By Filings on
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Joshua Harris
Apostasy
Celebrity Pastors

“People can sign up for the course for the cost of $275. Below the join button, however, is the statement: ‘A full scholarship is available to anyone harmed by purity culture and my past books. Use code GIFT at checkout.’” - C.Leaders

Discussion

Fri, 08/13/21

Hebrews 3:12-19 came to mind while perusing Harris’ new site. I shudder to contemplate God’s view of those who do the exact opposite of verse 13.

Fri, 08/13/21

Received a tip via email on this review/analysis by Trueman. An excerpt:

Two things are striking about the project. The first is the therapeutic ideology that characterizes it. Every single one of the course’s alleged strengths is cast in terms of personal self-realization. The course is for those of us who want to “make peace with our story.” That requires that we deal with our identities, our beliefs. All the things that have damaged our lives are things that have been “handed” to us. We need to learn to be compassionate—with ourselves first and then with others. And we need to take the courageous step of living now, which seems to be code for breaking with whatever we dislike about our past and doing whatever we want in the present. This is not courage as, say, a Chinese Christian or a Uyghur Muslim in a concentration camp might understand it, I suspect. And all of this “courage,” Harris claims, will lead us to be the “truest version” of ourselves. After all, we “do deserve … to choose the life we want.” ….

In short, Harris’s merchandise is no more than the spirit of the age, packaged and sold to benighted customers willing to pay good money for it. Unless, that is, your life happened to be damaged by Harris in the past—in which case he will give it to you for free. A man with a greater sense of self-doubt, not to say appropriate shame, might have decided that someone else would be better qualified to apply the balm of Gilead to the wounds of his earlier victims.

Which leads us to the second striking aspect of the project: The accidental properties of the message have changed, but at root its substance is still the same: Josh Harris.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/08/josh-harriss-message…

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.