708: Mistaking Certainty for Maturity with Joshua Harris

culture with his book I kiss dating goodbye. Since then, he's apologized for the book,

“exited ministry and his marriage, and announced he's no longer a Christian. Today, he talks”

to me about his journey from fundamentalism to deconstructionism and his move back toward being curious about Jesus. Also this week, how the Trump administration is making paganism great again, why secular progressives are rediscovering the benefits of religion and how Christians in Springfield, Ohio have organized to protect Haitian immigrants from deportation. Plus, cannibal jellyfish are taking over Venice and Phil has seen the rap light. A quick

note before we jump in, by conversation with Joshua Harris this week was close to an hour

long. That's way more than we could fit into just this episode. So the first 30 minutes

are here, but we've posted the other half of the interview on Holy Post Plus. If you're not yet a Holy Post Plus subscriber, you can learn how to sign up by going to holypost.com. Of course, you'll get access to my full interview with Joshua Harris, along with everything

“else we're creating. Shows like getting schooled by Caitlin Shes, 66 verses that explain”

the Bible with Islam McColley, full episodes of the SkyPod every Friday, bonus interviews, the Holy Post book club, behind the scenes content, games, resources, and merchandise. A very best of what we produce here at Holy Post media is all there for you when you sign up for Holy Post Plus. And by becoming a subscriber, you'll be helping us be able to make even more faithful pro-neighbor Christian content. So go to holypost.com today to sign up.

Here is episode 708. Hey there, welcome to the Holy Post podcast. I'm Phil Visher. I'm here with Caitlin Shes, Hi, Caitlin. Hi, Phil. And Sky Jitani. Hello. Hi, Sky. So Sky and I are discussing whether we should both color our beer. Oh my gosh. Just dye them jet black. Maybe we look more macho. Maybe I should dye it green for St. Patrick's Day. Oh, yeah, you could

be like the Chicago River. Right. What kind of river today? Floating. Yeah, for Valentine's Day. No, Galen times day is when we're part of it. I just learned about Galen times day because I missed Parks and Reckon. I guess that's a thing and now I'm like, I wish Phil happy Galen times day. And he just got grumpy with me. I know. I just got confused. Was that grumpy? How are you

telling people that I get grumpy with you? Like just on a dime? No, you don't. Just I just looked at him sideways. And then he got grumpy with me. How long is Galen times they've been a thing since Parks and Rec? So like, I mean, probably 10 years, 18 years. Because

“I just know how I learned about it this year. I think I learned about it today. I knew”

about it before today. So it's, yeah, 10 plus years because Parks and Rec ended in 2015. Okay. Galen times day. Galen times day. What would be the male equivalent? You don't get that. Brote. It's the day before. What is it? It's the day. Well, it's the day after Valentine's. When we get together to lament how poorly we did it. What did you mess up? I got the car. I thought I had it. But then it was gone. Or I, you know, like my

first, my first Valentine's day was a disaster of my married life. No. Because it was less than two weeks after our wedding. Oh, that's tough. And it didn't occur to me that we needed to also do Valentine's day. Also do Valentine's day. Our wedding is two weeks after Valentine's day or anniversary. Oh, interesting. Yes. So I learned, I learned on that blessed occasion just two weeks after our wedding. How important is special occasions are

to my wife? A lesson I never forgot, even though I forgot a lot more special occasions.

Would you leave the lesson? I was not saying to tell lessons. I was no longer surprised at her reaction. I said, oh, yes. There you go. And now it's time for the theme song. Sky, ill, Caitlin, and the whole leaf post. And sometimes other people, the holy post disponsored by Rocket Money. I was in a coffee shop talking to a friend and the topic of finances came up. I'm using Rocket Money to track my finances. They said, and I said,

I use Rocket Money too. And they said, I know. I use it because I heard about it on your podcast. We had a little Rocket Money fan club right there over our lattes. The expensive which, of course, was duly noted by our Rocket Money accounts. I have to know where my money is going and Rocket Money has made that easy. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions monitors you're spending and helps lower your bills so

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That's p-o-n-c-h-o-outdoors.com/HolyPost. For $10 off and free shipping, you'll love their shirts. I promise. And thanks to poncho for sponsoring this episode. I don't know if you noticed, but you'll probably notice going forward that our stories are running very tight, very like a like a like real cars on the line. They just go right down the line and it's because our producer, Mike. Hi, Mike. Hi, Phil. I'm putting a little light. And the light

is a UFO beaming up a cat. Why? I have no idea. It's cute. When he feels like we're running long now, he turns on the little UFO cat light. And then I say, "Uh-oh, I'm in trouble with Mike. I better wrap this up." Someone needs to bring some more to me. The universal symbol for wrap it up. Yeah, wrap it up. Wrap it up or suck it up. Because it's where the cats go on. Yeah. Tractor beams. Detractor beams. Is that a sucking thing

“or is it attracting or what do tractor beams do? I think it's an out-of-a-day work. What's the science?”

What? I think they're more like magnets. Magnus. Yeah. And speaking of... It's mine. What is it? What is it? Oh, Caitlyn doesn't even know what a tractor beam is. Okay, I have this whole time thought. Uh-oh. I thought a tractor beam was the beam of light from a tractor. Oh. So I was like, "What are you talking about?" They just are like, "You know it's so sad." No, cute. She's the most educated person in this road. It's just this, but this is days

we go deep, but not why. This is... Yeah. Exactly what Mark Twain said. Oh, stop. You know what I'm about to quote. An expert is somebody who knows more and more about less and less. Yes, that's true. You didn't turn that out. I don't know anything about tractor beams. I think I'm the opposite of an expert. Because as I'm getting older, I'm just knowing less and less about more and more. You know, I'm going even shallower in more areas. You're

“pretty... The opposite of the expert backwards. Is that what that was? I think so. That was brilliant. Okay,”

yeah. Yeah. He's turned it on the cat light again. We're going to move on. Animal news. Haven't done animal news in a while because it's been an all-Trump all the time and we're all sick to death of it. We're sick to death of it. So, but there's other terrible things happening in the world besides what's happening in America. Cannibal jellyfish are taking over Venice's legumes. Did you hear about this? Venice Italy? Yeah. Venice is being... It's probably

going to be destroyed by cannibals jellyfish. Probably going to be destroyed. If it's not flooded first.

Well, that's yeah. If it's just destroyed. Because when it's flooded, it's like shark NATO. Exactly. Do you have just the jellyfish flying everywhere in your bedrooms, in your houses, hordes of cannibalistic jellyfish or spreading through Venice's famed lagoon and wreaking havoc on local fisheries. Usually found in the western Atlantic, western Atlantic is not close to Venice. The warty comb jellyfish. I don't know if warty is part of the name or just an adjective.

It's being used to insult the comb jellyfish. The warty comb jellyfish also known as the sea wall nut. Wow. Isn't it a walnut kind of the opposite of a jellyfish? It's like nickname in high school. Get over here, yes. Sea wall nut is now thriving in the Adriatic sea. It's not supposed to be there. It's not supposed to be there. It hits a ride on a ship or something. It hits a ride on a ship or something. Now it's not a true jellyfish, but it's a comb jellyfish, which is in a different finalum.

“Did you? Why are you? You look like you're shocked. What did you just learn?”

Nothing. Something that you don't want me to mention? Yep. I figured scientists believe the species

muscles to the great lakes, which are messing up the great lakes among other things.

Sometimes cannibal. It will eat it. It's never been said about you. Sometimes. Sometimes can't.

