I was both surprised and disappointed to discover this
article in the New York Times. The topic is one that should probably stay
within Christian circles as the lost will undoubtedly misunderstand the issues
and turn to blasphemous mockery. The paper which in the same edition published
a piece on how a celebrity Sodomite couple spends their Sundays is a poor forum
indeed for a professing Christian to air internal grievance.
The 'Purity' issue has vexed me in the past and continues to
do so in the present. Something that was good and well intentioned was turned
into a harmful distraction and now a new generation sows seeds of confusion and
brings with it a potential for great harm.
But so it is with Post-War American Evangelicalism. The
movement once known as the New Evangelicalism was rooted in error from the
beginning and has now spawned many 'new' Evangelicalisms... confusion and I
fear apostasy. The fact that the author of the opinion piece is a managing
editor of Christianity Today is a rather stunning indictment of that magazine
and the Evangelical movement it represents.
The so-called Purity Movement was mired in damaging,
sometimes silly and certainly confusing rituals. Again the motives were 'pure'
but its leaders (despite their claims) did not rely on the Scriptures as a
source for strength and inspiration. A practical rejection of Scriptural
Sufficiency, the movement like so much of Evangelicalism turned to innovation,
psychology, gimmicks and other worldly-wise tools in order to mediate a
message. It was a case of the end justifying the means.
But the practical result was an obscuring of the sacraments
and a downplaying of Scriptural doctrine. It tied the ethic to promises made,
rituals, little talismans and the like rather than using Baptism and the Lord's
Supper as signs and seals binding the believer to a Kingdom ethic and life
imperative. If you're a Christian you're
already bound to purity. Baptism and the Supper signify this. A weak
doctrine of the sacraments and confusion surrounding the gospel led to the
creation of many lesser and man-made substitutes, cheap knock-offs of the real
thing.
The paltry symbols and weak doctrine failed and became
sources of superstition and even distraction. How many made the mistake of
thinking their 'purity' was bound to rings and juvenile rituals? How few
understood they're calling as Christians?
As one who attended an Evangelical high school how well do I
remember the confusion with regard to these topics. Even our teachers were
confused. The discussions usually centered on what was 'too far' as opposed to
what the Scriptures actually said. Thinking back on those conversations I am embarrassed
not only for myself, but for my fellow students, the teachers and frankly our
church leaders. Apparently the message wasn't getting through. Perhaps it was
that same kind of confusion that would eventually lead to someone like Josh
Harris writing about courtship?
I knew 'Christian' girls (and guys) that were promiscuous but
were convinced of their innocence because they hadn't 'gone all the way'. I later
knew of another Evangelical young man who would 'allow' women of the night to
meet his needs in a limited sense... because he was 'saving' himself for his
wife. I'm not kidding. I was basically a lost person at the time but even I
knew that was ridiculous and told him so. Looking back I have wondered just how
many actual Christians were at that Christian school. Apparently no one was
familiar with New Testament teaching. There was talk of purity (not in those
terms) but I don't think anyone had a clue as to what it actually meant.
On a practical level Evangelicalism has kept with its spirit
of compromise and cultural accommodation as this Time opinion piece
demonstrates. It's particularly ironic given that the movement has always been
about eschewing separatism and calling for cultural engagement, even transformation.
Once again thanks to Evangelicalism's bad theology, it's the Church that has
been transformed.
As our culture has pushed adolescence well into the twenties
and given the logistics of modern education and the debt it incurs, many are
not ready for marriage until their late twenties. The idea that these young
people will keep their impulses and passions in check for a decade or more of
adult life is increasingly unthinkable.
Of course a simple solution is to re-think the whole middle
class 'road to success' paradigm that not only has enslaved everyone in debt it
has prolonged adolescence and ill-prepared a lot of young people for marriage
and parenthood. I know there are statistics that challenge this but I contend
the question is not one that can be quantified by the type of study that
produces statistical data. The lost world has no means to gauge such questions
and the Church shouldn't turn to it for wisdom let alone definitions of terms
like 'success'.
Actually the courtship model advocated by figures like Josh
Harris was a good move and I was sorry to hear that he's changed his mind. At
the time of its publishing I was pleased that more people were coming to
embrace that way of thinking.
No doubt since he believes he misled God's people he will
return his considerable royalties or at the very least donate them. The book
which he now repudiates sold over a million copies and propelled him to fame
which of course allowed him to sell many more books. One hopes that would at
least make him pause and think. Maybe he could do a mass refund or at the very
least publish a book explaining his contemporary views and give it away.
