Think. Don't Think. #IKDG

“Do you want to take the long way back to school?” he asked.I was cold. And I needed to pee.“OK."We turned right, walked a block, then turned left onto Franklin Street.“I know we have been talking about how we really appreciate each other as brother and sister, but I need to be honest with you that my feelings for you have grown into more than just being your friend. I don’t know if there is any possibility that you could feel the same way about me, and if you don’t, I want you to know that I will still be your brother and your friend. I just didn't think it wouldn’t be fair to me, or to you, if I didn’t tell you how I feel."

Silence.

“It’s mutual,” I said.  “But I don’t feel like I would really want anything to change.” I was terrified. I had been journaling about my feelings for this guy for over a month, but I wasn't sure. What if I became interested in someone else? I didn't want to hurt him. Now that he knew I had feelings for him too, I felt like I was bound to him. Ten days later, I told him that I cared about him, but I couldn’t see myself with him for the rest of my life. Therefore, I wasn't ready to begin a relationship. What caused me to feel like telling a man I was interested in him made me bound to him? What made me think that I needed to know I could marry him before allowing myself to know him?Much of the hype on the web indicates these kinds of things and others have been caused by Joshua Harris and his illustrious book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. See the following examples: Is Josh Actually Taking Responsibility?, Recovering from I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and Lifeafterikdg. This book unintentionally deeply hurt many men and women from the Christian homeschool culture of the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, there is much more to take into consideration before simply blaming Harris for our pain. Harris did choose to write his opinions and submit them to be published. Harris clearly did want people to listen to him and choose his way of doing things, or he wouldn't have written the book. For these things, Harris is clearly responsible. However, many people made the book out to be more than it needed to be. The readers themselves were responsible a for how they received and reacted to the information placed before them.A vast majority of the audience of I Kissed Dating Goodbye were homeschoolers. Though not all homeschoolers were affected negatively, the general culture was a perfect target audience for this book for several reasons. 

First, the conservative Christian culture that existed prior to the book being written was already leaning towards similar ideas and was highly attentive to what the Harris family taught.

Harris' dad, Greg Harris, published The Christian Home School in 1988, highly impacting the homeschool movement. Kids growing up under the teaching of a homeschooling mom or dad were taught things that the Harris family taught before the kids ever heard of the Harris's. At the entrance of his book into the homeschooling community, Joshua Harris already had credibility through his dad, which also led the book to easily become popular. 

Second, I Kissed Dating Goodbye was published at a key point in history.

The purity movement was not something that just came out of nowhere, it was a reaction to the immorality that preceded it. When Roe vs. Wade happened in 1973, it gave women the choice to choose for themselves whether they wanted to have abortions.  The reaction of the conservative culture was to look for ways to counter what they felt were liberal ideas. If there weren’t  teen pregnancies and children being conceived outside of wedlock, there wouldn’t be such a high cause for people have abortions. The traditional gender roles of the 1950s were being challenged, people were thinking differently, and culture was changing. Conservatives began to try to find ways to desexualize the changing culture that surrounded them. Parents didn’t want their children to make the same mistakes that they did growing up. Their reactions were to reflect on their own pasts, and prepare their children not to hopefully do better. They sought to figure out how to handle dating in a Christ honoring way. The popular book seemed like an easy answer.  

Third, if a new idea is presented logically from a source that is deemed trustworthy, it is natural human nature to accept and believe. 

Christians chose to jump on the bandwagon of what they thought it meant to be pure. For older Christians, this was an attempt to return to the traditions of the past. New Christians didn’t know any better than to join this movement, because to them, this courting agenda was part of what they thought it looked like to be a Christian. Dating was an avenue to sexual sin. The culture they were entering taught these things, so they believed. When Harris provided the alternative of courting, the people welcomed it, hoping to use his tools to transform the culture.My mother was raised in a conservative home that fostered reading Scripture, praying, and eating together as a family. My father’s parents were both non-believers, and didn’t place value on any of those things. Not having his own godly parents to look at, I think that my father really respected my mother’s family as what a godly family looked like. My siblings and I were raised similarly. Humans are naturally inclined to believe and follow the examples and teachings of those whom we respect, especially when we have seen nothing different.People easily accepted Harris' teachings because of respected leaders’ influence upon them as they grew up. One of the top reasons for homeschooling is to control what a child is learning.  If parents main motivation is to teach kids only what they want them to believe and follow, then how will a child learn to think for his or herself? How will a person learn to take two different ideas, concepts, or beliefs and weigh them with Scripture? 

