“An Omlet is only as good as the eggs” Dr. Myles Munroe
Water Cooler Talk
August and September are months where the subject of football is normally a trending topic. Christian dating usually isn’t such a hot topic. So why was it being discussed as much as football?
Being about the same age as Joshua Harris I remember when his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl were released and how much it was being read and discussed. That it is still being talked about 20 years later I think says more to what lead it being written than it’s contents.
Why 22 years later would we have seen posts in September 2019 like Darren Salmon’s - Why is dating not in the Bible? Daniel Thomas’s - Why we need to kiss ourselves goodbye Kacy Garvey’s - The Church he kissed goodbye Jo Fuller’s - Religion verses Relationship and Emma McGeorge’s - I'm not sick, I'm single being read so much?
The answer is simple, two decades later the question still hasn’t been answered. The problem has only been compounded, as we now have a whole new generation that has been raised by a generation that couldn’t answer the biggest question of all.
Who am I?
Life in 2019
I’ve said lots of times to many people I never want to be famous. Yet I also want my life to leave a positive and far reaching impact on generations to come. As being connected online becomes an ever increasing part of our lives is it possible to leave a legacy and not become a public figure?
When Joshua released his book the internet was still in it’s infancy. Mobile Phones were for making phone calls without needing change in your pocket, sending sms and playing snake.
So much has changed in those 22 years. It’s now possible to run a legal billion dollar business from a mobile phone. It’s also easy for anyone to voice their opinion on any subject to a world wide audience in an instant.
My heart feels for anyone living through their personal struggles in the public light.
As much as technology has connected us to each other more than at any point in history it has also aided our disconnectedness. We can now share with all our “friends” any thing that happens in our life, at any time of the day. Yet we could easily go a day, a week a month and for some years, without healthy human interaction.
The statistics on the “hikikomori” are horrifying, that we as a global community have allowed to happen.
It all comes back to identity, which begs the question who am I?
I Kissed Dating Goodbye resonated when it was released because people where searching for answers. People have been blogging about the authors recent public posts because they resonate, because they are still searching for answers.
We may have never known who Joshua Harris was if we knew who we were. The 90’s were huge for self help books in 1992 John Gray released Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus which was the "highest ranked work of non-fiction" of the 1990s and spawned numerous additional follow up titles.
My Confession
The non public history of my relationships says that the book didn’t achieve for me what I wanted but I don’t hold the author responsible for that. I hold myself responsible for not reading the right book. I think I was approaching the question of dating from the wrong angle. Rather than how do I fix the problem if I’d asked why does the problem exist in the first place my past may be a different one.
I fully believe now that the more we can see our creator for who he truly is, the less self help books we’d see on our book shelves, and the less dust we’d see on our bibles. The more we see ourselves through his eyes the more we’d not only see ourselves differently but the more compassion we would have for others.
Let me leave you this month with this short video from John Piper
How John Piper Processes the Moral Failures of His Historical Heroes from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.
Next Month: What Can Still Be Learned From I Kissed Dating Goodbye Part 2
Neville Hiatt’s previous posts for Press Services International can be read here. He spent a decade working for Radio Stations before his career was intermissioned by someone in a hurry to get home from work. He now runs http://nevillehiatt.com where he shares his desire to Inspire, Create, Motivate, and Educate through his photography, poetry and short stories. He also blogs for http://altcoincollege.com/ covering the way cryptocurrencies and blockchain are changing our world.