Dr. Emerson Eggerichs wrote an entire book on the idea that men need respect and women need love. A premise that he based on a single verse in the Bible. That, to me, is already problematic because the Bible is a compilation of books that cover a time span of several thousand years and is written by more than 50 different authors. Too often, when people pull out a single verse and build a premise on it, their premise doesn’t align with the rest of the book. I think that is true here. Even more concerning is his idea that women don’t need to be respected, only men do. While that seems to be a w ..read more

What has been called “purity culture” should actually be much more accurately labeled “virginity culture.” Like so many Evangelical and religious teachings, virginity culture has far less to do with God’s will, pleasure or approval than man’s pleasure and approval. When we “come to know Jesus” in some way (often referred to as “getting saved”) the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit dwells within us and becomes our guide. Every action we take or don’t take will have a consequence and there are too many people in our lives that want to tell us what to do but they will not pay the consequences f ..read more

Christianity likes to present itself as being not just opposed to “worldly values” but superior to them. The truth is, however, that Evangelical Christian views on sex and sexuality (like those of many other fundamentalist religions) are actually every bit as damaging as secular views. The truth is that neither blueprint or model is bound to lead to healthy sexuality. The secular view is often that sex is just something you do to scratch an itch but Evangelical Christianity presents a view that all you have to do is wait until you get married and God will bless you with mind-blowing sex. The p ..read more

There may be few topics that are more widely discussed and hotly debated than what it means to love, particularly in relationship to sexuality. Popular culture obviously paints or presents one image of love as it relates to sex that often clashes fiercely with religious views. In my opinion, neither one actually aligns with how the Bible defines love when it comes to romantic or intimate relationships. In chapter 5, Joshua Harris tells the story of two couples: Jeff and Gloria and Eric and Leslie. Jeff and Gloria got a hotel room and had sex, while Eric and Leslie didn’t even kiss until their ..read more

At 18 years old, Josh Harris believed that intimacy is the byproduct of committed relationships and that it's not appropriate to engage in intimate relationships until or unless you are ready to make a life-long commitment. Like so many Evangelical Christians, Josh believed that sex and intimacy are the same thing. Millions of couples have bought this same lie that just by waiting and making a vow of commitment, they would experience deep intimacy in marriage. In Episode One, I discussed how dating is actually relationship practice and you can't become good at anything without practice. You ca ..read more

Joshua Harris wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye when he was just a teenager. It quickly became the tentpole around which purity culture was built. Purity culture left a massive swath of destruction in its wake, and much of the blame was laid (I believe wrongly) at the feet of Harris. Since then, Harris himself has been married, divorced and had a crisis of faith. Like so many young Christians of that era, he claims to no longer believe in the faith he once held so dear. Like so many Christian books, however, there are some really great takeaways and deeply profound insights to be found among a lot ..read more

Recently, I lost several hundred Christian followers on Twitter when I accused a well-liked member of the Twitter community of spiritual abuse and refused to bow to repeated demands that I take it back and apologize. Although many books have been written on the topic of spiritual abuse, they almost always examine or deal with abuse on an institution level, but rarely on a personal one. In fact, we love pointing fingers at the leaders of large institutions, because of how much power they have over those institutions. An institution is a group of people, however, and it is people that commit abu ..read more

Mark Batterson claims that it is very important to pray very specific prayers. Jesus, on the other hand, gave us a very different model of how to pray. This is why it is so important to always be holding the messages of “Christian” books up to scripture - and not just to a single verse here or there. Batterson focuses on Jericho, where God delivered on the promise He made to the Hebrews he released from captivity in Egypt. Just looking at the fulfillment of the promise, however, wipes out more than 120 years of significant challenges the Hebrews faced before seeing the fulfillment of that prom ..read more

In Part 2 of my series on Love & Respect, I talked about some of the red flag language that Emmerson Eggerichs’ used that we should all learn to pay attention to. In this episode I talk about some of the details Mark Batterson shares early in the book that should also be pretty big red flags. All-too-often, we trust authors simply based on the fact that they are a Christian or pastor a large church or are a best-selling author. But this means we trust them simply based on what they tell us about themselves or because so many other people trust them. In many cases, however, those other peop ..read more

In The Circle Maker, Mark Batterson reaches deep into an ancient Jewish Book of Legends to extract the story of Honi, an eccentric sage who lived outside the walls of Jerusalem just prior to the birth of Jesus. Batterson introduces Honi after his homeland has experienced a year-long drought. He weaves a rich tapestry of hyperbole in which Honi boldy draws a circle, steps inside and begins to pray. First, his prayers result in a tiny sprinkle of rain, then a torrent and finally a gentle shower. If this were an American Epic, Honi would return home a hero - and so he does in Batterson’s tale. Al ..read more