Purity In Today’s World

I was a youth minister in the mid-80s, and we spent time talking with our youth about sexuality, and we inadvertently just went too far, and some of it became creating a picture of, this is what purity is, and if you're not hitting this bullseye, then there's something wrong with you. So listen to the message. If you live perfectly, if you make this choice and you walk it out, then you will have a wonderful marriage. All your dreams are going to be fulfilled on the back end. I basically told our kids that.

That's, you know, that's a prosperity gospel. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. When our boys were, I think, 15, 13, and 10, we heard this epic story. Actually, we thought of a friend of ours whose son was getting married, and his wedding was going to be his first kiss. And we had all kinds of questions about it. Like, wait, what?

The first one's going to be in front of all these people? Yeah. But at the other side, we're like, that is the greatest vision ever. That's what we want for our son. So remember, we went and shared it with him. Oh, yeah. I was like, we're doing this. This is amazing. And one of our sons was like, I'm doing that.

That's my goal, blah, blah, blah. And I'll never forget it. Should I say which one?

No, just say the oldest one. One of the other sons said, that is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. And it caused quite a conflict at our home.

But it caused great discussion, and I was thankful for that. But I think as parents, we're always wondering, what is the appropriate way? What does God want for our kids in terms of sexuality? Yeah. And back in those days, which would have been about 20, 25 years ago, there was a whole movement birthed around that sort of idea. It sort of became known as the purity culture. And so we're going to have a discussion today about this purity idea and sexuality and biblical and God's view on sexuality. So we thought, let's bring in some really wise experts.

Yes. People that we love that know a lot. We scoured the country, the world. Who would be the best to bring in? And our listeners are thinking Ron Deal and Dr. Julie Slattery. That's who's sitting in the studio with us today.

We're excited because these guys bring a lot of knowledge, a lot of wisdom, a lot of experience into this topic. Yeah. So welcome to Family Life Today. Let's have a fun conversation. Yeah. Looking forward to it. Thank you.

I think I got picked just because my calendar was open. I think really that's it. No, that's not true, Ron, at all.

Well, most of our listeners know Ron as the leader of our blended family ministry at Family Life. How many years? Coming on 10 years now. Oh, really? Yeah.

It's been great. And author and speaker and, I mean, really the best in the country, best in the world at blended. No question.

There's no one better. Absolutely. And very wise. And so that's a lot of information that he wants to share with us about sexuality. That's like your topic, right?

No, I don't think so. Well, it's a personal topic I'm interested in. Yeah.

We all are. And sitting beside you is a woman who's devoted your ministry really to helping not just women, but men and women understand God's heart and views on sexuality. You wrote a book years ago called Rethinking Sexuality. You have a podcast, Java with Julie, that talks about all things, but you really have a heart to help people understand God's heart on sexuality, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Sexuality has caused so much pain, particularly for women and men, and it's not sex that's caused the pain.

It's our misunderstanding, the world's perversion of it, and some of what we're going to talk about today with some of the teaching coming out of the church that hasn't been nuanced well, that's been a source of pain for people. That's a good way to say it. Do you remember that culture, that time where... I do. I do.

You do? I was a youth minister in the mid-'80s, and that's when it was swinging big. So it was sort of like coming on strong, and lots of people were talking about it, and books were coming out. Well, we had the purity reigns, the purity. What else was there?

And that was a major emphasis of youth ministry during those days. Oh, I bet. Yeah. And you're right in the middle of that. I was right in the middle of all of that. And I got to tell you, there were moments where I thought, huh, not sure I really buy into that. But there were parts of it that I was very drawn to, and we spent time talking with our youth about sexuality and designed things to try to activate conversations between they and their parents, and really kind of hit it head on, even though I was still wondering, I'm still struggling with some of this stuff myself from a theological standpoint as well as a practical standpoint. Well, what were the positives of that time?

Julie, what do you think? Well, I think you have to look at it in context with what was happening in society, the same way there are things happening in society today that are pressing forward this conversation. It was really reacting to the sexual revolution. So when birth control came along, it all of a sudden divided reproduction from sex, which meant sex could be recreational for the first time. And so we had a few decades of what that looks like, of free sex, and this is just about hooking up with people. And I think that the church was really saying, how do we protect our kids from this? How do we give them a better vision of what marriage could be and the consequences of just random sexual encounters, no strings attached? Because there was fallout from that.

Yes. And I think even as we talk about the fallout of purity culture, we have to also recognize that there's a fallout of just doing what the larger culture is doing. And so the answer isn't let's just get rid of biblical sexuality and standards that God gives us. And the church is really responding to that out of a healthy wanting to protect, out of fear of we didn't want our kids to experience what we experienced, that sort of thing.