Christian publishing and those that profit handsomely from it
is (needless to say) fraught with problems.
The problem with the courtship model is that those who often
adapted it did so with a sometimes harmful rigidity and frankly most Christian
families, especially most Evangelical families were a long way from being able
to adopt such a model. It's not binding by any means but it represents a level
of wisdom in challenging the dating culture which arose with widespread
urbanisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
As I repeatedly point out, many in the Church have not
properly reckoned with the effects of Industrialisation on society and the
Church. Some indeed have but all too often they mire their understanding in
romanticised narratives about Dixie, Merrie Olde England or some other form of
agrarian utopia of yesteryear. I'm not by any means dismissing the
pre-industrial world. On the contrary I think industrialisation has been both a
blessing and a profound curse... probably more so the latter. And yet at this
point we're not going to roll the clock back short of some kind of societal
collapse. And then you won't have a rekindled Merry England, rather you'll more
likely have a dystopian Road Warrior type society which will present a host of
new problems.
We (speaking generally) would do well to revisit these issues
and think through them but of course if the end result is some kind of 'break'
with the mainstream of society, then Evangelicalism is sure to reject it. Antithesis
is the antithesis of their movement.
The 'purity' problem has been further aggravated by Dominion
theology's pendulum swing/over-reaction to Gnosticism and many common misperceptions
about what Gnostics believed and represented. Fear of dualism (and even
duality) has led to an embrace of Monism which ironically represents another
error within the Gnostic and especially the Judeo-Gnostic spectrum.
Gnosticism has rightly been identified as a syncretisation of
Eastern thought with Christian doctrine and yet not all Eastern thought was
dualistic. In fact much of it was monistic and interestingly Jewish thought and
certainly Jewish mysticism has always strayed in the Monistic direction.
I have argued and plan to continue arguing that the errors
being combated in the New Testament were more often forms of Judaized Monistic
Hellenism than some kind of absolute dualism. Gnosticism properly speaking
belongs to the 2nd century and after.
The virtual worship of the creation and the human body so
common in modern Evangelicalism (again in reaction to Separatist and often
legalistic Fundamentalism) has gone to such extremes that it has effectively
rejected not only the ethos of the New Testament with regard to the body and
the course of this age but it also rejects very specific doctrines. Its quest
to 'redeem' all things runs counter to the apostolic admonitions to treat this
age as something that is passing away, the body as tent to be discarded, to
focus on heaven and lay up treasures there and to love not the world or things
in the world. This is all in light of the imminent return of Christ, something
Dominionist Evangelicalism seems little focused on these days.
These teachings do not require that one hates the body or
views matter as evil. Rather Dominionism's problem is that it fails to
understand the nature and extent of the curse. There's an irony here as the
movement is actually rooted in Calvinism, the very system of doctrine that's
supposed to hold so tenaciously to Total Depravity. In practice Calvinistic
Dominionism's understanding of the Cultural Mandate, doctrine of the Kingdom
and perhaps Kingdom Continuity (cultural 'advancements' being part of the Age
to Come) have effectively rendered Total Depravity as mere partial depravity.
Their doctrine of Common Grace (as per Abraham Kuyper) is all too often not a
means to explain Providential restraint vis-à-vis the wicked but instead
becomes a means by which the world can contribute to the building of the
Kingdom. The world system is appropriated and effectively harnessed by the
Church in constructing a Kingdom which in the end is not the spiritual
otherworldly age transcending Kingdom described by Christ or the Apostles but
instead is little more than Western Civilisation. In addition a properly
ordered and philosophically coherent paradigm which syncretises Christian
doctrine and the world's knowledge is passed off as 'Christian Worldview', or
because it fits the system, it's deemed 'Biblical'.
Dominionism has sacralised the body and thus the ideas of
denial and of deprivation are viewed as ascetic and thus met with hostility.
Mortification once so closely viewed as a component of Sanctification finds
little place in modern Evangelicalism and its cheapened world affirming understanding
of salvation.
While the creation was indeed 'good' and sacred, the holy
realm and the Eden of God, this all changed in Genesis 3. The world fell under
curse and the Kingdom, the New Heavens and New Earth (and thus the new or
transformed Eden) are not in this age but in the age to come. Through union
with Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we can experience something
of that Kingdom life now and spiritually speaking we are already seated in the
heavenlies but that does not change the realities of this age and the futility
of its works which are (according to the Apostles) destined for fire.
The body is not evil in itself. Matter is not evil per se. The
evil is not intrinsic but a result of the Fall. In Adam we're born to die.
