If I found out this deep into doing this show that you were like not Free Britney, I think
we would just have to stop recording.
It would be like, and thus concludes the bad Christian books experiment.
Yeah, worse than Harris.
You are worse than Purity Culture because you're anti-Britney.
Don't take that out of context.
I'm going to start the podcast with that quote.
I remember the day that I went into my local Christian bookstore and there was my book.
You are not God.
You are just a man.
The total money makeover book that you sold almost.
The number one bestselling book.
No, because it's gotta read the book.
This is Bad Christian Books.
Welcome to Bad Christian Books, a Christian bookstore dumpster dive where we investigate
bestsellers and pop trends in the evangelical community.
I'm one of your two hosts, Samuel Cooliato, and I'm joined by Mary Hall.
I'm glad to be here talking to my friend Samuel about some books that frankly have been quite
triggering in my teen years.
Bringing up trauma I haven't thought about for 15 years, but I guess that's kind of the
point, right?
Triggering is a good way to put it.
I've been doing a lot of, I call it trauma spelunking, where you're just digging through
some bad memories, but with the benefit of hindsight.
And tonight's episode is about I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which has brought a lot of hindsight
memories to the forefront.
What do you remember, Mary, about I Kissed Dating Goodbye in one sentence?
I read the book as a 15 year old and prayed and told God that I would, you know, stay
pure.
And then like six months later, started dating my high school boyfriend.
So do with that what you will.
Not to insinuate I wasn't pure in my high school relationship, or that I wasn't.
I don't know.
Maybe tonight I'll find out.
But that's my memory of the book.
This kind of sounds like Schrödinger's purity, which I think we all kind of have.
Now I'm like blushing.
I'm like, ooh, was I pure?
Was I not pure?
What was the right answer for that?
I think you're perfectly describing the experience of reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
So I'd never read it until until my 30s, i.e. a few weeks ago.
And it had been often used to kind of, I guess, the popular phrase is used as a weapon.
So I dated somebody in high school.
And then I realized halfway through that I wasn't actually dating them.
I was courting them.
Their family regularly cited this book as their reason for that philosophy.
Having said that, they are both an ex and they do not have any peace of my heart.
So which is the main thing I think people remember about this book.
The book starts out with a dream sequence in which a woman is at the altar and she sees
every single ex that her groom to be has ever dated.
And each of them has just a little piece of his heart.
Oh, I remember this.
Right.
I also think that's like maybe the only part.
Most people actually, I think most people read that and were like, okay, I think I've
got it.
And they weren't wrong.
But that's the only part I ever hear people reference from this book.
Well, I mean, as like a young child, I mean, 14, 15, somewhere in there, I mean, a baby
mentally, it's a very evocative like image, especially if you're like a sheltered Christian
little baby who probably hasn't had a lot of experience.
You're like, oh, no, if I like bat my eyes at the boy in biology class, am I going to
ruin my future happiness forever?
That's I mean, I think that's kind of like the fear people brought into it.
Right?
Yeah, I think that fear and we'll talk about that fear.
I think that made it a very popular book.
And I do think it is kind of fear primarily that drove this book's popularity.
So for those of you who don't know, although I have a feeling that if you're listening
to this podcast, you're probably listening to hear us talk about kiss, dating, goodbye.
This book came out in 1997.
It was the second edition published in 2003, which is the one that I used between 1997
and 2001.
It sold almost a million copies per Christianity today.
At this point, it has sold far more.
Oh, my word, a million copies, a million copies.
And like what?
What?
Like six years, five years?
What was the date?
Between 97 and 01.
So yeah, like about four years, four years, five years, definitely a million.
This became nationally popular, obviously, by Josh Harris, the writer's own admission.
Christianity is sort of niche famous.
But within that niche, Harris became very famous.
He was sort of seen as an evangelical wonder kid.
But those of you may know, around 2019, he announced that he requested the book to be
discontinued.
And in fact, shortly thereafter, he announced that he no longer identified as a Christian.
In addition to him and his wife were also separating, which I think these three aspects
show not only they not only call into question the advice that he's giving, but shows that
he himself no longer felt the advice he was giving was good advice.
But is it that simple, Mary?
We're going to dig deeper.
Take me on the journey, Samuel.
I'm ready.
Harris and I actually have a little bit in common.
We're both from Ohio.
I don't think I mentioned this.
I live in California now.
I'm a West Coast boy, but I come from the Midwest.
And Ohio is for lovers, the heartland.
And yeah, so Harris is from Dayton, Ohio.
He's born there in 1974.
He's the oldest of seven children, although he, similar to me, went out to the West Coast,
albeit earlier.
He grew up in Oregon.
In a June 11th, 2001 interview with Christianity Today, Harris talks about how he was working
on a homeschool magazine because his parents were major players in the homeschool movement.
And so he's working on a homeschool magazine called New Attitude.
Dating was a major topic and inspiration for his writings, which built up to the publication
of I Kiss, Date, and Goodbye.
Another Christianity Today article says that Harris was a youth leader in a secret sensitive
church.
Eventually, he met the pastor CJ Mahaney, who is pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg,
Maryland.
So a lot of things happened for Harris all at once.
He published I Kiss, Date, and Goodbye through Multnomah Publishing in 1997.
And at the same time, he moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, and he became CJ Mahaney's pastoral
intern at Covenant Life Church.
So Mahaney was basically grooming Harris to take his place as pastor of Covenant Life.
And we'll probably be covering, I could see us potentially covering Mahaney in a potential
podcast, in a later podcast, because Covenant Life is a story unto itself.
But like Josh Harris was like, sorry to interrupt.
Josh Harris was like young at this point, right?
Like he was a baby.
He was 20.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, thinking about it, he was like five years older than me.
I mean, that's kind of like when I was reading his book.
You're saying he's older than 14?
He's older than 14.
But younger than I think he should be to write a bestselling book on how to like prepare yourself
for marriage.
Oh, I fully agree.
I mean, I wasn't married yet when I like I got married young, and I didn't get married
to 20.
So and he wasn't married to 20 yet either.
So he's giving this advice on a life he hasn't lived yet.
So between 1997 and 2013, he published six books through Multnomah, four of which are
about purity or dating.
Oh my word, that's so many books.
That's a lot of books.
As someone who has a quota of three stories a week, that still stresses me out.
Yeah, it's like I've self published four books and I similar to Harris, I unpublished my
first book, but it's a lot and I feel like that's quite the quotient of dating related
books, especially.
Harris became pastor of Covenant Life Church in 2006.
You recall I shared that he was youth pastor and then pastoral intern.
Did I mention seminary at any point in that equation?
You did not.
Do you know?
I mean, we're pretending like we haven't discussed about this before.
Do you remember the year that Harris finally did seminary?
I don't remember it, but I remember it was when he left his church, right?
After he was the lead pastor, decided he was like, I feel weird about my life and decided
to go back to seminary or something, right?
Absolutely.
Harris did feel weird about his life.
In an interview with Mike Cosper of Christianity Today for the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast,
Harris cites his inexperience as a pastor and the way it affected his leadership when
handling allegations of abuse within Covenant Life Church.
This was one of his big reasons for resigning as a pastor in 2015 and then going to seminary,
which is the first time Harris not only went to seminary, but saw the inside of any classroom.
Now I'm a former homeschooler.
I homeschooled from second grade to sixth grade.
So I'm not going to bash homeschooling per se, but at the same time, it is wild to me
how little education this guy has publishing such a widely circulated book and going on
to pastor a church.
I'm sure everybody has different feelings as to like how educated pastors should be
and even the kind of strange way that we marry education and religion in evangelicalism.
But the guy had basically no real formal training.
Well, yeah, because I mean, my and this is it's been a while since I've like looked
into this guy at all.
But I mean, my understanding is like even as like a homeschooler, he was even with him
homeschooling world, he was pretty sheltered, right?
Like he a lot of homeschool kids like are a part of larger classes or go on trips or
I don't know what your homeschooling was like.
