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What happens when you put a 19-year-old
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in charge of setting the standard for
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Christian dating? Well, you get this
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book. That's right. I Kiss Dating
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Goodbye by Josh Harris. That's what
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we're talking about today. I'm Jacob
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Gooden and this is the Exhomeschoolers
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Club.
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[Music]
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So, let's kick this thing off. This is
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part two of the I Kiss Dating Goodbye
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series. Uh if you missed part one, go
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back. It's only a few episodes ago,
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okay? And uh and it'll be linked in the
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show notes. I'll do that for you as
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well. But um we talked last week on kind
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of what this book stems out of. We
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talked about the history of the Harris
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family, their involvement in like the
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Christian homeschool world. So why it
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plays a significant role to a lot of us
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homeschoolers. Um because even if you
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didn't read this book, this book came
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out, the quick history is this book came
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out in 1996, the year I was born. Okay?
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It didn't cease to be published until
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2019. So, this book has had an influence
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on what is today modern-day purity
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culture. Okay.
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Last time we talked about part one of
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the book um and that section was called
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I kissing goodbye. We talked on chapters
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1 through three and we talked about a
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bunch of different stuff in there, but
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it was kind of setting the stage for
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what is what is the alternative uh to
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modern day dating. This week we're going
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to look at part two which is called, let
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me pull it up here, the heart of the
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matter, and it's chapters 4 through 7.
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This week is going to touch more on like
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Harris's definitions of of like
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Christian love, right? Of true love uh
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versus like worldly love. Okay? And he
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kind of brought this up in in the
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earlier chapters where he he said talked
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a lot about how,
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you know, Christ love is like this
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unselfish thing and it it's always
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giving and it's it's all of these
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things, right? And that that then
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worldly love is
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is the opposite. It's selfish. It takes
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um and it and it considers nothing of
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the other people involved. Um and so
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we're going to see that. So, I mean,
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right off the rip, right? We're going to
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just let's get into it. Okay, chapter 4.
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Right off the rip, like many of the
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chapters in this book, he kicks it off
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with a story. And he tells this story of
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driving around with his buddy Jeff. Uh,
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it's summer. He's in the car with his
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buddy Jeff. They're driving around and
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Jeff is telling him like, "Oh, yeah.
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I've been going out with this girl
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Gloria." And, um, Josh is like, "Oh,
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yeah. I know her. You know, we're all
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friends, whatever." And um and Jeff
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basically confides in him like, "Hey, we
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like we really like each other and we
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just had sex kind of a deal." And he's
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kind of looking for this like pat on the
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back like, you know, like, you know, add
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a boy kind of a deal, like get some kind
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of a thing. And Josh does not give that
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to him. He's like the polar opposite.
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He's like, "Well, that's not really like
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I don't think that's the right way to do
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things." And they kind of get in a
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little tiff about it, but nothing too
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serious. And then like they just part
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ways. Okay. But at the end of telling
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the story, Josh talks about, you know, I
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come home, uh, I'm visiting from out of
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town and he's like, I run into Jeff. And
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Jeff is now engaged to a totally
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different girl. Uh, some girl named
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Debbie, right? So Gloria is long gone at
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this point. And Josh responds with,
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"That's great." I said, "My
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congratulations sounded hollow. I
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couldn't help it. I was thinking of
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Gloria. I hadn't seen her in a long
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time. What was she now? Three or four
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girlfriends back? Love, huh?
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And I read this and I was just like
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bothered by this, right?
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You should always be happy for your
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friends, right? Even if you don't agree
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maybe with their with their love
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choices, cuz I've had a few friends like
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that. But but you should be happy that
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they're happy, right? You should want
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them to be happy. And but the fact is
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we're years removed from the situation
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with Gloria and Josh is still hung up
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and can't even be happy for his friend
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who has moved on. Let alone the fact
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that like Josh is this big advocate,
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right, for doing it Christ way, doing it
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like the right way, which is get
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married, have sex. And his buddy Jeff is
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like going down that path. He's getting
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married.
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And Josh can't even like just reconcile
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in his brain like that maybe this dude
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has grown up. Maybe this guy has evolved
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and changed, right?
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So, just this weird really arguably like
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terrible friend behavior, let alone just
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like
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you're obsessing over something that is
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not your business whatsoever. We flash
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forward like a couple more pages. Okay.
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So he talks about
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the he he calls it in the section he
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calls it Aphrodite or Christ. And he
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says I cannot overemphasize the
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importance of gaining God's perspective
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on love. We can link all the negative
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habits of dating to adopting a fallen
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world's attitude towards love. And the
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conflict between God's definition of
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love and the world is not new.
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Christians have always had a choice to
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either imitate the master or slip into
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the more enticing pattern of love
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provided by the world. But again, Josh
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is equating like love as this like
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purely
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selfish thing. He's equating it to like
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basically sex always. Uh he he basically
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is like if you're not a Christian,
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love is only selfish. It is only self-
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serving. Uh he later goes on to talk
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about this on page 62 and he says first
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we must understand that all of the
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world's deceptions flow from the belief
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that love is primarily for the
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fulfillment and comfort of self. The
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world poisons love by focusing on
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meeting one's own needs first and
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foremost. We witness this poison in the
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boyfriend or girlfriend who pressures
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their partner into sex. You've heard the
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line, "If you really loved me, you do
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it." In other words, I don't care about
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you or your convictions um or how this
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could damage you emotionally. Meet my
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needs. Or what about the person who
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dates someone because it will boost his
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or her popularity but then dumps that
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person when someone of a higher social
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sta status comes along?
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Again, there are people like this.
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People will do these things. People are
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shitty. Okay? It it happens.
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But I would argue that most people if
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you ask them about what love is and what
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real love is, they would not say this.
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They would not say this selfishness of
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throwing aside one's own needs uh to
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meet the needs of other like only being
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selfish, right? We would talk about true
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love has this aspect of give and take,
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right? Like we do have things, we do
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have needs as humans. Um, Christians
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might not know that because we are told
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consistently that like not to listen to
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our bodies. Uh, that our bodies are
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wicked and evil things and that like the
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wants and desires of man are like awful,
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right? And and it leads to this weird
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mentality. I talked about it in the
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previous episode, but like for me it led
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to this weird I still struggle with what
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pleasure is to me, right? And doing
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things that make me happy. uh whether
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it's sexual, whether it's just like like
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actually like fun things of like playing
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a video game or reading a book or like
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taking time for myself, things that I
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need to recharge.
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Um I struggle to register when my body
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is telling me those things and I've
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gotten better at it, but it's it's a
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slow unlearning process. Okay. It's so
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strange to me like
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this like
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selfish like love thing because I
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remember hearing that as a kid. I do. I
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remember hearing about like that people
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outside of God's love really couldn't
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have rich fulfilling relationships and
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love because they didn't know what it
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was to love. They didn't know what it
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was to like sacrifice and give up
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themselves. Later in the in the chapter,
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he has a section called true love
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nullifies dating and he has this quote
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in here that
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um or he says a few things in here. He
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goes back to his Jeff and Gloria
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explanation and he says that they uh
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they often uh they unfortunately they
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often subscribed to the world's
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definition of love. First, their
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motivation was self-centered. Jeff went
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out with Gloria because she was pretty
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to all the other guys uh or she was
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pretty. All the other guys liked her and
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she satisfied him sexually. His criteria
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for pursuing a relationship with her
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compares to his criteria for choosing a
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pair of jeans. They make him feel good.
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They make him look good. Gloria wasn't
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much better. So on the other hand, she
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liked Jeff because he was a prize. He
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was good-looking, athletic, and he owned
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a nice car. They met each other's
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emotional and physical needs and helped
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each other's image. Self-centered,
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right? As he goes on, our entire motive
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is transformed when we extract the
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poison of self-love. Now, I want to say
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this because this was a note I wrote
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down. I read this book as if I was like
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14, 15, okay? Peak puberty, sexual
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feelings are awakening in you.
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If I had read this and seen poison next
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to self-love,
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again, it feeds into this whole
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narrative that like because we view
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self- loveve as selfishness, right? Now,
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I view it much more as like self-care,
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right? Listening to our bodies.
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Sometimes you just got to take a spa
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day. You just got to do a facial mask.
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You just got to pamper yourself a little
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bit, right?
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But I would have I would have only ever
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seen those words in a very negative
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context
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if this is the book I was going off of.