Only when necessary. It's not like not like all the time. Not like all the time, but just special occasions. Like gallant times day. Sometimes cannibal. It will eat its own young when food is scarce. Now I have a question about that. Jellyfish don't have brains. Does it even know what's eating its own

“young? Does it know what it's eating? Can you be accountable without a brain, or do you then a zombie?”

I think you can be an accidental cannibal. Exit, it doesn't say that. It says sometimes cannibal. I'm curious. Scientists. I know we have a lot of scientists that listen to the show regularly. Right in, tell us if a jellyfish that eats its young knows that it's doing it, that's my question.

This bizarre creature has a temporary anus that appears only when it needs to

spell waste and vanishes again. We've talked about this. I love the fact that this creature has multiple things that are just temporary. Like cannibalism, cannibalism, and anus. Yeah, and being in Venice. Yeah, where you're supposed to be. But I don't think they're going to be able to get rid of it. Now we talked that we did a story. I don't know if it was about this jellyfish, but it was about something, but they referred to it as a transient anus. So we had a whole episode about the transient

anus, which many people decided would be a fantastic name for a rock band, or a itinerant preacher. Oh, it is also one of the world's top invasive species and is causing chaos. Chaos, I tell you,

for the Italian city's fragile lagoon ecosystem. So we're not, it's not funny anymore. We're not,

this isn't funny. We're not laughing. I'm not laughing. It's causing chaos for Venice's fragile lagoon ecosystem. Have they made it into a delicacy yet? Have they cooked this thing up? Oh, yeah, that's I don't know, probably not. Is there anyone eat jellyfish? No, no, I don't think they're good eat jellyfish. These don't sting. They're combed jellyfish, not jelly-hydrated and pickled jellyfish is considered a delicacy in some countries. Okay. There you go. Well, we'll get through it.

“Well, you should consider that. Do we have a department? Mike, do we have a department of food”

at Holy Post that could work on recipes? We're attached to a restaurant. I will get right on that, okay. There's a kitchen right over there. We should get right over there. The species devours plankton fish eggs and fish larvae, stripping the lagoon of the foundations of its food web. That's bad. That's bad. The gelatinous creatures are clogging up, fishing nets. At the same time, fish stocks are crashing because fish stocks are down. Oh, you're short, fish stocks are crashing because the

comb jelly's are demolishing most of their fish eggs and larvae. Well, that's terrible. If it isn't one thing, it's another. If it isn't, your country is moving in a slightly authoritarian direction. It's your lagoons are being overrun with, well, see you all not. See you all not. Did they, they don't look like that? I sort of said that's the opposite of a jelly fish. Yeah, they're like clear. Yeah, that's very strange. I don't know why they would call them, maybe when they

dry them and pickle them. They look more like walnuts, I don't know. Yeah, maybe when they dry them and pickle them, they look more like walnuts. Yeah, that's a good, we'll look into that. Oh, look the, the cat is telling me. It's jellyfish. It kind of defeats the purpose of a rat light with you communicate to the audience. Oh, everybody says what. It's not him. He should just put a little shocker into his suit. No, it should be, there should be an audible sound. Like, and then

he knows. Yeah, that act people can hear. So they know when we've run out of time. What about the present like the presidential debates where you get the green yellow red light? That'd be good. We're in that beaten. That'd be fantastic. I had another story that I was going to talk about. Oh, here it is. I forgot to open it up. Now it's open. Let's go to Springfield, Illinois or sorry, Springfield, Ohio. It's not Springfield, right? Which one are the Simpsons in? Yeah, that was

a contest wants to pick which Springfield, because there's so many Springfields. And what did they decide on? Was it Springfield, Massachusetts or I forget? More than a thousand people descended money Monday on a special church service in Springfield, Ohio to sing and pray and wave signs on the day before deportation protections were set to expire for more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants

“across the United States. If you don't remember, Springfield, Ohio, it was the place with the huge”

recent influx of Haitian immigrants and the rumor that they were stealing and eating pets. That which came from the presidential debate. Yeah, 2024. Well, it was magnified. Yes, that's

America's immigration debate in 2024. After then, presidential candidate Donald Trump and his

“running mate, J.D. Vance repeated false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were stealing”

and eating pets, the ensuing media frenzy and traumas like dozens of bomb threats toward the community apart. Before the mails, the city had attracted an estimated 15,000 Haitian immigrants, most of them had temporary protected status, the legal definition, designation granted by the

U.S. government. The Trump administration ended or attempted to end TPS for more than a million

immigrants from different countries last year and the speculation is that ending TPS for so many people was a way to make more illegal immigrants that you knew where they were, so you could hit deportation quotas. So just to make sure we clearly communicate what's happened here. These are people. The United States allowed in knowingly. They did not sneak into this country. They came in knowingly to our government's knowledge. They had credible, credible reasons to seek asylum.

“I don't know why I got some of my throat. Yeah, and they weren't actually, they're not asylum seekers.”

Right. They are from countries where it is unsafe to return. Right. So the state of the country

makes it, and that is very much the case with Haiti over the last few years. It is not a safe place

to be. Right. So according to U.S. law and with the U.S. government's knowledge, they come to the country and they get protected status, all of this completely legal, so that they can get jobs and they can get homes and they can work here and set their lives up here. And now the Trump administration goes just kidding. But we want to deport you. But this is a good news story. Sky, this is a story that I would describe as Christians behaving christianly. Churches and other faith groups in springfield

have spent months preparing for the day immigration and customs enforcement agents might amass in their city. They've hosted trainings on constitutional rights and have helped hundreds

“of immigrant residents get passports and birth certificates. They've passed out orange whistles”

like those that became the soundtrack of Minnesota's anti-ice protests. Roughly 20 springfield

congregations have collaborated to establish safe communication networks and to lay the ground work for emergency food distribution and childcare. And just recently on a Monday, all those preparations culminated in a worship service with more than 1,000 people on the day. Their protected status was supposed to expire. But a judge came through last minute in an unvernest 83 page opinion that opened with a quote from George Washington, Judge Rays criticized the government for

failing to demonstrate that Haitian TPS holders pose any public harm. She questioned how Christy Nome could conclude that Haiti is safe for return, a legal condition for the cancellation of TPS, when other federal agencies warn that Haiti is unsafe for travel for any reason. It's kind of talking about both sides of your mouth. Unless you're Haitian. And then we just don't care. It's not that it's safe for you. It's just that we just don't care.

