A Critical Look at Abstinence and Purity Culture

One of the most overlooked repercussions of contraceptives and abortion in the United States is how they opened up the floodgates for the so-called sexual revolution which, in turn, lead to the rise of pre-marital and extra-marital sex, STD’s, the AIDS epidemic and generation after generation of broken families. The cost of “sexual liberation” was actually very high. So high, in fact, that in the late 80’s and 90’s, a counter movement began to swell within the evangelical church known as Purity Culture. So, is the answer free sex or no sex; abortion or abstinence? That’s what we’re talking about today!

In 1997, Joshua Harris released his book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” I hated this book. From the title alone, I just knew that this was something stupid. You see, I 1997, I was 10 years old. By 2000, when I was 13, this book had really caught on in the Young Adult Christian market. I was just hitting the age when dating was even close to a viable option and now, here’s comes this dude in a fedora telling me “No.” To me, purity culture seemed like a semantics game – we're not dating, we’re courting – and yet I can’t tell you how many teens I knew that were “courting” someone different every few months. They had really prayed about it and knew that this guy or girl was “the one” God had for them... until God conveniently asked them to “lay that relationship on the altar” because He had something, or more accurately someone, better for them. Fast forward to today and Joshua Harris is divorced, both from his wife and from his faith as well. In fact, he has even written books and taught on how to “deconstruct your faith” and break away from Christianity. Behind him are tens of thousands of millennials who have deconstructed themselves and often blame the Purity Culture that Harris built his fame on as a primary culprit. Now, even many within the Church are wondering if the Bible’s prescriptions for sex, marriage, monogamy, heterosexuality, etc. All need to be reviewed, revised or left in the past. Did Christians, the Bible or even God get it wrong on sex?

Now, this might seem like an out of place video topic in the middle of a month talking about abortion, but we have to remember that Purity Culture was the evangelical response to the Sexual Revolution and the Sexual Revolution was only possible after the embrace of contraceptives and abortion. The free love movement was built on a culture of sexual exploration and drug experimentation. The problem is that both of those behaviors come with a heavy price tag and free love quickly ends up not being so free at all. Abortion rights came in as a false savior, rescuing men and women from the consequence of their own sins by shedding the blood of their unborn child and once again we see that the wages of sin is death. With the consequence of pregnancy being removed from the table through the act of literally and violently removing an infant from their mothers womb, these sexual revolutionaries could continue on in their debauchery unfettered by the burden of parenthood. Then, came the plague of STD’s and AIDs of the 70’s and 80’s and when the next generation was able to see the true price of free love, they began running in the far opposite direction. The pendulum shifted and as a natural reaction, out of the womb of the sexual revolution purity culture was birthed.

Now, all of this is a brief history lesson just to get us to today. Again, the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction as millennials have come to reject the purity culture standards that we were handed and even blame it for how jacked up we are. Instead, today’s motto is very reminicient of the early drive of the sexual revolutionaries with just a minor updated tweak – free love with consent. And that takes care of everything nicely, doesn’t it? Consent has become the final word and the only word in our culture to the question of “When can I have sex.” Consent, consent, consent. Consent is your green light, your get out of jail free card and if you get it in writing, it’ll even hold up in court. And this is why abortion access is such a critical piece of our cultural puzzle right now, without it men and women will once again be forced to reckon with the fact that pregnancy is the natural byproduct and designed outcome of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. So, is it time for purity culture 2.0?

No. One of the major reasons that purity culture failed is because frequently it was a form of idolatry. Rather than God being the final and ultimate source of our hopes, satisfaction and fulfillment, our spouse was. Sex became both the journey and the goal – resisting our urges for it before marriage and expecting it to be everything we ever dreamed and anytime we wanted it after. Instead, we cold showered our way to the wedding day only to find that sex is nice but not the most important thing and our spouse is just as imperfect and broken as we are. Marriage can never become all that we had built it up to be because, without realizing it, we were making marriage God. What makes all of this even worse is that we thought we were doing all of this for God, the real One. If we wait until we’re married to have sex, if we don’t even kiss before we’re married, if I dress modestly, honor my husband or for men love my wife, then God will bless my marriage – and by bless we mean make it everything I wanted it to be. Fortunately, God is not going to do that. He said we shall have no other gods before Him, including marriage, sex or even our spouse and in His goodness, He will allow each of our idols to expose themselves as false gods. This is a kindness of God, not to let us run our lives vainly and blindly worshiping anything or anyone less than Him. Chastity, fidelity, modesty and self-control are all wonderful things when they are the natural outflow of a life ordered towards God, but subconsciously using those things as bartering chips to earn God’s approval or demand God’s blessing show that He is not the center of our lives, just a means to an end. The answer is not found in the sexual revolution, in purity culture or anywhere inbetween. The answer is to love God with your whole heart, to keep Him at the very center and to recognize that He truly is everything that we need.