By Colby Malsbury

Ever notice how in Reformed ranks the apostasy of a theological rock star is treated as the death of an A-list celebrity in the normie world? Particularly since the grief expressed over such is usually of the most facile nature? I, for one, loathe pretension. Hence, when the news broke over the wire that Christian courtship guru Josh Harris had renounced his ‘faith’, I didn’t join the boo-hoo chorus emanating forth from Calvinist Facebook. It’s safe to say I was more moved when I heard about the passing of the guy who played Schneider from One Day At a Time many moons ago.

His was a reversion back to the old Adam that hit especially hard for a lot of people, as his popular (and peculiar) 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped to codify the vagaries of ‘purity culture’ into the impressionable mores of an entire generation, whereupon they embraced such gimmickry as father-daughter sock hops and bringing the entire church congregation along when the happy couple goes out for a malted milk as emblematic of Christian relationship orthodoxy. Look, no one despises the libertinism of dating more than I do. Still, it has been my experience that anyone who promotes this type of Mormonesque Kabbalah is either a charlatan or seriously touched in the head or both. The similar case of Doug Phillips might be getting some hoar on its head by now, but let us always take that as the premiere example of what I am speaking of.

So after twenty years of reaping all the royalties he ever was likely to out of his magnum opus, Pure Josh did the only logical thing that was left to him: he not only repudiated the entire book, he went one better and dropped the entire Christian charade, using the upcoming divorce from his feminist wife as a convenient excuse:

(Apologies if the resolution is poor. Outside of Instagram, it has become extremely difficult to access this confession in full anywhere online all of a sudden. Weird, huh?)

Few things nauseate me more when a newly-admitted pagan tries to adopt an air of magnanimity (“Sorry it didn’t work out, Jesus!”) and comes across sounding like a third-rate (and G-rated) version of Voltaire instead. ‘I’m not there now’? My bald-headed barista, you never were there to begin with! Know ye not what all ‘irresistible grace’ entails? ‘I hope you can forgive me’?? What do vengeful zombies who demand that all Christians be brought before their presence that they may ‘know’ them know about tender mercies? ‘Don’t take it personally’??? I very much take it personally when a reprobate spits upon He who endured infinitely more torment for our benefit than the cringey twinge of existential angst this pathetic drama queen believes to be the fulness of trial! Extra bonus points deducted for the unmitigated gall he displays in using the hip hashtag #exvangelical. In hindsight, it is indeed ironic that the man featured on the cover of I Kissed Dating Goodbye‘s first edition is wearing a fedora.

And if you’re going to fall into apostasy, might as well do so using a piano for a parachute. Go big or go home. For no sooner had Harris proclaimed his undying fealty to the cause of Sodom then he was all but marshaling the first Homo Pride parade he happened to stumble across. As the linked Reformation Charlotte article coyly asks, as well as a multitude of other sources, what other related ‘big announcements’ can we be expecting from Harris at a future date? Those in the know could have predicted this was the path Harris was destined to trod long ago. In 2015, he relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, to attend the self-described ‘innovative graduate school of theology’ Regent College and, upon graduation, chose to make his permanent residence there. Please let me assure my American friends that no conservative, no matter how marginal a one he might be, willingly relocates to Vancouver these days. We do not expect the next Machen to emerge from the likes of San Francisco or Seattle, nor should we along any of the remainder of the temperate Pacific left coast.

Most mysterious of all, though, is precisely why so many Christians are living out Harris’s alleged spiritual turmoil for him. Why bother? Do they not realize he is in his glory now? He gets to bask in all the accolades of being so ‘courageous’ as to belch forth his journey for all to behold, not the least interested being credulous Calvinists with a penchant for self-flagellation. His particular blend of high-minded humanist agnosticism is of that sanctimonious breed that presupposes acceptance to be the highest form of ‘love’ – a falsehood that has been adopted across the theological spectrum from the Jesuit high priest Francis to Al Mohler, from Joel Osteen to Joel McDurmon. For the Christian, this panty-waisted cordiality can be demolished through 1 John 4:16: ‘God is love’. Other than Jesus Christ, please show me in the Scriptures where God ever accepted anyone as is, foibles and all? Acceptance, rather, is a realm reserved for the likes of the Levitical daily burnt offering. Harris wouldn’t agree, but what do I care what some avowed heathen thinks about anything? And it truly is a shame and disgrace that the Church sees fit to give him so much as the time of day. Going back to the epistles of John, 2 John 1:10-11 gives us guidance on this matter: ‘If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.’ If the Church does not wish to cast off the bad salt of Harris’s apostasy, they should not complain when the resulting food they dish up to their congregations is decidedly rancid.

Harris’s newfound vigor in favor of his new pederast pals can be interpreted as a secular variation on the various religious ‘enthusiasms’ that sprouted like tares among some of the less sober Protestant sects of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and survives today in the hysterics of Pentecostal-style prophetic musings ‘in tongues’. However, Harris would be careful to ascribe his blather not to some spirit but to his own reasoning, springing forth from the ashes of a post-Christian West for the intent purpose of starting something ‘better’. Well…the enthusiasts of old thought in like manner, and bereft of a proper Christian mooring as they were, their heedless mini-reformation eventually transmogrified into the horrors of outright Jacobinism, and all the resultant delights thereof. Harris’s new way will lead to no different end, except perhaps in magnitude of grotesqueness.

There’s no reason not to suspect that Harris very well could have been a planted disinfo agent all along, especially since his leaving the faith in a teary huff coincided neatly with a similar announcement from big-name (I guess: personally, I’d never heard of any of these clods before their fan clubs began lamenting their abrupt departures) megachurch pastor Dave Goss a few months back. Which also dovetails with the death of Rachel Held Evans after her own well-publicized leap into the Lilith lagoon. Of a certainty God’s hand rustled out this band of racketeers, yet who is to say the means He used to do so did not emanate from all three reading from the same script, unknowingly doing the will of He who they make mock at? Witness, too, the spectacle of Harris’s ex-wife, previously mentioned as being a feminist. What can we say about a woman who wears her hair in a short (and often garishly dyed) Beatles bob, who is currently composing a satirical musical about the ‘conservative’ church, and who assures us all that she ‘still’ believes in God, apparently because she’s also ‘not very good at zen’ – all of which can be documented in this article? Only that she didn’t decide to abandon the example set by the wife of Proverbs 31 overnight. The conversions of all these pretenders seem decidedly more Soroscene than Damascene.

And little wonder. For if Harris & Co insist on melding God into their own revisionist preconceptions, rest assured they will also do so to anything else they falsely perceive to be vague and pliable – such as love. And once they get done erecting a hideous all-embracing Panopticon that can confine both ‘love’ and ‘God’, both will be rendered meaningless to all except to their own individual diseased soul. Thus atomization. Atomization is the end goal of all forms of libertarianism.

And Josh Harris is a most excellent libertarian indeed.