Rays wrote that it is likely that Nome preordained her termination decision because of hostility to non-white immigrants. Oh, that's in the judge's ruling. We have declared the head of homeland security hostile to non-white immigrants. So, ice rates are suspended in temporary protection status is sustained for the time being. And a bunch of pastors were part of putting together the effort to help them. So, this could do it. Is there any response from the administration

or the appealing appeal? Yeah, appeal. We want to get rid of the judge who was mentioning in the article "The Judge in the Hearing" got the administration's representatives lawyers to acknowledge that they believed Christy Nome could cancel this protected status just for the reason that she didn't like vanilla ice cream, for example. Like any reason and they acknowledge yes, if she could just say, "I don't like vanilla ice cream

and you know and you have protected status." That was the government's position. It's kind of the unitary executive argument that the executive branch or it's kind of that I can do whatever the heck I want argument and what are you going to do about it argument? Right. So, if the Secretary of Homeland Security does this with the consent of the president, no one can stop her. That's their argument. Yeah. Yeah, but there are actually rules about this. There's actually, you can't cancel

temporary protected status if the conditions on the ground in the country and question have not changed. Unless you want to, you say, try to stop me. Does the article speculate as this climbs the to a pellet court? Are there fave judges more favorable to do 8 DHS? Very, very unlikely. Okay. Very unlike I was listening to a advisory opinions podcast and they were with David French and Sarah

are no longer granting them the assumption. What was it? The presumption of normal see? I think the

assumption that because it's the government presenting a case, we assume they're telling the truth and we assume they're following the law and that historically the justice department has had that assumption that if they were bringing in case that they were assumed to be following the law or at least competence and not lying and more and more judges are saying actually that's no longer the case. We can no longer assume a representative of this administration is coming

before the court not lying and that question was how long even after Trump, how long does it take

to restore confidence or have we now said more or less that it's up to whatever president

whoever gets elected because if 70% of the country or 60% of the country supports a president who doesn't respect normal procedures or telling the truth in court it says more about the country than it does just that I don't know about that. So here I listen to a podcast recently with Chuck Todd and Rama manual. Chuck Todd you speak of NBC News, Rama manual you speak of the mayor of Chicago, Chuck and Todd, Chuck and Todd, Chuck and Todd show something like that. Anyway they were

well talking about the upcoming midterm elections and expressing a confidence that the

American people will do what's right and they will be the final check on these things and they're

going to the and they kept repeating this and it sounded kind of very campaigning like we trust the people and the people know what's best. And to agree I'm like yeah except you're assuming that those people have been properly informed of what's actually going on. So I would say I don't think most Americans are fine with the justice department lying and not to. I don't think a lot of Americans

“know that's what's happening because it's not being or would believe it or it'd believe it and”

I'll give you one example this week, Pam Bondi head of the justice department testified before Congress about the Epstein stuff and it was a circus oh my gosh what it was it was grotesque on so many levels and I was watching clips of what had unfolded that day and for my own amusement I clicked over to Fox News.com and scroll through the entire Fox News website and there was not a single thing about Pam Bondi and the hearings before Congress. So if you're in marinating in Fox News you've

had no idea does this happen. Right. So I don't think most Americans are happy about the Trump administration lying or the justice department. I don't think a lot of them know this is going on because the media is not telling them. Two stories I got two stories, good news, good news stories about and this is they're only good news if I have to spin them okay I'm spinning them because you

“could say oh that's bad news that that's happening I think no no it's good news because of who's”

noticing that it's happening. I'm seeing more people I would describe as progressive secular saying hey we're really moving away from our Christian roots and this is probably not a good thing. So that's interesting. If we have people who are saying we're reclaiming Christianity we're putting Christianity back in its rightful place. We have more and more people saying I don't think that's Christianity at least historically as we've practiced it and I think more and more we're missing

it now that it's leaving. We want it back. So this is a piece by Layton Woodhouse written in New York Times with the fun title Donald Trump pagan King. And he talks about there's been a lot of talk about Mark Carney the Prime Minister of Canada and the speech he gave at Davos where he described the world the present Davos oh yeah Davos. Davos is the family. The Davos is the family in the grandparents. Davos. Davos. Davos. Not Davos. Life is so complicated.

“Galen times day I remember that now. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada recently described the”

world that President Trump is dragging us into with this aphorism. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The quote comes from a guy whose name I will not even try to acidities. Acidities. Acidities. Yeah. Acidities. Yeah. Acidities. Yeah. That was me. That was me. Yeah. From acidities fictionalized account of a negotiation between Athens and the rulers of the island of Menos. Menos. Menos. In the Peloponnesian War. I've often heard of the Peloponnesian War. I have no idea

The dialogue is famous for its stark portrayal of the dictates of political realism. The world is

not guided by ideals and values. It demonstrates it is brokered only by power. The Trump administration has adopted this philosophy as its own Stephen Miller said recently in an interview with Jake Tapper. We live in a world in which say it more like he says it. We live in a world which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed

“by power. The more he talks the louder he gets. I don't know if you ever notice. I think his”

forehead gets bigger too. Yeah. It just grows until eventually it'll pop and then the real power inside him will come out and devour us all. And you can quote me on that. But the niceties that Mr. Miller disparages aren't just some naive fantasy. They are the values of Christianity. The faith, the Christian, the faith, the Trump administration purports to defend and uphold. After defeating Milos, Milos, Milos in a siege, Athens slaughtered the islands men and enslaved its women and

children. Such was the nature of the ancient world. A world that was to borrow Mr. Miller's words devoid of niceties and governed by power. And then he references a lot of people who've done recently. Recently Tom Holland in his book Dominion describing how ancient Greeks in pre-Christian Romans generally believe that their gods favored the strong and were indifferent to the weak but that Christianity upended these assumptions. He says the moral instinct is so ubiquitous today

that we barely recognize it as Judeo-Christian or even as religious. So Christian morality underpins what we generally just consider morality and human rights and human rights and all of that.

“And he says which is always important to say that's not to pretend that these lofty principles”

have effectively restrained great powers. Christian morality didn't prevent medieval kings and the Catholic church from uskring civilians, persecuting Jews, or committing genocides in the new world. Unlike the pagans of antiquity, however, those rulers had to answer to charges of hypocrisy

which corroded their credibility in a way that the Athenians never had to contend with.

Preparedly Christian great powers could do what they wanted to just as the Athenians declared. But unlike the ancients, they did so at a cost to their political legitimacy. That's a really important point. So he talks about people like George Bush and other American leaders that sent people into very questionable military conflicts, but they came up with a justification that we were still in line with Christian morality. It wasn't enough to simply say that we as the

strong can do whatever we want. We had to couch it all, however, and convincingly, in a framework that made it palatable to the Christian conscience. And that's the world we're leaving behind. I need to describe some of the things the Trump administration has done. I'm trying to acquire Greenland through threat. We're acting like the ancient Greeks, brutishly without shame or apology. And the abdication of Christian values is already shaping

the conduct of our government towards its citizens as in Minneapolis where immigration agents have killed two protesters. So he concludes his latent what house he's an independent journalist, documentary filmmaker and a substack author. Have you heard of substack? Yeah. I hear all the cool kids have a substack. That's the thing now. We've got to get ourselves a substack. We should totally look like a sandwich. Yeah. Mm. Give me a double. I want a double substack.

I want to foot along with the original sauce. Vice President JD Vance never tires of pointing

out that America is a philosophically Christian nation and that Christianity is under attack from his political enemies. Such statements get big applause from the Trump loving crowds. But the administration he serves is doing more than any antifa foot soldier is doing more than any antifa foot soldier to dismantle that philosophy as the fundamental basis of our government's political legitimacy. So here we have liberal progressive perhaps even leftist authors, journalists,

saying, hey, we're losing Christianity. Anybody notice this isn't good. And the irony is that the administration, as he points out, that is always trumpeting its Christian identity and its Christian base is aggressively advocating pagan values and pagan form policy. Yeah. And yeah. Well,

“did you hear at all about the Secretary of Wars speech at the National Prayer Breakfast?”

I only saw the President speech. Oh, yeah. He baptized the military in the gospel that to be a soldier in the U.S. military was to be doing God's will to give your life for the

I mean, that's an American thing we say. That bad. But yeah. But it was, um, I mean, there's a reason

he has crusader tattoos, right, because that's so many of the people that that come to take shots at me on Twitter have crusaders as their little pictures of this is how I want to be seen. And it's a it's a medieval guy with a crusader cross and a sword held up and I'm going to go kill people. It's a clash of civilizations, us versus that. We love that. Yeah. We love the clash of

“civilizations. Isn't that a online game? I wouldn't know. I think it is. I don't know. Thoughts”

miscalculating. Yeah. I mean, in so many ways, this article says things that we have been saying for a really long time, which is both Western political thought, not perfectly not entirely,

but has been deeply shaped by Christian values to the point where we have assumptions about them.

