What is purity culture?
Purity culture is the modern name for a movement built on rules, pledges and warnings meant to keep young people sexually pure until marriage, often with heavy shame attached to failure. The Bible says a great deal about purity — but the writers in this collection consistently locate it somewhere other than in external restraint, and that difference reshapes the whole subject.
Purity Starts Inside
Jesus was asked about ceremonial washing and answered by pointing to the heart as the real source of defilement. One commentator draws out what that does to any system of outward control:
James BoydThe Pharisees made clean the outside of the cup and plate, but that did not cleanse the inside, for it is what comes from within that defiles the man. The stream was bitter because the fountain was bitter. The fountain of a man's defilement lies in his own heart. An appearance of holiness and goodness might be — and had been — adopted by the Pharisees as an outward garment, leaving the seat of the disease untouched. There is nothing to be gained by attention to what is merely external. If the fountain were sweet the stream would be sweet; and if the heart were pure the man would be pure also.
Rules Look Wise and Feed the Flesh
Paul lists a set of prohibitions in Colossians 2 — don't touch, don't taste, don't handle — and rates them. The verdict is not that they are too strict, but that they achieve the opposite of what they promise:
William KellyThese things have indeed a show of wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Proud, fallen nature is satisfied even by these efforts to put down the body; whereas God would have the body hold a certain honour in its own place, and the Christian's body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The same trap can be set up by a believer with no ritual in sight, simply by making the standard the thing you lean on:
Hamilton SmithI may be seeking to restrain the flesh by my own efforts to keep certain rules and maxims, instead of looking to Christ to support me.
The Body Is Honoured, Not Suspected
Where purity culture can leave people ashamed of their own bodies, 1 Corinthians 6 gives the body a dignity that makes sexual sin serious. Notice also that the instruction is to run, not to wrestle:
Leslie M. Grant"Flee fornication." Here one is not told to fight, but to keep far away from it, as Joseph fled from Potiphar's wife. The Spirit of God dwells within our body in order to display in us the precious reality of His character in our practical lives. Being bought with a price — a price so infinitely great — we are certainly the property of the living God; and it is only right and fitting that we should glorify God in our body.
Marriage Is Honoured Too
Systems that treat sex as dangerous tend to drift toward treating singleness as holier. Hebrews 13:4 cuts that off:
C E StuartIt is honourable in all. No class of Christians is forbidden to enter such a state. Asceticism is foreign to Christianity; and to speak against marriage is part of the doctrine of demons (1 Tim. 4:3). But "fornicators and adulterers God will judge."
The wedding day is not the finish line either. Kelly reads the verse as a command rather than a compliment:
William KellyIt is in no way a certificate of respectability which all people possess because they are married, but a solemn charge to married believers that their use of the relationship be pleasing to the Lord in every detail.
Clean Living Without the Sneer
2 Timothy 2:22 pairs fleeing lust with pursuing righteousness, faith, love and peace alongside others. That second half is what keeps purity from curdling:
F. B. HoleWe are to "flee youthful lusts," that is, be very careful about purity and holiness of a personal kind, for without that, all this care about purity in one's associations would sink into mere hypocrisy. This will keep us from becoming mere separatists in the spirit of "stand back, for I am holier than you!" We shall rather be actively and happily occupied with what is good and of eternal worth.
What Happens When Someone Falls
The sharpest contrast is in how failure is handled. Purity culture often offers a long probation; Christ offered something else to the woman dragged before Him:
C. H. MackintoshIf they had met the woman on her way out from the Lord's presence and asked her how the interview ended, how they would have scorned the idea of "no condemnation"! They would have sent her to a reformatory, and after some years of moral reform they might begin to admit there was some faint hope for such a wretched creature. But what a poor foundation moral reform is! Let it never be forgotten that an unbreakable link binds these two sayings together: "No condemnation" and "Sin no more." Grace shines in the one, holiness breathes in the other.
Summary
- Source — Defilement comes out of the heart, not into it. Scrubbing the outside leaves the disease untouched.
- Substitute — "Touch not, taste not, handle not" has a show of wisdom and no power; proud nature is quietly fed by its own severity.
- Strength — Rules and maxims are what we reach for instead of looking to Christ to hold us up.
- Setting — The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and marriage is to be honoured; asceticism is foreign to Christianity.
- Second chance — "No condemnation" and "Sin no more" are inseparable. Grace speaks first; holiness follows. Moral reform is a poor foundation for either.