But you know what I mean?
Like there's, there's, there is a spectrum of homeschooling and I always got the feeling
he was a little bit more on the like, doing it himself side.
At the very least, I know that he had a gymnastics team because that comes up in the book, which
I assume was, you know, I didn't look I didn't, I, this is why this is the edge of my journalistic
expertise.
I didn't look into with the affiliations.
I got the journalist and beef instantly was like, okay, could we find pictures of this
gymnastics team and then was like, I hope Samuel really found pictures of gymnastics.
And then I was like, Samuel didn't find pictures of him doing gymnastics.
There's no way I will I will come clean Mary if you go on my Google image search history,
there are zero queries for Josh Harris gymnastics.
Man, next investigation.
Next investigation.
See, I've got such big shoes to fill here because where this is my first podcast where
I'm covering the book and we've got Mary, who's an award winning journalist so I'm like,
constantly, I'm dotting my i's crossing my t's here.
I roll.
This is your first podcast but not your first radio show.
So that's very true.
Yeah, just little Easter eggs in there for people trying to figure out where we come
from.
But yeah, it's not even the first radio show that you and I have hosted together.
That's right.
But no one should look that up because it was when we were very young and basically
goofied off.
Oh, I can't even imagine what kind of things we were saying on this proverbial show.
I think I would always just scroll weird news on Reddit and just talk about that.
100% my mom told me I was talking to her earlier tonight and she was like, I listened to you
guys once, but it was like really hard to find your show.
And then she was like, you guys had good rapport.
And I was like, yeah, I guarantee you had no desire to listen to that show because it
was like whatever we felt like in the moment.
There's no research behind it.
This one will be more researched.
People are gonna see growth.
Sure.
So yeah, speaking of learning of research.
Professor Harris, he goes to seminary, he goes to Regent College in Vancouver.
And so he eventually does a documentary about the experience of writing and then kind of
falling out of favor with I Kissed, Dated, Goodbye called I Survived, I Kissed, Dated,
Goodbye.
So according to him in that documentary, his time with his classmates got him realizing
that his books had adversely affected people.
I think in the past, maybe people had had criticisms, but he could kind of write them
off as haters.
Whereas when it's your friends and people who care about you, then it's a little harder
to ignore.
Eventually on Twitter, a woman tagged him and said, hey, your book was used against me
as a weapon.
And he said, I'm sorry, which as we know, I'm sorry can be very loaded and it got people
talking again about it.
I think the buzz about him apologizing for the book kind of made him think there was
more interest than there was.
He began to publicly express remorse for the book societal effect in 2016.
And then in 2017, he did a TEDx talk where he was promoting the upcoming documentary
about him reexamining the book.
This is kind of when we get into the kind of person Josh Harris is though, because I've
told you a lot about what he does, but who he is.
Josh Harris is a business guy.
He has always been a business guy.
Even reading the book where I'm like, I don't think you understand much about relationships,
sex or dating.
It seemed like he understood a little bit about business.
His apology to her very much has the feeling of, or at the very least was criticized for
being an attempt to monetize his apology.
Right.
Yeah.
That was my memory of it.
He wanted to do a seminar about deconstruction that was, I'm just trying to look through
my notes here.
It was going to be like $200 to like join the seminar.
But on the honor system, you could enter a code if you had been harmed by his book and
get it for free.
The backlash against that seminar was so great that he immediately canceled it.
And in fact, it kind of caused the documentary to get, the documentary is out there.
You can watch it on YouTube for free, but it was never officially distributed.
That's basically where his story ends until 2019.
He announced that he and his wife were separating via Instagram.
Why is it always Instagram?
It's always Instagram.
If you're going to choose Twitter or Instagram, you got more words to work with.
Maybe that's a millennial thing is to announce a divorce, like a celebrity millennials announce
their divorces by Instagram where I don't know.
Do you think Jinzy will do it on a Discord server?
Oh God, I hope not.
I Discord, I know people are on it.
I'm not trying to sound like an old person here.
But as someone who has written a lot about mental health and specifically suicide in
the past three weeks, I've spent a lot of time writing some stories about those topics.
Discord is a really dark place slash can become one very quickly.
I love Jinzy.
I want Jinzy to know right now.
I love them.
I'm sorry.
I'm feeling very Biden-ish right now.
So here, please continue with Harris.
Ignore my exhausted rants about Jinzy.
God, all I want to do is follow up with you on whatever you mean by I feel Biden-ish.
But I won't.
I feel like an old Boomer man.
But anyway, continue please.
You're like, I'm reaching across the aisle so much it almost seems like I'm just a Republican.
Okay, that's in that same month of 2019, Josh Harris announced via Instagram again, that
he was no longer a Christian saying, I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my
faith in Jesus.
The popular phrase for this is deconstruction.
The biblical phrase is falling away.
I don't know that that's true.
By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.
Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain
open to this, but I'm not there now.
In the grand scheme of like Josh Harris grifter moments, this one actually did not really
sign up, send off a lot of red flags for me.
I felt like it's about as authentic as we're going to see him get.
I will say the comments on that were very disturbing.
It was people that were just like, Christians, if you're listening, be kind to people, even
if they are no longer part of your club.
I think I've always had some compassion for him, just because, you know, like we said
earlier, he did write this book.
If it published when he was 20, that means he was probably writing it at what, 18, 19,
somewhere in that range.
Such a baby.
No one needs to read what I wrote at 19.
Please no one look it up.
I'm sure it exists on the internet somewhere.
But to have this much power and influence when you're 20, that's very destructive.
And I think, you know, for like, kind of this like wonder kind type character that he like
became where he was like fast tracked through a church and you know, all those things like,
you know, in some ways, I felt like he became as much like a monster of the like, Christian
publishing world as like he was within himself.
But then I saw like after he published this like thing, then he like tried to make a business
for people who like had PR issues, PR like relations issues within the church.
And I was like, maybe that's not what you're supposed to do.
I don't know.
It just felt like he he couldn't he even when he was like, I need to separate myself from
this because like, this thing that I don't believe anymore is obviously like toxic and
harmful to people.
And yet he couldn't like he couldn't separate himself enough from it to like, actually separate
himself from it.
And he just kind of kept profiting off it.
If you saw me if we were like on video, you would see I'm waving my arms frantically trying
to express words here.
Well, if you ever don't want to feel compassion for him, watch the documentary and listen
to his TED Talk.
Haven't done that one.
Maybe don't need to.
It seems like he has absolutely no clue as to why people dislike his book so much.
And just a quick roundup on this kind of apology to where he did the TED Talk isn't really
about purity culture or even interrogating purity culture.
It's about, in a way, aren't I a stronger man for being able to say I was wrong, which
kind of almost feels like he's saying he's not wrong.
The documentary is this very shallow attempt, I think, at trying to reach out to people
who were harmed by the book.
I think he's vastly underestimating just how many people were harmed by it.
So it just feels a little too little too late.
It also has this problem where there's nobody that they're interviewing where he himself
is not present.
But I think you're right.
You made a good point when you're talking about being a monster.
I think he felt a little bit of that monster ishness.
I saw an interview, most recent bit of Harris Media besides this podcast that I engaged
with was an interview on Axios where he was basically talking about how he excommunicated
people as a pastor for being gay, for divorcing, for premarital sex.
And so he decided to excommunicate himself.
Did he use the term excommunicate?
He did, which is just another one of many things that baffle me as to what does this
guy think evangelical Christian theology is?
That's just such a loaded word.
Oh my.
Yeah, I haven't heard the term excommunicate since I was studying the papacy in 1400s Rome.
And I feel like you told me this story years ago and I just don't remember the details.
But like, how do you enter a courtship without realizing you're in a courtship?
I think it's the same reason Harris's wife married him actually.
Because in the documentary even she's just like, okay, he was telling me all this stuff
about dating a courtship and I thought, well, I like this guy, we'll just go along with
it.
And I think that's what happens is it really takes two to tango for full courtship to happen.