I appreciate her article points out, like even just the idea that the week should be protected was a new idea when Christian started saying things like that. The thing that I kept thinking while I was reading the piece though was while I think it would probably be a net good for Christian values and ideas to be more robustly prominent in our politics, not just as advanced or others might want as like a symbol or a sense of identity or community, but actually robust values and beliefs.

Well, I think that would be good. I think what's happening is we're showing proof that those

“ideas without any of the story or metaphysical basis upon which they are built don't withstand”

human lives. If you're going to say, well, this is just a feature of our country. This is a legacy

and inheritance of ours that we believe these things about humans. If you don't bring with that where those ideas come from and I'm not saying that we should legislate those, you know, Christian stories and values, but when you lose a broad sense of most people understand, we protect the vulnerable in the week because even if we lose our lives in the process, we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come or we value the

things that we value because Jesus told us to value them and Jesus was God. When you get rid of those things, it's a lot harder to stand by them when you don't have like a robust story making sense for why those things are true. So if politicians today are saying, well, we just want to do these things because we want more power and we want to steam all over you because we can and then people who want to hold those values without any of the story or the metaphysics say, well,

just don't like that that there's not much behind that. I mean, we can say this is like America's Christian inheritance, but once you discard the underlying metaphysics in the underlying story, you don't get this great ethic that you can just kind of pull away from that context and use whoever you will, you lose the foundation upon which it all makes sense. Right. And then you get to a point where people are saying, you know, healthcare is a human right, a basic human right that everyone should

have and you, you say, why? Right. Based on what? Right. You know, how and when in the world did people say, he doesn't have access to top medical care. This is a wrong that our society must, I mean, that's a fairly recent development and it's almost entirely out of Christianity in the West to develop it. Think about where we've come over the last couple of years. We have not we, but we have seen a significant segment of the American population and certainly the mega world.

And a lot of the evangelical white evangelical church come new a place of sane. Empathy is either toxic or sinful. If, if you quote what you've mentioned from, from Stephen Miller, they've embraced this idea that the real world is governed by strength. It's governed by force and it's governed by power. I can't think of a statement that is more antithetical to the way of Christ. I mean,

“this, this is the spirit of antichrist. That's what that is. And yet people have baptized this”

administration as God's instrument in the world. It's just so completely backwards. It's exactly what Isaiah said when these people are going to call good evil and evil good in the lightness dark and dark lightness. That's where we've come to. It's bonkers. Okay. But we've got Trevor Noah on our side. Thank God. He's on this way. He's on his way to help. Trevor Noah was interviewing Zauron Mombani, the Democratic Socialist Mayor of New York City. And Mombani said, "Republicans,

this is interesting quote, "Republicans have a limitless imagination. Democrats are constructing an ever-lowering ceiling of possibility." This is, you know, Instagram post by Liz Booker,

try it, Phil? I'm a few more. I can keep going. Tell me when you want me to stop. And Trevor Noah's

response was, "It's because of the decline of religion on the left." She says, "He writes, Trevor dropped this almost casually." Then explained, "Fate requires the ability to believe this current state is not the end. There's a possibility that something can be greater. Even though you cannot see it, you can believe it can happen." And then Mombani responded saying, "House is a worship. Still have that trust. Really still have that faith. And it's by and large lost when it

comes to politics." She said, Liz says, "That made her think of Catholic theologian David Tracy's concept of analogical imagination, a trained capacity to see possibilities in the present. Not wishful thinking. Discipline detention to what reality suggests is possible. Religious traditions,

Liz writes, have been teaching this for centuries. Hope that survives disappointment. It's like

MLK's beloved community, which wasn't utopian fantasy. It was a realistic achievable goal grounded in black church theology. King could look at Jim Crow America and see what was trying to be born. He trained people in disciplined hope. And it works." So, she asked the question, "has religious illiteracy on the left meant losing access to the tools needed for transformative politics, the capacity to imagine radically different futures. This practice ability to trust and possibilities,

you can't yet prove." I wouldn't say it's a loss of religious literacy. It's a loss of religion.

“Oh, okay. And that's what so many people in progressive circles and secular settings lose this vision.”

It's, you go back and look at the civil rights movement. You go back earlier to the abolitionist

movement or pick whatever movement or reform you want from prior generations. Most of them are rooted

in a profoundly Christian vision of the world and ethic and story as Caitlin talks about. And eschatological vision of the redemption of all things and the hope of the world to come all that animates and fuels the changes we wanted to make in the world now. And to see those changes happen and then look back and go, "Oh, we can keep doing that, but let's get rid of the religion piece of it." Yeah. And I've mentioned this many times on this show in different interviews. I've done

but back in 2006, then Senator Obama did a fantastic talk about the role of religion in public discourse and politics and talked about exactly this. These great traditions rooted their social activism and their political activism in the grounding of their faith. And so much of the secular left to said, "We want all that activism, we want all that change, we want all that progress, but we don't want to root it any of that stuff anymore." Yeah. And they're cutting off the engine

that fuels it. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that speech too. I wrote a whole chapter about how I think Obama's approach to religion was in many ways better than a lot of conservative evangelical

“favorite politicians. But he did in that speech say something that I think happens on the left a lot”

that I think is a misunderstanding of the power of religion. He talked about religious language. Like, this is the moral language of our country. And even in this interview, I hear this sense of, well, let's return to religious language or the form of religion for the sake of this political goal and as you've talked about a bunch of sky. Like, if you're using Christianity to get something other than Christianity, you're not actually believe in Christianity. But also this goes back to

this other piece about Donald Trump being a pagan king. You can't drain the language of the actual story and belief and metaphysics and think that it will work as well. Like, I think a lot of people on the left want to be fluent in religion or literate in religion. Sometimes it's paternalistic. Sometimes it's like, for the sake of reaching the masses that are still confused and believe this backwards to the unwashed masses. But sometimes it's also, it's, I want, I don't want

to actually believe this stuff is actually true, but I want to speak as if it is true. As if that's what makes religion valuable, is it gives this imagination or it gives language or it gives,

“and I think what is often missed as sky is pointed out is historically, it was not religious”

language that made the civil rights movement. It was this like deep belief, not only in the life of the world to come, but reading this New York Times piece, I'm so struck by this belief that the story that was being told by segregationists, by violent activists, by people who are harming those churches and communities, the story they believed about what was fundamentally true of the world was a wrong story in the present. Like, even this, this line you, you quoted from Miller,

we live in the real world, governed by strength, governed by force, governed by power. Part of the Christian task is to say, not let's imagine something different than that. Let's imagine a world that's not governed by force or governed by power. There's a little bit of that

in some sense, the reality that powerful people can do a lot of great evil. But on another level,

“part of the Christian task is to say, like, no, actually, the world doesn't work the way that you say”

that it works. You're bending it to your will right now, but that won't be sustainable forever

because the reality is that the world that God created that is good isn't run in this kind of way.

