It wasn’t Purity that was the Problem
With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.
Psalm 18:26
My parents, and their generation, did a lot of bad things under the name of ‘purity’, so I am going to try to be as filthy as possible.
No, no one ever said exactly that. But that is the logical conclusion to a lot of posts that have been railing against the ‘purity culture’. They seem to wish to replace purity with filthiness. Something which has not only been tried, but has been actually rather prevalent over the years… indeed centuries. Indeed the entire human experience.
The people tried it in the days of Noah. Indeed Noah was the only holdout. Sodom and Gomorrah tried it. Nineveh tried it. The nation of Israel kept experimenting with it over the years. And Hollywood might as well have it as their theme.
But it is, in no sense, Biblical. While various people calling themselves Christians (and many who were Christians) might have made a big deal about the word ‘purity’, and have made all sorts of rules and laws and written tons of books on the subject… and did so without (often) a shred of Biblical justification for those rules and laws and books… that does not mean that the word that they were bandying about was a bad word.
Joshua Harris
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Psalm 24:3-5
The poster child for the purity culture was Joshua Harris, the author of ‘I kissed Dating Goodbye’. And then, over the years, he became the poster child for the fall of the purity culture. Moving from someone who boasted in how pure his courtship of his wife was, he became someone who excused his divorce and descent into the glorification of sexual depravity.
Which led many former followers of his to say , “See, purity is a bad thing!”
Let me put my conclusion right here in the beginning: There is nothing wrong with purity, but there was everything wrong with Joshua Harris. He was not a good person who was led astray by the pursuit of purity; he was an evil person who led thousands astray with a false definition of purity. What Joshua Harris taught was wrong from the beginning and is, if anything, worse now. He abandoned the Scriptures in the beginning, and his end is proof of concept.
The Fathers
Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.
I am small and despised: yet do not I forget thy precepts.
Psalm 119:140-141
Following Joshua Harris were thousands of fathers. Fathers entrusted with teaching purity to their sons and daughters, who abdicated their responsibility to follow the false teacher Joshua Harris. Ignoring the Biblical definition of purity, and the Biblical path to marriage, they got caught up with purity rings and courtship checklists.
And because there was no Scriptural foundation to their teaching, they couldn’t, and didn’t teach it. So when their children got older and rebelled, there was no check, no anchor.
Semper Reformada
Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Proverbs 30:5
The reformation doctrine of ‘semper reformada’ (always reforming) teaches us an interesting lesson. It teaches that we can never arrive. Not because the goal is ever changing, but because we are always sinning.
Purity has a Scriptural definition, and it has dozens of Scriptural examples and Godly methodologies. But because of sin, the church can never put its final stamp of approval on one set of methodologies and sit back and relax. Because each generation, indeed each family and person and couple, will find new ways of perverting those methodologies.
Each generation will make a great show of encouraging new virtues, some of which might even be virtues, while blinding themselves to new and improved methods of sinning.
True Purity
The way of man is froward and strange: but as for the pure, his work is right.
Proverbs 21:8
No one post can dream of attempting to think about even covering even a modicum of elements covered by the Biblical concept of ‘purity’, even merely the sexual purity that was the prime focus of the ‘purity movement’ in the United States. So the following elements in the following list are just really signposts. Snippets that are meant to point in the right direction.
1Co 7:2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
Mat 19:4-5 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Luk 16:18 Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
Pro 5:18-19 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
Deu 20:7 And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.
Mal 2:15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
Jer 29:6 Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.
Pro 5:18 Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
Deu 5:21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.
Lev 18:6 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.
Lev 20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
There. There’s a list of some of the many subjects that need to be dealt with in any attempt to get at Biblical purity… and that’s just sexual purity. But we don’t deal with any of them by ignoring purity and drinking from the sewer that is the filthiness of the world.
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books are published by Wise Path Books and include the children’s/YA books:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
As well as GK Chesterton’s wonderful book, “What’s Wrong with the World”, for which ‘Arthur’ wrote most of the annotations.
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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von