Josh Benner

Tag: love

  • What I’m learning about marriage

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    As I write this, I think back to this moment two years ago. I was rushing around the church awaiting my wedding. It was surreal.

    Marriage truly is a gift from God. It is a relationship unlike any other that you have in life. Marriage is sanctifying. It has a way of magnifying your imperfections: your areas of selfishness, your temperament, your approach to conflict, your bad habits. But in that, we see the beauty of marriage because it’s an opportunity to grow in all of those areas.

    When done right, there’s nothing in the world that’s better than a great marriage: two people who love each other, who support and serve each other, and who bring out the best in each other. (more…)

  • “I kissed dating goodbye” author is separating from his wife

    Popular author and former pastor Joshua Harris announced via Instagram that he and his wife Shannon are separating.

    Harris influenced a generation of Evangelical Christian youths with his popular books “I kissed dating goodbye” and “Boy meets girl: say hello to courtship.”

    On Instagram, Harris said:

    We’re writing to share the news that we are separating and will continue our life together as friends. In recent years, some significant changes have taken place in both of us. It is with sincere love for one another and understanding of our unique story as a couple that we are moving forward with this decision. We hope to create a generous and supportive future for each other and for our three amazing children in the years ahead. Thank you for your understanding and for respecting our privacy during a difficult time.

    Last year, Harris began to distance himself publicly from his dating philosophy and called for the end of the publication of “I kissed dating goodbye.”

    I do have a few thoughts.

    It’s very unfortunate that their marriage is in its current state. I sincerely hope that they can reconcile and go on to have a strong marriage. In his post he used the word “separating” instead of divorce, so maybe I’m overly hopeful.

    Some will mock Harris. I think that’s unfortunate. Let’s not rub salt on the wounds. It’s a family, people’s lives, they have three kids. It’s not funny.

    With that said, I also don’t think a person should feel guilty of noticing the irony. He was the relationship guru for untold swaths of young Christians. I think a person can observe that fact without celebrating it.

    There may be a temptation for Christians who are in a tough spot with their own marriages and who bought in to Harris’s philosophy to question their own vows and relationship. Don’t do that. Joshua Harris is still just a man and he’s still fallen and fallible. Let us not make idols of teachers and writers. Regardless of what he is doing in his life and marriage, that doesn’t undermine the commitment that anyone else has made to your spouse.

    I also think it’s worth noting that just because Joshua Harris is separated from his wife does not mean that everything he ever said about dating and relationships was wrong. I don’t love “I kissed dating goodbye.” I would not encourage a person to base their dating philosophy off of that book. But for people who did, there are still some good things that he said. He emphasized being ready for marriage, commitment, healthy boundaries. Those are good things. Just because a person doesn’t ultimately live up to their own ideals does not make the ideals wrong in themselves.

    It’s important to continue to fight for your marriage. Everyday.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 
    Josh Benner has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has served churches in Minnesota and Illinois. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in St. Louis.

  • Six stories that will warm your heart

    There’s often so much negativity in the news. But there are also a lot of good stories of people serving others, sacrificing for others, being good to others. I like to bookmark stories that I find especially heartwarming. (more…)

  • Bachelorette talks about faith and premarital sex


    ABC reality show the Bachelorette is in the news regarding a confrontation from bachelorette Hannah Brown and contestant Luke Parker. Brown is a professing Christian and Parker is a born again Christian. The subject of sex outside of marriage came up in a conversation. Parker said “let’s say you have had sex with one – or multiple – of these guys, I would be wanting to go home.”

    Brown says “I’ve had sex and Jesus still loves me.” Certainly Jesus is infinitely gracious. But we also should not take a casual attitude towards sin. Brown has received criticism from many Christians this week. I think her attitude is one that has become too common among professing Christians. We take anyone pointing us to Christians teachings as them judging us. And we treat “thou shalt not judge” as the first and only commandment that matters in the 21st century. (more…)

  • What’s the greatest danger to the American church?

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    There are 300,000 churches in America.
    There are many wonderful churches that boldly proclaim the gospel and faithfully teach the Bible every week. There is no perfect church in the world, because every church is full of members who are imperfect people.
    I think that the biggest issue the American church faces today is related to truth and love.
    Love that undermines truth and truth that doesn’t practice love. I’ll briefly explain what that means.
    Love that undermines truth 
    Love is important. The greatest command in scripture is to love God and to love people. God is love.
    But some churches can emphasize love to the point where it undermines truth.
    For instance, there is a temptation in some Christian circles to consider the love of God and reason that: “since God is love, his love extends to all people, whether or not they believe in God and whether or not they want or accept his love.”
    God is love. But that is just taking a slice of the character of God and acting as if that’s the whole pie. God is love. But he is also just, and righteous, and holy. He judges, he has wrath towards sin. God has all of those qualities at all times.
    God is love. But the idea of love is not only exclusive to what our culture defines love as.
    We tend to value acceptance and tolerance as what it is to love. And it’s true that God meets us where we are, but Jesus doesn’t save us to keep us the same. God is a perfecting God. We sin. We sin so much that we needed a savior, and the gospel is not a message that teaches us that we’re ok and we should just keep doing what we’re doing. We need to live for God and pursue him.
    Making love purely about acceptance and tolerance is not the full Biblical scope of what love is. And so it undermines the truth of scripture. And it runs the danger of undermining the inerrancy of scripture (taking the Bible as practical wisdom rather than the infallible word of God). And this view runs the risk of undermining the gospel itself.
    Assuming that love and  demand for justice are mutually exclusive.

    I observe this being the great risk in more liberal denominations.

    Truth that doesn’t practice love

    I think this is more of a danger in conservative and evangelical circles. We place a high value on the scripture and theology. And well we should because both of those are hugely important.

    But we can get so preoccupied with having the right answer that we lose sight of actually living out what we know. This is very similar to the failure of the Pharisees in the gospels. They were very well studied and trained in theology, but they missed the heart of the message.

    It can be easy to know the right answer but it’s difficult to live it out in practice.

    Truth and love. It comes down to belief and practice. We need both.

    Originally published May 9, 2018 under the title “What’s the greatest danger to the church?”

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

    Josh Benner has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has served churches in Minnesota and Illinois. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in St. Louis.