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All right, we are moving right along
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into chapter 5 of this book. It's called
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The Right Thing at the Wrong Time is the
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Wrong Thing and uh subtitle is how to
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keep impatience from robbing you of the
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gift of singleness. Now, the story that
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starts out this whole thing is he tells
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this parable of uh the magic thread and
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how this uh this kid named Peter gets
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this magic ball of of thread, okay? Or
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this magic spool of thread or something
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like that. And the way the thread works
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is that it Peter can go forward in time
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by pulling the thread and it will
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advance him in time. Okay? And so the
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parable goes that, you know, he goes to
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class one day and he's in school and
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he's bored out of his mind because he
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doesn't want to be in school. So he tugs
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the thread just a little bit and he
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flashes forward and he's not in school
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anymore. And as his life goes on, he
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continues to pull on this thread anytime
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there's anything boring. He just wants
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the excitement. He just wants the the
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enticing parts of life. And so he pulls
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the thread and before he knows it, he's
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pulled all the way through his life.
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He's pulled the thread to the very end.
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Now, the thing about the thread is
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there's no respspooling it and going
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back, right? It only works one way. And
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uh Josh uses this like as an example,
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right? To be like, we
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often young people often give up their
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like their singleness in pursuit of a
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relationship, in pursuit of this this
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adult thing. um and how sometimes it's
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actually good to sit in the like
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monotonous life, the monotonous
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day-to-day stuff. And um and I was like
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interesting. I don't totally disagree
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with him on this. Um, I think his
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some of the arguments for it are a
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little bit dumb, but I do understand
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that like idea of like life is a series
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of excitement and kind of some boring
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times and it it's this weird up and down
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roller coaster, right? Um, so I'm not
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going to totally disagree with the guy
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on all of it, but I do disagree with him
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on some of it. And uh specifically this
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he talks later in the book or talks
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later in this chapter about seasons and
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he says uh just as spring's role is
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different from that of fall so each of
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the seasons of our lives has a different
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emphasis focus and beauty. Totally with
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you right life is seasons.
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We cannot skip ahead or experience the
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riches of another life season any more
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than a farmer can rush the spring. Each
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season builds on the one before it. God
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has many wonderful experiences he wants
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to give us. He also assigns those
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experiences to particular seasons of our
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lives. In our humanness, we often make
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the mistake of taking good things out of
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its appropriate season to enjoy it when
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we want it. Premarital sex is a prime
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example of this principle. Sex in itself
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is a wonderful experience and he has in
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parenthesis from what I've from what my
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married friends have told me. But if we
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indulge in the outside of God's plan,
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indulge in it outside of God's plan, we
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sin. Like a fruit picked green or a
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flower plucked before it blossoms. Our
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attempts to rush God's timing can spoil
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the beauty of his plan for our lives.
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Just because something is good doesn't
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mean we should pursue it right now. We
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have to remember that the right thing at
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the wrong time is the wrong thing. One
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of the things that
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I struggled with growing up was God's
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will was talked a lot about when I was a
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kid.
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And I think I've brought it up on the
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podcast before, but
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I had kind of a different view of God's
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will than most of my friends did. A lot
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of them would
00:14:00
they would pray a lot. They would read
00:14:02
the Bible a lot and basically be asking
00:14:05
God for this very definitive answer of
00:14:09
like do this, do that. And sometimes it
00:14:12
was for very arbitrary stuff that I was
00:14:14
like this is a waste of God's time.
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And
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let me give you an example. Like it
00:14:24
would be like should I join this club or
00:14:27
that club? And now if I still believed
00:14:31
that, you know, God was master of the
00:14:33
universe, of course, you know, if I
00:14:35
believed all the Bible stuff, I would
00:14:36
still believe that, you know, God even
00:14:37
cares about those little details.
00:14:41
My difference of opinion came from uh
00:14:45
when I was young, my mom had me read the
00:14:47
Westminster Catechism, and one of the
00:14:50
first sections of that book, it was
00:14:53
basically these teachings on the Bible.
00:14:56
Um but one of the first sections and
00:14:58
themes of that book was this idea that
00:15:02
in order to do the will of God, what is
00:15:04
the will of God? The will of God is that
00:15:06
you glorify and honor him. And in doing
00:15:08
that, you get to you get to spend
00:15:11
eternity with him.
00:15:14
And I was like, interesting. Okay. And
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so from then on, I kind of had this
00:15:19
different view of like I don't really
00:15:22
need to bother God with all of the
00:15:24
questions of all of the like, should I
00:15:27
do this club over that club? I should
00:15:29
just make a decision. And if I'm doing
00:15:32
it and I'm honoring God while doing it
00:15:34
and I'm being in a light to the world,
00:15:37
I'm doing the will of God.
00:15:40
And
00:15:41
how does this fit into what I'm talking
00:15:43
about here? I think so many people
00:15:47
waited for this like God to tell them
00:15:50
now is the time to date, right? Now is
00:15:53
the is the time to do this thing. And I
00:15:55
think Josh pushes this a lot too because
00:15:56
he pushes this certainty within dating.
00:15:59
And we're going to get we're going to
00:16:00
see more of it as we go further in the
00:16:02
book, but
00:16:04
he pushes this certainty of like dating
00:16:06
is bad because like you should be the
00:16:08
person that you pursue, you should want
00:16:10
to like pursue them for marriage and be
00:16:12
like kind of almost certain about it.
00:16:14
And I remember there just kind of being
00:16:16
this because broken hearts are bad,
00:16:18
right? Getting hurt is bad and hurting
00:16:20
other people is bad.
00:16:22
But that's just not how life always
00:16:24
works, right? We get hurt, we get
00:16:26
knocked down. And so I think I viewed
00:16:27
dating in a different way because I
00:16:29
viewed it as like I'm interested in this
00:16:32
person. Let me date them. Let me meet
00:16:34
them. Let me experience them. And Josh
00:16:36
is going to argue you do this as friends
00:16:38
without the romantic stuff. But I I
00:16:40
disagree. I've always disagreed on that.
00:16:43
I think that the romantic stuff can add
00:16:46
a seriousness to it. Um
00:16:50
like let me give you this example.
00:16:53
When I dated my wife, pretty early on in
00:16:56
our relationship, we were friends before
00:16:58
we were lovers. Uh, but
00:17:02
when we were friends, we talked a lot
00:17:04
about like what we want out of life. We
00:17:06
hung out with a lot of different people.
00:17:09
And then as we started dating, one of
00:17:11
the things that I told her very quickly
00:17:14
was that I was not dating to just have a
00:17:18
girlfriend. I had an intention behind
00:17:20
it. I wanted to get married. I wanted or
00:17:24
I wanted to find a partner. It wasn't It
00:17:25
was less about getting married. It was
00:17:26
more about I wanted to find someone that
00:17:28
I wanted to do life with.
00:17:31
And I set that intention very early in
00:17:34
our relationship. And it didn't scare
00:17:35
her off. She was like, I'm interested in
00:17:37
that, too. Now,
00:17:40
we also added all of the handholding and
00:17:43
the kissing and that was an aspect of
00:17:45
figuring out if this was the person that
00:17:46
I was compatible with. Again, I think
00:17:50
Christians got it wrong. They got scared
00:17:53
of
00:17:55
someone along the line was like
00:17:59
sex equals bad. And I think Josh is one
00:18:02
of these people where we even see in the
00:18:04
in the first chapters and and I I read
00:18:07
his follow-up book to this as well. I
00:18:09
think Josh got hurt while dating because
00:18:14
even though he doesn't talk about it a
00:18:15
whole heck of a lot in the books, Josh
00:18:18
does mention the fact that he dated a
00:18:19
lot of girls. He kissed a lot of girls.
00:18:22
He never uh was he never uh lost his
00:18:26
virginity, which I even hate that term,
00:18:28
but
00:18:30
but he he was not like a pure guy. like
00:18:33
he he had done the thing and then he got
00:18:36
frustrated with it. And
00:18:39
I think part of that is just the fact
00:18:41
that like I think he got hurt one too
00:18:43
many times and he was like there has to
00:18:45
be a better way
00:18:47
instead of just actively pursuing
00:18:53
more out of it, right? And like actually
00:18:56
I don't know maybe looking at the
00:18:57
situation differently. And this is a
00:18:59
little bit of an aside. This is not in
00:19:01
my notes, but I'm I'm realizing as I'm
00:19:03
talking about this that I'm like there's
00:19:05
so many things and Josh, I would love to
00:19:07
have you on and maybe I could just ask
00:19:09
you this question, but
00:19:12
was it that you got hurt and you were
00:19:14
like, okay, screw this, I'm going to
00:19:15
figure out a better way, which was like,
00:19:17
I'm going to make it look cool to be
00:19:18
single,
00:19:21
or
00:19:24
was it an unwillingness to learn that
00:19:27
maybe you were the problem in a lot of
00:19:29
these relationships?
