We had four lawsuit threats the week that The Great Sex Rescue was published.
Authors were upset that we had quoted their works and showed them in a bad light. Our publisher pretty quickly talked them down (after all, you can’t sue someone for quoting your exact words), but it was still a harrowing time.
And it reminded us that, even if we bring the receipts based on a HUGE study (20,000 women in that case) to show meticulously how certain ideas contained in their books did real, measurable harm—their first instinct will be to lash out, not to apologize.
Shaunti Feldhahn even said that we weren’t doing things in a “kingdom way.” Apparently trying to warn people against false teachings that can hurt them long-term is going against Jesus.
Yes, those lawsuit threats were a little scary.
But more importantly, those threats did a real number on my faith.
For the next few years, when picking up the Bible I could only read the gospels. Everything else in Scripture was too triggering. I had to just look at Jesus, and Jesus alone, to comfort myself in what God was actually like. To see how God actually does care for people.
It was excrutiating realizing that these people that I had looked up to, whom I had thought knew Jesus and cared for people, were only interested in their own bottom line.
It didn’t matter that evangelical women were suffering from sexual pain disorders at twice the rate of the general population. It didn’t matter that their teachings were stealing women’s sexuality from them, making it harder to get aroused or reach orgasm, or artificially lowering their libido. It didn’t matter that their teachings were making it harder for women to identify when they had been date raped, or even raped in marriage. It didn’t matter that their teachings were causing divorce rates to increase.
They simply didn’t care.
And those statistics represented thousands of individual women. Extrapolated from our data, it’s millions. Millions of women who try so hard to get in the mood but just can’t. Millions of women who feel used. Millions of women who are seeking medical help and trying desperately to find a solution to the pain they’re having.
And they didn’t care.
Usually in these articles I try to teach something, or show one of our findings, but today I just want to get a little raw and explain why this matters so much to me.
We’re doing a three-episode arc on the Bare Marriage podcast right now looking at how purity culture authors are rewriting history.
Dannah Gresh, the “mother” of purity culture who wrote the curriculum that told girls as young as 8 that their “bellies are intoxicating”, which she defined as having the power to make adult men out of control, has just rewritten her bestselling book And the Bride Wore White. And she’s doing a publicity tour where she talks about why she rewrote it and what she corrected.
The problem?
She doesn’t mention any of our actual critiques. Instead, she uses strawman arguments to make it sound like we were critiquing her for something totally different.
She’s rewriting something without apologizing for what she wrote before, or telling people what she got wrong.
She’s rewriting the book while keeping the same messages on her website (and even in her publicity interviews for it; she talked about modesty at length in the Focus on the Family interview).
What should it look like if an author wants to apologize?
The best biblical model we have for this is Zacchaeus. He’s a tax collector who has been cheating people for years, and when he encounters Jesus, he doesn’t just change and say he’s sorry. He makes restitution, paying back anyone he cheated four times. That’s what change looks like. It’s not just saying “I’m sorry.” It’s recognizing that there was actual and measurable harm done that requires amends.
I asked on social media what it would look for an author to truly make amends, and I got some great answers! Liz Daye said:
IMO, the best apology/ repentance is one with no personal gain.
I’m not entirely sure what that looks like, but publishing a retraction that earns publicity points and enables them continue to use the same platform to publish doesn’t feel like repentance.
Maybe it looks like going back to school, earning credentials, and entering a helping profession?
Maybe it’s something away from the spotlight?
Maybe it’s more inner work and relational repair than outward facing ministry?
Here’s another answer:
First they need to be quiet and listen to those harmed by their books until they understood, really understood, the harm they caused, then follow that with listening to experts about the harm they caused and the healthy alternatives.
I like the emphasis there on listening to the experts!
Yet what have Dannah and Bob Gresh done?
Bob had a tantrum at Cedarville University where he said:
Dana led purity culture. She wrote about purity culture. And I’m sort of sick and tired of hearing everybody beat up purity culture as the most traumatic thing they’ve ever gone through. And I’m also sick and tired I’m I’m sick and tired of that woke message. And I’m also sick and tired of Christian leaders and institutions and people that won’t wake up to some of those messages and know that the good days weren’t always so good. There were mistakes. There were things that hurt people. Don’t let your life be wrecked by a book. It’s a book. Don’t spend your life criticizing, becoming cynical.