Things that die are not holy. They are not sacred. The problem isn't the body,
but a body born in Adam. Baptism makes us holy as it were but that's through
our union with Christ, that's through our 'translation' into the Kingdom of
Heaven. It does not follow that the body is now therefore holy. The redeemed
body will be but of course that body doesn't properly speaking belong to this
age.
The theology tends to attach an aspect of
redemptive-eternality to reproduction and the pleasures and gifts given to the
married. Indeed the bed is undefiled as we're told in Hebrews. Marriage is
often referred to as covenantal and rightly so and yet it is temporal and thus
not absolute. It's not typological awaiting an anti-typal fulfillment but it is
(it would seem) symbolic in that marriage (while picturing the love of Christ
for the Church) is clearly identified (in Matthew 22) as something not part of
the eternal order. Nor will there be procreation as we are to be like the
angels.
And so it is a temporary means not an absolute. It is holy
because it is commanded, not commanded because it is holy. For Christians and
Christians only marriage takes on a meaning not found in the perishing world
and indeed our children are reckoned as holy and thus covenantal. They are part
of the Church and thus are reckoned as Christians. Like the rest of these temporal covenantal
orders, there is an element of provision. The covenant must be maintained and
it serves as a vehicle to shepherd those toward perseverance, toward making
their calling and election sure, toward continuing in the faith grounded and
settled and not moving away from the hope of the gospel. That's true for our
children just as it's true for all of us.
This is why as wonderful and inestimable as marriage is, and
even as necessary as it is in terms of procreation it is a higher (or heavenly)
calling to eschew it if God has given the gift required in order to do so. Once
again Dominionist influenced Evangelicalism cannot grasp this teaching and thus
purity as they would understand it is confused... even schizophrenic. In some
ways I think the movement represented a last Fundamentalist gasp within the framework
of Dominionist Evangelicalism. It was caught in a contradiction and for this
and other aforementioned reasons, doomed to fail.
On another level the problem is also fairly simple. Worldly
Evangelicals have bought into the lies of culture and thus to live
antithetically to it is out of bounds, even unthinkable. The life-patterns
provided by our culture are followed (in the name of relevance and impact) and
thus a New Testament model that speaks to male headship or a rejection of
feminist assumptions quickly became obsolete.
I suppose the presence of the Patriarchy movement and some of
its abuses contributed to this and while the movement is flawed on many fronts,
not all it professes is wrong. I am reticent to embrace the label but my own
views would certainly be placed on the extreme end of the Complementarian scale.
For that matter most Complementarians have embraced not a few of the errors I'm
addressing here and as each day passes the line between the more broad minded
elements of Complementarianism and rank Egalitarianism is getting pretty
blurry.
Evangelicals rightly rail against feminism and yet the irony
is they have embraced it. They don't see this because (as I've argued
repeatedly) they have continued to move the goal posts. And so they can stay on
the 'right' side of the issue even while they have already imbibed the Kool-Aid
or to put it another way... plunged off the cliff.
So what's happening in this New York Times article and the
many like it that are floating around the Internet?
What we have is confusion. We have feminists trying to
reconcile their rebellion with Christian doctrine and rather than repent or
even reflect on what the Scriptures teach, they are lashing out and laying
blame.
We have many people who are struggling with guilt. Waiting
until age 30 (or whatever) ended up proving too difficult and they gave in to
the pressure. And now they feel guilty but they're also angry and bitter and so
they blame others.
Some have basically declared that Biblical teaching on
intimacy and issues like lust are basically unworkable and so they have with a
veneer of subtlety rejected them even while pretending to take the Scriptures
seriously.
In other cases the guilty are rank apostates or near
apostates and they and their confounded arguments only muddy the waters.
Gripped by the cultural moment they get bogged down in
questions and terms like 'consent' and instead ignore what the New Testament
actually says about passion (and the need to marry), and they certainly ignore
anything the New Testament says about money, lifestyle, self-control, deprivation,
temptation and even marriage.
The Evangelical-spawned Purity culture deserved critique but
this isn't it.
What about courtship? The anti-dating arguments still stand
even if our contemporary culture thinks they're absurd, even if Evangelicals
have drunk deep from the wells of feminism. Because courting implies male
headship and it doesn't work under the college-career girl paradigm... and
that's why it can gain no traction. Evangelicalism in 2019 is not the same
creature that it was in 1997 when Harris wrote his book. Even though feminism
was already rampant in 1990's Evangelicalism the overall change is pretty
profound. Women as primary breadwinners was still controversial, even women
working outside the home was still a source of some debate and needless to say,
stay-at-home dad's were out of bounds, an object of scorn. Today they're made
into elders and deacons and they're celebrated by the feminists in the
Church... these same women who celebrate emasculated, servile, help-meet
husbands will disdain if not denounce women who choose to 'stay at home'.