00:19:30
Did you have areas that you needed to
00:19:32
grow as a person
00:19:35
to to fulfill
00:19:38
whatever it was you were going to get
00:19:39
to? I don't think it's a bad thing to
00:19:41
want to date somebody with the intention
00:19:43
of marriage, with the intention of
00:19:45
finding a life partner. I also don't
00:19:47
think it's bad to date people with the
00:19:50
intention of I like having somebody to
00:19:52
go get drinks with, to go to the movies
00:19:54
with, to have like a partner in crime
00:19:56
kind of person. and maybe they're not my
00:19:58
forever person, but they're just
00:19:59
somebody I'm vibing with currently.
00:20:03
I don't think that any of that's bad. I
00:20:05
just think it's all about like the
00:20:06
intention and the communication of those
00:20:09
things right off the rip so people don't
00:20:11
get injured. Does that make sense?
00:20:15
Anyway, I could ramble on this for a
00:20:17
long time, but let's let's move on.
00:20:19
Okay, a few pages more. He says, "While
00:20:22
you're single, dating not only keeps us
00:20:24
from preparing for marriage, but it can
00:20:25
quite possibly rob us of the gift of
00:20:27
singleness. Dating can tie us down in a
00:20:29
series of pseudo relationships, but God
00:20:31
wants us to maximize our freedom and
00:20:33
flexibility to serve him. Any season of
00:20:37
singleness, whether you're 16 or 26, is
00:20:40
a gift. You might uh you just might do
00:20:42
God a disservice by wasting its
00:20:45
potential on a lifestyle of short-term
00:20:47
dating." I talked about this in the last
00:20:49
episode, but this idea that like when
00:20:52
you're in a relationship,
00:20:54
you can't like
00:20:58
be serving God, right? Like you can't or
00:21:00
you can't be preparing for marriage.
00:21:04
It's like really [ __ ] weird. And I'm
00:21:06
sorry I cursed, but like it's really
00:21:09
weird, right? There's a lot that goes
00:21:11
into marriage. There's a lot of things I
00:21:13
didn't know that I was going to need to
00:21:14
do as a husband that I that I had to
00:21:18
learn, but some of them I learned
00:21:19
beforehand. Okay.
00:21:22
I learned about like
00:21:24
the difference of personality, right? I
00:21:27
learned about I need to do
00:21:31
certain things. I need to take care of
00:21:34
my partner in certain ways that I had
00:21:37
not ever thought of before. I learned
00:21:39
about the fact that like my words held
00:21:42
different meaning or the tone of my
00:21:44
voice held different meaning than maybe
00:21:45
I intended. I still learn this on the
00:21:47
daily. Um and it maybe hurt feelings or
00:21:51
made people feel a certain way.
00:21:54
And I don't think I would have learned
00:21:55
those things if I wasn't
00:21:58
I mean like I said I'm still learning
00:22:00
those today but like I learned a lot of
00:22:02
them while I was dating while I was like
00:22:06
exploring a romantic partner was like
00:22:08
the way that we interacted and the way
00:22:10
we like learned how to take care of each
00:22:12
other and what we needed. Right. I
00:22:14
brought up in my last episode that like
00:22:16
I had surgery while I was dating my my
00:22:19
wife. We were not even close to being
00:22:21
engaged. Like I had surgery. I couldn't
00:22:23
take care of myself. It was in an
00:22:25
awkward part of my back, my lower back,
00:22:28
and like I couldn't replace the gauze on
00:22:31
my own. I needed help and I needed her
00:22:33
help cuz I had nobody else. My family
00:22:36
didn't live nearby. Nothing.
00:22:39
And
00:22:41
she could have easily been like, "Nah,
00:22:44
don't do that. That's like not the level
00:22:45
of our relationship." But she cared
00:22:48
about me and she said, "No, I'm going to
00:22:49
take care of you and I'm going to like
00:22:51
do this for you."
00:22:53
And she would push me to when I wanted
00:22:56
to just kind of be like, you know, do
00:22:58
things that were, you know, the doctor
00:23:00
was telling me, "You got to take it
00:23:01
easy."
00:23:03
She helped hold me accountable to
00:23:04
following doctor's orders as opposed to
00:23:07
me and myself. I would have been like,
00:23:08
"No, I can do XYZ and I can do this on
00:23:11
my own and I don't need anybody." I
00:23:12
would have had this very independent
00:23:14
streak inside of me. And she didn't have
00:23:18
to do that. But but I learned to accept
00:23:21
that and I learned to
00:23:24
communicate better when I'm sick what I
00:23:27
need. And I'm a super needy patient, by
00:23:29
the way. Um, but I don't like this
00:23:33
argument that he continues to make that
00:23:35
like when you when you're in a
00:23:36
relationship, you then like are like
00:23:39
losing out on this opportunity to like
00:23:43
learn how to be a spouse. Like I just
00:23:44
think that that's like I think it's just
00:23:47
like flipped to be honest. Like like you
00:23:49
actually can't really learn how to be a
00:23:51
spouse until you're in a relationship
00:23:52
and you're actually having to like
00:23:55
you're closing that intimacy gap, right?
00:23:58
You're closing that gap of like it looks
00:24:01
different to be intimate with friends
00:24:04
than it does with a partner than it even
00:24:06
does with a spouse. Like it's just very
00:24:10
very different and that's okay. Like it
00:24:13
just
00:24:15
and it's okay to explore that. I also
00:24:18
wanted to bring this up because I put
00:24:19
this in my notes again. Early on in this
00:24:21
book, he was talking about how he wanted
00:24:23
to go back to dating as if it was in the
00:24:26
1800s.
00:24:29
Now, if we look at historically like
00:24:31
dating and we look at dating even within
00:24:33
the Bible, one of the reasons I think
00:24:36
the Bible doesn't talk a lot about
00:24:37
dating is because at the time women were
00:24:40
like bought and sold, right? They came
00:24:43
with dowies. They like it was a lot of
00:24:47
times it was these plays within families
00:24:50
to strengthen themselves. Talk about
00:24:51
selfish love, man. It was families plays
00:24:54
to like strengthen their their worth,
00:24:57
their their value, their standing in
00:24:59
society. And it's like
00:25:03
Josh, why are we going back to that?
00:25:06
Because now we're coming out of that and
00:25:08
we're coming into a place where women
00:25:11
can have a say. Women can have a voice
00:25:14
and they can say, you know, I value
00:25:16
these things in a partner. Before they
00:25:17
couldn't do that, it was just like, you
00:25:19
know, dad would arrange something. mom
00:25:20
and dad would arrange something or you
00:25:22
know you hear about arranged marriages
00:25:24
people still to this day have arranged
00:25:25
marriages I'm not totally knocking that
00:25:28
just FYI but I think it's interesting
00:25:33
this push within
00:25:36
Christianity specifically in this book
00:25:38
but I think by so many to kind of go
00:25:40
back to this like maledominated 1800's
00:25:45
view of of romance
00:25:48
as opposed to we're in a different place
00:25:51
now. We've evolved as a society. We've
00:25:54
changed the rules.
00:25:57
We evolve, we change, we grow, we become
00:26:00
better. And um yeah, it just honestly
00:26:04
feels very like patriarchical
00:26:08
um and nasty to be quite honest. So
00:26:13
that's chapter five. We're going to move
00:26:14
on to chapter six because I mean I could
00:26:18
talk about every paragraph of this book
00:26:19
and my disagreement or agreement with
00:26:22
it. Uh
00:26:24
most of it's disagreement. Um but yeah,
00:26:26
let's jump in. Chapter six, the
00:26:29
direction of purity. Subtitle, how to
00:26:33
get on the road of righteousness.
