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Today seems like as good a day as any to re-engage with some of the books of my youth to see how solid a foundation they still stand on even decades later. Two of these titles I read faithfully in my teens and the third was more geared towards boys which of course affected me in ways I didn’t even know about! What a thrilling delight it was to revisit some of these mighty and steadfast words and know the truths they contain and communicate so boldly will always be: solid as a rock.
Rush into one of these titles for wisdom that stands the test of time.
I KISSED DATING GOODBYE by Joshua Harris
Joshua Harris's first book, written when he was only 21, turned the Christian singles scene upside down...and people are still talking.
Tired of the game? Kiss dating goodbye.
Going out? Been dumped? Waiting for a call that doesn’t come? Have you tasted pain in dating, drifted through one romance or, possibly, several of them?
Ever wondered, Isn’t there a better way?
I Kissed Dating Goodbye shows what it means to entrust your love life to God. Joshua Harris shares his story of giving up dating and discovering that God has something even better—a life of sincere love, true purity, and purposeful singleness.
Growing up as a teenager in an evangelical church meant that this was practically required reading and, coming back to it now as an adult, wow. I can see why! Written by wunderkind savant 21 year old Joshua Harris, this takes the idea of purity culture further than ever before seen in mainstream Christian circles. Now we can know that not only is having pre-marital sex bad and wrong, but dating at all can lead to heartbreak and the ‘great pollutants of life’: Infatuation and Self-pity. Harris’ clever cherry picking of Bible verses from a myriad of translations are free from confusing constraints like context and literary devices and really show how intensely focused God is on every single person’s relationship status, which is so helpful since there is so much else going on in the world! Who knew!?
Harris brilliantly and bravely states incontrovertible and universal Truths such as this message to boys '… girls don’t struggle with the same temptations we struggle with. We wrestle with our sex drives, while girls struggle with their emotions.’ Or ‘the joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment’ and The 7 Habits of Highly Defective Dating and that ‘one of the best ways to maintain a pure life is to watch out for the purity of others’. He also includes inspirational and attainable goals for readers such as this command to girls ‘your job is to keep your brothers from being led astray’.
It is endearingly sweet and never creepy to witness a twenty-one year old man share deeply personal anecdotes of his friend’s romantic and always regrettable sexual encounters in order to instruct us all not to fall into the same messes. And I just loved how Harris’ dream life was included in rich detail that somehow always aligned perfectly with his point! Just incredible and truly a display of God’s favor.
Because dating is so dangerous and counterproductive, I was especially thankful that he included the 4 Steps to Maintaining a Friendship with The Opposite Sex which we all know is a mystifying almost Herculean task. Just ask Harry and Sally! His black and white worldview made me feel safe and secure as did his granular grasp on The Bible; a collection of texts that has gone through fifteen hundred of years of editing and compiling and various canonizations, written by many hands from many cultures. How astounding that Harris can understand it so clearly and with such conviction in his view. Especially his grasp on ‘Biblical Marriage’! That he can niche it down to ‘one man and one woman forever and always’ from a book with so many different examples of marriage is truly astonishing.
These unerringly biblical concepts will ensure that every reader who decides to ‘stop treating all girls as potential girlfriends’ and embrace ‘the gift of singleness’ can be like Harris who aspires to whisper in his wife’s ear on their wedding day ‘I can’t wait to see you when you’re 50’, the truest dream of any bride. Of course before this wedding or even relationship can happen, Harris will have to ‘show respect to the person responsible for the girl’ and if you think that is the girl herself, well you’d be mistaken! It is actually her closest male relative, which is just so charming that my heart melted! Verily, a book this solid will continue to stand the test of time.
Someday I want to be a godly husband. I want to nurture my wife, love her, respect her and protect her. How can I train for that? I believe God has given me a mother and sister in order to practice understanding and honoring women. If I can’t love and serve my mother and sister today, what makes me think I’ll be ready to love and serve a wife in the future?
Oh, wait. Hold on. Looks like there’s been a bit of a retraction for this book… how interesting.
Oh wait. There is a sequel? The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife by Harris’ ex-wife Shannon. What!?
SOUL HARVEST: THE WORLD TAKES SIDES by Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
Having survived the wrath of the Lamb--a global earthquake in the 21st month of the Tribulation--pilot Rayford Steele and reporter Buck Williams now embark on a journey of absorbing adventure and Christian triumph. Soul Harvest is book four in the enormously popular Left Behind series (seven books are planned in all), based on those who are left behind in the Rapture. Written with the same gripping pace of Tom Clancy and John Grisham (film rights have already been sold for the first two books), the authors take us to Iraq, America, underground shelters, and the bottom of the Tigris river as Steele and Williams search for loved ones. Meanwhile, biblical prophecies are fulfilled at every turn, including the great soul harvest. For many Christian followers, this series has become a tangible and thrilling testament to the Book of Revelation
Book 4 of the Left Behind series finds the intrepid heroes of The Tribulation Force a few years out from The Rapture, an event that disappeared much of the world’s population by taking them up to heaven and leaving behind all their clothing. The impeccably named Rayford Steele and Buck Williams are half a world apart, yet are doing the exact same thing for 500 pages: desperately looking for their imperiled wives after the worldwide earthquake aka The Lamb’s Wrath shook the planet.