There's a different story that is currently true, and you don't get there by saying, let's model ourselves after religious people. You get there by going, do you actually believe in your bones that the way that they are narrating what is true in the world is not just unhelpful or unjust, but is not true. That is not the world that God made. That is not the reality that is true. Currently, even though we're believing that light now, even though it seems to be true. You say we're all

even the non-Christians are starting in Genesis 3? I love it. Yeah, and not just Genesis 3. I mean, I've talked a bunch on the show about revelation as this unveiling of what's really going on. You think this is the normal operation of things. Actually, it's the unveiling of like the

great evil of these powers and this great conflict. Revelation is also the unveiling of this whole

time, all of this chaos and evil is forefront of your mind is happening on the reality, like the stronger, more true reality that's happening in heaven is that the martyrs are celebrating at the throne of God and real justice and righteousness and truth is already real. It doesn't mean all of the brokenness we're experiencing here on earth is just an illusion. No, it's really real. But when Stephen Miller says the real world is governed by strength, governed by force.

Now, Jesus Christ defeated those powers and principalities on the cross and showed us what real power is, showed us what is actually true of creation. For us to listen to him and go, yeah, you're right that that's real, but please act nicer is to not be very Christian to be Christian would be to say, that's not the world that God made. That's not the world that God desires us to live in. But also, you're believing a lie that is passing away and what is actually true of the world

was revealed on the cross. Okay, so to take a step back, what I hear you saying is on the trumpet administration, the Steven Miller types, they're advocating for a profoundly anti-Christian way of engaging the world. But what we just read from Trevor Noah and Mondani and all that, the more progressive side is we want a form of religion, but we don't want the actual substance of it. This is a bad metaphor, but it feels to me like there are people on the progressive

left who want to co-habitate with Jesus, but they don't want to actually marry the guy. They want the benefits of religion, and they don't want any of the costs. They don't want any

“obligation. Which is true on the right, it is, right. Yeah, but that's what's so fascinating.”

So for so many decades on the religious right, it was we want to use Jesus to achieve our political objectives. But now they're like screw that. We just want pagan power. Let's cut to the chase here. And on the left for so many years, it's been, we don't want Christianity. We don't want Jesus. We just want cultural transformation. And now they're going, okay, maybe we need a little Jesus to help us with it. We lost him, but we don't want all the Jesus. Maybe that would ask too much of

Jesus juice. Some Jesus. Yeah, Jesus. Yeah, Jesus. Light. So what do we say to our progressive friends? Like, what do you, because the the instinct to to at least admire the teaching of Jesus, and it's effect on people is good. Yes. And we want to encourage it. But how do we get past that to, you know, he was actually a real person that asked for your allegiance. Right. I, to Caitlin's point, I think this is true of everyone on all sides. People are drawn to Jesus for all kinds of different

reasons. Great. Take a step closer. Our job, or those of us who feel called to this, our job is to keep inviting them in deeper and to discover he's not just someone or something you use to achieve some other end. He is in and of himself the most valuable thing and the goal and the end to which

all things point. So devote yourself to him. See, first of all, King of God, all these other things

will be added onto you. But you don't get the other things and bypass the King. Who's King to him it is? Yeah. Can't you just like sneak into the palace and steal some of the things that you want and then apply them without him noticing? Yeah. Well, if if you look at it as it's a, it's a,

“it's a useful fiction. Right. That's how some people see it. Hey, we're forgetting the values of the”

Lord of the Rings. Everyone read the books. Watch the movies. We need to return to the values of Tolkien in his fictitious world. It's good. I'm that's kind of where we are. And the irony is on the other side they're saying we really want a Christian society again, but we're going to use pagan tactics to get it. Yeah. The other side is saying we want a utopian kind of society and we want to use Christian taxes to get it, but we don't want all of it because some of it asks too much of us.

fall before Jesus and go, all right, we'll do it on your terms, including the mercy and the

empathy and the kindness towards those who are enemies and the dignity of all people and the things you are asking of us to surrender, we accept the whole thing, not just too much. The little bits we want.

“It's just too much. It's free and it's also costly. I think the way that you phrase that question”

feels really important because how I would speak about the people who want to use religious language for political goals and have a lot of power is very different than the way I would want to speak to someone who's seeing this post on Instagram and going, "Oh yeah, interesting. I'm like curious about imagining a different possibility." Like I have a little bit of a harsh urge to me for the people who have a lot of power and tend to use it in this kind of flippant way. But I think you're

totally right that there are plenty of people who, regardless of where they are on the political

spectrum, are suddenly realizing that something is missing and their family and their community and their politics, even if they're on the right or the left, they might have an experience of watching the Trump administration in particular and going, "Wait, what was it that made past President's feel accountable to describe what they did in ways that were distinctly moral in these ways? And why is that loss now?" And along, guys, why were we embarrassed to say actually we

did kind of do this for just people had it in the sense of shame? Why do people have to repent? Why did they have to, I mean, even if they were lying and that was bad, they felt they need to present things in a certain light to show that if you accidentally tweeted out, say pictures of a former

President as wife as apes, you would rush to apologize. Even if you kind of maybe did it on purpose,

but you didn't think it would get out, you would rush to apologize. This I did a whole sky pod skydive some months ago about the positive side of hypocrisy. This kind of what we're talking about. Like hypocrisy, though wrong, shows that you still have a sense of what is right. It's points to a standard. Exactly. And the reason you're hiding the truth of your own failures

“because you believe the standard is still good. Where have all the hypocrites gone?”

Oh my god. That's the problem. But I really do think for the people who are starting to have this experience of like, oh, what is the progressive? I mean, I see this evident in the people who are going, oh wait, is there some value to religion that I have been missing my projects? I also see this on the right right now with people who for some of them some of what's been happening with ice, some of the murders, some of the significant presence and the terrorizing of immigrant communities,

has made them go, wait, like I something has changed here and I'm curious about it. I do think along the lines of what Sky said, there is a great opportunity to say, hey, it's actually even better than you thought. Like you thought it had this limited political goal. What if it's also true? And what if it really needs something for your whole life? And yes, it comes with all this costs. But again, Michael put it in the beginning was like, the cost doesn't make sense without the larger story that

says why it's worth it. And if I show you why it's worth it, I'm not starting with just actually Jesus asks more of you than just, you know, being used for your political goals. I'm actually saying, it's so much bigger and better than the political goals you're trying to achieve. Jesus gets you so much more than your candidate having a better shot at winning or the bills you want passing getting past. He offers you everything, eternal life, the reconciliation and redemption of all things.

No, all I want is, all I want is rent control. All that's just, that, I'm good. You get rent control in heaven. You do, I promise. It's the parable. It's you find the treasure

“buried in the field. You sell everything you have to gain because what you're gaining is so much”

more valuable than what you are giving up. Yes, I don't want to be cynical about people in the left who are suddenly interested in religion. Yeah. I'm a little cynical of maybe the kind of conflict entrepreneurs who suddenly realize that it's maybe useful. But for other people, I want to say, yeah, this is actually how Christianity spreads as people going, oh my gosh, is the world bigger and better is their core out there than I thought and painting the picture

that makes you want it to be true. Yes, because a lot of the comments on her Instagram post as I was scrolling down were people saying things like, yeah, but this is BS because if you're Christian, all you care about is the next life. So the one, what you do and this one doesn't matter and you don't care about this world. That's a warped kind of Christian. That's the narrative we're up against. Yeah. You know, is partly we have created a Christianity that doesn't care

about what happens in this world, which is why some of the people who are raised in those environments in those Christian environments are chucking it to and there are people disillusion coming from both ends. Right, right. Oh, boy. Oh, and hopefully they find the real Jesus somewhere. Yeah, so much should help them. Yeah. Someone, someone should try to help them. Let's try to help them. Okay. Okay. Mike. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll start my own podcast. Okay. You're on so many podcasts.