00:26:35
This book, this chapter, man, kicks off
00:26:38
with
00:26:40
a disgusting story again. But this
00:26:43
story, he talks about, so he talks about
00:26:46
going to church camp and he talks about
00:26:48
the pastor that was leading the thing
00:26:50
saying, "Hey, we're going to fill out
00:26:52
these anonymous note cards and we're
00:26:55
going to rank where you sit on the um
00:26:59
the levels of physical intimacy um and
00:27:02
their seriousness kind of a deal." And
00:27:04
so he's like, "Hey, if you've ever like
00:27:05
kissed somebody, so it's like a 0 to 10
00:27:07
system is the way he outlines it. So,
00:27:11
you know, zero would be nothing, right?
00:27:13
Done nothing. One is like like kissing
00:27:16
and then 10 would be sexual intercourse.
00:27:19
And so Josh is like, "Okay, so we fill
00:27:22
them all out. We drop them in the thing,
00:27:24
you know, and we leave." It was like the
00:27:26
end of a service and then they were
00:27:28
going to talk about it uh in a different
00:27:30
in a future thing. And he's like, "As
00:27:33
I'm walking out, like some of the guys
00:27:35
are all chatting about like, "Oh, what'd
00:27:36
you score?" And you know, and they're
00:27:39
like, "Oh, I got to like a six, but like
00:27:41
almost a seven kind of a deal." And I'm
00:27:43
like,
00:27:46
I'm sitting here going, "Weird weirdo
00:27:49
behavior." Again,
00:27:51
this is the kind of stuff if you never
00:27:53
went to church youth group, if you never
00:27:55
did like the summer camps and things
00:27:57
like that, these are the types of things
00:27:59
that would happen at places like that
00:28:00
where it's like this weird like telling
00:28:04
of things to the adults in the room, but
00:28:07
then ultimately it's going to come down
00:28:10
to them shaming us into
00:28:14
feeling like wicked people,
00:28:17
resulting in us repenting of our sins.
00:28:20
and asking God into our hearts, right?
00:28:23
Asking for forgiveness, asking God to
00:28:24
come live inside of us so that they can
00:28:26
report their numbers back to the church
00:28:28
when we get back and say, "Hey, 150
00:28:30
students committed their lives to Christ
00:28:31
or something like that." But anyway,
00:28:34
these are like just weird controlling
00:28:37
church behavior that is just like
00:28:42
Anyway,
00:28:43
I wanted to also talk about this. He
00:28:46
says, "Like countless Christians, my two
00:28:48
friends foolishly viewed purity and
00:28:50
impurity as separated by a fixed point.
00:28:54
As long as you didn't cross the line and
00:28:55
go all the way, they believed they were
00:28:58
still pure." True purity, however, is a
00:29:01
direction, a persistent, determined
00:29:03
pursuit of righteousness. This direction
00:29:06
starts in the heart and we express it in
00:29:08
a lifestyle that flees the opportunities
00:29:10
of compromise.
00:29:12
I grew up believing the same thing that
00:29:14
like purity was kind of this like fixed
00:29:16
thing, right? So, I talked last time
00:29:19
about like sexual sin not being
00:29:21
classified, right? Like of like what is
00:29:23
too far and everybody's definition is
00:29:26
slightly different, but we can all agree
00:29:27
that having premarital sex is like that
00:29:29
is way beyond the line and nobody should
00:29:32
be going there. Um kind of a deal. And
00:29:35
then on the lower half of it would be
00:29:38
the kissing. I personally probably would
00:29:40
have ranked like masturbation down on
00:29:42
the lower part. Um maybe even some like
00:29:45
pornography. Um
00:29:48
I don't know. People would probably
00:29:49
disagree with me. They'd probably be
00:29:51
like porn and masturbation go higher on
00:29:53
the list. But like I know that for me
00:29:58
I viewed it very much in that fixed
00:29:59
point of like
00:30:02
until I had sex
00:30:05
I was like I'm good. I'm good. I got
00:30:09
this. Now,
00:30:11
mentally, I had decided in my brain, I
00:30:15
had determined that I was like, I think
00:30:17
that the Bible's views on sex are wrong
00:30:20
or the things that I had attributed to
00:30:22
biblical standards of sex were wrong.
00:30:25
And I had determined that
00:30:28
I was like, I don't think that
00:30:30
premarital sex is sinful.
00:30:33
Disagree, agree with me, whatever you
00:30:34
want. I don't really give a [ __ ] That
00:30:36
was what I had determined.
00:30:38
But my body was so used to being told
00:30:42
that sex equals bad that when I did have
00:30:46
sex that was outside of marriage, it was
00:30:49
great in the moment. But the shame and
00:30:51
the guilt that came after
00:30:54
were awful.
00:30:56
And so even though in my brain I was
00:30:58
like telling myself I was like no, this
00:30:59
is okay. Like this is fine. Like you
00:31:01
should not feel guilty for this. This is
00:31:02
like normal natural you know like you're
00:31:05
learning. You're exploring. this is a
00:31:06
part of the human experience like you
00:31:08
should you know be enjoying it all these
00:31:10
types of things because my body had been
00:31:13
told so for so long that like this is
00:31:15
bad this is bad this is bad I just had
00:31:17
so many issues with it
00:31:20
but when it came to anything else I was
00:31:23
like well that's not
00:31:25
crossing that line
00:31:28
I knew that like watching porn maybe
00:31:30
masturbating was sinful but it was not
00:31:32
like at this definitive
00:31:35
Like it it almost felt like having
00:31:37
premarital sex was like you it's an
00:31:39
instant go to hell card, right? Like in
00:31:41
Monopoly you get the like go to jail, go
00:31:43
directly to jail, do not pass. Like it
00:31:45
felt like maybe that was like the case.
00:31:47
Like and I've only ever really felt that
00:31:49
way about two things inside of
00:31:50
Christianity.
00:31:52
One, sex is like the instant go to hell
00:31:56
card and homosexuality is the instant go
00:31:59
to hell card. And
00:32:02
it's just wrong. It's just wrong. It's
00:32:04
like it's just a [ __ ] up belief to be
00:32:07
quite honest. And um it doesn't make you
00:32:11
less of a person. It doesn't like
00:32:13
dehumanize you. It's it I I I don't even
00:32:18
know like I can't even the words aren't
00:32:21
even there to express my feelings on
00:32:24
this. But I just agree with the idea
00:32:27
that that was what we were being taught
00:32:29
of like purity sits within these fixed
00:32:33
points of like you're either all the way
00:32:36
at a zero where you are like extremely
00:32:39
pure um because you've done nothing
00:32:42
physical or you're all the way over here
00:32:44
and then there yeah there's all this
00:32:46
stuff in in the middle but it's all like
00:32:48
redeemable. You can be saved from that.
00:32:51
So, without further ado, I'm not going
00:32:53
to I'm not going to ramble too much
00:32:54
longer on that. I do want to jump ahead
00:32:56
a few more pages uh to page 89. And he
00:33:01
starts talking about good old King
00:33:03
David. And
00:33:06
one of the things I'm just going to say
00:33:08
this now because I'm going to bring this
00:33:10
up again later, but the the story of
00:33:12
King David, this particular story with
00:33:14
him at Ba Sheba is from 2 Samuel
00:33:17
chapters uh 11 and 12. If you're not
00:33:19
familiar with it, here's the cliffnotes
00:33:22
version. Okay. King David, king of
00:33:24
Israel, goes out on his rooftop, sees a
00:33:26
beautiful woman taking a bath on her
00:33:28
rooftop in all of her nakedness, is
00:33:31
like, "I want that woman." So, even
00:33:33
though he's a married man, uh has
00:33:35
multiple wives cuz he's king uh of
00:33:38
Israel. Um he sends his guards to go get
00:33:42
her, bring her to him. He seduces her,
00:33:44
they sleep together, she gets pregnant.
00:33:46
What he doesn't know at the time is that
00:33:48
she is the wife of one of the generals
00:33:50
of his army. And uh what ends up like
00:33:53
happening is that he ends up killing her
00:33:56
husband so that he can be with her. But
00:33:59
the reason I bring up this story is is
00:34:02
one I want to highlight something. You
00:34:04
know, Christians will always say like
00:34:05
God uses imperfect people. They'll use
00:34:08
that as an argument. David is considered
00:34:10
by the church as one of like the guys.
00:34:13
He is one of like the ultimate god
00:34:15
followers and he's a man to be
00:34:18
respected. He's a man to be uh admired,
00:34:22
to to imitate, all these types of
00:34:24
things. And I was rereading this story
00:34:27
cuz I read it the more than just in this
00:34:29
book. I actually opened my Bible and
00:34:31
read this story and I was reminded that
00:34:33
I'm like, this is a man who does
00:34:35
everything that you guys disagree with.
