Mailbag Monday
This wasn’t quite an email, but it’s certainly one of the sweetest comments we’ve received on a post in a while. Thanks NL! Glad to hear you’re enjoying the site.
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I went to Wheaton College (you know, the “Harvard of evangelical schools?”… HATED it!) I’m a black woman. I’m about to get married. I LOVE this site!!! I remember reading the Joshua Harriss books in high school and being so frustrated. Well actually I appreciated them at the time but became frustrated when I soon realized that they are based in a conservative, right-wing, sexist, eurocentric reality. Not much relevance for me, a black chick, one generation removed from crippling poverty (and watching my grandparents/aunts/uncles deal with the effects of it) not raised in the U.S., with crazy immigrant parents. The book is a fairytale for some white girl in suburbia in a 2-parent home who’s in love with the guitar player in the youth group.
In ANY case. I basically did dating my own way. Stumbled blindly into the crazy world of men after college (there weren’t many “men” at my college… “males” yes. “men” NO!) I’ve made some mistakes, and I’ve done some things that probably weren’t the best idea. I tried to see passed the shroud of religiosity and just accept men for who they were. I was less concerned about whether a man could quote all the write Scriptures, and was fluent in Christianese, and more concerned about whether he was kind to me, gracious to me, and represented the love that God has for the church.
And I found that. And I’m grateful for it. We’re getting married in August.
But had I listened to Joshua Harris, I would still be at home, waiting for a white, guitar-playing, complementarian youth leader to call me up.
It would have never happened.