The Send your daughter
off to college and then off to pursue a career model is itself a
repudiation of New Testament femininity.... and thus male headship and courting will then
appear absurd.
Does it have to be that way? Is courting the only way? No, no
one can say that. But the assumptions of dating are problematic. The idea that
you just go and spend lots of aimless time with someone... someone that you get
attached to, flirt with and develop affections for and become romantically
involved with does become a problem. Why? Because if it's not a relationship
with a telos of marriage in mind, it promotes fornication in the heart if not
in the body... or something very close to it. Interestingly some of these Anti-courtship
Christians seem to be just all but shrugging their shoulders at this. It's no
big deal to 'fool around' a little or so it would seem. And after all dating is
about putting yourself out there, strutting your stuff. It means your
relationship isn't going to play out like a chick-flick romantic comedy. Courtship
robs you of that.
That's right it does. Have these people even read the Scriptures?
Or perhaps they've been shaped by the culture far more than they realise.
Christian dating is just fine we're told, besides they've got
hack Christian psychologists to back them up and help them figure out the
boundaries. This aspect and dimension to the question just adds another layer
to the rubbish pile that is American Evangelicalism. For a movement that
professes to take the Bible seriously and as authoritative, the truth becomes
all too clear. The Scriptures are only a component in a larger epistemological
mix.
In real life it's messy. My own life (and marriage trajectory)
didn't quite work out in perfect accord with the courtship model. I had become
convicted about the issue long before I had ever heard of Josh Harris and at
least a couple of years before he wrote his book. He was not the first to raise
the issue. And while I was not able to follow through to the utmost there was
at least a deliberate attempt on our part to reject the dating paradigm. And it
worked. In our case parents couldn't be involved. They were dead. We were
autonomous adults and we weren't chaperoned or anything like that. But we
talked about marriage from the very beginning and were hitting the 'big issues'
about a week into our relationship. I figured if we're not compatible then it
will quickly become manifest and we can walk away without developing strong
feelings. The feelings developed quickly enough anyway. We were married after
four months and might have married sooner but for obligations and logistics. We
were also separated by 500 miles and so we were only able to spend a limited
amount of time together. That was also during the 1990's, back when
long-distance calls were expensive. We talked on the phone, emailed and snail
mailed and saw each other when we could. We knew then that the real romance is
something that develops in the context of marriage and after all these years I
can only affirm that in the strongest possible terms.
It may not work for some but we were (and are) convinced that
what we were doing was more honouring to God than the world's paradigm... an industrial
age paradigm at that. We've certainly watched other Christians play the dating
game and suffer great pain as a result and they are often filled with regret.
Emotions are damaged and 'slip ups' are a source of grief. Of course most
Evangelicals aren't really burdened by such as their gospel makes light of sin
and of God's commands.
I can respect people who reject courting... but only if
they've thought through the issues and know why they believe what they believe
and can explain the thought behind what they do. And I think they had better
justify the practice of dating in light of our social context. What was once
unthinkable is today the norm. I think that has to be reckoned with. I have yet
to hear solid answers. What I mostly hear is a lot of justifications for Middle
Class life and values and a lot of feminism.
What I cannot respect are those who just go along with
culture, are unwilling to think and act differently, who profess to hold fast
to the Scriptures and yet spend most of their time explaining away what it says
and at every occasion seem eager to bend over backwards to accommodate the
culture and its norms.
If the Purity Movement or Courtship are understood as
Evangelical fads, then I'm glad they're gone. But it saddens me that the baby
is being thrown out with the bathwater and it's tragic that Evangelicalism has
produced a crop of wayward Church affiliates who are in truth Scripture
rejecting Christ haters... who wage war on the truth by using the world's weapons
and its media. There's nothing that NPR or the New York Times love more than
ex-Evangelicals who turn on their former movement and trash it.
Evangelicalism deserves trashing but I certainly wouldn't air
my criticisms to the lost. That would be casting pearls before swine. But in
the case of these Ex-Purity folks, they have no pearls to cast. They've learned
nothing. They're dogs returned to vomit that are trying desperately to convince
someone that the worldly vomit tastes good.