What's wrong with 'I Kissed Dating Goodbye'?

Wow, there must really be something wrong with a book if the author himself is stopping its publication. You would imagine that it had heresies in it or at least very damaging ideas. However, as far as I remember  I Kissed Dating Goodbye didn't have any of those things. Was it so incredibly dangerous?

Funny, what I think hurt me about the book wasn't so much its ideas as the beautiful picture it presented that never quite came true. Looking at Harris' separation from Church and wife, I feel the pain all the more strongly. I Kissed Dating Goodbye and then Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship were so easy to read and, frankly, so exciting. However, life, or at least my life, hasn't been quite as easy or thrilling. It turns out it's a lot harder to make it work than it seems. 

I thought living the lifestyle of purity would make me appreciated. I figured God would just sort of make things fall into place as long as I was chaste. Things didn't work out that way. The whole idea of not dating before marriage really wasn't so much the issue for me. I wish I'd dated more, but maybe I didn't because I was so sure that to date I would have to be dating the right one and this never seemed to be true or never 100% true. It wasn't just Harris' book that made me feel that way; it was also the fact that my parents met in college practically on the first day. I had a rosy idea of meeting just the right person and somehow knowing this in my heart. 

Some of the criticism of the books makes me roll my eyes because it just seems so woke. A lot of people feel that the book is patriarchal and repressive. They tend to dismiss the idea of chastity before marriage as at best whimsical and at worst deeply damaging. More or less, they assume that chastity isn't a state someone could choose. However, I tend to believe that living a chaste life is really your own decision. That's partly because it's such a difficult thing to do and such a nearly 24-hour occupation these days because of pornography.

Some of the more cutting criticism accuses the book of giving people guilt that just won't go away. I'm split because on the one hand, I've suffered first hand from feeling like something I've done has permanently damaged my chances of becoming happily married. On the other hand, I would feel lost if there were no guidelines for me to follow. Maybe, those guidelines can hurt us but without them would we have any chance?

It's funny how two years after Harris published his sequel to I Kissed Dating Goodbye in 2000 the sex abuse scandal hit the Boston Catholic churches. Then in 2004 Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage. We were realizing that a lot of the people we thought had made vows of chastity weren't living up to them and we were also questioning our deeply held ideas about marriage and sexuality. All these things seemed to hit against Harris' book. At this point, if I were to pick up his book, I'm pretty sure it would seem outdated in certain respects. 

Also around the time the books came out, a young man who was friend's with my older brother got married. He was a strong Christian and the wedding could have been a picture-perfect, Joshua Harris style wedding, but there was one hitch--his bride was pregnant. I remember someone bringing this up in a conversation and feeling a little bit like to her it was a real tragedy and would make their marriage really hard. I was about fifteen  at the time; I didn't understand at all ina real way,  but I remember feeling anxious about my own wedding day and worrying that I would mess up. 

I think I've grown out of that for the most part but it still haunts me a little.  Most likely if fear and guilt are someone's motivations for not entering the hookup culture, he or she won't make it. People like this won't make it because they will realize that they don't really believe in what they are doing and fear is no way to live. We fear sin but believe in second chances for those who have fallen and we trust in the mercy of God. That said, it is still frightening to think that just maybe you could mess it up and never quite have that picture-perfect wedding or marriage you always wanted. But maybe these ideas have to be given up? Is anything really perfect?

Mostly though my hunch is that 80-90% of Harris' books would help us today—that’s probably an underestimate. A lot of us who read his books as teenagers have found it hard to get into dating relationships (I wonder why that is). There's a lot of bitterness out there, and quotes from the book such as "Singleness is a gift. Let’s rejoice in it and enjoy its opportunities today. Let’s practice trusting God by pursuing His kingdom and His righteousness with all our hearts and by leaving the planning to Him" might be worth pondering for my generation. 

In sum, I think we as a culture today tend to look at things as either good or bad. We decided Harris' books were bad and so we threw them out, but like many things going out the window today, his books might come back someday.