00:34:40
Not only does he have multiple wives,
00:34:42
which a lot of Christians would argue is
00:34:44
bad, he has an affair with a married
00:34:50
woman. He gets her pregnant and then he
00:34:52
kills a guy as a result of it. I just
00:34:56
don't understand the justification for
00:34:57
King David. To be honest, I think that's
00:34:59
the main p pull from there that it just
00:35:03
always irks me that I'm like, why are we
00:35:05
talking about this guy? Because
00:35:08
I'm not going to get political. I'm just
00:35:10
going to leave it at that. But why why
00:35:12
why do we do that? It just seems dumb to
00:35:15
me. Okay. There's plenty of other people
00:35:17
in the Bible who are better examples,
00:35:19
more faithful examples of of their faith
00:35:23
than King David. That's all I got. I'm
00:35:25
going to leave it at that.
00:35:27
I want to point out this other part of
00:35:29
this book. Um
00:35:32
it's always interesting to me. He says
00:35:34
this in the in the book of Proverbs, the
00:35:36
seductive spirit of impurity and
00:35:37
compromise is symbolized by a weward
00:35:39
adulteress. We are warned that many are
00:35:42
the victims uh many are the victims she
00:35:45
has brought down. Her slain are a mighty
00:35:48
throg. And then he goes on. He says,
00:35:50
"Though King Solomon wrote these words
00:35:52
hundreds of years ago, this woman
00:35:53
continues to lurk all around us today.
00:35:55
She snares the innocent with promises of
00:35:57
pleasure, but she truly desires nothing
00:36:00
but her victim's destruction. She has
00:36:02
ruined countless lives, both male and
00:36:04
female, with her treachery. And I just
00:36:07
wrote this in my notes. I said, "Why
00:36:09
does the Bible always portray like the
00:36:11
bad guy as like a woman?
00:36:16
Like, why is it never why is it never a
00:36:18
guy? It's always like a woman." Um,
00:36:22
I don't know. Something to think about.
00:36:23
That's all I got to say there. Next up,
00:36:26
page 93. We're moving. We're moving.
00:36:30
Purity and action is what this section
00:36:32
is called. I'm just going to read this.
00:36:35
It has a a bit in here. It says,
00:36:36
"Respect the deep significance of
00:36:38
physical intimacy. Many non-Christians
00:36:41
view sex as bodily as a bodily function
00:36:44
on the level of scratching your back.
00:36:47
They engage in sex whenever and with
00:36:49
whomever they want. While this lifestyle
00:36:51
is an affront to biblical values, many
00:36:54
Christians treat lesser expressions of
00:36:56
physical intimacy with the same lack of
00:36:58
respect. They view kissing, holding,
00:37:01
fondling uh as no big deal. While you
00:37:04
may hold higher standards uh while we
00:37:07
may hold higher standards than our pagan
00:37:09
neighbors, I'm afraid we too have lost
00:37:11
sight of the deeper significance of
00:37:13
sexual intimacy. I wrote in my notes, I
00:37:15
said viewing sex as the same as
00:37:18
scratching someone's back is like a wild
00:37:20
thing to say. Like that's how he views
00:37:24
the world's idea of like love and sex,
00:37:27
right? It's like we we don't
00:37:29
differentiate between like scratching
00:37:31
your back or having sex with someone.
00:37:33
It's all just bodily, you know, our body
00:37:35
is telling us we need something, so we
00:37:36
just fulfill it. There's so much more to
00:37:38
it than just that. Like sex is so much
00:37:40
of a bigger thing than just scratching
00:37:43
your back. Like
00:37:45
I would just I would argue that people
00:37:48
don't view they view sex as a special
00:37:50
connection between two people. And I
00:37:54
don't think they would put it on the
00:37:55
same level as scratching the back. Like
00:37:58
also he mentions in here that he says
00:38:02
later in this chapter he says physical
00:38:04
intimacy is much more than two bodies
00:38:06
colliding. God designed our sexuality as
00:38:09
a physical expression of the oneness of
00:38:11
marriage. God guards it carefully and
00:38:13
places many stipulations on it because
00:38:15
he considers it extremely precious. He
00:38:18
doesn't back up this statement with any
00:38:20
Bible verses. I mean, this whole page
00:38:23
right here, both these pages, I mean,
00:38:25
there's one little Bible scripture here
00:38:26
that says, "Do not let your heart uh
00:38:30
turn to her ways or stray from her
00:38:31
paths."
00:38:33
But there's no other scripture in here
00:38:35
that's backing up these stipulations
00:38:37
that supposedly God has. That's why I
00:38:39
said earlier, uh, you know, where the bi
00:38:42
where the story of King David is. If you
00:38:45
want to check it out, second 2 Samuel
00:38:48
chapters 11 and 12.
00:38:51
Where where is your proof? Where is your
00:38:53
backup? That is something that I
00:38:56
realized as I read this book.
00:38:59
Many Christian books
00:39:02
bet on you already having an
00:39:04
understanding of the Bible, having
00:39:06
already been to church, having already
00:39:08
have this knowledge in place to just
00:39:10
then go along
00:39:13
with them saying stuff like, "Well, we
00:39:15
all know that this is the way God views
00:39:17
it. We all know that this is in the
00:39:21
Bible.
00:39:24
Where? Tell me where. Show me where."
00:39:27
Okay, I didn't think much of these types
00:39:30
of things until I read um When Religion
00:39:33
Hurts You. And as I was reading it, one
00:39:35
of the notes I took on that book was I
00:39:38
was like, everything is cited. There's
00:39:40
links to everything. There's references
00:39:43
to books and all these things. They're
00:39:44
all listed, not only in the actual
00:39:46
writing, but there are annotations in
00:39:49
the corners to say, "Hey, you know, go."
00:39:51
And in the back there's an entire
00:39:53
reference sheet of everything that's
00:39:55
referenced throughout the whole thing.
00:39:58
I would respect this book, I think, a
00:40:00
lot more if he actually had sources to
00:40:04
back it up and maybe sources more than
00:40:07
just the Bible. Even though this is a
00:40:09
Christian book, of course, the Bible is
00:40:12
the whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
00:40:15
So help me, right? Like I get it. But
00:40:18
like the more
00:40:22
you just rely only on the Bible for
00:40:25
everything. As a non-believer, it gets
00:40:27
harder and harder to like
00:40:30
kind of buy into the [ __ ] so to
00:40:33
speak, because if I don't believe it,
00:40:35
you got to hit me with other sources
00:40:37
that maybe I respect more. That's all
00:40:39
I'm going to say about that. Moving on,
00:40:41
he brings up Billy Graham. Thought this
00:40:43
was interesting. My family has a
00:40:45
connection to Billy Graham. My
00:40:46
grandfather used to work for Billy
00:40:47
Graham organization.
00:40:49
One of the things that Billy Graham
00:40:50
historically did, and I saw this play
00:40:53
out in my own lives as well, but in the
00:40:56
early days of his ministry, Billy Graham
00:40:58
experienced deep concern over the
00:40:59
public's distrust of evangelists. How
00:41:02
could he preach the gospel to people who
00:41:04
assumed he was fake? As he considered
00:41:07
this question, he realized that most
00:41:09
people who distrusted evangelists did so
00:41:11
because these evangelists lacked
00:41:13
integrity, particularly in the area of
00:41:15
sexuality. To combat this, he and his
00:41:18
close circle of men who ran the crusades
00:41:20
avoided opportunities to be alone with
00:41:22
women who weren't their wives. Now, I
00:41:25
grew up in a household and with people
00:41:27
in my life who kind of lived by similar
00:41:29
principles, who would leave the doors
00:41:32
open. I had a grandfather, like I said,
00:41:34
who worked for the Billy Graham
00:41:35
organization. He had to follow some of
00:41:37
these rules. Here's what I understand
00:41:39
about this that I can kind of get
00:41:42
behind. I understand the wanting to to
00:41:46
for there to never be a question about
00:41:50
what happens behind closed doors. I I
00:41:52
get that. Here's where I kind of
00:41:55
disagree.
00:41:57
I believe that this perpetuates the idea
00:42:01
that men are uncontrollable hormone
00:42:03
monsters. The way that purity culture is
00:42:06
set up
00:42:09
is so that men don't have to take
00:42:11
accountability for their actions.
