{an open letter to Josh Harris}

Hi. 

You don't know me, but I'm one of those kids.

y'know...the ones who entered adolescence with your book as gospel? the ones who are now adults trying to navigate this whole healthy relationships thing?

See, our parents had the Bible. Our parents had each other. but we had I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It was our relationship Bible. Instead of searching the Scriptures, we were given your book; and somewhere between the purity balls and the purity rings and the long lists of qualities we wanted in our future spouses and the chastity pledges and the modesty vows and the abstinence covenants and the entire 'courtship' culture whose interpretation of your book became the latest Christian mark-of-holiness, we never learned how to have real relationships with the opposite gender. 

Instead of teaching us how to relate to romantic relationships in a healthy Biblical way (without reading into the text and imposing your own interpretation on it!), we learned that romantic attachment is something to be avoided at all cost. We learned that our hearts are evil, all our desires sinful, and all feelings before marriage are nothing but stumbling blocks in the path to righteousness. 

We learned that we have only so much love to give, and that if we have feelings for anyone besides the person we marry, then we will end up having no love left for our future spouse - as if there is a limit on love! Did no one teach you, as a young man, the truth that while human love is limited, God's love is limitless? and if He lives in us, then we are given His love to love others with. 

We learned that there is an impossible standard for both men and women to live up to - women if they would be worthy of a man's love, and men if they want so much as a chance with her father. And while there was a tiny chapter on grace, that was not the overwhelming message we came away with. We came away with 'try harder..be better..follow these rules..and you will have a godly marriage. otherwise, you are doomed to disaster and heartbreak'. But, oh, heartbreak will come regardless. There are absolutely no guarantees in life, but we broke our own hearts over your book when the first person we found ourselves in a relationship with, we didn't marry. 

We learned that unless we are willing to commit to potential marriage with a stranger, we have no plausible reason to get to know them. We learned that dating was to relationships what public schooling was to education, so anything which could be construed as the beginning of even 'the appearance of evil' was sin. We learned to never take risks or step out in faith -that unless both parties were irretrievably bound to each other by parents, that unless it was perfectly safe with no chance of heartbreak, we ought not to care except in a remote detached fashion. 

Because of your book's message, and the way it was interpreted by the purity culture, I spent years trying to live up to an impossible standard of purity, terrified of so much as talking to a guy because 'oh gosh what if i make him fall?' and now there is a man i love who loves me and he still cannot hug me in public because it has been so deeply ingrained into his psyche, thanks to your book, that he is doing something wrong by touching me, even in the most innocent way. 

After the first shocking analogy which you opened Chapter 1 with, I and countless others, found ourselves unable to believe that we were worth more than damaged goods because 'oh God, we gave away pieces of our hearts before we were married' What your book advocates isn't purity so much as unemotionality - locking your heart away in order to prevent heartbreak, and an inability to have a deep connection (whether in friendship or otherwise) with someone of the opposite gender. 

And you cannot live your life sheltered in a glass bubble. 

there is no formula for preventing heartbreak.

just because we may have loved someone in the past doesn't mean we cannot love again. the biggest obstacle to love isn't having loved before. it's being taught that love is wrong - that love is purely a choice of the will and any emotions involved are sinful. 

We learned to be terrified of physical contact. We learned that attraction is inconsequential and sexual compatibility doesn't exist. We were never actually given a sexual education beyond 'don't do it'. We learned to automatically sexualize any physical contact, and consequently never learned self control or reliance on God. We learned that unless we were stronger than Samson or holier than David, then we had no choice but to fall to sexual temptation, but what on earth happened to the fact that He who created them - He who is mightier than all - lives inside of us? and if it is no longer I who live but He, then He will give me the strength to walk in holiness.

And while the suffering we went through grieves me, the popularity and appeal of your book is not too surprising. after all, it is easier to adhere to a man-made set of rules. It's easier to put all relationships into one little box and say 'this is the only way you're allowed to do it', and fail to recognize the difference between cultural norms during Biblical times and what God actually prescribes for Christian living. 