And there's some good there. I would say it was an attempt to kind of right the ship. But a lot of times, as Julie pointed out, when society goes one direction, we swing the pendulum in the total opposite direction. We're trying to get it back headed towards north again, but sometimes we inadvertently swing it too far. I think in this case, looking back, even at the things that I taught 30 years ago in youth ministry, we inadvertently just went too far and some of it became crystallized, almost legalized. And the talk and the rhetoric was so strong, and we so wanted to help children see God's best for them and experience what He has designed for them, that we inadvertently started making laws and creating a picture of this is what purity is, and if you're not hitting this bullseye, then there's something wrong with you.

And I think we just swung it too far. And it's sort of like maybe now what we're doing today is trying to find a balance, trying to say what does the Bible really say and what would it look like going forward for parents and children and for singles and for married couples to really understand this well so that we are following God with our hearts. Yeah, and that's the thing I'd like to start there because it's like the reason Ann and I heard that story and like, oh, that's just awesome, is because it was a beautiful picture of, man, you want to protect yourself, you want to save yourself for a covenant of marriage.

And so this was this beautiful picture, like, oh, I've never heard of that. You know, like I've heard of be careful, draw a line, but never kiss until the wedding day. And again, one of our sons was like, that's my goal. And I think he hit it.

Yeah, he did hit it. I mean, it was— It wasn't on the wedding day, but it was his wife. He kissed—the first kiss was his wife. And then having our other son there was like, well, there's going to be the reactions you're going to get from almost anybody. And I tell you what, honestly, at the time I was like, I'm with my older son.

I think that's like a beautiful thing, but really. But Dave, I think the reason we thought it was a good idea was because we had experienced the trauma of our own sexual baggage before we got married. We carried that into our relationship, and there was all kinds of fallout from that. And so we're thinking, oh, let's really emphasize this because it's not wrong to encourage our kids to remain sexually pure before marriage. We all want that. And yet when we say we went a little too far, Ron, how do we go too far?

Like some parents are thinking, is there a too far? Isn't that what we want? Yeah, it's sort of like the messaging, again, best of intentions. But I think looking back, I think some of the messaging just got to be overpowering and controlling. We set up these parameters, and this is the way it's going to look.

This is what it's going to be. And all of a sudden you hear those stories, and now you're as a 16-year-old going, oh, so I have to wait until I get on my wedding day before I can kiss my spouse, let alone experience any sort of physical intimacy whatsoever. And so inadvertently, yeah, like now here are the rules. And if you don't follow these, then there's something wrong with you. You know, one of the things I think happened with the purity message is we took a biblical truth, which is God created sexual intercourse for the covenant of marriage, and we built a whole sexual theology only on that one piece of truth to the point where it became like a sexual gospel. And kids were growing up even thinking, my whole standing before God is based on if I've been sexually pure or not. And what's the definition of that? Is it having intercourse? Is it going too far?

Is it looking at pornography? And it lost sight of the true gospel, which is none of us are pure. Whether we've had sex or not, we all need the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And so it took a good teaching and blew it out of proportion and took it out of the larger story of God's heart for sexuality, what healing looks like, what redemption looks like, and it got unbalanced. And I also think a big part of it was that it was unbalanced in the messaging of guys versus the message to women. And so that's also a piece of the fallout of this. And if I could add to that, I would say we attached a prosperity gospel to this purity gospel.

What do you mean? Because not only did we say this is the only piece that we're going to focus on, sexual intercourse, save it for marriage, here's the line, then we said, and if you do, you will have everything you've ever hoped for and dreamed for, a wonderful marriage. Your physical intimacy will be amazing. It will be amazing. You'll never have problems getting pregnant.

Infertility won't be a problem. There were all these implied promises that came along with. So listen to the message. If you do right, you're going to get right.

If you live perfectly, if you make this choice and you walk it out, then all your dreams are going to be fulfilled on the back end. I basically told our kids that. That's a prosperity gospel.

If you do A, you get B, is the prosperity part of it. But the truth is there's a lot of beauty, like you were saying, Julie, in the message. It's what we want to say. I want to make sure our listeners don't misunderstand us. We agree with what it was trying to teach. But when all of those little principles became sort of rules and laws and standards and rituals, and it crystallized into this thing, then it became something else.

Julie, I want to go back to what you said. You said that it hit girls harder than guys. What do you mean by that? Well, kind of the narrative with the purity culture, and we still are feeling some of this today, is that guys really can't help themselves. They lust by nature, and so it's your job as a young woman to dress modestly to keep the guys in your life from stumbling. And you're really the gatekeeper of sex, and so you should expect guys to always be thinking that way, to be pushing the boundaries in dating relationships. And that went so far as I know some women are going to identify with this when there was any sort of lines crossed or even sexual assault.