You can watch it in our podcast last week, starting at around 7:15:
Bob is sick and tired, y’all. He’s sick and tired of everybody complaining about purity culture and complaining about Dannah’s books.
That doesn’t sound like people who want to make amends. That sounds like people who want to keep profiting off of their messages.
Here’s what I don’t understand:
It isn’t hard to say “I was wrong.”
I’ve said it so many times. I’ve taken books out of print. I’ve taken down podcasts. I’ve erased about 1000 blog posts. I talked in The Great Sex Rescue about how seeing the data showed me I was wrong in some of my teaching, and I vowed to do better.
You know what didn’t happen? No one got angry at me. They just thanked me.
When we make things right, people feel healed. Validated.
They don’t tend to get that angry, because we all know that we can get things wrong. We know that we need to grow. And so when people do grow, people are often relieved and feel seen!
This week Kristin Du Mez made a factual error in an article she wrote. It wasn’t an error that would cause anyone decades of harm. It was simply a factual error in an argument she made.
You know what Kristin did? She wrote an entire other article telling people, “hey, I got this wrong.” She published in full the message she received detailing the error. She apologized and did a full mea culpa. She wrote that second article because, as she says, when you merely correct the first, most who saw the error will never see the correction. So she went all in.
She showed integrity. She showed that saying, “hey, I’m sorry” isn’t that difficult. It’s what you do when you got things wrong!
Do these authors not care that so many people would feel tremendous healing if they just said “I’m sorry”?
Kristin’s error didn’t harm people, but their messages did. Decades of marital turmoil. Decades of stolen sexuality or pain. Decades of heartache that could have been avoided if they hadn’t internalized toxic messages.
Bob may be “sick and tired” of us pointing this out, but the rest of us are here trying to figure out why these people don’t care. Why they’re happy to make millions off of toxic messages, but they aren’t willing to care for the souls they hurt in their wake.
And they’re doing it in the name of Jesus.
Having those lawsuit threats broke something in me. Not because I was scared of the lawsuits, but because I realized how morally bankrupt so much of evangelical publishing was. How could the vehicle that was supposed to teach us about God look so little like God?
That’s why we want the apologies! We want our pain validated. And we want to know that we weren’t just a means of people making money. We want to know that we actually mattered. We want to know that having faith in Jesus actually does change you and make you care for people.
When they don’t apologize, it is a cancer on the church.
And that cancer continues to grow with each tantrum, each strawman argument, each rewriting of history to make themselves seem like the victims.
I’m still holding out hope that at least one of these big name authors will say “mea culpa”.
I just want someone to say, “it mattered that so many people were hurt, and I’m so, so sorry I contributed to that in very real and specific ways.”
I know, of course, that it may never happen. But I so desperately wish that those authors would understand that I’m not quoting them or showing where they went wrong to get famous myself, or to make money myself, or any of the other things they accuse me of.
I’m doing it in the desperate hope that (1) people who have been hurt will realize that this wasn’t of God, and it wasn’t Jesus who was telling you these awful things; and that (2) I’ll be shown that belief in Jesus does make you want to help people.
I so want to believe that those who teach the Bible actually care about people. I so want to believe that people I used to think of as colleagues, and even prayed with, were serious about Jesus. I so want to believe it wasn’t a farce to make money.
I so want to have my faith restored.
And while I’m still waiting for that, I hope I can help others restore their faith.
Because none of this nonsense was ever of Jesus.
Was it Rebecca that suggested some of these authors retire and garden and maybe raise rabbits or something…? Just quietly step away from the public. That sounds so nice if I had the opportunity to do that now I would take it.
Well Bob, here’s the thing. You can say it was just a book but I doubt that you’ve ever sat through a divorce mediation with two people that were told that if they did everything according to your plan that married sex would be just wonderful and it wasn’t. There’s a husband that was told that if he did everything more or less right he’d be able to all the sex he wanted when ever he wanted and found out the hard way that things don’t work that way. There’s a wife that was told that was told that all men are animals and that she’s responsible for all men’s sins. She can’t shift gears from gatekeeper to wanton sex goddess and doesn’t understand why. Both of them just know that their marriage is in the toilet and that everybody has lied to them. Yeah, it’s just a book so get over it.