And at no point did I really buy into it.
So you courted someone knowing that it wasn't going to work out, which is like-
Which is dating.
Well, there you go.
I was going to say that's the opposite of the book, but maybe that's why you've just
proven the thesis of the book.
It's like, you know, we didn't kiss.
I was cool with that.
I was just like, hey, you seem interesting.
Let's get to know each other.
And then we did.
And I was like, all right, thank you next.
Wow.
So harsh.
I mean, that's an Ariana Grande moment.
You were before your time.
Just need a ponytail.
But yeah, it was, that was kind of the thing for me is I was just like, and I think this
is actually a central issue with a lot of how these pop culture trends are handled within
Christianity is we treat it like an extension of the Bible where we're like, it says this,
so we have to do this.
And it's like, well, I don't, I don't agree to that.
You know, it's like, if you don't want to kiss, I'm not going to kiss, you know, like
I'm fine with that.
I respect your physical boundaries, but you can't just say we're courting, i.e. we're
just going to get married one day.
I'm I was how old was I?
I was 16.
So like, it was the year the dark night came out.
I remember that was a year.
That was a year.
That was a year and a half.
But yeah, so that's kind of that's how you that's how you court somebody without courting
them.
You simply stop returning their texts.
I fear that I was a ghost.
Enough about me and my dysfunctional, my defective dating habits, as Harris would call them.
Let's talk about the book.
Let's let's talk a little structure.
The book is divided into four parts with four chapters each.
He's making really a handful of points that he spreads over 200 pages.
So the books in four sections, section one is basically saying modern dating is bad.
It's harmful.
Number two is saying you can't know the love of Jesus without sexual purity.
I should add these are in my words, not his because his words are not efficient.
Number three is here's some tips on how to remove sex from relationships.
I should say premarital relationships, though he does not really speak to sex within marriage
at all because how could he?
He has not been married.
And then number four is just kind of potpourri.
He talks a little bit about courtship near the end of the book.
He has a whole section that's just him quoting poetry that he likes and then his hopes for
the future.
I think most people just read the first chapter and then skim the rest.
Like I said, everybody's recollections about the book are about the exes of the altar.
And then they'll be like they'll mention courtship.
But here's the thing, courtship isn't even name checked until page 188.
It's like a 200 something page book.
It's more of a more of an afterthought.
So this podcast, we're going to oftentimes do our best to like debunk claims that are
made.
I know, Mary, you're in the process of reading a book that makes a lot of really specific
financial claims that you're kind of looking through.
Are these actually peer reviewed?
Are these actually correct?
Harris does not make claims that are so easily verified or not verified because they're just
anecdotes.
His basis for everything is anecdotes.
He'll quote books, but in more of a like, lit paper sort of way where he'll be like,
modern modern dating is bad.
Love is patient.
Love is kind.
It's like these two things don't really, you know, I think he tries to make the argument
that Corinthians was written for a similar dating culture to ours.
But nobody well, plenty of people do worship Aphrodite, but they're it.
Aphrodite is not nearly so mainstream as a of an institution as she was in Corinth.
Yeah, I've been like squinting my eyes trying to figure out like how you make I mean, I
guess I see it.
Aphrodite often had very little clothes.
So did Britney Spears at the height of her fame.
Free Britney.
I'm pro-Britney.
Just establishing pro-Britney.
But she wore a lot of crop tops at a time when crop tops were frowned upon.
So most claims are justified through unverifiable anecdotes.
I thought this was interesting.
Josh's foremost source, which was Elizabeth Elliot, specifically the book Passion and
Purity, which is the book, besides the Bible that he references the most.
Which is like astounding to me.
As someone who grew up in Ecuador, the Elliot's were like very big there in the mission community.
They were missionaries who came, tried to reach this group of indigenous people that
were like very anti Western world.
And I don't know, I think whatever you think about that, which I have feelings about that
we can talk about another time.
Elizabeth Elliot was like a really remarkable person.
I mean, in the 50s, when like women did not just go do things by themselves, she ended
up going back into the like people that killed her husband and like a group of her friends
and then spent the rest of her life living among them helped bring like medical care
there helped negotiate against like Shell oil was coming in and probably just like going
to like wipe out the people that were there.
I mean, it's just like she's a very interesting character.
And so when you were like, Josh Harris loves Elizabeth Elliot, I was like, well, that's
a weird cameo that I wasn't expecting.
Part of the evangelical influencers cinematic universe.
And I think at the same time, he's kind of, there's a very kind of boyish naivete with
which he's evoking a lot of these Titans, shall we say.
I do think there is something culturally, Christianity makes heroes out of humans, by
kind of like simplifying their accomplishments.
And maybe that's kind of how like it was for Josh Harris when he was like a teen, because
it was like, oh, wow, this teenager has such insight into teen culture today.
I mean, Elizabeth Elliot is another one where like, I mean, I met so many people who are
like, I want to come to Ecuador because like of the Elliot's it's like, do you know anything
about like what they did or like what they did after and they're like, No, it was just
such this inspiring story.
And you know, I do think like, maybe that's something we'll encounter in other books.
But that is something that I've had to reckon with too, of like being taught like these
very simple stories about people that are extremely complex.
And Christianity doesn't make us more simple, if anything, it makes us more complex because
we're trying to live up to our morality.
Well, I think you really put the nail on the head though, because even in I Survived I
Kissed Dated Goodbye, Harris muses that the simplicity of what he's suggesting in his
book is what the appeal of it was, it was taking the complexities of dating and simplifying
it.
I think too, it's also a way, which is funny, because the book regularly contradicts itself,
which is actually a strange web of that, but I think sometimes heavy contradiction does
get filtered by the reader into a rather simple point.
Well, and I mean, when you're like 16, and like, I feel all this anxiety about talking
to the girl or guy or whatever that you want, I mean, maybe there is like a comfort and
being like, well, it's all bad.
And the discomfort I feel is not me learning to become an adult.
It's just the sinful world.
And so it's more simple if I just like push this off until I'm 20, which hate to break
it to all the young kiddos out there, it does not get simpler when you're 20, it gets worse.
I think it validates people's fears.
And I think that's a huge appeal of a lot of popular media, both secular and Christian,
so called, is people want to feel like they're not being ignorant, that their fears are justified.
But we'll get into that more.
I think another huge mistake that Christianity makes in simplifying its stories is the simpler
the story, the more we can say this person was perfect.
If you're a Christian, I feel like if you're not a Christian, you should not believe that
anybody's perfect.
If you're a Christian, you most likely believe that Jesus was perfect, and that he was the
only perfect person.
So it's interesting to me how we regularly try to make these non Jesus characters who
are perfect.
Well, but I mean, I grew up in a church that regularly said, like, not to get too Christian,
he is here for anyone who's not.
But like, I was regularly told if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, like, aka you
are living a Christian life, you know, in the way that you're supposed to, you will
become perfect.
You will become free from sin and you will no longer struggle with sin.
I mean, that was like literally said to me every Thursday night of every church camp,
because Thursday night was always the Holy Spirit night.
Yeah, and I mean, that was definitely you and I were sort of raised in a very unique
kind of theology to which was the holiness theology, which so we come from the Nazarene
Church, which believes that eventually the Holy Spirit will perfect you through a process
called sanctification.
Samuel, you just gave away all the things.
I gave it all I mean, there's a few Nazarene colleges out there.
Maybe we went to Point Loma, who knows.
But yeah, so it's what's interesting, though, is that is not Harris's theology.
Harris comes from reformed theology, which basically believes that people sin every day
and were thought indeed, until they ask for the final mulligan on their deathbed.
That's me whittling it down extremely reductionistically.
But it is it comes from that Calvin, it's called Calvinism, which is it's interesting
because I find that Calvinists often push for this idea of a patriarchal perfect person,
despite the fact that their theology does not support anybody being perfect in that
way.
So yeah, that's a very that is quite the intro to this book.
So this book makes a lot of points.
Every chapter is literally a list of bullet points.