00:42:14
And that's a really dangerous message to
00:42:16
tell young boys specifically
00:42:21
that we get to blame. We get to put we
00:42:25
get to shift blame to to women a lot of
00:42:28
times for well they wore this thing
00:42:31
which results in us being like well they
00:42:33
were asking for it.
00:42:35
They you know said or did this thing or
00:42:37
they gave me this look and and you know
00:42:40
whatever. It's their fault not mine.
00:42:45
And so we're teaching these young men
00:42:48
that like they have no self-control,
00:42:51
right? It's unavoidable.
00:42:55
I get really irritated by this because I
00:42:59
know that I was that way for a long
00:43:02
[ __ ] time. I thought that I was just
00:43:08
uncontrollable.
00:43:10
And
00:43:12
I'm thankful. I I said it in episode
00:43:14
one. I'm going to say it again. My dad
00:43:16
had told me that there is a time and a
00:43:18
place for sexual things. We grew up in
00:43:20
California. We go to the beach. you're
00:43:22
going to see women in bikinis. He's
00:43:23
like, "The beach ain't a sexual place.
00:43:25
We're not here
00:43:27
to be hooking up. We're not here to be
00:43:30
ugly. We're not here to do it's not sexy
00:43:32
time."
00:43:35
And that helped. I'm not going to lie. I
00:43:38
think it I think it gave me a breadcrumb
00:43:40
of learning about self-control and
00:43:42
learning to like harness that. One of
00:43:44
the things that I chose to do, and I'm
00:43:48
just going to take ownership for all of
00:43:49
this, is that I masturbated a lot as a
00:43:54
teenager. I did. It's disgusting.
00:43:56
Trigger warning if that grosses you out.
00:43:59
I get it. It grosses me out sometimes,
00:44:01
too.
00:44:03
I did that because the alternative was
00:44:08
popping a boner left and right for any
00:44:10
little thing. the wind would blow,
00:44:13
I'd have a boner.
00:44:16
Doing that early in the day, kind of
00:44:18
taking care of myself, so to speak, it
00:44:21
alleviated
00:44:22
sometimes
00:44:25
the embarrassment of that happening when
00:44:27
I was with other people.
00:44:29
And so, even though I felt a lot of
00:44:30
guilt and shame about it, right, I felt
00:44:32
like I was on the spectrum, right? We
00:44:34
talked earlier about the 0 to 10. Even
00:44:36
though I felt like I was sitting in
00:44:37
there and I was doing something I
00:44:39
shouldn't have been doing, I like
00:44:43
I chose to do that because I was like, I
00:44:47
would rather that happened than me be
00:44:50
embarrassed when I'm with my friends
00:44:53
and someone comment on it or just feel a
00:44:56
certain way or feel awkward because
00:45:01
there I am. Like men can't hide it,
00:45:05
right? we get a boner. It It's external,
00:45:07
right? Women get turned on. You guys can
00:45:10
hide it a little bit more,
00:45:12
right? So,
00:45:16
I just like I chose to do that. I ch
00:45:19
that was a self-control thing for me.
00:45:22
Now, of course, I had problems with
00:45:25
pornography.
00:45:26
I had I had some issues with some of
00:45:28
that. Uh but
00:45:31
it kind of helped. Like in a weird way
00:45:34
it kind of helped because when I did get
00:45:38
to the point where I no longer viewed
00:45:39
masturbation as bad, right? And I no
00:45:42
longer viewed premarital sex as bad. Um
00:45:45
I had learned that I also needed to have
00:45:49
self-control. I had learned that like
00:45:53
sex is not going to happen all the time.
00:45:55
Anytime the wind blows and I'm like
00:45:57
wanting it, right? It it's it's a
00:45:59
partnered thing. It happens between two
00:46:01
consensual people. What I started to
00:46:03
realize was that other guys I knew were
00:46:07
not that way. They were pressuring women
00:46:11
into having sex. They were pressuring
00:46:13
women into uh giving them hand jobs and
00:46:15
[ __ ] and like getting them off. They
00:46:18
were like uncontrollable and they would
00:46:21
like like I said, we would be at things
00:46:24
and like it was just whatever. But they
00:46:26
were they wrote it off as like well
00:46:30
that's just me. that's just guys being
00:46:32
guys and
00:46:35
you know and then making gross comments
00:46:36
about things that women would wear and
00:46:38
like all of these things and they would
00:46:39
write it off as like that's just dudes
00:46:41
being dudes and that's like what we're
00:46:42
supposed to do. It's like no it's not
00:46:44
[ __ ] what we're supposed to do. Like
00:46:47
we are supposed to be gentlemen. We are
00:46:50
supposed to know the time and the place
00:46:53
the appropriate measures to take in
00:46:55
these circumstances. And
00:46:58
it just
00:47:00
irks me when I see
00:47:04
these things. And we're going to get
00:47:05
into it even more because I mean the
00:47:06
next section of this book is like guys
00:47:08
versus girls responsibilities. And like
00:47:11
I mean literally he lists all these
00:47:14
things that are like the guy's
00:47:15
responsibility, right? He's like, "Guys,
00:47:17
it's time we stood up to defend the
00:47:18
honor and righteousness of our sisters.
00:47:20
We need to stop acting like hunters
00:47:21
trying to catch girls and begin seeing
00:47:22
ourselves as warriors standing guard
00:47:24
over them. How do we do this? We must
00:47:26
first realize that girls don't struggle
00:47:28
with the same temptations we struggle
00:47:29
with. We wrestle more with our sex
00:47:31
drives while girls struggle more with
00:47:32
their emotions. We can help guard their
00:47:35
hearts by being sincere and honest in
00:47:37
our communication. We need to swear off
00:47:39
flirtation and refuse to play games that
00:47:42
lead them on. We have to go out of our
00:47:44
way to make sure nothing we say or do
00:47:46
stirs up inappropriate feelings or
00:47:48
expectations.
00:47:52
Few things I want to say on this one. Of
00:47:56
course, I would argue it's a good thing
00:47:58
to be a man that's willing to stand up
00:48:00
for a woman. I think most
00:48:04
I'm not going to say everybody, but I
00:48:06
think most people would argue that that
00:48:07
is a good thing. The thing that I
00:48:10
disagree with is like down here it talks
00:48:14
about we wrestle more with sex drives
00:48:15
while girls struggle more with their
00:48:17
emotions. I don't I don't think that's
00:48:19
true. I think that we are at a point
00:48:22
where men have been programmed for so
00:48:25
long that our emotions are like negative
00:48:27
things and we shove them deep down
00:48:28
inside. Like we don't cry, we don't show
00:48:32
weakness. Our emotions are weakness,
00:48:35
right? We've been told that lie for
00:48:38
centuries at this point and it's just
00:48:40
programmed into us that like emotions
00:48:43
equal weak and and thus because women
00:48:47
are emotional and women tend to be more
00:48:50
in touch with their emotions. They're
00:48:52
the weaker species.
00:48:54
I think it's the polar opposite. Like I
00:48:56
I genuinely am at a point in my life
00:48:57
where I'm like I think it's the polar
00:48:59
opposite because like I will be burning
00:49:01
up inside with emotions and unable to
00:49:04
cry, unable to do things because I just
00:49:07
haven't gotten there yet in my therapy
00:49:10
and and growing as a human being because
00:49:13
I struggle to do those things. I
00:49:15
struggled to show emotion because it
00:49:18
still registers in my brain as weakness.
00:49:20
So even though again mentally I can tell
00:49:22
myself it's okay you can cry, it's okay
00:49:25
to be sad, it's okay to feel this
00:49:27
emotion,
00:49:29
there's a part of me that's like but
00:49:30
that's not manly that's like weakness
00:49:33
kind of a thing. What he doesn't mention
00:49:36
in this section
00:49:39
is dressing appropriately. He mentions
00:49:42
nothing about clothes for the men. But
00:49:45
yet when we get to the girl section says
00:49:47
girls you have an equally important
00:49:48
role. Remember the weward woman we
00:49:51
discussed earlier. Your job is to keep
00:49:52
your brothers from being led astray by
00:49:54
her charms.
00:49:57
Please be aware of how easily your
00:49:59
actions and glances can stir up lust in
00:50:01
a guy's mind.