Filled with pages long dialogue scenes written in extremely easy to grasp language that recounts minute details of events that occurred in previous books this series takes apocalyptic literary interpretation to levels heretofore unexplored. The fascinating choice to take the Book of Revelation, which is apocalyptic literature written in a poetic voice, literally and fixate on a single Anti-Christ, though this character isn’t even mentioned in Revelation, is a striking one. Also intriguing is the choice to dole out action, plot and interesting information so slowly and without any subtlety or narrative flair as a parallel to the reader of just how dark things get during the actual Tribulation. A truly genius approach that makes the reader feel as if they are living through seven years of trial as they traverse over 500 pages of elongated testimonies and extensive exposition deposits alongside sermons and prayers that are interspersed with characters randomly yelling at the sky.
Our soldiers in the army of God, reporter Buck Williams and commercial airline pilot Rayford Steele, even encounter a couple women in these 500+ pages. I was interested to see how the authors were able to imagine a female character though they seem to have very little real life interactions with women. True imagination and boundless creativity are at work here! Full of slavishly literal interpretations, invisible forehead tattoos, fire, brimstone and blood rain the imagination of the authors never ceased to amaze me. Also amazing was their unwavering dedication to their message as the final 10 pages of the book contained sections like “Test Your Prophecy IQ Trivia” and ads for other books like the YA versions of the 13 book series, new special editions of the original 13 book series and spinoffs like “The Truth Behind the Fiction” and “Are We Living in the End Times” (published in 1999). Verily these authors are dedicated to a soul harvest!
“Don't parent me, Buck. Seriously, I don't have a problem submitting to you because I know how much you love me. I'm willing to obey you even when you're wrong. But don't be unreasonable. And don't be wrong if you don't have to be. You know I'm going to do what you say, and I'll even get over it if you make me miss out on one of the greatest events in history. But don't do it out of some old-fashioned, macho sense of protecting the little woman. I'll take this pity and help for just so long, and then I want back in the game full-time.”
WILD AT HEART: DISCOVERING THE SECRET OF A MAN’S SOUL by John Eldredge
God designed men to be dangerous, says John Eldredge. Simply look at the dreams and desires written in the heart of every boy: To be a hero, to be a warrior, to live a life of adventure and risk. Sadly, most men abandon those dreams and desires-aided by a Christianity that feels like nothing more than pressure to be a "nice guy." It is no wonder that many men avoid church, and those who go are often passive and bored to death. In this provocative book, Eldredge gives women a look inside the true heart of a man and gives men permission to be what God designed them to be-dangerous, passionate, alive, and free!
Though this was widely read in my circles, I never picked it up as a church going teen as I thought it was just for the boys. As so many other things were for just for boys in church it didn’t occur to me until recently that perhaps I could glean some knowledge here too! I learned so much in this book. Like did you know that men in the church are bored and thus are boring? The danger in this cannot be overstated because, as we all know, the seventh commandment is Thou Shalt Avoid Boredom at Any Cost And Adhere to The Passionate, Wild, Masculine Vibe That Is God’s Image.
Eldredge is another biblical expert just like Harris. How lucky are we?! As his own desires are of course universal, he leaps and bounds over logic as he flourishes verses and bravely rebels against any whiff of intellectual thought to bring us “a clue into masculinity itself” which is that every single man and boy deeply, utterly and soulfully in his heart longs for:
a battle to win
an adventure to live
and
a beauty to rescue
The author shares fascinating insights like “the world kills a woman’s heart when it tells her to be tough, efficient and independent” and uses quotes from celebrities, songs and war speeches along with movie monologues and plot synopsis to illustrate why he is right to be Anti-Mr Rogers. From Gladiator to Braveheart and The Mask of Zorro we glean infallible truths and learn that he and all men would “much rather be like William Wallace than Mother Teresa.” Ah William Wallace. I also often confuse him with Jesus!
Had I known so much of the instruction in this tome would be towards women, perhaps I would have read it in my youth! Who knows, if I ever read it, what could've been? Perhaps I would have learned that wives need to encourage their husbands to ‘become dangerous’, that it is their duty to make their men ‘come alive’ and that all men look for a woman ‘that will make [them] feel like a man’. As the author wistfully yearns to slay metaphorical dragons, I can read between the lines and know he actually longs to live in Westeros.
His defiant declarations boldly generalize and this civility be damned approach is emphasized by his flouting of grammar and a copy editor. From the back copy:
Every man was once a boy. And every little boy has dreams; big dreams: dreams of being the hero, of beating the bad guys, of doing daring feats and rescuing the damsel in distress.
Every little girl has dreams, too: of being rescued by her prince and swept up into a great adventure, knowing that she is the beauty.
or
a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.
Now we can all know the universal truth once and for all; that a woman’s role: is specifically to arouse, inspire, energize or seduce: the one true warrior male in her life forever and always.
The book ends with a pages long prayer written by Eldredge that, if recited daily, has the power to ‘rescue’ the reader and he also generously includes all of the other ways this message can be reiterated in the reader’s lives for a fee: a field manual, workbooks, dvds, study guides, extra materials and more. Verily the courageous and selfless sharing of his message knows no bounds!
I'm so glad my husband let me read this.
Oh my God 😂😂😂
The flashbacks this post gave me. I did not get to read “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” or “Wild at Heart” like my brother because of obvious reasons (I have a vagina). I remember looking at them as they sat on shelves or coffee tables around the house wondering what mysteries they hold.
Also, please know that I sang the title of this post upon first sight and was extremely glad to see the AD clip in the first section.