Fourth, homeschoolers are functioning members of a conservative ecosystem.

An ecosystem is a community of organisms that interact with each other in their environment. For an ecosystem to survive, the organisms within the environment need to stay the same. Homeschooling families' knowledge and lifestyle depended on others who had similar beliefs to their own, those who were part of their ecosystem. People fed off one another’s thoughts and ideas. As long as these ideas were similar to their own, or affirmed what they themselves already believed or taught, then everything flowed smoothly in the ecosystem. In this ecosystem, if a new idea was introduced, then an old idea either became extinct, or the new idea did not survive. The two did not coexist well together. If a person strayed from the traditional way of thinking and tried to think differently, and voice those thoughts,  then he or she was pressured into silence, or maybe even leaving the community. Therefore, the cycle of believing one way continued and everyone in the system believed similarly to each other. People had already adopted Harris's teachings. They didn’t know how to think, and they didn’t need to, so they didn’t try. Why search for something better when the best is right before you?Growing up in a conservative family culture, my view of dating was heavily aligned with Harris’s book and also fostered by the examples of my three oldest siblings. I didn’t have to think about dating anyone until my graduation from high school, because my answer was always that I was waiting until I was "ready" to be married. I was exposed to other cultures and systems of belief, but by the time that happened, I was so grounded in what I had made my own set of beliefs that everything else seemed wrong. Because of my sheltered upbringing, coming to Moody was the beginning of shattering my ecosystem. I was completely taken out of my own ecosystem and exposed to a new one. I couldn't live by the same rules anymore, and I learned that I didn’t want to.Some homeschoolers strive in the courting system because they live in a culture that fosters that for their whole lives. However, for those who transferred into another culture, a public school, college, or even a new church or town, things changed. When a new culture is realized, whether good, bad, or just different, one can no longer live the same as he or she did in his or her prior community. Homeschoolers who stay local to their family after high school can embrace a courting lifestyle. However, when a person moves far away from the local culture,  the same opportunities are not always available. 

The fifth reason why I Kissed Dating Goodbye had such a profound impact on homeschoolers is because many of them didn't see Harris's ideas as just things to think about.

Rather, they made Harris's ideas into a list of rules to obey. People like to feel that they are good. Doing and teaching others the things in this book made people feel like they were doing dating right. As the book gained popularity, people fit in better if they adhered to these ideas as rules. If one didn’t follow the rules, then he or she was looked down upon. Many in this conservative homeschool culture began to see themselves as better than those who didn’t practice the same way. It may not have been intentional, but pride slowly crept in. People embraced these teachings and applied them to their lives as if the ideas were the Word of God. Some would say “cleanliness is next to Godlines.” Because of the way that many based their relationship lives around this book, someone might say, “Kissing dating goodbye is next to godliness.” Whether intentional or not, cognitive or not, people embraced these teachings because doing so made them feel godly. Humans are prone to legalism because that is the only way they can compare themselves to others and say they are better than someone else. Sometimes we would rather have a rule to obey that allows us to feel good than to actually think about what we are doing, simply because it is easier. 

The sixth reason is that not only did people abide by this mental list of what dating should look like to make themselves feel better than other people, but also because obeying it made them feel safe.