Thanks for supporting us. Go to Holy Post. Plus, there's lots of stuff this guy's making,

“Caitlin's making, he saw his making, even Mike might be making stuff in so much stuff. I pop in”

every now and then, but I'm making stuff for kids. I can't wait to tell you about okay. We'll see you next week. Bye. This episode is sponsored by policy genius. I got a life insurance policy almost 30 years ago when my kids were little. I wanted to know that they'd be okay if I were

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That's 50% off your first order at Sundays for dogs.com/holypost50. Sundays for dogs.com/holypost50 or use code Holypost50@checkout. In 1997 Joshua Harris' book, I kissed dating a bi was released and became the seminal work for the true love weights movement. Harris was just 21 years old, but he found himself in the spotlight. He was the poster child for purity culture. In the years that followed,

he became a mega church pastor and eventually the president of sovereign grace churches. Despite all this notoriety and influence, under the service, Harris was harboring all kinds of doubts about the fundamentalist Christianity he was raised within and now leading. He was rethinking everything, including the book that defined his identity and launched his career. About 10 years ago, Harris publicly apologized for his book and the way his participation in

purity culture had hurt so many people. He even asked the publisher to stop sales of eye-chist dating a bi. But the more shocking news came in 2019. That's when Harris announced that he and his wife were divorcing and that he was no longer a Christian. It's hard to overstate how seismic this was within conservative evangelical subcultures. Joshua Harris, the cheerleader for purity culture, had suddenly become a cheerleader for the deconstruction movement. For some,

he represented the false promises and failures of American evangelicalism all wrapped up in one package. But that wasn't the end of the story. More recently, Harris posted on Instagram

bully energy that exists in progressive secular communities as well. And he says that the years

“after he left his faith were sometimes marked by an over-correction. We talked about Harris's recent”

Instagram post a few weeks ago and after that episode, I asked our producer Mike to reach out to Harris. I was curious to hear more about his story and thankfully he agreed to come on the show.

My conversation with Harris was way longer than we could fit into just this episode. So the first

30 minutes are here, but we've posted the rest of the interview on Holy Post Plus for subscribers. You can go to holypost.com to learn how to sign up and access that. Here is my conversation with Joshua Harris. Joshua Harris, welcome to the Holy Post. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm delighted to have this conversation. It must be weird for you that the thing that people know you most for, you did when you were 21 years old. The publishing of

your book, so I kissed Aiding Goodbye. I want to get into some of that. We're not going to talk

about the book and purity culture and all that stuff because you talked about that at Nazium and

other settings and places, but I do want to talk about the background of that book. How is it that you were able to publish a book at 21 years old? Yeah, there are days where I would love to pass the book for the contents of that book on to other people, but I wrote it. I believed it with all my heart. I sought to spread it. And the answer to the question of how I got a book contract was tied to in many ways. I'd say the family business that I was a part of my dad was an influential

leader in the homeschool movement. Travel across the country teaching workshops to tens of thousands

of families. I came alongside him, began to speak at his workshops when I was a teenager,

started publishing a magazine for homeschool teens, started doing my own conferences for teenagers. So I had pre-social media, pre-explosion of the internet, an audience, a platform, a lot of people that I was interacting with directly, and also sort of inroads to the publishing world because my dad was in the publishing world. So I'd go and man the book table at CBA, Christian Booksellas Association, and talk go and talk to all the different publishers and that kind of

thing. And so I had relationships and connections that I think were unique and a platform that got them to pay attention to my manuscript. Okay, so that raises a different question for me. I've been in the Christian publishing world, too. Obviously, I'm not at the same age, but in the process of speaking at these events, building an audience, publishing a magazine as a teenager, and then eventually writing a manuscript for a book and having publishers expressed interest

in it. Did anyone in your older person in your life, whether a parent or a publisher or somebody did anyone ever step in and go, "Hey, Josh, you know, great that you're interested in all this,

“but maybe you need to slow down or maybe this isn't the best thing for your faith or formation”

right now to be put out front in front of so many people in these different venues?" Did that ever happen? You know, I have one memory of the pastor of the church that I grew up in Stu Weber. God bless him. He's an icon, tender warrior kind of guy. I remember him making a comment about how people shouldn't write books until they're 40, at least 40. And it stood out to me because it was kind of like, "Oh, wow, you know, the sad thing about that is that it was almost

like a comment in passing. It wasn't a, let me just sit down. I know this is going to, this is going to be hard to hear this. I say this and love. It was more of, I would say, more on the level of, isn't this annoying these young kids? Think they have something to say?"

“That kind of delivery. I'm not putting any blame on him at all. He was one of the few people. I think”

who is making an astute observation, but it's an example of the disconnect between a certain kind of wisdom connecting with a younger person when it's said in a way that is is not empowering and real relational, I guess you could say. But that really stands out to me as one of the few examples.

doing their jobs. It's an acquisition editor that goes, "Wow, this kid has an audience."

Well, this is a fresh take. This is kind of interesting. It doesn't take a lot of people to green light something like that. And I think in the, in the evangelical world, there's a tradition that goes back a long way where we love to, we love to highlight young people that are catching fire, you know, for the faith. We love that zeal. Like it's something that inspires the older people. There's an emphasis on the next generation. So when you see the next generation,

grabbing hold of messages and ideas that you approve of, you're like, "Yeah, let's give this person the stage. Let's give them the mic. This is great. They're, they're going to inspire

“other young people their age." And I think that's what my book was a, a really big example of.”

In the early 2000s, your book came out in '97 and in the early 2000s, after I finished seminary,

it was a pastor and then I started working at Christianity today and going to a lot of ministry conferences. That was kind of the heyday of the so-called emerging church trend. And there were all these younger 20-something pastors at different parts of the country that were all getting these publishing deals. And I remember talking to an executive at a Christian publisher and asking him, "How long is this emerging church thing going to go?" Like, "Is this

got legs? Is this a long-term kind of movement thing?" And he very dryly said to me, "It has 18 months." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And he goes, "Well, that's when our marketing

plan runs out for the emerging church." And we created the emerging church and it's going to run out

18 months. And from that experience of many others, around 2012, I wrote an article which I talked about and coined the term, the evangelical industrial complex. And so this is a question I wanted to ask you. Having grown up in kind of the home school, more fundamentalist, stream of American Christianity,

“we can critique that all day long. But I would argue one of the lessons and I think strengths”

of fundamentalism is that it relies very heavily on wisdom from the past. It says, "This is what we've inherited." Whether it's doctrinal truths, a scripture, or models, if you're whatever it might be, family structures, things like that. There's things we have inherited that we should not throw away, but retain the wisdom of. But one of those great heritages of American or any Christian tradition is the importance of structures of accountability. And all the way back to the new

Tessmore, Paul says, "Don't, don't appoint new believers to these positions of authority, but make sure they've been tested." And why is that part of Christian tradition? Why has that been jettisoned by American evangelicalism or American fundamentalism that says, "No, no, we don't care if they're untested. We don't care if they're untrained. If they're able to draw a crowd in cell books, we're going to give them a microphone and put them on a platform. How do you explain that piece,

not being part of the package of what we want to retain from the past?"

