What's Wrong With "I Kissed Dating Goodbye?"

        This post was intended for Valentines Day but life has a way of throwing you curve balls when you least expect it. I think I can safely post a Valentines day post two days late without raising too many eyebrows.

          To be honest, I don't usually take notice of this day. Best case scenario is when I forget it exists. The main reason is that though I may be a romantic, I prefer epic romance to the cheesy kind, and, alas, February 14 is the banner day for cheesy romantics.

          That's why I would normally ignore the day but today I'll break the silence.

                 The topic:

Joshua Harris' now controversial book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

        In 1997, a year after I was born, Multnoma Press released what some considered to be a radical critique on the dating culture.
        I was fifteen when my mother read it aloud to my brother Elliot and me. I don't recall gaining any new insights, but the book did help cement many of the convictions I already held regarding my plans for dating and marriage.

          Fast-forward to 2018 when the author went about making a documentary titled, "I survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye."

          At the time I read about it, I stuck out my tongue at the idea(literally). The premise was that some people had been hurt by the book, and Harris was going about listening to their stories and, in the end apologizing for the mayhem his book had caused. This gave me pause. Harris did the best he could as a 21 year old. How people choose to take a book is up to them, the author is hardly responsible for something that he neither caused himself or had any intention to cause.

       Was the book really that bad? I thought back to my own reading and tried to recall where the book had gone wrong. I couldn't.

        Less than a year later in the summer of 2019 Harris announced that not only was he separating from his wife of 10 plus years, but he also no longer considered himself a Christian.

       At this point in my life, having seen so many major Christian leaders topple off their thrones, I was hardly surprised. Saddened, to be sure, but not shocked. Did this mean that his book was no longer valid? To me it didn't. God very often uses extremely flawed individuals to perpetuate His truth. All we have to do is to look at the Bible to see that.

       People in my circles, however, started taking a different tack.

          "Yeah, I never really agreed with that book anyway."

          "It really held sexual purity up as an idol."
         
          "You know it's never going to work when you just lay down a bunch of rules like that."

          "You can't just say that not dating is going to solve all your relationship problems."

Others were more gracious but still condemning, "He was too young to write a book like that, he probably didn't mean to sound so dogmatic."

         There's nothing wrong with all these statements, if they're true. However, my problem was that I seemed to be experiencing either a memory loss, or the book really went sailing through one ear to come directly out the other. How had I missed the dating rules and dogmatic condemnation?

         The result of all this was that last October or so I rifled through our shelves and blew the dust off several volumes until I found our copy of that horrible, judgmental book.  Ours was the new updated edition, available at the time my mother picked it up in the early 2010s.

        That night the lamp in my room stayed lit until nearly midnight, as I turned page after page of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, searching for that poisonous dogmatism that has squelched so many lives.
 
       I couldn't find it. What I found was a young man earnestly seeking to glorify God above all in everything he did, specifically in this context, in his relationships with women. I wondered what happened to that young man. Where had he gone?

        He certainly wasn't plain in the man who went about apologizing for the effects of treating a book on the same level with the Bible or extrapolating from its contents the dogmatism that saving your first kiss for marriage is the holiest thing you'll ever do. In fact, this seemed extremely prideful and self-centered of Harris. Did he really imagine he alone was responsible for people's interpretations and failed relationships?

          Of course, the book itself didn't appear to me to contain anything that could perpetuate  something like that on its own.

     It seems that the young man who wrote the forward to this new edition was under the same misconception. He was skeptical of the book and wouldn't read it for years, but here's what that young man, Same Torode, discovered when he finally did pick it up:

  
          "I was expecting to find a long list of rules for "courtship God's way." After a few chapters, I started impatiently skimming ahead. The rules must be in here somewhere! To my surprise, I discovered I Kissed Dating Goodbye isn't really about dating at all. Instead, it's a book about following Christ and what that means for all of our relationships with others--whether romantic or not."

    Torode goes on to corroborate my findings in his summation of what he believed to be the book's message by quoting a line from the book itself: "Every relationship for a Christian is an opportunity to love another person as God has loved us."

       And, isn't this one of the messages in the gospel? Isn't this, in summation, what all Christians are called to do? To do to others as we would have them do to us? To love one another as Christ loved the Church? That to demonstrate the greatest love is to lay down one's life?

       Yes, Harris did cite multiple examples of couples who chose to save their first kiss for marriage, but, as one couple themselves said, "We understand this isn't for everyone." This was a personal decision they made based on how they determined they could best demonstrate their love for each other. Other examples that some find extreme are also given, but as Harris says again and again, "Courtship isn't a set of rules."
He also says he thinks that going out on dates can be a "healthy and important part of getting to know one another. Getting time to focus on each other isn't bad."

      What I saw as the book's main focus was, number one, pointing out the big flaws in secular dating, and pointing Christians towards what our ultimate focus should be in any relationship, "Romantic or not," as Torode puts it.
    
    And this ultimate focus is....drumroll....glorifying God and seeking to bring Him glory first of all.

          In the end, I wonder how long it's been since Harris has read his own book. I wonder how much of his apology was for Christianity rather than the book. I wonder whether the people who stumbled over it were really trying to seek Christ first and foremost in their relationships.

          Anytime you take something of this world, be it a  relationship, a person, a thing, or a book on dating, and set it above or on a level with God and His word, you ask for trouble. You invite discord, chaos, grief, and broken hearts.

     Love does not seek its own, and I think anyone who truly wants to seek Christ first will be benefited by reading Harris' book.

     If Christ is not your goal, then no book, however true, will be able to halt the disaster to which your life and your relationship goals are headed.


                 Jesus says, "Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it."

And again, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father, but through me." 

Yet again, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches."

        I could go on, but you get the picture. The Bible's message is poignantly clear; for a relationship to succeed, both parties must be looking to God first of all for hope and satisfaction, not to each other. This is the message I see in Harris' book and if so, I would answer the question firmly, if ever put to me:


     What's wrong with "I Kissed Dating Goodbye?"

        Nothing.

    I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this subject. Have you read the book? If so, what was your perception of its message?

             Happy Late Valentines!

       ~ Christianna