So what I tried to do was distill his talking points into seven points.
And they are as follows.
One, all physical attraction is a distraction from God's purpose.
Two, the purpose of life is productivity.
Three, singleness is a gift from God.
Four, the casual nature of modern dating often puts people in morally compromising positions.
This is me wording that in the most generous way possible.
Five, all authority is an extension of God's authority.
Six, marriage is ownership.
And seven, we should all be policing our peers purity, which I might add is at odds with
points he's making in points two and three.
Wow, I predict feelings in the future.
I do too.
I think we've got some feelings ahead of us.
Let's do a breakdown of these points.
Point one, all physical attraction is a distraction from God's purpose.
I really got the sense that this was why he thought dating was bad.
Because he says a lot of it's bad.
And he says a lot of why, but he doesn't come out and say it, which is sort of an issue
with a lot of this book.
For being something that's trying to package dating anxieties into a simple, wrap it up
with a simple bow, he does not use particularly efficient wording.
So the primary focus of chapter one, besides the altered dream, is Josh's struggles with
using women for pleasure.
It feels like Josh is this close to learning an important lesson about the equality of
women and how objectification is morally wrong.
But he pivots into making it a reason to other women and make his feelings about them their
fault.
This is one of the book's big failings.
Insistently, the beauty of a woman's body is made to be a thing that only exists in
Josh's gaze, not something that belongs to her.
For instance, he says physical interaction encourages us to start something we're not
supposed to finish, which almost makes me want to ask, so Josh, do you kiss your mom?
Like do you feel like that's starting something that has only one logical endpoint?
But yeah, it's like that.
I mean, that's such a fishy sentence to me is it's like we're starting something we're
not supposed to finish.
And that's like, so every kiss needs to end in like full penetration.
Do you understand what you're saying?
It's interesting you say that though, because like as an adult, I'm reading that differently.
But I think as a kid, that was like actually a very compelling argument.
I just think it's interesting how there's like, I guess this is a good example of bringing
simplicity where it's just like, don't touch it all and you'll never do the bad touch.
But you know, technically true.
This comes to a head in chapter 14, where he has a test, scare quotes that is entirely
at a woman's expense, framing her body as a problem and a measure of worth.
Mary, can you read us our first big excerpt from the book?
How many times have I made a complete fool of myself by falling head over heels for someone
simply because of her charm and beauty?
Too many times.
To cure this tendency, I've created a little game.
When I meet a beautiful girl and I'm tempted to be overly impressed by her external features,
I try to imagine what this girl would look like when she is 50 years old.
Again, I'm actually remembering this now.
If this girl is with her mother, this game doesn't take too much imagination.
That last sentence was in parentheses.
This girl may be young and pretty now, but what happens when the beauty fades?
Does anything within her beckon to me?
Is it her character that radiates and draws me towards her?
Or is it just the fact that her summer dress shows off a little too much of her tan?
So what if her feminine outline captures my eye today?
When pregnancies add stretch marks and the years add extra pounds, will something in
this girl's soul continue to attract me?
The feelings are coming, Samuel.
I have feelings.
So this is a thing people said, right?
Like, oh, look at her mother.
And number one, he's trying not to objectify women, but what he's literally saying is that
once women pass the age of, I don't know, 27, they're no longer beautiful.
That's the DiCaprio rule.
Okay, that's another conversation.
But I mean, full disclosure, since we're here, since we're friends, I have stretch marks
on my body.
I've not been pregnant.
I have more pounds than I had when I got married.
I mean, like, my mother has gray hair, I think she's beautiful.
And like, she is beautiful.
Like, I'm sorry, the gaze of a 19 year old doesn't get to dictate charm and beauty.
It's this mindset of, I don't want to objectify someone who is like legitimately hot.
So my answer to that is by defining hotness as one thing that I'm just going to disconnect
my brain from, instead of being like, huh, maybe like beauty is something different.
Yeah, that's the thing is like, he doesn't really interrogate what beauty standards are.
I've been doing a lot of reading lately around like, fat liberation and like, fat positive
things as well.
And I don't know, like, this is the kind of thing that like I internalized in my head
in a very specific way, because I was like, well, I like, I think in my brain, I'm realizing
this now I'm like processing having therapy with you as we speak.
Like, I think I internalize books like this in a very specific way that was like, I'm
a short, dark headed girl with a big butt.
And like, in my head, the girl he's describing here is a tall, thin blonde girl with long
legs.
And whether that's true or not, that's like, you know, that's like, what was the presented
thing.
And so it's like, oh, wow.
I do like that your way of like, shaming yourself would also be just like a great headline for
like a tender profile.
It's like, I'm a short, dark haired girl with a big butt.
I think people would be like, okay, allow me to swipe.
I would like to know more.
I was gonna say moving to South America during my middle school years gave me a lot more
confidence.
I'm revealing too much about myself and my own psychosis here.
But like, no, but I do think like, as someone who has been a teen girl, you have in your
brain an idea of like, what guys are looking for.
And then when you hear a Christian guy write this, and he's supposed to be like, the hero,
the message isn't decide for yourself what you think is beautiful, decide for yourself
what you think is attractive, like, like who you are.
And like, that's attractive to people.
You know, sometimes like, physicality is a part of it.
Sometimes it's not like, I mean, there's like a whole range that like, this kind of book
just says, well, no, there's still only one thing that's beautiful.
But like, we're gonna lock it up in a box until it's ready to be opened.
And that's, that's, that's hard for teens to internalize.
Yeah, and I think that's actually a central issue with Harris's mode of thought throughout
this book is this book is very anti figure it out for yourself.
There is a belief in absolute authority that we'll get into later, but that authority is
100% external.
And there is almost no internal means of coming to your own understanding.
I think this probably reflects how lost Josh was honestly, when he was writing this book,
he thinks that these apparently absolute factors of beauty are distract are distracting us
from the purpose of life.
So what is the purpose of life?
Well, according to Harris, my second point here, he believes the purpose of life is productivity.
He gives us a little bit of insight in Chapter 12.
He feels like productivity takes the form of service, physical responsibility, and parenthood.
These are great things.
These are noble, but they are so aren't going to be what everybody else's life is about.
And this is a much more benign way than he makes this mistake.
But I think he makes a lot of assumptions about what the average person's life is going
to look like.
There's not a whole lot to say about the purpose of life is productivity, other than I thought
it was interesting that he makes a distinction between producer and consumer.
I think this was sort of a popular talking point and the young restless reform movement
as it's something that Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll talks about as well in his sermons.
Service also makes a distinction between entertainment and service, which is fine.
I wish he would have extended that distinction to his own book, which I would argue is more
so an entertainment piece than a service piece.
I think that was kind of the conversation that was happening in society at large at
that time, right?
For sure.
I mean, you're talking about late 90s, early 20s, the rise of MTV just around the corner
is like- The OJ trial.
OJ trial.
You got Ask Jeeves and I am, you know, direct messaging coming along.
Facebook's not too long around the corner.
I mean, I think that was like the moral panic of the time was, oh no, young people are too
concerned with entertainment and so they're going to become bad.
Maybe this is a little too political, but they're going to become bad capitalists.
And I hope in some sense and form we kind of have.
Maybe because we realize that productivity doesn't always serve-
Make you happy.
What we think it should.
So Harris literally says in the book, my mom has an intolerance for wasted time.
I think God has the same intolerance.
That to me isn't so much from the book of Job as it's from the book of capitalism.
You know, it's-
Literally God created an entire day to rest.
Yeah, I think he's cool with a little time now and then, you know, going to-
Idle hands of the devil's work is not a quote from the Bible, just so you all know.
I mean, when I'm idle I go to Goodwill and it's great.
So yeah, this is like his- that idea that no time can be wasted, I think, kind of brings
us into his third point here, which is singleness is a gift from God.
I honestly thought this one was the funniest just because he would use the phrase God's
gift of singleness.
And I'm just remembering the way that I was when I was single.
