Posted on 08/18/2019 8:46:20 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
If there was ever a true move of God in my Chrstian journey, here in America, it occurred throughout the 1970s and 1990s, when millions of Christians made an Exodus out of the State run school systems, (Once the envy of the world, but already turning into a cesspool of leftist consciousness) and began Homeschooling, and or private Christian schooling.
I suppose it was part of a larger “return to family” movement, very Christ centered, which swept our nation in the wake of millions of baby boomers coming into the “born again” experience. We didn’t want to turn our precious children to the wolves of secularism, so we launched out into various streams of alternative education.
Revivals have consequences.
The emphasis on returning to the Christian concept of ‘home and family’ took other forms as well. There were “purity” movements; young people pledging to turn away from the tide of promiscuity and sexual libertinism. We didn’t want our children to repeat the sins we were redeemed out of.
Tokens such as Fathers giving their daughters “purity rings” as pledges to save themselves for their husband, were not uncommon.
As our Christian children came of age, There was much teaching and reaction against the “hook up” culture among evangelicals, and people were looking for better ways for their children than the “dating culture”.
This was the milieu out of which came the classic book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, by Joshua Harris. It is not my purpose to review or critique the book at this time. I thought it a wonderful aid, and assed it out to my daughters and to the young people of our church, and still do not see anything wrong with the basic premise.
Harris’s book and “Passion and Purity” by Elizabeth Elliot, I credit with giving many young people the moral teaching and strength to pursue God honoring ways of meeting each other, which involved their parents and as an antidote to the toxic “Hook up” culture developing at the time.
But as you now know, Harris has repudiated his book, (along with his marriage, and his Christian faith). He “grew up” and cringed at what he wrote twenty some years ago as a 19 year old young man.
He “re -thought” the whole issue and concluded that he no longer believed in his earlier criticism of the “dating culture”, and that he had been too narrow in his critique and had been wrong to discourage young people from participating in dating and even experiencing limited displays of affection. Harris actually apologized to the Gay, Lesbian and Bi-sexual community for not affirming “marriage equality”.
This from Instagram by Harris,
“I have lived in repentance for the past several years,repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few.”
“But I specifically want to add to this list now: to the LGBTQ+ community, I want to say that I am sorry for the views that I taught in my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality,” he continued. “I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me.”
Harris is not alone among influential Christians of the 1970s-1990s, in rethinking and even repudiating earlier pro family, pro marriage, and pro-life positions , which sprang out of Christian revival.
There are a good many Christian leaders who once fought against the forces loosed by the sexual revolution, feminism, and the left in general in order to tear down the family in America. These Christians once saw themselves (rightly) as fighting the good fight of faith, but now sheepishly look back and make inane comments such as
But now they seem sheepish about it, and seem to have succumbed to the reproach of the World against the Christian concept of Family, as though being concerned about the purity and sexual integrity of our sons and daughters is something to be ashamed of.
Idolized the family? Rather we fought for it, and to struggled to re-define and re-enculterate the Christian ideals of family, which had developed in the West over centuries of Christian influence but have now come under attack.
How would apologizing to the sexually degenerate “community” be anything but a denial of Christ? Does the LGBT community have anything better to offer than the two parent Christ centered home? The Christian revelation of Marriage, sexuality and sexual roles are some of the very points of the revealed truth which is currently suffering it’s greatest attack om our generation.
Harris is a portent and not an outlier, he represents thousands of demoralized and disillusioned Evangelicals who are now rethinking everything they once stood for in the name of Christ, and are being tempted to think of their younger battles as foolish and misguided, when seen through the prism of the last forty years of the collapse and decline of our civilization, due to forces of Atheism, libertinism and even Satanism.
Make no mistake about it, this Transgender and homosexual movement is Spiritual warfare. It is Spiritual to the core and is a harbinger of AntiChrist and final Judgment. For now, it seems, Satan is being allowed to make “War on the Saints, and (in part) to Overcome them”.
Joshua probably wants to marry a guy. What a pervert!
I think the Protestant/Evangelical approach to sex is in need of an overhaul.
“The Sex Education We Need”
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/04/the-sex-education-we-need
Thanks, Great read and agree with you totally. Even so Come Quickly Lord Jesus
Nice,I just got this book, I will have to read it
I was preaching and teaching that in the early 1980s - not that people in my church wanted to hear it.
If there are any people who should have a positive understanding and attitude toward sex, it is Christians.
That in no way implies permissiveness; it simply means that God designed it, and it is good.
It is powerful, and sin makes it potentially very destructive, but it is not “dirty” as so many Churchians (as I call them) think and say.
When I was in youth ministry, fornication was, no surprise, a problem - precisely because no one wanted to talk about sex.
My recurring message to young people was: So, you really, really like doing it, but you think talking about it respectfully is dirty.
My background is both in biology and theology, so I had no problem discussing it respectfully and without embarrassment. As I often said, when quoting a Bible passage explicitly dealing with sex, “God is not shy talking about it; why are we?”
(I, a chaste single male and Bible teacher, was denounced as indecent for that by the worst fornicators in the youth group.)
I regarded Joshua Harris as a legalist from the first I read of him and his book; I eventually regarded him as a heretic. Either way, I do not credit his repentance.
He is the modern equivalent of Bill Gothard, whose legalistic institute and philosophy was finally exposed for sexual immorality some years ago.
Bill Gothard ??? Sexual immorality ???
Well, I have not seen where he was arrested. Or charged. Or entered a plea agreement.
Heck, I mean maybe he was as bad as Michael Jackson and Jimmy Saville are said to have been. But here is the thing - from what I read Bill Gothard was accused of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment? In today’s environment that could be telling a woman that she is dressed immodestly. Or that she is not behaving like a lady. Or that the way she is talking is not the way a woman of God would/should speak.
So what are the FACTS about these allegations against Bill Gothard? Or am I the only one here who doesn’t know the facts?
I’ve been wondering just how long it’s going to be before he comes out of the closet and reveals his homosexual preferences,
A greed 100%.
I am learning that we are far deeper in spiritual warfare in this country than I previously had any clue about.
I imagine there were other reasons as well.
This is normally what these sorts of "announcements" mean. I've known or known of quite a few who have fallen away just so they can have sex (with whatever they wanted to have sex with). But the apology to the perverts is almost always a precursor to the apologizer diving into perversion themselves.
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