Purity and the Gospel: Part 1

February 27, 2019

by Jennifer Moodie 

     

   My childhood was full of adventure. We moved a lot, traveled a lot, and I even got to live outside the States for a time. Life was never dull, and I am not wanting for exciting stories to tell. I grew up in a Christian home and I practically lived at church. There was even that one time we actually did live in a church. I have lived in all the climates, been from coast to coast, and from Northern America to Southern America. All before I was eleven years old. God was not a foreign concept to me, and I made many professions of faith from the ages of five to seventeen. And I was sincere in every one of them. But more on that later. 

    From the age of 11 until I got married at 21, I attended the same church. That was the longest I had ever been in one church. When I was 13 I was old enough to attend the annual Ladies Conference hosted by our church. I know it was meant to be a teaching opportunity, and I wouldn't say it was a bad thing, but all I remember from those conferences were the "purity talks" and the illustrations that went with them. We were taught to be "good girls" until marriage, how to be the right girl so the right guy would find us using methodology, how to wait for the right guy to find us, and made to fear what would happen if we didn't wait. We had purity rings and pledged our purity to our fathers and God, and at any moment we could lose our rings and break our dad's heart. The focus of the whole thing was our identity in things other than Christ--or at the very least, our identity in Christ PLUS in other things like being a virgin, a wife, and a mother. 

All I remember was being afraid. 

   
   To put that into context, let me explain a few of the illustrations given. First, there was the rose. The leader would have one rose that was to represent our "purity" (which was synonymous with our virginity but also included physical contact with the opposite sex) . We were to behold and appreciate it's beauty. Then, we passed it around the room. We were instructed to touch it as much as we wanted, smell it, take a petal, and just overall manhandle it. Then we were to look at this poor, abused and tattered rose, and equate that to ourselves after not keeping our purity-which could include kissing, physical contact, dating around, or other things, not just losing our virginity. The teacher held up that rose and said "Now look at this poor excuse for a rose. What man is going to want to take that rose home to his mom now? Respect yourself enough to not let others damage you. You don't want to be damaged goods." The same idea was used with bubble gum, a glass of water that we all spit in...you get the idea. 
   My 'favorite' illustration was being given a construction paper heart. We would rip out pieces and that represented dating someone but not marrying them; rip another piece out and that stood for giving a piece of our heart away to a guy we had a crush on (not being emotionally pure). In the end all we were left with was this tattered piece of paper that no longer resembled a heart. This was, apparently, all we had left to give the man we actually married. See, we were also given the indication that even having crushes or dating left an imprint of that person on our heart that we could never get rid of and would then cause us to not be able to fully give our heart to our spouse. But one thing that was never even considered was the fact that they were talking to many girls who had been sexually abused or had had their purity taken from them by force.  This sent a very, very wrong message to those who didn't willingly 'pass around their rose' or what have you. This has been a message that damaged me and many, many other women I have talked to. That sense of guilt and shame and feeling of no longer being valuable or having worth was heaping trauma upon trauma. Not to mention that it compared girls, women, human beings made in the image of God, to objects that should be discarded. 
     

   Paul Tripp says it well in his book, Sex In a Broken World: How Christ Redeems What Sin Distorts, "The Bible never presents sexual sin as being of a different nature than other sins. Sexual sin may have different social and interpersonal consequences, but it is sin, no more no less. In Romans 1 sexual sin is listed along with envy, gossip, and deceit, even with something as mundane as disobedience to parents. That is why this is important. If you begin to think that sexual sin is a sin of a different kind or nature, it is logical then to wonder if the same biblical promises, hopes, and provisions apply to it." 

     Here's the thing: Jesus wants the rose. 

Unlike all the men that we were told would run away screaming if we were not untainted, or at least have a very hard time coming to grips with the fact they weren't getting that 'special, unwrapped gift' of our virginity or our 'firsts' (because that was apparently all men want, but let's make fun of the Muslims for hoping for their virgins), Jesus isn't scared away by our sins, even our sexual sins. The same grace that covers our sins of selfishness, envy, pride, hate, idolatry, or dishonesty covers the sin of lust and sexual immorality. Nothing is outside the reach of the cross.  

   Modesty. This is such a loaded word. My church, family, and aforementioned ladies conference would tell us what that meant to them. Basically it boiled down to the idea that if you respected yourself, you covered as much as you could. Those who dressed "immodestly" (i.e. wore pants, sleeveless shirts, had a neckline that went more than two fingers below the neckline, showed any curves, or wore skirts that came above your knee) were not respecting themselves and were trying to draw the lustful attention of men. We dressed modestly to keep men from lusting after us because they needed us to do that for them since they couldn't control themselves because "that's just how God made them". If they fell into sin, it was our fault for "advertising what wasn't for sale". A teen girl I knew had a married man send her inappropriate notes and it was said "Well, what did she expect? She knew what she was doing and was asking for it by dressing like that". It was clearly communicated that a man's poor behavior against a woman was a result of his natural lust being "lead on" by a woman not carrying out her responsibility to be modest. In essence, sexual harassment was the woman's fault. I have heard it clearly said on the topic of rape "Well.... I mean, rape is wrong, but when you dress like that, you are asking for it." Just let that sink in. I don't think I need to expound. While it wasn't always explicitly said like that, that idea was most definitely implied when certain issues were talked about-expect to be treated according to how you're dressed. 

   

   One of the sessions at said conference had a slideshow where the teacher took magazine pictures and circled all the areas where the models were "immodest”. This included the pectoral muscle in the underarm because it draws the imagination of men to the breast. A slit in the skirt drew the attention to the legs and made men's imaginations wander upward. *facepalm* We carefully analyzed many different models in different outfits and judged them based on their clothing. It taught me how to judge a book by it's cover and to be constantly and carefully looking at women's bodies. In all this, I quickly learned that my body was a dirty thing to be covered for the sake of others who couldn't control their own thoughts and desires. The more 'desirable' of a body you had, the more you had to cover it up. Objectification of women was taught by women. The overarching lesson I came to believe was that women's bodies were essentially evil, and every woman not dressed according to the standard we had was doing so with the goal to tempt men-including your dad, brother, boyfriend, future boyfriend, etc.-to fall into lust or sexual sin. We didn't want to be like them. Our clothes protected men from us. But on the flip side, it very quickly produced the idea that if you wanted to get a guy's attention, the best way was to flaunt your body. Guys ignored me because I dressed modestly, but they sure took notice of those other girls. And at the age of 17, I wanted the attention of guys. Through the overemphasis on our outer appearance in relation to men, I came to the conclusion that 1) Guys are only attracted to seductively pretty girls 2) In order to keep your guy from looking elsewhere, you had to be prettier and more seductive than all the other women he would come in contact with. Imagine how well that played out in a teenager and young married woman's life. Yup. About as good as you'd think. It put me in a prison...a self-focused prison. And that leads into the next point.....


{Read part 2 here}

   

   

*I just wanted to clarify: I am for Biblical modesty and did not mean to "bash" the idea of teaching modesty alone, but what I take issue with is the emphasis on the wrong reasons. I don't know if I made that clear enough and don't want to hurt those who choose to dress in a way I don't for the right reasons and with a heart to glorify God. It wasn't the standards but the heart behind them that I was referencing.