I should say, I mean, obviously, you know, it's like you could be single your whole life
until you're not.
But there's a certain point where you're ready to mingle.
And I remember being ready to mingle and also being single.
And it didn't always feel like a gift from God.
And that's not to say that he's incorrect, but it's just such a funny phrase.
It's kind of condescending.
So he likes- he first name checks that in chapter three, he says dating can cause discontentment
with God's gift of singleness.
In this segment, Harris focuses on the freedom of singleness and how it shouldn't be spent
pursuing romance when it could be spent pursuing God.
Harris goes on to make this exact same point three more times throughout the book, name
checking this idea even more underneath other points.
So I like his- some of his quotes here.
As a single, and I think this is why he says as a single, like, I don't know, a single
feels so othery.
As a single, you have the freedom to explore, study, and tackle the world.
Harris explicitly says no other time in your life will offer these chances, which to me
is such a dis on marriage.
Like when you're married, you'll never get to explore, study, and tackle the world.
Like I've traveled less just due to like trying to like succeed, to like stay, like be able
to pay the rent in LA.
But ever since I've gotten married, I feel like I've- life has been so much more of an
adventure and I get to enjoy it with somebody.
I would agree.
Also as someone who like got married a little bit later than you, like a good five, four,
five years later than you, and like I'm also a pro of like waiting if you're like want
to or be to or whatever.
Them too by the way.
I like- aren't my- my marriage works really well for me and Ana, but it's like it's so
specific to us.
And I think that's like when I- why I have so much issue with books like this.
It's like I wouldn't take the experience I had with my life and say like, oh everybody
has to live their life this way.
Because I'm a very weird guy.
Like I'm a weird person who like has different needs.
No, I laugh at that only because I'm like Samuel, like people who don't know you, they're
gonna read that and just like into that so much.
I think Harris is kind of weird too and has weird needs as well.
Yeah.
Well and the other point I was just gonna add very briefly is that, you know, I mean,
I actually don't disagree with what he says here because I actually- I like subconsciously
almost wonder if this is- I- so okay, slight history into Mary.
When I was like in this era, I had like a very strong mentality that was like, I know
what I want to do with my life.
I want to be a journalist.
That means I have to be in a city most likely.
Like most Christian guys want you to like follow their careers and I'm not about that.
So like when a guy fits with me, then we'll meet.
And I almost like wonder if like reading this or some other like singleness weirdness put
that thought in my head.
But at the same time, I like looking back, I'm like, well, it's very easy for Harris
to be like, yeah, being single is great.
Like as a man, it's actually really difficult to be in the church as a single person.
It's like probably the main reason why I would say as a single woman, it is probably the
main reason why like I didn't have a home church for like a good three years probably
after three, four years after I graduated college.
And it was because like I felt super weird as like a single woman who wasn't married,
wasn't engaged, but also wasn't in college.
And like people would be like, oh, do you have a boyfriend?
I'm like, no, but like, I'm the editor of a paper.
And they're like, okay, cool.
When are you having babies?
Like, you know, like, I actually think it's actually really difficult for women in the
church to be single.
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.
I think too, it's so interesting to me because the way Harris talks about singleness, I think
he's specifically thinking about, he'll mention women, but whenever he mentions them, I think
I have a quote a little bit down the ways, but it's always, it's never in a professional
setting.
It's always in a, there is this undercurrent of the sort of sexism in the church that often
is called complimentarianism where it's like, he's trying to speak to both men and women,
but he clearly doesn't believe that they're capable of the same things.
Or even like, even if they are capable, like, it's this expectation that like your life
is preparing itself for a man and your future babies.
Like there's that expectation that I don't like, I think when you say that to people,
they're like, oh no, I don't believe that.
But like, if they examine their thought, like they do.
And I think that's something that I struggle with because I was like, I mean, again, I
was literally like, when a man comes along who's willing to follow my career, because
I got specific places I want to go, we'll talk, that happened when I was like 27.
So Harris makes a lot of assumptions here.
He says most of us won't remain single for our entire lives, which I think is becoming
less and less, like that claim is becoming less and less true as people are, A, kind
of removing relationships from the equation entirely, especially married relationships.
And then I think it's just hard for people to meet people as the world becomes more isolated.
He obviously didn't know COVID was coming when he said that.
But it's, it's very naive, like a lot of things that he's written here.
Well, and I think also like we live longer, like people are becoming single at higher
rates later in their life.
I mean, yeah, I think there definitely was like, in this period of time, I think a holding
on, I recognize it now almost as like a holding on to what the church is doing.
What the church used to be, which was like a man and woman, white picket fence kind of
vibe and then trying to figure out what does it look like years down the road, there's
like this fear of like all these things that were coming in, like fear of feminism and
fear of the gays.
And like, I actually think both of those movements have made a lot of people in the church feel
like or outside the church, like more whole with themselves as they've like grown into
that.
Yeah, I mean, it's allowing it's allowing for more ways of living your life, right,
which I think has created a lot of cognitive dissonance for people who need everything
to look like, you know, when Eisenhower was still president.
Yeah.
You pointed out the good part of that talking point.
Another potentially good talking point, though he doesn't really go anywhere interesting
with it is just that the casualness of modern dating can put people in compromising positions,
which is true.
I think there's there's an issue of expectations.
And even when I, you know, the kind of stories I hear from modern dating are boundaries.
It's like a woman will clearly communicate her boundaries, but a man will assume that
she doesn't actually mean it or he'll try to coerce her into compromising those boundaries.
I don't ascribe to purity culture.
I think it is OK to have sex before marriage, but I think that all sex should be consensual.
He doesn't really talk about consent.
I was going to say the argument like I mean, I definitely think like what you just said
is could be true.
I also think the answer to it is not women don't and I don't think you were saying this,
but like just I you know, the answer I think that I received was like, well, don't put
yourself in those situations.
You know, and I don't think that's the answer.
I think the answer is teach everyone what consent means, because consent can be about
sex, but it can also be about like anything.
I mean, it can be about like, how do I how what are the things that are important to
me being around you and you being around me?
And how do we like do this thing, which is like a relationship in a way that makes both
of us like feel good and feel respected?
Yeah, I who there will be a lot more talked about this, though, in a future podcast because
of the book that I'm reading that I have a lot of feelings about consent.
Does that have to do with a battle and a battle?
A young person and two genders that they acknowledge that have it?
Yes.
Well, oh, you don't even know, Samuel.
There's a good do they get into that?
They get spicy.
But yes, there's there's there are forthcoming episodes about battles that we will spend
most of the episode talking about consent.
So we don't need to hear.
I mean, I think the more you talk about consent, the better, right?
True, true.
That's true.
Unfortunately, it's not pertinent to I Kiss, Date and Goodbye because he doesn't mention
consent once.
His main thing is that people should only be friends and they should be hanging out
in groups that are large enough to avoid dating conditions to happen.
But I think the friends only rule does nothing to unblur the lines of sexual tension in relationships.
For one thing, Harris doesn't acknowledge that sexual tension can be felt between the
same sex.
It also I can guarantee you was felt between teens, no matter how large the group was.
Yeah, and I also think it's like having people in a group doesn't mean sex isn't going to
happen.
I was also going to say like, true, your point is taken, Samuel.
I was more thinking of like teenagers who like teenagers going to be flirting, whether
there's like 15 people there and no one there but Jesus.
Right.
And yeah, it's I'm reminded of this Garrison Keillor quote where he's like, they tried
to put us in groups of five, hoping the odd number would confuse us in reference to churches
trying to keep them pure.
Poor fifth person.
Yeah, I know.
That's like making me think of like how I don't know if this happened to you in your
Christian high school, but I feel like with couples there was like this thing where you
were like, oh, well, like, let's invite one other person to like, you know, make sure
nothing happens because if it's just couples and they'll all couple off and like, go wherever
and like we did that anyway.
I mean, that's Harris's advice.
Oh, is it?
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, that's that's this whole thing.
I mean, it went so well for me.
