What Comes After the Purity Culture Reckoning

RACHEL JOY WELCHER had written a thought provoking article that offers some valid criticisms, but falls short of offering practical help for many teens. This is an article to get us thinking.

What she got right: Shallow, emotional decisions to maintain purity do not endure. The evangelical world needs to get over its addiction for decisions and needs to emphasize obedience and direction.

Such decisions can be made on the basis of false information and false promises. Promising youth that, if they and their future spouse stay sexually pure, they will have an amazing sex life is fiction. Also, saying that those who have participated in premarital sex will always be handicapped is not necessarily true, either. Amassing a quantity of reasons for staying pure may convince some, but the biggest reason boils down to one: obedience to God. You can mitigate the chances of pregnancy or STDs, for example. And when young people see Christians who are unhappily married and lost people whose ethics were looser happily married (or happily shacking up), all of a sudden the reasons for purity have disintegrated, unless God is first in their lives.

What she gets right under certain conditions: If we had youth groups, for example, that studied the Life of Christ or Theology Proper, we might have youth groups that are much smaller than we now have (particularly if we expected kids to think). Not always. Some churches draw thinking people, but there are only so many who are willing to love God with the mind. So that raises the old debate over outreach vs. developing believers via deep Bible study/discipleship. We try to do both, but outreach brings in, in-depth teaching drives out.

What she misses: We need concrete guidance. How far is too far? What are some practical precautions? The older ARE to teach the younger, and we all need wisdom from other members of the Body. Sometimes what the older teach is incorrect, and sometimes wisdom from the Body of Christ is nothing more than parroting some party line. And that, I think, is what happened. So we all need to be constantly reforming, as she advocates.

Men do tend to be aroused more visually, which is part of the reason some Islamic cultures cover women so thoroughly. But are men responsible for their choices? Yes. And to put the whole burden on women is wrong. Christians, however, should be cooperative in helping one another stay pure.

Young people do need specific guidance. Not all young people have sense, want sense, or how to apply concepts to particulars. They need other members of the Body of Christ to help them do this.

Focusing on Theology and God’s Word is — I agree — the best medicine. But not all young people, some of whom are genuinely saved — can even pay attention enough to delve deeply. Still others can barely read, etc. Not everyone is upper-middle-classed from a decent family.

So is our only concern to help dedicated young people stay pure, or less-dedicated but professing believers too? That is the question.

And what specific guidelines do we offer? Wisdom, as in the Book of Proverbs, is specific. Nebulous direction isn’t going to be helpful for most. Not everyone is bright. I would never attend a church where you had to check your brains at the door. But some people need that kind of church, and the only way they grow is in such environments. Again, not everyone is bright.

I agree with Ed on the danger of “decisions.” The decision we need to make is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. Then we need to remember that Jesus said that if we love him, keep his commandments.

My wife has been reading a book called “The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended”. She has read me some excerpts and it looks like a thought provoking challenge to rethink how we as Christians approach this subject. I am not suggesting that I agree with all the conclusions of the book, but neither do I agree with the positions of the authors that are critiqued in the book either. So far, I see it as a needed balance for an off balance subject.

This seems like a corollary of the failure of the church to properly consider the relationship between Biblical principles and applications.

Much of the church in the 70-80s (except fundies) discarded the rules of modesty and chastity from the 50s-60s. Then in the 90-00s, a bunch of people entered the vacuum, thought about Biblical principles, and developed some hard and fast rules. They weren’t the rules of the 50-60s - they made new rules. Make this promise; wear this ring; don’t date-court instead; go to this conference.

But the problem is that those rules, as much sense as they made to people like Josh Harris and his readers, were only shadows of God’s Word and in reality they have no power in stopping the flesh.

Applications are great. But they have to be your applications.