Josh Benner

Tag: Books

  • Joshua Harris kisses “I kissed dating goodbye” goodbye

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    It’s crazy that one of the most popular books on dating written in the 90s was the dating philosophy of a 21 year old man…who was single at the time! In 1997, Joshua Harris wrote his dating manifesto “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” where he talked about…kissing dating goodbye. Instead of casual dating and having lots of relationships, Harris favored courtship, intentionality, rules and boundaries.

    It was a popular book.

    This philosophy continues to influence people. While Harris didn’t invent these ideas, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” exposed many to these approaches and rules.

    This week, the pastor and writer announced that he is working with his publisher to discontinue the book:

    In light of the flaws I now see in I Kissed Dating Goodbye, I think it’s best to discontinue its publication, as well other supplemental resources tied to it (this includes the two books I wrote after it whose content is similar).

    -Joshua Harris statement

    In a 2016 interview with NPR, Harris acknowledged his consideration of the results espoused in IKDG: “I think it’s taken time for the consequences of the way that people applied the book and the way the book affected people to play out. And so I’m hearing these different voices saying, here’s how your book was used against me, here’s how it was forced on me, or here’s how I tried to – no one forced it on me, but I tried to apply it and it had this negative consequence in different ways. I’m trying to go back and really evaluate, you know, where did my book contribute to that? Where was it too stringent? And where was that me and what I was writing, and where was that – the families and the church cultures and so on?”

    Thoughts

    I was never a huge fan of this book. It’s not that everything in it was bad. For instance, of course it’s good to have intentionality in relationships. But Harris’s philosophy wasn’t just conservative on physical intimacy before marriage but also on emotional intimacy.

    In wanting people to not get overly emotionally committed before marriage, it risked a person getting too relationally committed to soon to people they knew too little.

    Some took Harris’s philosophy as gospel when it came to relationships. Harris argued against a culture where people hopped from one dating relationship to another to another. There needed to be more intentionality in dating. It was a courtship model where relationships were only entered into with people you could seriously see yourself marrying and where activities were largely based on building friendship.

    I think these ideas continue to reverberate through American Christian culture. While Harris warned against casual dating, hyper-intentional dating can put tremendous pressure on a couple from the outset of a pursuit. I think in Evangelical Christian circles, when two people do start dating, there can be this tendency to think “well they’re going to get married.”

    But there might be some serious reasons as to why those people are not a good fit. Dating without emotional connection (which Harris was weary of) can lead to superficial relationships.

    I think that millennial Christians tried to navigate relationships while a “hook up culture” existed for much of the rest of this generation.  And while many might not have taken dating and relationships seriously enough, I think Evangelicals pushed too far in taking dating to an opposite extreme which could be just as unhealthy, and where even the beginning of a relationship was taken with extreme seriousness.

    There is still be an “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” approach within Christian circles where courtship is seen as being inherently better and more God-honoring than dating. This is absurd, because neither dating nor courtship is the common method in the Bible of finding love.

    Some young Christians brought a formulaic approach to relationships and marriage. Almost like good things would happen for avoiding certain pitfalls of dating and relationships.

    This approach can lead to legalism and false hope that “if you follow the rules, you’ll have a fulfilling marriage.”

    In his statement this week, Joshua Harris touches on this idea that many took from his book: “The book also gave some the impression that a certain methodology of relationships would deliver a happy ever-after ending—a great marriage, a great sex life—even though this is not promised by scripture.”

    Dating should be taken seriously. But in our society, it does need to be taken casually enough to where a person doesn’t feel prematurely committed to someone who they’re just getting to know. And this isn’t just a critique of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” because there are other books from the same late 90s, early 2000s period which espouse similar philosophies.

    I think it’s worth appreciating the humility of Harris. He obviously took a long look at his book and its impact. It’s a book that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and put Harris on the map. For him to look at his own work and say it should be discontinued and to recommend other books, I think that take a big person.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • The science of timing and how to maximize your day

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    I’m finishing up the new book “When: the scientific secrets of perfect timing” by Daniel H. Pink. Pink writes on management and behavioral science.
    Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of “when” decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.
    Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
    This book was helpful for me. Since getting married last year, I’ve spent a lot of time evaluating my schedule and how I utilize time.
    How do we maximize our time?
    We all have times of the day that are more optimal for us to get work done. From “When” and numerous other books I’ve read on the subject, it is essential for people who work in fields that take a lot of mental energy to allow their minds time to recharge.
    To some, that might seem lazy.
    But it’s really just human nature. We have a finite amount of physical and mental energy.
    Pink talks in the book about how it used to be a badge of honor for people who worked long hours and sacrificed sleep to work. But how, often times, the quality of the work struggles when people do that.
    We aren’t robots who can just devote endless hours to accomplishing tasks.
    What is more likely to happen is that our minds start to wander and drift and we have time that is spent pretending to work, or looking like we’re working but actually accomplishing very little. In reality, people spend a lot of time socializing, texting, playing on their phones, looking online.
    In one study (not mentioned in this book), 1,989 British office workers were found to spend just less than three hours a day actually working.
    This is a reality of what happens.
    So my interest is in maximizing efficiency in that.
    And that’s where I found “When” helpful, because part of what this book did was analyze the rhythms of the day. It’s important to structure the day where we are working on what’s important at our optimal times of productivity.
    Many (not all) adults are able to hit the ground running in the morning. As the morning goes on, closer to lunch time, that mental productivity can wane. In the middle of the afternoon, around 2:30, our productivity hits another low.
    For many people, we hit a rut approximately seven hours after waking up.
     And the peaks and valleys of the day have real consequences. Citing numerous studies, in the late morning and mid-afternoon lulls, there is a statistical increase in medical errors during surgery; people who are up for parole have a higher chance of being denied; test scores go down for students.
    So with this knowledge and applying it to life, it might be a waste of prime mental real estate to start the day off by doing a relatively mindless task like checking emails.
    The book also talks of the importance of rest. But not just any rest but productive rest. Pink argues that checking text messages on a break can actually be counterproductive. We do many things that aren’t productive but which also aren’t conducive to rest and recharging. And perhaps the lack of rest also perpetuates the problem of a lack of productivity.
    Work hard, play hard.
    I thought the book was well-written, well researched, practical. I’d recommend it.
    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.