So he's he's preoccupied primarily with premarital sex and physical boundaries, kind of like
what we talked about where it's only a problem.
I feel like he often puts the onus of temptation on women alone.
I think this is one of the reasons the book was so popular, because I think it provided
again, a simple solution to a much more complex issue, which is having a dating situation,
whether it's sexual or not, that makes people mutually feel comfortable.
And he in saying just don't do it at all.
That's so much easier.
It's easier, but it's I don't know that it's like more effective.
You're saying not educating yourself makes you you're saying that that would be less
effective to be.
Well, sure.
We're not having like moral boundaries that you like actually believe in, but just have
been told to you by a man child who wrote a book once.
Like, I mean, yeah.
If you see early interviews with maybe that was mean, maybe that was mean.
But I just keep going back to he was a baby.
Mary, if you see interviews with him, he looks like evil Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Like he like I don't want to be mean.
I'm being mean now.
But like, he's just like he can't stop smiling, which I get he's anxious.
But like, it's just so creepy.
Like Christians listening to this.
You guys come off creepy.
Thanks, Sam.
Yeah.
That's my.
Don't be creepy, Christians.
Don't be fair enough.
I just keep coming back to the fact that he was a baby.
Which adult let him write this?
I think the I think the people at Multnomah Publishing probably would be the answer to
that.
Like, I don't know.
That's a rant.
I just I keep saying like, who let a man child write a book about dating and purity and marriage?
Well clearly somebody did because this brings us to point five.
Harris very much believes that all authority is an extension of God's authority.
And I think this is really essentially he was given authority in writing this book.
And I think this is why it took him so long to really turn the mirror towards himself.
I think this is another reason why this book is so popular, because it gave it gave parents
and pastors a lot of leverage in matters that I think the 90s is really when we saw the
helicopter parent kind of morph into the Imago that it became.
It refers to he Harris first to authority in the book is God given and implies it shouldn't
be questioned.
For instance, does this person respect the authority of a boss or pastor, even if they
disagree with that authority figure?
Harris puts how a person relates to authorities above how they relate to their own parents
as a factor for if their marriage material, for instance, say that say that again.
Harris puts a person's so like, he says how you treat a
cop or or the mayor is more important than how you treat your mom and dad.
So here's this his quote on this, a guy who can't follow legitimate orders will have difficulty
landing a job.
A girl who can't respect a teacher or coaches authority will have difficulty honoring her
husband.
Please understand those.
That's Harris's word choice, not mine.
I'm so okay.
So many feelings, all the feelings.
Neither of those quotes continue.
Neither of those quotes are good, but no feelings.
They're bad quotes from a Christian book that is on this podcast.
Note that the authority relationships and examples are heavily gendered.
Complementarianism is never name checked, but it's heavily implied.
The guy is at a workplace.
The girl is being taught or coached.
Which like we should say, I think maybe defying complementarianism.
Did you do that earlier?
Basically the idea that like, people who are complementarian are on that spectrum, like
think that women cannot teach men, meaning like they can't be pastors, they can't be
leaders of like, you know, like on the I guess, most progressive spectrum, like they can't
be the lead pastor, but maybe they could be like the worship leader on like the most conservative
spectrum, like they can't even teach boys Sunday school.
The other side of that, which I think it's pretty obvious Samuel and I fall into is more
on the egalitarian side, which views that people do people stuff within their giftings
and it does not matter what gender they are.
Just thought I should throw that in because I feel like that's, I didn't know what that
term meant until like, just a few years ago.
And I had either excised it from my brain or never heard it either until you and I were
talking about this podcast and you were like, talking about these complementarian-
Right, because I was shocked.
I was like, this is still a thing and like a majority of denominations in the church
like fall into the complementarian viewpoint theologically, even if they don't practically.
I should say, I was very aware of the church was sexist.
I just didn't realize they had such a fancy fun term for it.
Well, and you can be, you can be even egalitarian and still be sexist.
That's definitely a thing, but yes, there is an official theological term that I mean,
like you see it.
I mean, I think it ties into that view of like this hierarchical view of like who has
authority from who like it's, you know, I mean, it's like the org charts you see in
corporations like this person reports to this person reports to this person.
They do it except it's just like within the family.
Neither works great.
No, I think you've provided a great explanation of complementarianism because this brings
us sort of into our next point, which is I really feel like Harris is making the case
that marriage is ownership.
And yeah, that was the one that I like physically shriveled up into my body.
Yeah, you don't believe that if you believe in egalitarianism, I would say, because unless
you believe it, if you believe in Jesus.
Right.
I mean, that's a hot spicy topic because I could see somebody using the bridegroom imagery
and song of Solomon as a way to justify, justify patriarchal ownership of a woman, which I
think this book does.
I mean, I know it exists.
I'm just saying that's my view.
It doesn't help that this religion was.
Oh, that's so spicy.
I'm not going to say that I was gonna be like, it doesn't help that this religion was started
by a culture who did see married women as like possessions.
No, I mean, no, I actually think you should say that you should 100 percent read the Bible
as being written within a time frame where women were literally like less worse, less
worth than slaves.
Women were only useful as much as they could like pump out babies.
If you read the Bible through that lens, specifically the New Testament, like things that in our,
you know, 21st century were like, it actually is like extremely radical.
And I think that's where I have come not to say that like the Bible does not have any
like passages that are problematic.
Definitely think it does.
And like you can debate like that's a whole thing.
But I think overall, like people who like, like I think often, I critique is they're
like, well, Paul was a sexist, you can say yes or no, he wasn't.
But like, the radical thing is that even if he was a sexist, he still said, in Jesus's
eyes, men and women, there's no difference.
And I think we should also be reading these books within the culture that exists today,
which still is very patriarchal and sexist.
That's why we have to evaluate what we're reading, because humans are not infallible.
I think this goes without saying, Mary and I do not ascribe to inerrancy doctrine, which
is this belief that the Bible is perfect as it is and needs no critical lens applied to
it.
That's a common, that's a very popular belief amongst Christians that because this idea
that scripture is God breathed, and therefore there's no problems with it whatsoever.
I think there is an inherent problem when a text is as old as it is.
If you look at some of the most classic books in American literature, there are problems
with it.
Does those make those texts bad or completely unreadable?
No, I think you have to put your thinking cap on and do a little bit of time travel
and say, this is how things were then, but that does not need to be how they are now.
We have this, basically people speaking beyond the grave.
Yeah, not even just beyond the grave, but thousands of years beyond the grave.
We talked about earlier that we're like, we don't want anyone to read what we wrote at
like 19 or 20.
I'm sure in 2000 years people will find stuff wrong with what I write.
Like he said, you can't escape literature.
I think Harris experienced this as well.
He wrote a book, he can't unring that bell.
I want to share just a few comments he made before we move on to the final point, just
to show that he does actually make this point, because it's a spicy point.
One of Harris's points in chapter four is, and I quote, I cannot own someone outside
of marriage, which implies that within marriage you can.
He's got this little relationship principle that he keeps citing in chapter two, which
is the joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment.
His defense of this is circular.
He basically says, and looking back on this, I do think I understand what he was trying
to say, which is, the closer you are to somebody, the more you're going to enjoy the intimacy
that you have.
But that's not what he wrote.
What he wrote basically implies that sexual pleasure is a reward for marriage.
And I think it's like, not every marriage, I think, and this is like maybe a societal
issue too, where it's like, you know, everybody's speed is going to be different for sex in
marriage, but there are going to be some people who they struggle to open up sexually, but
you still love them.
So here's what he said, until you're married, don't treat each other as if your bodies
belong to each other.
I think this poor wording really comes down to Josh not considering that spousal rape
is an issue, it's like a thing and an issue.
And that passage in the Bible where they said, like, your bodies are like each other and
so like treat this as your own body.
It was specifically written against spousal rape, against men exerting power over their
wives who had literally zero, like negative power in any shape or form in their relationship.
So it's like the inverse.
Even the way you said that, it's evoking the golden rule, not a business transaction.
