Joshua Harris is the famous author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye a book in which Harris, while rather young, figured out that courtship was a biblical model for vetting marriage partners. Evidently not, as Joshua Harris would eventually get divorced and renounce Christianity. So too, would his wife. Just like Joshua Harris turned faith deconstruction into a money making opportunity, so too is his ex-wife, Shannon Harris.
Her new book showcases her deconstruction and degeneracy. It also shows the folly of Joshua Harris for thinking she was wife material.
Alpha Widow
As NY Mag notes in their article “The Dark Side of Courtship:”
Doubt crept in early. Shannon wrote that she once wore a thin gold ring given to her by a high-school boyfriend. Though they were no longer together and she didn’t have feelings for him, she kept the ring as a reminder of a happy time in her life. Joshua wanted her to get rid of it. “What’s happening is the ring is kind of reminding everyone that I’m not this good little Christian girl that they maybe want,” she told me one afternoon in September. “It reminds them that I had these other boyfriends, that I went to secular school, that I wasn’t a virgin at this point.”
She deliberated for weeks. “I know Josh would like me to not wear the ring anymore, and it’s just really weighing on me in a way that is one of the first times where I’m really, really torn,” she said to me. Then she decided to get rid of it. “I throw the ring in the ocean,” she remembered. “It was like this moment where I really decided, Okay, I’m just going to throw away my path and pretend it doesn’t exist for all these people to make them more comfortable. It was a sad moment for me.”
The so-called Manosphere would consider her an Alpha Widow, someone who slept with an “alpha male” and is unable to get over him.
Anti-Calvinist
Christianity Today in their review notes her theological shift. In surprising fashion, Russell Moore’s outlet does not give a glowing endorsement of the behavior they have long encouraged. A major shift is her rejection of Calvinism.
As Harris reflects on these years of feeling like unwilling clay in the hands of male church leaders, she concludes that her entire conversion to Christianity was essentially built on “the premise of shame.” Because of this, she felt like she was always trying to make up for her sins. Many women coming out of the purity movement (that Harris’s husband, Joshua, ironically spearheaded) feel the same, that the gospel they heard was, You messed up, so you are forever dirty and guilty, and must live a life of groveling.
We know this isn’t what Scripture teaches, so why is it what so many in the church hear? This question compels us to consider the role of Calvinism in souring Harris on Christianity . She cites Calvinist theology as the reason she now pays her therapist “hundreds of dollars to remind [her that she’s] fabulous.”
The fruit she saw from this particular theological camp was a group of men who touted the doctrine of total depravity but somehow believed they got everything right. “No one else was doing Christianity right enough or hard enough or biblical enough,” Harris writes, “and their unquestionable certainty had grown tiresome.”
Instead of accepting the spiritual authority of Calvinists, Shannon Harris accepts the spiritual authority of a Freudian therapist. She pits Total Depravity against Imago Dei, but this is a fig leaf for her wanting to feel good about herself in her sin.
Hoe Into A Housewife
Their review highlights her lusting for other men on her own honeymoon.
One morning during her honeymoon, Harris says that Joshua was down with a migraine, so she decided to wander around on her own. Soon she spotted a man in blue jeans and a flannel shirt doing some woodwork through an open door. She writes of that moment, “I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a man so attractive, and I stood in the doorway a few seconds looking at him.” Then she admitted to herself, “Now there’s a guy I’d like to have sex with.”
Many have trotted Shannon Harris as a victim when she was the Jezebel in the marriage.
Conclusion
The fact that Shannon Harris goes too far for Christianity Today is saying something.
Joshua Harris left the faith ultimately because he could not reconcile his affinity for sexual degeneracy with the Bible. One has to wonder how much his ex-wife encouraged his recantations. Joshua Harris was not wrong for having a short period of courtship, he chose the wrong person to marry, and in hindsight should have known. Shannon Harris is a hoe and Joshua Harris thought he could turn her into a housewife.
Though she was tamed for years, her love of sin ultimately led her to deconstruction like it does for everyone who deconstructs. In similar fashion Shannon Harris’s love of sin, specifically whoredom, led her to deconstruct in spectacular fashion.
Powered by RedCircle
3 Responses
Yep, she’s an Alpha Widow. It is a great lesson in how to vet women. Joshua, Shannon, and their supporters seem to think their “deconstruction” and anti-purity stance are some sort of flex against Christianity, but they actually prove the Bible’s point. Yet the “Christian” Left will look to her for moral guidance, and use it as an excuse to avoid purity. Sad.
“Joshua Harris was not wrong for having a short period of courtship, he chose the wrong person to marry, and in hindsight should have known.”
Should have known… yet Ray and company will say we can vet these women. What you don’t account for is women’s (and yes men’s) distinct natures even in so-called “redeemed” women.
And the evangelical pressure tactics in churches to “marry those hoes” as an act of grace and sacrificial chivalrous love. How do you know why she “adopted” Christianity or what she thinks is Christianity as a system of thought and behavior? How do you know she won’t “change” under the influences of modern evangelical culture and the broader cultural acid.
After all a lot of these “tough guy” Calvinists, and the Christ-hating (see the video by Chuck Baldwin sometime) Ben Shapiro types too, are still pretty woke or feminized betas in their day-to-day pathos. You and they still tell young men it’s their “duty” to jump out of a plane with the possibility that even a Christian parachute won’t open 25% of the time.
The entire episode illustrates the folly of writing or reading books about courtship, marriage, and raising children until the author’s own grandchildren have shown themselves to be adults walking with God.