“…I’m sick and tired of that woke message. And I’m also sick and tired of Christian leaders and institutions and people that won’t wake up…”-Bob Gresh
Um… which is it? We are too woke, or we aren’t awake? Sounds like Bob has encountered a Catch 22 much like women who are supposed to be gorgeous for their husbands at all times yet never look tempting to other men.
“…I’m sort of sick and tired of hearing everybody beat up purity culture as the most traumatic thing they’ve ever gone through.” -Bob Gresh
I’m extremely (not sort of!) tired of the trauma my body has gone through because of evils of purity culture because it led to my abuse; it led to my rapes. I’m tired of the subsequent chronic pain. I’m tired of being taught that no matter what I did, as a female it was always.all.my.fault.
And while I can get therapy and work on healing from it now that I do not allow those abuses to happen anymore- abuses all done in the name of GOD, mind you- I am also thoroughly tired of knowing I will likely be working at this till my days are at an end on this earth. And I’m sick and tired of doubting God so often because His people have inflicted upon me so.Much.Harm. In HIS name.
Fwiw I’m also sick and tired of the work many men put forth to undo the harms THEY encountered, being told they couldn’t help themselves. How many men developed p*rn or s*x addiction habits because they were told, “I can do all things through Christ… except fight temptation because that is how God made men?”
But yes, Bob, we should all shut up and stop making YOU sick and tired because we all know that YOU are the “real” victim here, right? Right?
You’re not waiting for an apology, are you, Bob?
“You’re not waiting for an apology, are you, Bob?”
Why should Bob when in his own eyes He Can Do No Wrong?
Remember that Proverb about “The harlot wipes her lips and says ‘I Have Not Sinned'”?
Cross that over with Bob Dylan’s “God on Our Side”.
“their first instinct will be to lash out, not to apologize.”
In this, they are being conformed to their God of Hair-Trigger Wrath.
“For the next few years, when picking up the Bible I could only read the gospels. Everything else in Scripture was too triggering. I had to just look at Jesus, and Jesus alone, to comfort myself in what God was actually like. To see how God actually does care for people.”
i.e. Everything else had been poisoned.
Good thing they didn’t end up poisoning the gospels as well.
“It didn’t matter that evangelical women were suffering from sexual pain disorders at twice the rate of the general population.”
Being male I have obviously never experienced vaginissimus, but I understand it is very painful.
“Why they’re happy to make millions off of toxic messages, but they aren’t willing to care for the souls they hurt in their wake.”
Your sentence answers itself.
In the words of the prophet Pink Floyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kcet4aPpQ
“And they’re doing it in the name of Jesus.”
According to Jewish tradition, THAT is the actual meaning of the commandment “Taking God’s Name In Vain” — doing evil and claiming God’s sanction for doing so. Like God is saying “You do your own dirty work! Don’t drag me into it! Not even my mentioning my Name!”
Convenient how it has been redefined to mean cussing and cussing alone, Eh, My Dear Wormwood?
Nowhere do we corrupt so effectively as at the very foot of the Enemy’s altar!
“He makes restitution, paying back anyone he cheated four times.”
I was told once by a Jewish source that the significance of “paid back fourfold” was that in Torah, paying back fourfold instead of twofold was for stealing not only the victim’s property but the victim’s ability to make a living — such as tools of the victim’s trade or (nowadays) a working car in a city where cars are needed to get to work or the job requires driving a lot in the field (like a DoorDasher).
“First they need to be quiet and listen to those harmed by their books until they understood, really understood, the harm they caused”
As Joshua Harris (“I Kissed Dating Goodbye”) did.
This is more aimed to the Every Man’s Battle people but it is a similar sentiment.
Apologize for making my life harder. Apologize for making me feel like a monster every time I walked by a Victoria’s secret for like a year and a half. Apologize for acting like men have less self control than a stud bull.
Because it wasn’t you who taught me about female anatomy or breathwork ir how my fantasies were telling me about needs and pain I had encountered in my life or that no not all my fantasies were just me being porn brained.
Si yes I would like an apology.