A pastor might even say to the woman, what were you wearing? This is your fault. Were you in the wrong place?

Did you say no? And so it's created this culture, particularly within Christianity, of women are bearing the responsibility for everybody being sexually pure and the guilt, if they're not, including in marriage, of it's a woman's job to give her husband sex enough so he doesn't look at pornography and so that he's not tempted. And so it's not just what singles have heard, but it's the thinking about how we operate sexually and who's accountable for what.

Oh, I felt that pressure, and I'm sure a lot of listeners have been kind of taught over the years, maybe this will resonate, if your husband's going away on a trip for a few days, make sure you're intimate with him physically before he leaves because he's going to be so tempted that it's on you. So we as women felt this pressure like, oh, his purity is based on me. What do you guys think about that? It's wrong.

It's absolutely wrong. And I just want you to know, I've had a number of conversations as we've been planning for this conversation today, and over and over and over again, I've heard that there is a line between genders and some of the things that were taught and said communicated a message to women in particular that has been harmful in many ways. And it's prompted some conversation in my own household where I went to my wife and said, wow, I just read this. I don't think we taught that when we were doing youth ministry, and I never believed that you were somehow responsible for my sexual integrity before we got married or since we've been married. And my wife looked at me and kind of went, women did hear.

You're responsible. Julie, did you experience that? Yeah. I mean, you heard different things and read different books than we did. So going to marriage conferences when you would have the, all right, ladies, we're going to have our talk. A lot of it was that. It was about keep your husband so satisfied that he doesn't want to look anywhere else. That's a message I heard as a young wife. And is that not true?

Here's the hard thing about it. There are wisdom principles, and those wisdom principles are true. So even before when we were talking about the prosperity gospel, if you follow God's design for sex, good things will happen. That's wisdom, that there are consequences for sexual sin, our own and others against us. But that's very different than God's blessing and presence in your life.

And the same is true here. I think there are wisdom principles that we have to take sexual integrity seriously as a couple. And even as you shared that example, Ann, about traveling and being intimate, that's something my husband and I do together because we've talked about how can we protect our marriage, both of us. And it's something we've agreed on.

That's a great way to play offense and think about one another. But I don't ever think about that now in terms of it's my job to keep my husband from sinning. So I think we've got to be really careful, even as we nuance this conversation, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, yeah, most guys would say this is a really important part of my marriage. And when I'm disconnected from my wife sexually, when I don't feel like she's on that journey with me, something is missing.

So that's one piece of it. But where we take it too far is when we say to a wife, no matter what, you have to give your husband sex. Your pleasure doesn't matter.

Your exhaustion doesn't matter. This is all on you. And so, again, I think it's really critical that we don't just react to this cultural moment, but we go back to what is biblical and what is wise.

Two thoughts. One is I've learned to filter things we say to married people through the lens of how would this sound? What is the teaching to a single person? So if you say to a woman, you're responsible to keep your husband sexually satisfied and if he's going on a trip, you need to do whatever in order for him to stay pure. What does that say to single men? They have no ability to stay pure? Is that really what we believe? Is that really what we would want to teach? That doesn't hold water at all.

So run it through a different lens and then reflect on it. That's number one. Number two is, as Julie was talking, I was hearing, I'm responsible to my wife sexually. I'm not responsible for my wife sexually.

And I think this is a part of a bigger conversation. I'm responsible to my wife and what I bring as a husband. I'm not responsible to make her completely who she's supposed to be as a wife.

I love her and I give and I sacrifice. But who I am does not make who she is. If everything in marriage is about husbands and wives are responsible for the other person's needs and satisfying every bit of that so that they remain faithful in the marriage, wow. So we're teaching dependence? So we're teaching I'm not responsible for who I am and what I bring?

No, I am responsible for my sins, my temptations, my lust that is within me. That is my job as a follower of Christ, not my wife's job to take care of all of that so that I no longer struggle with those things. Now she helps me with that as a loving partner who cares about what's going on with me and she can, in her responsibility to me, offer things that are helpful. And that's a part of what meeting one another's sexual interests and needs is about. But it's not becoming responsible for the integrity of the other person.

Yeah, and so the dilemma becomes, what is my role in our marriage in terms of purity and in terms of the sexuality of our marriage as well? Because I can remember, thank God, this is 40, 35 years ago, confessing my struggle with pornography to Anne. This is before digital world pornography, so it was a different world, but it was still my struggle. And it was minor, but it was major to me. Yeah, it was minor. I mean, I didn't watch a movie.