“Yeah, I think that most traditions have a tendency to be better at applying certain traditions,”

and they can kind of pick and choose. And I think that when it comes to getting more market share, more acclaim, more success, it's hard to pay attention to those commands. I mean, you could say the same thing about, you know, commandments about greed and, you know, ignoring the poor, those kinds of things. Those are great, but if that restrains you from, you know, being pals with the, with the ultra wealthy or, you know, filling your own pockets, those kinds of things. So, I mean, I just think that

we all can be selective when it's, when it's to our own benefit. You know, I think part of my own struggle with some of these things is that, you know, when you're, when you're in church systems and you're benefiting from the, you're at the top of the pile, it's hard to see the flaws. It's like, this is great. This system is great. Yeah, what they're other for me, right? So, we're much great for me. Yeah, exactly, but there are other people in that same system, you know, like I remember

being a pastor, single women in the church. They were much more ready to go, hey, you know, what, there's some, there seem to be some flaws in this structure. I feel really pushed out and isolated and, you know, families with kids, you, you, you pastors love them, but what about me, that kind of thing? That's just an example of how, depending on where you are in the, the structure, you, you benefit or you don't benefit. And again, when you're benefiting, it's hard to be honest about

the inconsistencies and the hypocrisies. And I think it's just easy for humans to use the power

the excuse of being faithful to the fundamentals as, as a way to control and, and remain in power.

I'm not saying that's true of everybody. I'm just saying that that's, that's a temptation for all of us. As somebody who at that time benefited from the system to use your phrase, you benefited with notoriety with influence perhaps financially and then you, you were, in short order, accelerated into ministry roles, in church roles and even church leadership roles. So you benefited in one way. Looking back, can you talk a little bit about how you actually didn't benefit or the way it

“impaired you in some way or your face development in some way unexpectedly?”

That's a great question. I, I do think that I was promoted and given opportunities

that I grabbed hold of just assuming of, you know, if someone's saying that I'm going to be the next

lead pastor, I'm going to lead this movement, you know, these, these people who have, who are established leaders and so successful for the Lord, you know, if they're seeing that me, then it must be, you know, the will of God. And I think I walk through open doors when I needed to linger in places of learning, of wrestling, of, you know, considering other viewpoints and perspectives. So I bypass a lot of those things because of the opportunities. And, and I, you know,

I really missed, I think, seasons where I should have been wrestling and asking harder questions.

“And a lot of that's on me just even my personality. I think I'm, you know, my whole personality”

is more one of, oh, is this, is this what the team says? Let's, I want to be a good team player, you know, I want to go along with things I went right from being in my parents' house and carrying those banners to moving into, you know, the basement of the senior pastor at the church I was trained at. And I just embraced everything that we believed, instead of saying, "Well, I would think through this, let's, I want to hear the other side of this story."

And I was in an environment that didn't encourage that kind of thinking, you know, it didn't encourage, hey, let's, let's debate and wrestle with these different theological viewpoints. It was no, here, here's the, here's the approved list of books. Here's the approved list of theologians. Here's how we do things. And stepping into a leadership role so young, I just became a spokesman for those values instead of someone who was curious and, and asking questions.

It sounds like you were in an environment that mistook certainty for maturity. That's a great way to put it. And I don't, I mean, yes, I could appreciate your taking responsibility for the things that you chose and going along with. But I'm a little disappointed that you didn't have adults, older adults around you with the maturity and wisdom to say,

“"Hey, Josh, maybe you need to slow down. Maybe you need more time for training, reflection,”

life experience, getting knocked down a few times before you're given so many platforms of safety and influence." I've just heard this story over and over and over again from people close to me, other people I've worked alongside who were very gifted and very good on a platform and wonderful, relationally. And so they were just pushed to more and more influence in ministry settings. And there wasn't any attention given by the people around them and leaders around them

to the, the strength of their soul. And their capacity to carry that influence. And it, either leads to some kind of ministry breakdown or just personal devastation on some level. If you could go back, I guess there's two ways to answer this frame this question. I know you've got kids around my kids ages, kind of young adult ages. And I don't want you to talk about your kids like I don't want talking about my kids. But if one or more of your kids came to you with like a

real drive towards a ministry vocation or platform, curious what you would, what wisdom would you impart to them now, that you maybe didn't receive when you were their age. Yeah, I mean, it's so hard for me to imagine any of my kids wanting to go into ministry, I'm having a little bit of trouble with your question. But I'm just saying,

yeah, I'm not going to come see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there is in that first half

of life, you know, Richard Brure talked about the first half of life. It's it's all about securing your identity, feeling safe because you are believing the right things, living the right way,

career context. And there is a certain sense in which I think it's pretty hard to break through

“that young persons view of the world and impart that wisdom. I mean, I think, you said some of”

those things, hey, slow down. Don't find your identity in this role. Don't equate your relationship with God to a position. Separate the the audience of one. It's to use the evangelical phrase from the the audience of people that are cheering you on. Recognize the different motivations that are around you that are hard to see. Like it's hard to sort through the voice of God. And if you ask this theological question, you're going to lose your internship. Like it's hard to, it's hard

to be honest about those kinds of things. And so I, I probably would just say, there's there's going

to be some benefit to growing your faith outside of that being tied to your livelihood and your identity. That would be the encouragement that I would bring. And I think, you know, the reason that in these settings, it's so hard to encourage young people to do those kinds of things, is there's a risk? There's a risk whenever you ask any question that you will come up with a wrong answer. And so if you are, if you're coming from a more fundamentalist viewpoint that says there are

a lot of wrong answers out there. In fact, the world is more filled with wrong answers and

right answers, then you're going to be very protective. You're going to be very controlling.

You're going to create your own, you know, in-house educational programs, whether that's home schooling or your own colleges or your own seminaries, whatever it might be. And you're going to discourage people from asking too many questions or listening to all the voices because there's a chance that they'll come back with what you consider to be a wrong answer. So I do think there's a lot of fear and control that builds the structures. And if somebody is running hard in the answers that you

like, let them run, you know, you're like, oh, great, just let them run. Because you're more concerned

“with propping up your system and your structure, then I think it kind of being open to mystery”

or believing that God can be working even if they take a viewpoint that's different than the establishment. Something I've written a lot about, but I find so ironic is that these communities that talk so much about the importance of faith. Don't recognize how control is the antithesis of faith. And you mentioned it multiple times in your answer, though, that fear and that need for control. It just seems contrary to the life we're called to. It's moving ahead in the story a little bit,

because roughly 10 years ago, you openly apologized for some of the ideas that you contributed to through your book and the purity culture stuff. And you asked the publisher to please discontinue the book, which they did. You got a lot of attention for that. But then you also got a lot of attention when you publicly said, hey, I don't think I'm a Christian anymore. Why did you, why did you want to do that publicly? Why was it important for you to

not just wrestle with all those things going on? You are the deconstruct that works kind of over use. But you clearly were going through some kind of process like that. What made you want to put that out in front of everybody for everyone to see? Yeah. To go back to your earlier question of giving advice to others, when other people come and say, I'm thinking of deconstructing publicly and putting this out there often say, slow down, let's take your time and think about

that word slow down the formation of your faith and even slow down in the deformation of your faith. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. The reason that I did that is very tied to

