Josh Harris has the answers to all of your dating questions. Just crack open any one of his books—I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship, Stop Dating the Church—and you’ll find information on how to have a God-pleasing relationship that will lead to a God-pleasing marriage and eventually produce God-pleasing children. It seems a bit odd then that the man who advocates holy relationships, no kissing before marriage, and accountability partners would have the email address DOIT4JESUS@aol.com. Ugh. Please. We’d rather not. I Kissed Dating Goodbye is Harris’s revolutionary book that swept the Christian evangelical world off its feet. Teenagers who read it were awed by and strangely attracted to the idea that dating, in all its commitment-free glory, does more harm than good. Harris’s theory sounded far more workable: if you focus on certain Bible passages regarding sex and marriage, if you refrain from all things physical when going out, and if your family and pastor demand a weekly accounting of your activities with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you can be assured that your relationship will be a godly one. It sounded good. It enticed thousands of teenagers. Girls even began saying things like,“I’m not dating anymore. Jesus is my boyfriend.” Huh? In his next book, Boy Meets Girl, Harris outlined his version of what a relationship based on biblical principles should look like. He elaborated on the idea that courting is more purposeful than dating. It is a season, he claims, a time in which a man and woman decide whether or not they are meant to be married. Courtship actively works towards marriage, while dating is loose and without meaning.To Harris’s mind, the secular standards for dating were far less than ideal, and so religious ones were put in place. Boyfriends and girlfriends don’t hug. Marriage is the goal of any relationship. Pastors and parents supervise the courtship, pointing out what the couple is doing wrongly and what worries them about the pair. These types of rules struck a chord with many teenagers and spawned a whole new rash of books. Finding Your Million Dollar Mate was next. The author, Randy Pope, outlined six principles that will guarantee you, literally, a match made in heaven. Some of them are helpful, such as praying daily for your future spouse. Some are pretty harsh, like immediately breaking off relationships with non-Christians. Ouch. But these rules, if followed in the proper succession, the author practically says, guarantee a long and happy life. All these regulations sounded quite pleasing to the tingly ears of young men and women everywhere. We like the idea that we can do something for God, that we can work at being better, and even bring about more holiness by our own actions. Harris sweet talks us into believing this by writing that God is simply “telling us that if we want to get life right, we need to make it about God. Another way to put it is that we need to see God’s glory as the greatest purpose of every part of life.” Or at least for forty days. “Well, that’s certainly easy enough!” we cry. So now all we need to do is talk up God and let our parents check on us during dates, and then everything is guaranteed to work out swimmingly. A + B = C. Or better yet, if we pray enough, only hang out with Christians, and follow the six highly effective habits of dating, we’ll end up marrying a physical reincarnation of Michelangelo’s David. God will surely make the perfect girl or boy waltz right into our lives. Nice try, but no go.These books are dangerous. In fact, they’re nothing more than Law. And because they’re Law, all they do is accuse. And they keep right on accusing, from the Table of Contents to the back cover. They put the responsibility on us as readers to be holy and sinless when dealing with members of the opposite sex, even though it’s impossible.
IK
Goo
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