00:50:03
You must realize that guys most commonly
00:50:06
struggle with our eyes. I think many
00:50:08
girls are innocently unaware of the
00:50:10
difficulty of a guy that a guy has uh to
00:50:13
remain pure when looking at a girl who
00:50:16
is dressed immodestly.
00:50:18
Now, I don't want to dictate your
00:50:20
wardrobe, but honestly speaking, I would
00:50:22
be blessed if girls considered more than
00:50:25
fashion when shopping for clothes. Bro
00:50:27
wants girls to dress like they're in the
00:50:29
1800s. Like, what the [ __ ] is wrong with
00:50:31
you, Josh Harris? You're going to sit
00:50:34
here and you're going to be like,
00:50:36
one, you're going to spew off [ __ ]
00:50:38
about women being more emotional than
00:50:40
men when that's just programming that
00:50:43
needs to be broken down.
00:50:45
And then you're going to say that men
00:50:46
struggle more with their sex drive than
00:50:48
women do. I've talked to enough girls at
00:50:49
this point about about their [ __ ]
00:50:52
teenage years and being horny all the
00:50:54
time and whatever. Like again, as men,
00:50:58
we can't hide it. We have an exterior
00:51:00
appendage, right? As penis hvers, we
00:51:02
have an exterior appendage, right? For
00:51:05
the vagina havers, you guys can hide it.
00:51:08
Like you like
00:51:11
but you put everything on the girls of
00:51:13
like you you know when you dress a
00:51:15
certain way and you act a certain way
00:51:17
and you flirt a certain way it makes
00:51:19
guys fall into temptation into lust.
00:51:25
And yet the guys take no responsibility
00:51:27
of this. I mean like
00:51:32
we're taught that like we have two
00:51:34
options in those circumstances. We
00:51:36
either give in to that emotion of like
00:51:41
lusting after a woman or we run like
00:51:44
extremely far away. And I I just think
00:51:47
that there's a weird I think that
00:51:49
there's a middle ground in there where
00:51:51
it's learning to like accept the situ
00:51:55
that the situation isn't sexual. And
00:51:58
that's not running away. It's not
00:51:59
removing yourself from the situation.
00:52:01
It's a it's recognizing. It's a
00:52:02
recognition as men, as penis hammers,
00:52:05
that like this is not a sexual situation
00:52:08
and I'm not going to make it that. Okay,
00:52:12
women, you are allowed to wear what you
00:52:14
want. Okay, you like dress how you want.
00:52:18
Like, just do it. He also doesn't talk
00:52:21
about the fact that like as guys, we
00:52:24
wear clothes that maybe turn girls on,
00:52:27
right? I could go on and on and on about
00:52:31
this. I don't have the time to do that.
00:52:33
Okay, so we're going to move on. Chapter
00:52:35
7, last chapter. It's called a cleansed
00:52:38
past, the room, how Jesus can redeem
00:52:41
your past.
00:52:44
He kicks it off talking again in a
00:52:48
story. He talks about the room. This is
00:52:50
where the title comes from. And he
00:52:52
shares kind of
00:52:54
having a dream. And he wakes up in this
00:52:56
room. And in this room, there's all
00:52:58
these um kind of like mini file cabinets
00:53:00
for index cards. Okay. And uh and each
00:53:04
one is labeled, right? And so there's
00:53:06
different things in there like uh like
00:53:07
one says friends, and then the next one
00:53:09
too, it says like friends I've betrayed,
00:53:11
and he's got other stuff that's like
00:53:13
books I've read, lies I've told, comfort
00:53:15
I've given, yada yada yada. And then he
00:53:18
gets to one that's called songs I've
00:53:19
listened to. And this is what he says. I
00:53:21
realized that when you pull it out that
00:53:25
it would expand uh to to meet like
00:53:29
however many cards were in there, right?
00:53:32
And so uh the cards were packed so
00:53:34
tightly and yet after two to three yards
00:53:36
I hadn't found the end of the file. I
00:53:39
shut it shamed not so much at the
00:53:41
quality of music but more by the vast
00:53:43
amount of time I knew that that file
00:53:45
represented.
00:53:47
He feels shame
00:53:49
for time spent listening to music
00:53:52
because you know what that time could
00:53:53
have been spent preparing for marriage
00:53:56
or could have been spent glorifying God
00:53:58
in some way or could have been spent
00:54:00
like that's his argument as he gets down
00:54:03
here. That's his argument is that what
00:54:06
if I what if I hadn't have wasted all of
00:54:09
this time on all this other stuff on
00:54:11
living life, right? Living just living
00:54:13
life, being a normal human being. What
00:54:15
if I had not wasted all my time on these
00:54:17
things and instead I had just solely
00:54:20
focused on God? I'm sorry, but what a
00:54:22
boring life it's going to be if all you
00:54:24
ever do is read the Bible, pray to God.
00:54:28
Like, I'm sorry. That's not exciting. We
00:54:30
are meant to do so much more than that.
00:54:33
We set the intention of what we want our
00:54:34
life to be. We set value to things. We
00:54:38
set intentions of the things we want to
00:54:39
accomplish and do and whether we what
00:54:41
the impact is that we want to make in
00:54:43
life and the messaging that we want to
00:54:44
leave behind for the next generation of
00:54:47
people.
00:54:50
And as I read this, it made me really
00:54:52
upset because it reminded me so much of
00:54:58
my relationship with my grandfather and
00:55:00
how,
00:55:02
like I said, my grandfather worked for
00:55:04
the Graham organization. He had uh some
00:55:07
seminary degrees or had gone to seminary
00:55:09
multiple times. He was a chaplain. He
00:55:11
was never a pastor as far as I know, but
00:55:13
he was a chaplain. And so when I
00:55:16
graduated high school and I went to
00:55:17
college, I went to a Christian college,
00:55:19
uh, but I was not studying religion. And
00:55:23
he would always tell me when I would
00:55:25
talk to him, you should consider getting
00:55:27
a minor in religion or you should just
00:55:29
double major. And then he's like, when
00:55:30
you're done, you should go to Asbury
00:55:32
Seminary and get, you know, a full
00:55:35
seminary degree. And I was like, that's
00:55:37
not really what I want to do, Grandpa.
00:55:40
Like that's not intriguing to me. It's
00:55:42
not interesting to me. And he's like,
00:55:44
"Yeah, but it's like a good thing to
00:55:45
have in your back pocket so when you
00:55:47
like become a pastor or you, you know,
00:55:48
whatever." And I was like, "I don't want
00:55:50
to be a pastor. I don't want to do
00:55:52
that." So the value there was just not
00:55:55
there for me. Um but also one of the
00:55:59
things that we disagreed on so so
00:56:01
adamantly was the idea of what
00:56:04
evangelism looked like. And he would
00:56:06
talk about going out and preaching to
00:56:09
the people and all of these types of
00:56:12
things. and standing on stages and and
00:56:15
shouting, you know, the words of God and
00:56:17
whatever. And my view on it has always
00:56:19
been relationship based. It's always
00:56:22
been about meeting people where they're
00:56:23
at, not pushing God down their throat.
00:56:26
And this is still, I think, how I live
00:56:29
my life, too, of just like you can't
00:56:32
always just start the relationship with
00:56:34
like, well, what do you believe? Well,
00:56:36
this is what I believe. Like, it takes a
00:56:38
while. You got to ask dumb questions.
00:56:39
You got to ask the like, what's your
00:56:41
favorite color? What's your favorite
00:56:42
movie? What's your favorite day of the
00:56:44
week? Like, you got to get through those
00:56:46
questions, the dumbass questions, to get
00:56:49
to know somebody. And and to get to have
00:56:51
a relationship with that person. That's
00:56:54
why I think Josh's take on this is so
00:56:56
garbage, right? He's sitting there
00:56:58
pulling out this box and it's all the
00:57:00
songs he's ever listened to and he's
00:57:01
upset because he's like, I could have
00:57:02
spent this time doing something so much
00:57:04
greater for God. What if those songs
00:57:07
come up in having these conversations
00:57:09
with people, right? you meet somebody
00:57:11
who is a music afficionado, right? And
00:57:14
you can list off all these bands you've
00:57:15
listened to. You can list out all these
00:57:17
things, you know, who produced and who
00:57:19
did that and yada yada yada, right? All
00:57:21
of these things, right? You can have a
00:57:23
conversation with people. And that's why
00:57:25
I'm so like I'm such a big advocate for
00:57:28
like have the things that you're
00:57:30
passionate about and like learn them and
00:57:32
learn them really well. And like uh I
00:57:35
talk about this all the time within the
00:57:37
homeschooling world of just like my
00:57:39
parents knew that I loved pirates and
00:57:40
they built a whole curriculum around me
00:57:42
loving pirates and they pushed me to
00:57:44
learn that. Right. When I got really
00:57:46
into music, I learned a ton about music.
