Well, here we go! The first bit of my "series", "Alternate Realities: A Personal Response to Joshua Harris's I Kissed Dating Goodbye."
The book begins with the story of a dream, had by Anna, one of Josh Harris's many elusive friends. In the dream, Anna is getting married to this guy David, but, alas and alack, six other girls show up and stand next to David for the wedding ceremony. David informs Anna that they are "girls from [his] past" to each of whom he has "given part of [his] heart" in dating relationships. The dream concludes with David telling the languishing Anna, "Everything that's left is yours."
Now, there is probably no more interesting way to start a book than by telling a dream. Because, who doesn't like to talk about dreams? I have often found that a dream-telling session is practically a no-fail conversation creator when you're running out of things to talk to someone about. One of my favorite dreams to tell is when I dreamed that I accidentally got involved in the plot of this evil spy dude (he stumbled into my apartment by mistake because he thought it was where he was supposed to meet someone). We actually ended up falling in love, even though he was evil. But he had curly hair. So what did you expect me to do?
Anyway. As fun as dreams are, I'm not sure that it's very accurate to take a dream and extrapolate it to apply to real life as JH does in the first chapter of IKDG. Because dreams AREN'T reality. Even the least nightmarish dream has something bizarre and odd about it. I've no doubt that the dream!Anna was very sad about the six dream!girls who showed up with the dream!David, but that honestly has no correlation to the real!Anna or anyone else real.
Because, the dream makes it sound like "giving your heart away" to someone that you don't marry is unfair and cruel to the person that you eventually do marry. Of course, I believe that it's wrong to have sex before marriage, but "giving your heart away" is NOT the same as sex. I've noticed this confusion among many in the pro-courtship crowd. It's like they assume that your feelings and emotions are something you can package up neatly on a shelf and take down and unpack at will. But in real life, emotions are messy and complicated. Sometimes you feel something even though you really, really don't want to. Sometimes you feel something even if you believe it's wrong. Sometimes you feel something and don't even know that you feel it. I'm sure that some people would sleep better at night if they could tell their spouse 100% truly "I've never loved anyone in the world but you," but that is simply an unrealistic, and certainly an unbiblical, expectation.
I remember in the Mahaney's book "Girl Talk," which my mom once went through with me as a study, Carolyn Mahaney would have her daughters come to her periodically during their adolescence and "confess" to her which boys they had a crush on. In addition to being extremely invasive and embarrassing, this system makes no sense to me because the way we feel about people is simply not that simple!
Anyway, the point. JH is wrong to blame "David" for having attatchments to other girls before marrying Anna. People have crushes. People experience attraction. And people get in relationships, realize they're making a mistake, get out of the relationship, and start over again. (In fact, I know someone who was engaged and the engagement ended up getting broken off. And they were a courting couple!) And, if anyone here is nerdy enough, I'm sure we could hear some stories of "giving our hearts away" to a book or movie character. (hee...) And all of this is not equivalant to fornication or adultery. Believing that it is makes people awkward and repressed, afraid to even talk extensively to the opposite sex because that might be too much of an investment if they don't end up marrying that person. But how can you know that someone would be a good marriage partner if you don't invest in them prior to walking down the aisle?
-Violet
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8 comments:
Hopefully I am not leaving too many comments on your blog. I am enjoying the discussion.
This section of Harris's book is quite baffling. Some argue that Harris's attitude on "not having a broken heart" syndrome or not "giving your heart away" to anyone but your marriage partner may be the foundation of what Harris believes. That is, this is what motivates what he teaches in the rest of the book which is a need to avoid the giving your heart away at almost any cost.
It is almost as if Harris is equating giving your heart to someone along the lines of what the bible indicates happens as the result of a couple having sex. The bible indicates that the act of sex makes a couple become as one. I don't agree that that giving your heart to someone creates this same type of union that intercourse does and thus should be avoided before marriage.
I do agree with Harris that it isn't necessarily good to have the stereotypical teenager experience of repeated "going together" and then breaking up with a number of people. I am sure that not all teenagers do this. I would argue that some heartbreak and learning to move past it is part of growing up.
Oh no, please leave as many comments as you like! I really appreciate readers' comments and I especially appreciate having a male perspective on the situation, especially since, as you are going to see over the next few postings, I don't have very many male friends at all.
I've heard the analogy of glueing 2 pieces of paper together (=having premarital sex) and then trying to pull them apart once the glue has dried. You can't completely pull them apart, because little pieces of paper remain stuck to each other. This is illustrating the "oneness" created by sex that you mentioned, and while there is definitely some truth to this, I totally agree that "giving your heart" in a emotional or non-sexual way does NOT create that same glue & paper effect.
And like you say, it's unhealthy to be the stereotypical 14-year-old with a different boyfriend every week. The fallacy is that JH seems to believe that ALL dating experiences are like that stereotype, which isn't the truth.