It's like, do unto your spouse as you would do to yourself.
If he said that, I don't know if we'd be sitting here talking about this book.
We still would because there would be all the other chapters.
So I'm going to move us on to our final point.
This one I think is really funny in light of what he's talked about with productivity
and enjoying God's gift of singleness.
And that is that we should all be policing our peers as purity.
So you know that time in your life that's supposed to be not thinking about dating or
sex, you have to use that time to make sure your friends are also not dating or having
sex.
So this kind of cancels out singleness being a gift for God, and he makes some genderless
assumptions about libido.
Mary, what do you think those assumptions are?
My guess is that women not only have no sex drive, but they're actually afraid of sex
and have to be enticed to open it up, as they say.
And that men are like roaring machines full of gasoline, ready to go and like cannot control
their brains in any way, shape or form.
That is just like always out there.
Well, we have some handy dandy excerpts to answer these questions explicitly.
Oh, no.
Guys, it's time we stood up to defend the honor and righteousness of our sisters.
We need to stop acting like hunters trying to catch girls and begin seeing ourselves
as warriors standing guard over them.
How do we do this?
First we must realize that girls don't struggle with the same temptations we struggle with.
We wrestle more with our sex drives while girls struggle more with their emotions.
We can help guard their hearts by being sincere and honest in our communication.
We need to swear off flirtatiousness and refuse to play games and leave them on.
We have to go out of our way to make sure nothing we say or do stirs up inappropriate
feelings or expectations.
Can I just say as a Libra, this is so hard for me to do.
Like everything I say sounds flirty.
So this is Harris, what Harris believes the girl's responsibility is and policing her
peers purity.
I think many girls are innocently unaware of the difficulty a guy has in remaining pure
when looking at a girl who is dressed immodestly.
Now I don't want to dictate your wardrobe, but honestly speaking I would be blessed if
girls considered more than fashion when shopping for clothes.
Yes guys are responsible for maintaining self control, but you can help by refusing to wear
clothing designed to attract attention to your body.
I know many girls who would look great in shorter skirts or tighter blouses, and they
know it.
But they choose to dress modestly.
They take the responsibility of guarding their brother's eye.
To these women and others like them, I'm grateful.
You were a great girl, Samuel.
Fabulous.
Oh no, I was Josh Harris.
Full stop.
Oh okay.
That's just how, that is how he sounds.
As someone who was a teenage girl, we did not know it.
We don't know it.
And you know, this is another way that women and men aren't all that different.
Like I always just felt like I was the ugliest person in the room.
I mean you're like very tall.
Did you shoot up in high school?
I feel like that's where that could have come from.
I'm outing you as a tall person.
I did.
To be clear by shoot up she means have a growth spurt.
I did not.
Yeah, so I was six foot one in seventh grade.
Oh my gosh.
I didn't realize that.
Oh Samuel, I'm so sorry.
Like I feel like as an adult I'm coming out of my shell.
Like it's weird because I always had this sort of like confidence.
I kind of had to be confident because people knew I was there.
I was perceived at all times and it just felt, it felt preferable to like, I don't know,
especially in like a Christian high school in Ohio, just having some, become some adult
special project.
Like you don't talk much do you?
It's like no, I'm going to talk so much you're actually going to tell me to stop talking.
That was my coping mechanism.
As someone who was like a very short person who has been told I have Napoleon complex,
like I feel that because I think on the alternate side I was short, I looked super young, I
looked very sweet.
I just always had this like fear that people would like maybe just run over me.
And so I've always been this like firecracker that like exploded my personality into the
scene.
Maybe this is why we're friends.
Yeah, I think we've like kind of both handled our heights in a similar way.
And people would be like, oh there's Mary and Samuel, the shortest person on campus
and the tallest person on campus walking next to each other.
No good transition.
That kind of closes out the points of the book.
I did want to share a few extra things that are in the book that I couldn't quite categorize.
So the second edition features an anecdote near the beginning.
Because Josh Harris got famous and had really living up to that Woody, Woody Harrelson,
why I'm an idiot.
Living up to that Andy Warhol quote in the future, everyone will be, I know.
Oh my god, you have to leave that in.
I think I will.
I'm trying to picture Woody Harrelson playing Andy Warhol.
He's like playing Josh Harris.
Oh my gosh.
That would be amazing too.
I mean, I'm just imagining the art that would be made.
I'm sorry.
I totally interrupted you, but that was hilarious.
No, that's really good.
I love this.
I love bringing Woody Harrelson into this podcast.
Every episode.
That should be a thing.
We'll just work him in somehow.
This really reminds me of Venom, Let There Be Carnage.
It reminds me of that Andy Warhol, I was going to say Woody Harrelson again.
Oh my gosh.
Listen to this.
I'm sorry.
That just was such a, what is that called?
Freudian slip?
I can't stop thinking about it.
It's such a slip.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Harris got his 15 minutes of fame.
No easier way to say it.
That 15 minutes of fame extended to an appearance on real time.
No, it wasn't called real time at that point.
It was politically incorrect with Bill Maher.
And the other guest was Ben Affleck.
So this is like, well, it was Ben Affleck and Christine O'Donnell.
So he-
Wow.
So many people.
Okay.
They're just in my brain to what that conversation was.
Oh, we'll save your thoughts because I'm about to lay it on you because this is, we're
getting a little bit out of bad Christian books territory and more beyond the blinds
territory.
Okay.
I'll go.
Let's go.
So I really wanted to find a clip of this interview because I really wanted to play
like a bit of it on this podcast, but Mary, I couldn't find a clip of it.
And I have a theory as to why.
I was able to find a transcript of the interview via Jezebel of all things.
The interview was on YouTube, but Bill Maher in the interview with Howard Stern made a
reference to a lot of his old clips being scrubbed because, you know, it's that classic
thing of like, oh, people get so offended.
You know, it's like, well, anyways.
So the reason that I think it was scrubbed from YouTube is because Ben Affleck gets bored
listening to Josh Harris talk about purity culture.
So he starts sexually harassing Christine O'Donnell.
Oh no.
He probably thought it was flirting, but it's like, for the clips I was reading, I was like,
oh yeah, it's definitely not professional what he's saying to her.
Just basically like, would you have sex before marriage?
You having like, are you thinking about sex right now, Christine?
You know, just like, yeah.
So that makes me sad about J.Lo's choice.
Hopefully he's grown.
Allegedly he might not have.
But my tinfoil hat moment though is if you Google or YouTube politically incorrect Ben
Affleck, Josh Harris, there is another interview that comes up and he does interview a man
named Harris.
But in the interview, the man's being Islamophobic and Ben Affleck is defending Islam.
And he looks so much better in that interview.
It's almost like, but it's still recorded as Ben Affleck Harris politically incorrect
controversy in the SEO.
How often was Ben Affleck on the show?
A few times.
He was on the show a few times.
But it was weird to me because it almost feels perfectly meant to like cover up his faux
pas with Christine O'Donnell.
But that's a total side note and that's all alleged on my end because all I could find
was a transcript via Jezebel.
But kind of spicy, right?
I mean, yeah.
Also the fact that like you found it with a magazine called Jezebel, which is, you know,
very spicy.
I mean, have you read Jezebel?
Of course I have.
Okay.
I was like.
No, no, no, I have.
I'm just saying because, you know, like Jezebel and Christianity is.
She's a Christian icon.
A Christian icon, that's a great way to put it, Samuel.
Used as a weapon against women.
Super iconic, eaten by dogs.
I forgot that she got eaten by dogs.
How does that's like the thing people know about her?
There's just a lot going on in the book of Kings.
Is it Kings or Samuel?
Samuel!
Okay, sorry.
That was not intended to be a book.
No, it's got to be Kings, right?
Because like 2nd Samuel covers the reign of David and I feel like Kings is kind of like
a post-David world.
Like 2nd Samuel, there's Solomon and a little bit of.
Wow, we're like showing our.
I promise you guys I did Bible quizzing as a kid.