By not dating, and taking on Harris’s method of “courtship,” people thought they could keep themselves safe from hurt over broken relationships. They could feel safe from doing something wrong. If you don’t have any relationships at all, you certainly can’t have any broken ones. Don’t date. Problem solved. Not really.People developed unrealistic mindsets towards their potential future spouses. People felt that they shouldn’t date someone unless they knew they would marry that person. People falsely believed that if they waited, and followed all these steps, they would be rewarded with a good marriage. People were taught to run from relationships in fear. People were taught to stay away from a person who had evident sin, rather than try to work through that sin and conflict with him or her. People wound up in marriages they didn’t want to be in, after marrying the first person they dated. People found themselves “eternally single” because they never set aside their fears and worked through the reality of sin in all humanity, including a dating partner. In the end, people were left hurt, because there is no “perfect rule” for dating that guarantees happiness.If people are never given the chance or freedom to think differently than directed, then they will live thinking only in the way they were taught, or rather, not thinking at all, but simply accepting it as it is. One can shelter, ad perhaps should, but only for so long.The ones who were most hurt may have been those who didn’t think, but only received and followed. It wasn't wrong of Harris’ to write his opinions and publish them in a book. I am writing my opinions and putting them in an article; this is not wrong of me. It is the readers' responsibility to take, listen, analyze, think, and choose for themselves to agree or disagree. Just because Harris’s dad might have been a key leader or “authority”  in the homeschool movement, does not mean that his son should be the authority on everyone's cross gender relationships.Just because I have an education from a highly respected school does not mean that people should automatically accept what I say. When the Bereans met Paul and Silas (Acts 17), they didn't just believe everything they said because Paul and Silas seemed like good, intelligible people. They searched the Scriptures for themselves; they thought. The places where we come from give us credibility, but our audiences still have the right and the responsibility to think their own thoughts and to try to align those thoughts with Scripture. Then make a choice.Harris believed in what he wrote and he desired change in the world, so he wrote authoritatively and persuasively. As writers, we are responsible to write in a way that promotes Scriptural thinking, but does not equate our thinking of Scripture as Scripture. We need to know our audiences the best we can. Homeschooled or not homeschooled, some people just have more questioning and thinking personalities than others. If we know that the majority of our audience is steeped in legalism, then we should probably encourage them to think on their own. We need to come alongside them and help them ask why, or how, even if we believe what we are telling them is right and true. They need to make the choices they make because they have the liberty to do so and they choose to do so. If we know that the majority of our audience is a group of highly independent thinkers, then we can write without reminding them to think, because they will without being told. Jesus spoke with authority and He had every right as the Son of God to do so. However, as mere humans, we cannot write and speak so authoritatively on gray areas such as dating. Sometimes we interpret wrongly, and then write wrongly,  and that's why we need to be critically thinking readers and writers.The popularity of the book lead it to easily become the source that people now look back on as the root of their problems. Yet, Harris wasn’t the only one involved in this kind of thinking. Eric and Leslie Ludy’s books, When God Writes Your Love Story and When Dreams Come True are just a few other sources that personally had influence on me as I grew up. However, the popular thing to do right now is to blame Harris for our relationship problems, so it is easiest to jump on that bandwagon with everyone else who is doing the same thing. It sounds like a very plausible source to blame, and so many of us do it without thinking of the other puzzle pieces that fit into the picture. We join the circle of hurt, the commonality of pain, and fire at what everyone else is firing at.  Once we do allow ourselves to recognize the other facets, it's easiest blame them for our problems. We blame authors, teachers, parents, speakers, siblings, cultures, and even God. We blame anything that leaves us out of the equation. People have their place in our lives, whether good or bad, worthy of blame or not. It's valuable and hard to find out why and how we came to believe and act the way we do. Once we do make some sense of it, we have to use that knowledge for good; invite others to think with us, to evaluate with us, to change with us, all the while, still fostering a community that helps each individual to think for his or herself. 

An Invitation to Think

I do not write to persuade my readers that we are who we are today, and the pain we struggle with is because of the reasons I have given. I write simply to present something to think about, from my perspective, my experience, and my research, with the hope that anyone who resonates with anything I have said will take it and wrestle through it for his or herself with the Lord and with Scripture. I've been trying to figure out the mess I come from and am still a part of for almost two years, and I still feel like I don't fully understand it all. But I'm still trying to think, to understand, to not just react, and to not just blame. Think with me.