I watched it for seconds, literally, but that changed my mindset. I had a secret now. Long story short, and we've shared this before here, but one of Anne's responses, I don't know if you remember this, was she felt like it was her fault. Like, I'm not enough. I'm not pretty enough. And I would say, it has nothing to do with you.

Of course, it had something, but not really at all. It's my temptation. And that's where we see the messaging to women show up, is in those moments. Right, so the question is, you know, if it's really a man or a woman struggle, a husband-wife struggle, what's a better message of what is purity? What should be our goal, single or married? Let's give a better explanation of how you would talk about this. There were some great things in that message, and there were some negatives.

What's better? And we've got Julie here. I mean, I can tell you're just ready to tell, because this is the world you live in. It is.

It is. And I do want to answer that question, but before I do that, I want to go back to something that you said, because I think this is key. When Anne was saying, no, this is involving me. It's bringing up my insecurity. I think that men want to compartmentalize the struggle and say, nope, this is something I saw. I love you.

I'm still attracted to you. This is between me and God. And I think one of the things that has gotten lost in some of this conversation is understanding that your battle, your sin deeply wounds your spouse. And even if it's my responsibility to deal with my stuff and my problem before the Lord, our baggage and our choices deeply impact our spouse, because we're one flesh. And so you can't compartmentalize and say, yeah, that's the guy's issue. And so I think we've got to know that while there is a compartmentalization in terms of my accountability for God, when we become one flesh, when one part suffers, both parts are suffering. And so you're saying, if the husband's saying, this has nothing to do with you, the wife is saying, but it does.

Yes. Because I feel it, and I feel— And that's so true. And what I was trying to articulate right or wrong was, if you made love to me every night, two times a day, I still think I might struggle with this. If you are the most beautiful woman in the universe, in my opinion you are, I still think I would struggle with this. And at the same time, I know this is crushing you. This is crushing our marriage. I just felt like I was trying to say to her, don't carry this alone. We're going to carry this as a couple. And you're part of my struggle, because you're my partner to help me win this. And now looking back, she helped me win this, not because we had more sex, but because she became my partner and said, I'm going to walk along this journey with you. That is so key. It's sexual intimacy that matters, not activity. And I think what women have heard and believed— Wait, wait, wait. What's the difference? Back it up.

Say it again. So sexual intimacy is sharing the journey of becoming one in every way, including sharing my struggles and my wounds and talking about the difficult things, forgiving each other. That's intimacy.

Activity is what we do with our bodies. And I think what Christian women have heard is, you need to give your husband sexual activity, which actually sabotages intimacy on so many different levels. And I think one way to unpack this and even answer the question that you asked, and we probably have to save it for next time, is to talk about 1 Corinthians 7, because that's where a lot of this teaching, particularly as it applies to marriage, gets kind of sideways. I think most of us recognize that the cultural messages about sexuality and purity point us away from God's design. But I think what's less obvious is some of the ways that we have not presented God's truth about sexuality well. And when that happens with children and teenagers in the formative years, the implications for dating and marriage can be profound.

I want to recommend to you a book that Julie Slattery has written that I think you will find really helpful if your thinking about purity and sexuality has been confused in any way. She's written a book called Rethinking Sexuality, God's Design and Why It Matters. And it's a book we've got in our Family Life Today Resource Center. You can order the book from us online. Our website is familylifetoday.com.

Or you can call to order. The number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website, familylifetoday.com.

The number to call to order Julie Slattery's book, Rethinking Sexuality, is 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. You know, these kinds of important conversations are a part of our mission here at Family Life, which is to effectively develop godly marriages and families. We believe godly marriages and families can change the world, one home at a time.

And our goal here at Family Life is to provide you with the kind of practical, biblical help and hope you need for your marriage and your family, to strengthen it, to undergird it, and to keep you pointed in the right direction, keep you looking at Jesus and wanting to please Him in all that you do. I want to say thank you to those of you who make these conversations possible, those of you who are regular Family Life Today listeners, some of you are monthly legacy partners with us, others of you will contribute from time to time. We are grateful for all of you who are helping us reach more people, more often, and on behalf of those who are being helped because of your generosity.

Let me just say thank you. In fact, we'd love to say thank you today if you're able to help with a donation of any amount by sending you a couple of books written by Matt and Lisa Jacobson, who were guests this week with us on Family Life Today. Matt and Lisa have written about ways we can affirm our sons and daughters. So when you make a donation today, you can request A Hundred Ways to Affirm Your Son and A Hundred Ways to Affirm Your Daughter by Matt and Lisa Jacobson. Both books are our thank you to you when you support the ongoing ministry of Family Life Today, and we appreciate you. And we hope you can be with us again tomorrow when Ron Deal and Julie Slattery will take us to 1 Corinthians 7 to show us what purity in marriage is supposed to look like. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.