.

Light version:
American Christian dating is awful. This alien is here to point out all their strangeness and errors.
 
Now aliens, go forth and propagate. We need to do better than clueless humans to populate the earth.

Heavy version:
The dating/hookup scene is hands down the most shocking aspect of America to this alien, and dating (or lack thereof) in the American Church seems exceptionally awful. What ought to be a simple process rooted in basic human instinct has become so nasty and contrived that to this alien, it is really a prime example of human modernization gone very wrong.

The problems plaguing secular and Christian dating in America are indeed very different. Secular dating is a meat market of instant gratification, exploitation, gaming, and manipulation. In a knee-jerk reaction to the pitfalls of secular dating, American Christian dating has been wrought with fear, bitterness, defensiveness, and passive aggressiveness that are in direct opposition to the Christian faith. It is scarcely a secret that there is an epidemic of singleness among younger Christians who are anxious to marry.

Humans or aliens, the best way to live is to be simple and straight forward. Enough with the guessing and testing. There is no upper hand to be had because this is not a game. This is hardcore living.

We don't know when the world is going to end. Make our lives worthwhile by being real.

What am I talking about? See Q & A.