And also, I've never dated so I can't really say for myself, but I'm sure you learn a lot from a failed relationship (part of growing up as you say). I mean, I'm sure it hurts like crazy and all and it's not like I want to run out there and pick a poor boyfriend simply for the educational aspect of breaking up with him, but I'm sure you DO learn a lot about yourself as a person.
Anohter good post. Woo hoo. It's nice to hear people saying what I've been thinking.
Though, don't get me wrong. I swallowed the whole IKDG, hook, line and sinker. Oh the painful lessons God has had to take me through in order to UNlearn all the non-biblical junk in that book.
But before I even get into that, I'd like to pose one example that might shed a different light onto the whole David/Anna and the dream situation. (And remind us how completely idiotic it is to have a 19 year old boy teach you how to relate and building lasting, Godly relationships.)
Allow me to give you my dear, sweet grandmother. Heretofore known as, Grandmom or Grandma. Grandmom was married to my grandfather for 20 years. Then sadly he died, leaving my grandmother brokenhearted and lonely, just in time for her two teenagers to go off to college. Fortunately God sent another man into her life and they wed.
Did my grandmother not love him as well? Was she a bad wife to him because her heart had been given to another before him? Isn't that what that silly dream implies? Was their marriage less God glorifying? Was it less close? Was it missing something because she had been married before?
Then, after another 20 years her second husband passed away, too. Leaving her sad and lonely. She resigned herself to the fact that she would never marry again. She was after all in her 60s.
Then another 20 years passed. And can you guess what?! She got married once again. In her 80s! It was a shock to her as much as it was to all of us. But we had known the man our whole lives. He has been a double widower just as Grandmom had been a double widow. And he cherished her and loved her and she him.
A few short years passed and he, sadly, passed away. She was, once again, heart broken. But why? Surely she hadn't loved him like she had her first two husbands. After all she had already given parts of her heart away (at least) two other times. Surely this man could only have a "part of what was leftover". And surely she could only have a part of what was left over of his heart for her.
She couldn't possibly have loved him as much since she only had a "part" left over.
But you know what happened? Years later (she lived a long time) she told me that losing her third husband was the hardest of all. In many ways harder than losing the father of her children (as well as "the boy next door"). In many ways harder than losing the man who came along in her grief and swept her off her feet and took her all over the world on all sorts of adventures.
Yes, you see, her heart hadn't been something you could carve up and give away. It was hers. Hers all along. Her capacity to love was not diminished by loving someone. If anything, it grew her heart so she could love in a more mature way, in a tender and respectful way.
Was she less of a wife because parts of her were littered in her wake? Nonesense.
Again, why did we let someone who had never even been married teach us about love and relationships? Sheesh.
What a beautiful story, EDavis! Thank you so much for sharing that :) Your grandmother sounds like she must have been a really incredible woman. I especially liked this part:
"Yes, you see, her heart hadn't been something you could carve up and give away. It was hers. Hers all along. Her capacity to love was not diminished by loving someone. If anything, it grew her heart so she could love in a more mature way, in a tender and respectful way."
What a great example of the way REAL love actually works. And notice, your story actually happened in real life, not in somebody's dream!
EDavis
That is a good point. If you listened to Harris's theory your grandmother had already given her heart to one man and thus wouldn't have been possible for her to be married two more times. That is a good way to show the fallacy of what Harris teaches here.
Sister Act
Harris does seem to portray all dating as the stereotypical 14 year old of repeatedly getting together and breaking up. One thought I have is that people like Harris and other who promote "alternatives" to dating exaggerate the problems with dating to sell their "alternative." The exaggeration may not be intentional but is still an exaggeration.
Thanks. She was a really special woman. Even after losing three husbands, her only daughter and most of her family, she characterized her life as being blessed by God and she sat in awe of her goodness to her. Wow, I want to look at my life I see it that way, too.
Steve, I find reality is a good antidote to a lot of things that are taught in modern Christianity.
E
"One thought I have is that people like Harris and other who promote 'alternatives' to dating exaggerate the problems with dating to sell their 'alternative.'"
Oooh, I think so too. There's probably a very educated-sounding Latin term to describe that type of logical fallacy, but I can't think of it at the moment!
"I find reality is a good antidote to a lot of things that are taught in modern Christianity."
lol! I like that.
"There's probably a very educated-sounding Latin term to describe that type of logical fallacy, but I can't think of it at the moment!"
One other person who critiqued Harris's book and the betrothal movement used the term "false dilemma. "false dilemma."
Those who teach against dating paint a picture of all the problems that they see with dating. IMO, the picture they paint many times is of extreme bad cases and abuses. They then say that since dating has all these problems the only alternative is to "kiss dating goodbye." They don't list other alternatives such as dating with purity or waiting till one is old enough and/or mature enough to date etc. It is things are so bad with dating that it shouldn't be done.
Wikapedia has a good explanation of what "false dilemma" means.
This may not be intentional on their part. It may just reflect their propensity for black and white thinking. It may be easier to have one alternative.
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