So I don't blame you, honestly. I blame those older and wiser than you who should have known better. I blame those who created an entire culture around your book, where that was the only 'Christian' way to conduct relationships, and all other forms were sinful. I blame whoever abused you as a child and shamed you for it, and my heart breaks for the fact that you were just as much a victim of all the scripture-twisting of this particular brand of so-called Christianity as any of us. You just happened to have a bigger platform, so your words had more impact.

But for the love of God, it is past time to throw that book away. And i speak for so many of us when I say that we were sold a bill of lies, starting with your book and down through countless others, which promised a problem-free, heartbreak-free life, if we would just adhere to a set of rules. But, you see, life is not a mathematical equation; and if our hearts never broke, how would the light reach us? Sometimes relationships will fail, despite our best efforts, despite doing everything 'right'. You can't protect us. Our parents can't. Because life is not meant to be hidden from. Life is meant to be lived, in all its glory and beauty and pain and heartbreak. 

We were created by God to live and to love and to reflect Him in all that we do and think and feel and love. And...Jesus didn't have a pain and heartbreak-free life. He loved and He cried and He laughed.

And I firmly believe that your heart was (and is) in the right place, that you never meant the harm the book unwittingly caused, that the secular culture of cheap sex is wrong, and we ought to focus on following God more than chasing a mate. But the alternative to cheap sex isn't running away from love or vulnerability or emotion, and I think you know that now. I hope you do. 

After all, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, "to love at all is to be vulnerable. love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. if you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. it will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. to love at all is to be vulnerable" 

and of all the commandments Christ could have emphasized, when asked what the most important one was....his answer? "love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor". 

"Love as I have loved you"

Love. 

Love and feel and live every moment fully attuned to the Spirit of God and the breadth of the range of human emotion which we are gifted to feel. 

So I pray we find healing, we who grew up on your words.

I pray you are in health.

And I pray that the next generation will tell stories of the man who wrote a book on courtship which inadvertently hurt so many, but then recognized his errors, and became a champion of true Godly relationships, and I pray they admire you as much as we once did - only for far better reasons. 

With love, 

Tirzah 

when purity culture wounds men too

There's been a lot of talk regarding the damage done to women by the strict purity culture found in some circles of conservative Christianity. And while I would be the first person to passionately remind people that the problems caused by the purity culture don't just disappear because you no longer believe them, and that women seem to bear the brunt of responsibility for purity....sometimes I think we fail to remember that the guilt, shame, and fear of that movement also hurts guys.

While the majority of the purity culture literature seems to be marketed towards women, there is still a good percentage of it addressed to young men. And, being the abnormality of a girl that I am, I read the ones written for girls..and the ones written for guys.

Now, the books written for girls seem to focus primarily on emotional purity - guarding your heart, making sure you don't 'fall in love' with a guy and give away supposedly irretrievable pieces of your heart to someone you will not ultimately wind up with - and 'tips' for dressing and conducting one's self in such a manner where it is impossible for a man to be attracted to you, (yet somehow you are also supposed to attract a good Godly man by your loyalty and devotion to your father. go figure).

The books for guys, on the other hand, were wracked with the fear of repeating 'David's mistake' - brought low by a woman who failed to protect her modesty - and therefore focused on the fear of women as dangerous objects with the ability to ruin a man forever, and the fear of their own selves. 

Now I used to think that it was just women who were victims of the purity culture, but the more I've read and the more I've seen, the more I realize how much it damages men as well. Let me explain.

For one, purity culture teaches men that their desires are inherently uncontrollable, evil, and sinful. Don't even get me started on the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong with being attracted to someone. There isn't even anything wrong with being aroused. You can't control who you're attracted to, and you can't really control whether or not you're turned on. Lust is what is sinful, when you dehumanize another person in your mind and allow your fantasies to run wild. That's something completely different than even wanting to have sex with someone.

It teaches men to be terrified of attraction, since there are no clear lines drawn between attraction and lust - they are too often treated as the same thing - and therefore doesn't actually teach them how to deal with it - to go to God for forgiveness if they sin - but rather to remain trapped in cycles of shame and condemnation. (Seriously, stop shaming guys for things they have no control over..but that's a whole nother blog post rant!).