So did I.
I did 1st and 2nd Samuels.
That was actually one of my favorite years.
So did I.
That was also one of my favorite years.
Did you make it to the regional quiz that year?
Excuse me.
I made it to General Assembly.
Thank you very much.
Mary, you and I were in the same room in like the 20 somethings and the 20 odds.
I would have been like 12.
As would I.
Oh, we could have been friends.
We could have been friends.
But you know, probably our personalities need to mature another 10 years.
I would have been just telling you about how much I loved Revenge of the Sith, so it's
probably best that you didn't run into each other then.
I mean, I might have been with you.
Anyway, not this podcast.
This is about Star Wars.
It's not.
Although I can make anything about Star Wars.
Fortunately, I will move us to a conclusion because we are fortunately kind of wrapping
up here.
So yeah, I mean, it just really feels like Harris is trying to buy time for a word slash
page count, which is especially funny given that we're accidentally padding this podcast
too.
The final part of the book is just like Harris talking about how his own parents met and
then he's just like, I'm going to have a story of my own one day.
And boy, did he ever.
His epilogue is the beginning of Boy Meets Girl, which is his courtship book.
And it's about him courting his wife.
It's like a dramatization of his wife before she became Mrs. Josh Harris.
I wanted to I'll give a few final notes on where are they now.
Josh Harris now hosts a podcast called Clear and Loud, which focuses on business trends,
particularly clarity in message, which I thought was really funny.
I listened to an episode mainly because his daughter was a guest on it.
So I wanted to sort of see it was really cute.
Honestly, like they seem to have a good relationship.
His daughter is on Hinge.
So you know, or she was she was on the apps.
I think Harris kind of put himself into I think it was really good of him to remove
himself from the conversation of Christianity.
It's like business is business.
Let him do whatever he wants to there.
And he's he's kept his statement about his books on his site, which I think is good.
And it does seem like he's removed I Kissed Data Goodbye from new printing of books.
But here's the thing.
There's already a million plus of it out there, including the one I got from the library.
In the meanwhile, I also I preordered his Shannon Harris, his I believe ex wife.
I know they separated.
I don't always know how that works, though, if it's there's like a middle stage.
She is writing a book called The Woman They Wanted Shattering the Illusion of the Good
Christian Wife.
And I have hope that maybe it'll be a good Christian book.
She's on record saying that I Kissed Data Goodbye isn't a good book in the documentary.
I see I survived.
I Kissed Data Goodbye.
She's like, oh, you know, it was a good book.
And then she pauses and she's like, well, I wouldn't say it was a good book.
But you you cared a lot.
I don't know.
I'm rooting for her.
And we'll revisit it if it's just as harmful.
I think a lot of people point to this book as either the book that started off or really
like epitomized purity culture within the Christian Church.
And I'm curious, like your thoughts around was this the catalyst for was it a catalyst
or was it just like a result of the time that it was written in?
This was 100 percent a result of the time.
But like a lot of things, I think it became the Kleenex of purity culture.
At some point, people decide they should make disposable tissues.
But Kleenex is the one that becomes known for it.
It's a very similar sort of thing.
In fact, Harris is definitely not the first person to write even a book saying don't kiss
or at least write a publication.
He quotes a woman named Bethany Patchen's article called Don't Kiss Me.
The New York Times actually interviewed Patchen in 2011.
Guess how old Bethany Patchen was when she wrote Don't Kiss Me for Boundless, a web magazine
by Focus on the Family, saying that people shouldn't kiss until they're married.
I don't even know.
She was eight.
That's at least like slightly better.
Well, Patchen went on to marry Sam Turrode and together they wrote a book about contraception
called Open Embrace in 2002.
The Turrodes took a natural family planning approach to contraception, believing sex outside
of fertility cycles was okay, but other contraceptives were immoral.
In 2006, they retracted their support of natural family planning and in 2009, they got divorced
and Bethany took to using contraceptives.
They both ended up going, they still attended church at the time of the publication, but
they were now in much more liberal churches.
Bethany shared in her interview that her going so traditional was actually a way of rebelling
against her parents, who were actually pretty moderate evangelicals.
I share this story because it's like Josh's story in Microcosm.
You see this sometimes when culture gets more progressive and this is one reason why I think
counterculture for counterculture's sake is not always a good North Star, because for
Bethany Patchen and Josh Harris going super fear-based, some call it conservative, was
a way of being rebellious against their folks.
I think in Josh's case, what he was rebelling against specifically was it just really seems
from the narrative of his book that his parents were really pushing marriage on him, being
like, oh, have you found that special girl in your life?
Kind of like what you were talking about, Mary, which is it's hard to be single in the
church.
People give you a really hard time about it, especially if you're a woman, but I think
even for a guy like Josh getting to an age like 20, there starts to be this expectation.
So he created a narrative in which what he was doing was the most righteous thing and
couldn't be argued against.
So I guess my closing thing would be, you know, Mike Cosper of Christianity today in
the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast calls into question the role Christians allow Christian
celebrities to play in their worldview.
My question specifically is what factors lead to these celebrities getting platformed in
the first place?
It was hard to find who exactly picked up his book for Multnomah Publishing.
What exactly got him that extra mile?
Because I think there's a world where Josh Harris even writes I Kissed Daddy Goodbye,
maybe self publishes it, and it's whatever.
It's like, oh, my friend Josh wrote a book.
But this got really big really fast.
You know, there's like a reason why when you write a book, when you write an article, like
before the era of self publishing, before you wrote anything, that like there are editors
and there are coworkers and there are people who come around you and they're like, hey,
maybe like, don't phrase it that way.
Or like, have you ever thought of x, y, and z?
You know, I do think it's really easy for anyone.
If you're in a really bubble community to not have those voices that challenge your
own way of thinking.
And in my mind, that's where things get very dangerous, become very toxic.
And then you can you combine that with a platform.
Yeah.
I think that's really well said.
And I think that's I think we'll be digging into that even more as we look at all the
myriad people who have been platformed in that way.
Okay, Samuel, is I Kissed Daddy Goodbye a bad Christian book?
Without a doubt, even from an entertainment factor, it is not.
It was difficult to read.
It was like very easy to read in a sense of like it's written at a very accessible reading
level, but I pray it is it is neither clever nor fun.
Beyond not being particularly educational.
In fact, one could call it a bad education.
So now, yeah, it's a bad it's a bad book.
It's a bad Christian book.
Free content for us.
You know, it's worth going back 15 years to laugh at someone who thought sitting next
to a boy in the movie theater would like show up at my wedding, which I can guarantee you
it did it.
I can guarantee it as well.
But part of that is my Riz was so strong, I simply hadn't given my heart to anybody
until I met my wife.
Should we name some of the books or just like give out teases?
Yeah, we should we should we should share what's in store for this season.
I mean, hopefully we're going to be dropping a bunch at once so you can look at our feed.
Yeah.
I the book, I'll just be honest, a horrible book that hopefully will be at least 2% of
fun will is Every Young Woman's Battle that was the source of all of my teenage anxieties
and I reread it.
You're welcome.
But also like Dave Ramsey, who I did not know but there's there's some dirt and also some
very quirky ways of expressing boomer ideas.
We'll just put it that what's what's upcoming for you, Samuel.
Those boomers are so worked up, but they're not always goaded with the song.
Coming up, I will be covering more stuff in the realm of toxic masculinity and masculinity
in general with John Eldridge's book Wild at Heart, which I'm currently reading and I've
got to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
John Eldridge is a better writer than Josh Harris and when we cover Wild at Heart, you
will see just what a diss that is.
Should we say like, if you want to tell us what books we should review, like hit us up
on our social handles, which I think will be like at bad Christian books.
Hit us hit us up with recommendations.
We will take that very seriously.
What book destroyed your childhood?
Please tell us.
We'll read it for you so you don't have to.
So get psyched.
We have a lot more coming.
We hope you come visit us next time at the Christian bookstore dumpster because we've
got a lot more diving to do.