00:57:49
They allowed me to listen to like Eric
00:57:50
Clapton and BB King and all these guys
00:57:54
that they might not have agreed with
00:57:56
everything they did. I mean, are you
00:57:57
kidding me? Eric Clapton has a song
00:57:58
called Cocaine that's about doing
00:58:00
cocaine. Like I just I'm so sick and
00:58:03
tired of this like
00:58:05
thought process of like it's such a
00:58:08
waste of time to do anything outside of
00:58:10
basically like study the Bible
00:58:13
because like I'm at a point in my life
00:58:15
where like I think I view a lot of
00:58:18
evangelism as
00:58:22
somewhat of a pyramid scheme. Now I'm
00:58:25
saying evangelism and not Christianity
00:58:27
because I think they can be separate
00:58:29
things. Okay, they go hand in hand, but
00:58:31
I think they can be separate things. So
00:58:33
I just want to say that I want to
00:58:34
clarify that. So when I talk about
00:58:36
evangelism, I view it now more as a
00:58:38
pyramid scheme a lot of times because I
00:58:41
think of it as this person shares the
00:58:44
gospel with these people who get saved
00:58:45
who then go share the gospel with these
00:58:47
people who then it's a pyramid scheme.
00:58:50
It's like Lulao, right? It's like any of
00:58:52
these knockoff pyramid scheme companies
00:58:55
where you know you you sell this product
00:58:58
and you you get all these other people
00:59:00
to start selling that product and you
00:59:02
get a commission off of it and then yada
00:59:03
yada and it goes all the way down,
00:59:04
right? And then it implodes because it's
00:59:06
not a system that works. Like I said, my
00:59:10
idea of building relationship with
00:59:12
people and now as someone who's not a
00:59:16
religious person, I would classify
00:59:18
myself as more spiritual person.
00:59:21
My view of building relationships
00:59:26
before entering into like the spiritual
00:59:28
conversations has paid off so much more.
00:59:30
It allows me to be friends with people
00:59:32
of all different denominations. It
00:59:33
allows me to have conversations with
00:59:35
people of all kinds of different walks
00:59:37
of life. and like to ask stupid
00:59:40
questions, but to be knowledgeable in
00:59:42
things that like are interesting and
00:59:44
whatever. And we can have relationships
00:59:45
that don't revolve around religion. We
00:59:47
can have relationships that revolve
00:59:48
around our interest in music, our
00:59:49
interest in books, our interest in
00:59:51
movies, our interest in podcasting, like
00:59:54
whatever it is. Like I could build
00:59:57
relationship on those things.
01:00:00
And I think so much of what I saw
01:00:02
growing up was building relationship on
01:00:05
just Christianity being the thing. And I
01:00:09
don't know that that's enough of an
01:00:11
interest
01:00:13
to really build solid relationships on
01:00:15
any longer.
01:00:17
So,
01:00:18
oh my gosh, I think we made it. Let me
01:00:22
see if I have any other notes. Any other
01:00:24
little tabies in here? No, that's it. We
01:00:27
made it to part three. The next part is
01:00:30
going to be called building a new
01:00:32
lifestyle. It's going to be a few more
01:00:34
chapters. This has been interesting.
01:00:36
This doing this
01:00:39
um series
01:00:42
has been so interesting for me because I
01:00:45
read this book and I read it a while ago
01:00:48
and I really sat with it and I I took
01:00:50
notes while I read and then now it's
01:00:52
been a reflecting on those notes and
01:00:54
figuring out what I really think and
01:00:57
feel about those things.
01:01:01
And boy oh boy, um, I don't know how
01:01:05
much got left in, but I definitely can
01:01:07
get pretty heated about some of that
01:01:09
stuff. I know that getting through the
01:01:12
rest of this is going to be tough, and
01:01:14
that's part of why I kind of have split
01:01:16
them up a little bit where there's maybe
01:01:18
a gap in between. So, if you don't like
01:01:20
this content and you're just like, I
01:01:22
just want the interviews with people,
01:01:24
it's okay. That that content is going to
01:01:26
be coming in between. um episodes kind
01:01:30
of a uh a pallet cleanser, so to speak.
01:01:34
But I have so much more to say about
01:01:36
this
01:01:37
stupid book. And I know that this next
01:01:40
section we're going to start getting
01:01:42
into, I think, more of the practical
01:01:44
applications of how he views how he sees
01:01:47
things like courtship starting to work
01:01:49
out and how relationships actually will
01:01:51
get formed and things like that. So,
01:01:52
it's going to be interesting. Um stay
01:01:54
tuned for that. Um, you know, if you're
01:01:57
listening from way in the future and
01:01:58
it's already out, you know, just click
01:02:00
over to that new episode. But, um,
01:02:03
I appreciate you guys and I appreciate
01:02:05
you guys listening to me rant and rave
01:02:08
about my experience reading this book
01:02:11
and my experience within purity culture
01:02:13
and where I am today. And I know that
01:02:16
I'm probably not, no, not probably. I
01:02:20
know that I'm not a perfect person and I
01:02:22
know that I'm continuing to grow and
01:02:24
that's something I want to remain
01:02:26
committed to is growing and evolving and
01:02:28
changing and being better as time goes
01:02:30
on. And that's why I make stuff like
01:02:33
this because I want to talk about the
01:02:35
people that we used to be the people the
01:02:37
person that I used to be um and how we
01:02:40
can change and evolve and be better uh
01:02:43
and and be stronger. And that's not
01:02:45
scary, right? It's a good thing. Um it's
01:02:48
a good thing to change. It's a good
01:02:49
thing to like evolve and we can allow
01:02:52
our thinking to change. We can allow our
01:02:55
ideas to change. We can allow our
01:02:56
beliefs to change and it's okay. There's
01:02:59
nothing wrong with that. So, with that
01:03:02
being said, one of the great things that
01:03:05
came out of episode one of this series
01:03:07
was that a couple of you reached out to
01:03:09
me. You sent me messages on whether it
01:03:11
was a DM, whether it was an email and we
01:03:13
talked about things and I would love
01:03:15
that again for this episode. So, if you
01:03:17
have purity culture stories, if you've
01:03:20
got stuff to say about Josh Harris, if
01:03:23
you've got stuff to talk about with
01:03:25
church drama or just with homeschooling
01:03:28
drama or whatever you want to chat
01:03:30
about, uh, I want I want to talk to you.
01:03:32
So, couple ways you could do that. Shoot
01:03:35
me an email, [email protected].
01:03:38
Shoot me a DM. Uh, exhsclub
01:03:41
on uh I'm on Tik Tok, threads,
01:03:44
Instagram. I think that's about it, but
01:03:47
uh yeah, or go down in the show notes
01:03:49
and there's links to all that stuff as
01:03:50
well. And um yeah, I want to I want to
01:03:53
hear from you. In addition, if you're
01:03:55
listening to this, whatever platform,
01:03:57
whether you're watching, whether you're
01:03:58
listening, whatever you're doing, do all
01:04:00
the internet things that you pretty much
01:04:02
should already know how to do. Like this
01:04:03
episode, leave it a review, leave a
01:04:06
comment in the description, share it
01:04:07
with a friend, do what you got to do um
01:04:11
to get this out to more people. I
01:04:13
appreciate that. The show appreciates
01:04:14
that. It's so much bigger than I would
01:04:16
have ever hoped. We're almost a year in.
01:04:18
I think we are a year at this point in
01:04:20
to this podcast and uh it's been
01:04:22
incredible. It's been an incredible
01:04:23
journey. I'm so stoked for what's coming
01:04:26
down the line. Uh and we're just going
01:04:28
to keep going. We're going to keep
01:04:29
sharing stories. We're going to keep
01:04:31
doing stuff like this, hanging out,
01:04:33
getting to know each other, and uh yeah.
01:04:35
All right. Till next time, this has been
01:04:37
Jake. Peace.
01:04:42
[Music]
01:04:47
[Laughter]
01:04:47
[Music]