Additionally, by placing the entire emphasis on women's bodies, it teaches men to see women as nothing but bodies. By teaching men that women deliberately dress immodestly in order to trap them, and focusing on their physical attributes, it teaches men to evaluate women in terms of how much clothing they have on their frame - instead of seeing them as human beings, worthy of respect regardless.

Instead of seeing them as people... girls are viewed as either a potential future spouse, or a danger and temptation. (now, in all fairness, this one goes both ways where girls also need to learn that *gasp* guys are people too and don't fall into one of two categories: a. he just wants to get into my pants or b. future husband material).

Purity culture also sets an impossible standard for a man to reach if he is to be 'worthy' of the girl he wants to date/marry. Books such as 'What He Must Be If He Wants to Marry My Daughter', and others, set ridiculously high hoops for any prospective suitor to jump through, if he even wants a chance with the girl's father.  

That's an incredible amount of pressure to put on a young man, and I have seen it work several ways, where either a. the girl ends up marrying an abusive man who is able to put on a very good show in front of her father, or, b. the girl doesn't end up married because no guy can possibly pass all of Dad's expectations and the poor guy eventually gives up altogether because the constant rejection crushes him, or, c. the father initially approves, only to disapprove the moment he discovers that the guy isn't perfect. 

Now, granted this doesn't mean that i think girls should date scumballs, but on the other hand, there is no perfect man (or woman, for that matter!) and whatever happened to giving grace to the one who is genuinely striving to follow the will of God?

Oh, and, my pet rant on this topic: purity culture (and the majority of the modesty movement, too) basically reduces men to the level of animals with absolutely no control over whether or not the act on their sexual desires. The logic goes somewhat like this:

a. Men are more visually oriented than women/have stronger sex drives. Their minds are 'mental rolodex's' of sexual images. they think about sex 24/7 and naught else (thank you, Shaunti Feldhan)

b. If a woman dresses or behaves 'provocatively' (attractively), then a man will lust after her, because, of course, his mind was already on the topic of sex - where it is all the time (*cough* Nancy Leigh DeMoss *cough*) 

c. If he lusts after her, then he will be sinning greatly. Since women have just that much power over these poor innocent men, then the guy will inevitably be unable to restrain himself from having sex with her because the temptation was just that great. (candle and gunpowder... girls are candles, guys are gunpowder..you get the drift)

d. Now, the guy is no longer pure. the girl knew what she was doing all along (or, at best, was naive enough to not realize the effect her mere physical form existing in public, whether fully clothed or not!, had on him), and we have a disaster on our hands. 

I'm sorry, but I beg to disagree.

This doesn't further healthy relationships, friendships, or otherwise. All it does is teach men to fear women, and, even, despise and loathe them (along with despising and loathing themselves for failing to be 'stronger').

See, if you are taught that attraction and arousal are both sinful, then if someone sparks either/or, that person will automatically be associated with your 'sin'. So, in addition to self-loathing and self-hatred for failing to live up to an impossible standard, the guy projects those feelings onto the woman as well, learning to hate and fear her.

It also conditions men to see non-sexual body parts as sexual (eg. shoulders!). It sexualizes the female form to the point where there is literally no safe place for a man to look.

and finally... while i could go on about this for quite a while... the biggest problem with what the purity culture teaches men is the way it instills in them a sense of shame and unworthiness, a certainty of damaged goods akin to what is instilled in girls, and completely overlooks, disregards, and trivializes the concept of grace.

God's grace.. grace that is greater and bigger and wider and deeper than any sin or shame or scars or screw-ups. Grace that says 'neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more', grace liberally bestowed upon us by God that says that your past does not define you and that perfect love casts out fear and there is no fear in love and there is no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus.

See, that's the biggest thing they miss - they always miss - when purity becomes fear based shame laden behavior modification.

They miss grace. 

And without grace, there is no Gospel, and without the Gospel there is no Christ and without Christ there can never pursue true purity no matter how hard we try. 

so what if, instead of policing people's behavior and concocting extra-biblical reasons to shame them - which only furthers fear and loathing - we focused on the grace that is greater than it all? 

may we always remember that grace is greater...and extend that same grace to others

(....and for heaven's sake, ditch the guilt-trippy books!)