“the specifics of what I was going through in my life at the time. I think it was also tied to”

in a sense the same patterns that it guided me all along, which is, I want to be a person in integrity. I want what I say publicly to match what's going on internally. And if it's not, then I feel this obligation to kind of say that and acknowledge that and so on. So it was very black and white kind of thinking that I'd live with as an evangelical fundamentalist whatever Christian for all those years, it's like you're in or you're out, you believe or you don't believe,

that kind of mindset guided me a long time as a pastor. And so when my life

“didn't match up, I'm getting divorced. You know, I'm all these things that in my mind were like,”

getting close to that unforgivable kind of sin category, there is a sense in which I was just like, I can't defend what I'm doing, but I'm on this path. I'm not changing the path. I'm out, guys, like that was kind of what took place there. In terms of the life circumstances, there's a lot of sadness. There was a sense in which everything that I thought about myself, everything that I built my life around was crumbling. And, you know, the intertwining of my relationship

with God, to my work, my family, my identity as a writer, my identity as a pastor, my identity

as a good husband, my identity as an author of best-selling books that help people, you know,

honor God in their relationships, all those things through a number of different events, just one by one crumbled and fell apart. And, you know, I think it was just like a week before that my ex-wife and I announced that we were separating. And, you know, we'd live through so many kind

“of things as a church where everything in your life is going to be made public. If you don't get out”

and say it, it's going to be on a blog. It's going to be like, and so I'd lived in that world. And, so there was kind of this mindset of, well, I'm going to be the one to tell people, you know, we're separating. That was a huge explosion. The guy who wrote "I just dating a buy," you know, is getting divorced. And, at the time, there was a huge backlash towards my ex-wife saying, "Oh, well, she's an ex-fan. She's been saying, using a term ex-fangellical." You know,

you know, he, you know, he didn't marry a godly woman or whatever, all these kinds of things, because she'd been more vocal about that, and this is just kind of a misogynistic response. It was, it must be her fault. Josh is this godly man. Their marriage is ending. It must be the woman's fault. And, I think, you know, in a way, it was like I was watching my whole life burned down. And I was like, well, it's not going to hurt to throw a little more gas on the fire.

I mean, so that announcement to my, you know, saying, you know what, guys? Actually, I don't even, I don't even know that I can, I don't even know that I call myself a Christian. According to everything that I've, for all these years, thought about being a Christian, I'm out. And I'm not even,

“I'm not trying to defend myself or claim I'm anything. And so that was, yeah, that's what that moment”

was, was about. In some sense, you're, you are very far from unique. I mean, there are many, many, many people who, whose marriages have ended, whose faith has struggled, whose, who, who reacted to the things they grew up in or environments and communicating a part of. But what does make your story a little bit more unique is you are on a platform from the time you were a teenager. And that platform only got bigger with the book and then being a pastor and then leading this

denominational, you know, network of churches. And so you were always kind of in the fish bowl.

And so it makes sense then when you hit the season where your marriage is struggling and your faith is collapsing and your question only sings that that also has to be on the platform and has to be seen by everybody. I, what worries me about myself or is me about for my kids and anyone who I like, I don't know how you form healthy anything when everyone's looking at you. And yeah, it just seems really strange. I don't fault you for being public with those things, given that your whole life

up to that point had been very public and your faith had been very public. It makes sense. But I wonder what your process both as a young person and now middle ages we are would look like had it not been under a spotlight or on a platform or on social media. But we just don't allow people to do that if you've been a pastor or you're in a public place anymore. One of the things you wrote about, we talked about this on our last Holy Post episode, you recently posted an Instagram,

I don't know what they're called multiple page things. But you did mention that part of that season for you eight years ago had to do with Donald Trump and the way the evangelical world had embraced him. How much do you tribute that broader dynamic to your deconstruction process and how much was it the more intimate realities of your life? The breakdown of things that you

was influenced by the broader dynamics going on in the culture and the evangelical sub-culture,

“especially at the time. Yeah, I think it was primarily all the dynamics of what was”

taking place in my personal life and the appeal that happened there. The backdrop of the political situation, I mean, we can all say this. It's like it's this unavoidable, massive distraction, polarizing force, relationship, disrupting kind of moment in history. So I think for me, it was just icing on the cake to use that metaphor of, for so long, I bought into a certain view of how Christians were to be involved in the world and, you know, I voted Republican all my life.

I can remember being, you know, a six-year-old kid and drawing a very disrespectful caricature of Jimmy Carter. Like, drawing cartoons on my parents are like, you know, laughing and praising me for doing this terrible picture of Jimmy Carter. Like, you know, for as long as I can remember,

“again, faith was very intertwined with a certain political viewpoint. And I think that, you know,”

Donald Trump, obviously completely hijacked the Republican parties, taken over in so many different ways, but what it felt like to me was this moment when when I was simultaneously beginning to ask questions,

like, wait a second, we believe this about, you know, how women are supposed to be in the church

and those kind of, where we write about, you know, where we wrung about that, where we wrung, so it's this list of me going down and going, well, did we get this wrong as well? You know, so it's still within the Christian structure asking these questions, deconstructing, taking things out and examining them. And then when it came to the issue of politics, it felt like, wait a second, we're endorsing this guy who is so blatantly, you know,

violates all these things that in the past, we condemn this past candidate for doing these things,

but now we're, we're giving this person a pass. So it felt like this moment of, of major hypocrisy,

and it added to this sense of, I don't, I feel it's easier to just walk away from this. It's easier to step back because a lot of the people that I, and I, I love these people, I, you know, I've got so many friends that are Trump supporters and, you know, we disagree politically, and I have deep affection for them, but it was an isolating moment that added to the, the isolation that was happening to me internally. And in your post, you, you described that season

as one of overcorrection unpack that for me. What does that mean? Well, I look back now and I see that I just carried my fundamentalist black and white thinking with me onto a new team, you know, and so there was this mindset of, you know, the kind of the fundamental approach to a lot of things. It's very fair driven and it's very who's in and who's out. If this person is wrong, doctrineally, and he hangs out with Joe, we'll don't hang out with Joe,

because he hangs, you know, so that's like the, don't have these books on the bookshelf that

“kind of a thing. That's how, that's how we operate it as a church. And so when I stepped out of that”

and kind of stepped into, you know, whatever you want to call it, X Van Gellicle, Deconstruction, Community, whatever, I brought that same zeal. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? You know, the hats have switched. And I also think, I think I was being manipulated by the algorithms, as I'm still being manipulated by the algorithms. There's just this sense of like, well, this person pops up and they're saying this, well, if that issue is identified with, you know,

MAGA Trump, whatever, then obviously it's wrong. And I definitely am opposed to it just because of the association. That's a very fundamentalist approach. You know, a more nuanced approach is saying, well, I'm going to, I want to examine this issue in this topic in light of its own merits and do some hard thinking and really sort through this and not just have this emotional reaction because it's identified by whoever, as, as belonging to one, one party or one side or whatever.

So I think that's where the over action, over reaction came into play for me. And I, I started to realize that I was having that same creeping feeling of fear of getting things right. You know, when I was a pastor, I had that all the time. It was like, I, I, I got to preach things right.

all my, my eyes dotted in my T's cross. And I started to have that same fear when it came to

“am I speaking out on the, am I taking the right stand? Am I speaking, if I don't say something about”

whatever, you know, political, social topic, I start to feel the heat of, oh, someone's going to

be like, why aren't you talking about this? Why aren't you saying something? So that started to,

“to kind of come to light and I realized, gosh, I've got the same like fear response that I used to”

have in the conservative church. And, and I, you know, that was a, that was a wake-up call that I,

I wasn't quite sure what to do with. All right, that was the first half of my conversation with

“Joshua Harris, but there was just too much to stuff into just this episode. So the second half”

of the interview is posted on Holy Post Plus. If you're already a subscriber, you can get that on Holy Post Plus or in your podcast app, if you've linked Holy Post Plus to your podcast feed, if you're not yet a subscriber, learn how to sign up at holypost.com. Holy Post merchandise, and much, much more.