{an open letter to the friends that saved my life}

Thank you.

i know i don't say it near often enough, but thank you.

thank you for seeing hope when all I saw was darkness, for being able to look past these messy shards of a girl and see all the beauty that could be.

thank you for never giving up on me, even when i couldn't remember what it felt like not to have given up on myself.

thank you for having the courage to reach over and piece together the fractured shreds of my past, dipping into the darkness i had deliberately hidden for all those years.

thank you for not running in terror at the demons which were exposed, demons grown diseased distorted, raring for a fight - rather, you grabbed my hand and marched right into the middle of my war, refusing to let me back out.

thank you for all the late nights, and the times you've lost sleep because of me. also, the hours you've spent on the phone with me, whether talking me down or simply distracting my overactive mind.

thank you for making me eat. thank you for making me sleep. thank you for being practical as well as an idealist, never shaming me for my slow recovery but rather encouraging, supporting, uplifting, consistently speaking truth to me even when I refused to listen to your words.

thank you for the time you begged me to eat because 'this is killing me'. you will never know how many times that memory saved me. thank you for the times you told me you were terrified for me. those words worked their way past my defenses. they broke my heart. they changed my ways.

thank you for the hours of advice, entire days and weeks spent rehashing the same issues over and over again, because your 'little one' will apparently never learn. thank you for insisting that with you I didn't have to be strong. I was allowed to be vulnerable, to break without fear of being judged.

thank you for the times you didn't trust me to tell the truth, and talked to me till 4am in the morning, night after endless night, because 'i'm fine' always meant i was anything but. thank you for your stubborn persistence, all the times I demanded that you leave and you refused to walk away.

thank you for your purity. thank you for being so upright that at times i half-hated you for it, but i cannot count the number of times that i was stopped in my tracks by the thought that if you knew what i was about to do you would not be proud of me.

thank you for being my strong and steady for so long, my rock. thank you for letting me lean on you when i could not find the light, and showing me who i was through your eyes even when i didn't believe you.

thank you for putting up with all my moodiness, my doubts, my fears, my questions, my insecurities, my paranoia, my pain. you never held any of it against me, and i am still in awe of your ability to forgive the vicious anger and hurt which was unleashed upon you.

thank you for never letting me settle. thank you for your anger towards those who had wounded me, your passionate insistence that there was more to life than the abuse that i had grown familiar with.

thank you for all the times i scared you; the nights you called me or made me call you because i was too drunk or drugged to type straight, and you didn't know if i would survive till morning.

thank you for your truthfulness. for never promising that we would 'always be friends' or you 'would never hurt me'. i had heard those lines too many times from the mouths of those who left first.

thank you for all the times you could have quite justifiably walked out, because i repeatedly treated you like trash despite everything you'd done for me, but you didn't leave. you stayed. you forgave. you showed a jaded heart what faithfulness and Christlikeness looked like, practically, consistently lived out.

thank you for understanding and never losing patience with me when i demanded that you prove yourself over and over again, or slung thoughtless accusations at you, maligning your character, mistrusting your heart.

thank you for the moments of laughter, the teasing comments, the times you told me i was ridiculous when it came to my looks, and the way you could make me smile even with tears streaming down my face.

thank you for making me say the hard things. for letting me ask 'why?' and also asking it of me. there were times when i dreaded discussing things with you, because i knew i couldn't lie to you. you would dig until you found the truth, and i thank you for that.

thank you for knowing what was best for me even when i could not see past the Jericho-walls i had built for myself. thank you for taking a sledgehammer to those walls and rebuilding them with windows to let the light in.

but most of all, thank you for your love and your care and your faith and your hope and the way you always pointed me back to Jesus as the ultimate healer of my soul. you always reminded me that i am loved because He loves me. i am worthy because He deems me as such.

thank you for years of prayers, of songs, of bible verses, of 'don't you dare give up'. thank you for unconditionally loving me, for showing me what real love looks like - true love - the kind that saves and heals and holds on until the loved one is whole again.

thank you because i am alive today to write this letter to tell you that you were right after all. you were right about everything. there is hope. there is more to life than pain. there are people who love me, and a God whom i am infinitely loved by.

and for all that and so much more,

thank you.

thank you.

thank you.