Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Was Purity Culture a Bad Idea? 6 Myths You Should Kiss Goodbye

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Were purity rings, banquets, and pledges the best or worst thing to happen to Christianity? Did purity culture teach good lessons about chastity, or offer a sexual prosperity gospel? Did it give a spacious vision of faith or narrow the scope of God's concerns to sexual morality? Did it train us to celebrate sex or create shame around sex? In this episode, Keith and Patrick explain purity culture to those who did not grow up around it and explore how it caused damage in Christian culture. They warn against swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction by abandoning a Biblical sexual ethic and offer a new model: sexual wholeness and integrity. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook) and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TMBTpodcast. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Keith, did you have any good Christian pick-up lines when you met, Christine? Well, I'd be able to Christian in college, and I missed a lot of the weird. Christian culture stuff. Did you get stuck in it? I'm thinking you may not have either. I had some

good lines. You want to hear them? Good dating lines? Yeah, well, that's a good Christian pickup line. Oh, okay. You ready? Maybe. Are you trying to pick me up? You're already taken, but so it goes. How about this one? Hey, last night I was reading the book of numbers when I realized I didn't have yours. Why are you talking so breathy? Well, that's how I talk when I tried to do a pickup line. It's been a long time. Is that how you talk? I haven't tried one since, I mean, Emily and I got married 10 years ago, and then you added that our dating relationship, and it's like 80 years ago. So here's another one. Here we go.

Is your name Faith? You can't even say it. I can't even say it. Is your name Faith? Because you're the substance of things hoped for. You are so booboo. One more, one more. Want to practice speaking in tongues together?

That is gross. That's so creepy. I want to say to my normal ones. You sound like some old man trying to pick up an old man. Some stranger or something. I had to read those. Those are all pretty funny. No, in all seriousness, today we're going to be talking about purity culture.

So you thought you start with... So I thought I'd start with a joke. I thought I would pick up line. And we're not actually going to spend really any time talking about dating today. But I will say this. If you are a child or your children are listening, we are going to be talking about sex and sexual matters. So just be able to be. aware of that before we go in here. Keith won't say anything because he's afraid to say potty words,

but I'm a little less squeamish than he is. We are not going to talk about anything explicit, but Patrick is going to say the word sex as often as he can. Yes, I am. So let's talk about purity culture. What is purity culture? Well, this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, is that you kind of get sucked up into Christian culture, but thankfully I feel like I missed a lot of that whenever I became a Christian because I didn't become a Christian in high school. And I think a lot of purity culture started in high schools. Now, it got well beyond that in the college and into church life in general. Well, it's funny you say that because I for sure experienced aspects of purity culture. I don't think it had as much of an impact on me because I didn't experience them until I was

in college. But it feels like it's very much so a youth groupy thing. And it's still a kind of college-age youth group type thing that continues, really up until people get married. Well, I've read so many articles about it recently. It keeps popping back up, like when the shootings, they're very, very sad shootings in Atlanta took place. For some reason, a lot of conversation on purity culture developed. Well, it happened because the shooter, who went and shot this law and said that he was shooting these women because they were a temptation to him, that they were tempting him to lust. And his idea of responsibility, he's obviously mentally ill. Yeah, he's got a lot of issues.

I'm not saying that to defend him. I mean, it's terrible. But that's why he said he did it is basically, I was trying to protect my own purity. And this was his solution, which is obviously an entirely ungodly, evil, wicked thing to do. Absolutely, 100% horrible thing to do. I'm not sure I'm ready to tie that directly to purity culture.

Yes, I'm just saying that's why it got tied to purity culture because he used that language of lust and protecting myself, which comes out of purity culture. And so then you had all the think pieces and all the magazines about purity culture. So let's define it if you're not. familiar with it. So purity culture launched all kinds of ministries from true love weights to silver ring thing, all kinds of different books out there that we'll get to eventually. It came with purity rings and people attended purity balls. These are daddy daughter dances in which both dad and the

daughter signed pledges. It was almost always... And a lot of the purity rings were given from fathers to their daughters. They'd take them out for a dinner and they would give them a ring as a symbol of... And we'll get back to this throughout this episode, but all of these were centered on the girl. In other words, there was no purity ball or purity ring with young boys, men involved in it, right? It was for sure purity culture that men were a part of, but it was disproportionately emphasized among young women. The focus was on the girls. So again, I missed all of that in the Christian culture bubble, but my guess is that you guys didn't, you and Emily. So Emily grew up in a Southern Baptist church, so she very much so didn't miss it. I've never got in the

Central remember that this was a major, major emphasis at her church. And that's what's really interesting, is if you talk from person to person, you'll hear lots of different stories. So Emily got a purity ring, and she lost it. And so I asked her, she didn't lose it because she did anything. She lost it. I was like, well, tell me about that. She said, well, I think I was excited about the purity ring because it was finally I could pick a piece of jewelry for myself. So that's what got her excited. And when I lost it, I just didn't really think about it. No one made a thing about it. How old was she at the time? High school? Somewhere in there. But then I talked to someone else who had the exact same. Actually, it seems like every woman I talked to tells me that they somehow misplaced

their purity ring. And so a different one had a very different story. And she was like, I lost it one weekend. And I was terrified to go back to school because I thought people would notice that I didn't have it on. They would assume that I had done something terrible over the weekend. Do you go to Christian schools? Are these people? My wife went to a Christian school. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. This person, though, didn't go to a Christian school. It was just kind of a Southern Christian culture. But then I talked to another person who said, I get the problems with purity cultures, and that's what we're honestly going to focus her time on. But she said, to be honest, I remember my dad taking me out to dinner and it was actually really meaningful.

And I remember looking down at that ring and thinking, I do want to stay pure. And she felt like it was her dad protecting her and taking care of her. And I just want to say that was I think around this conversation, well, I think there's probably far more problems with purity culture than not personally. There are people who were helped and who have some positive memories, and we can't just throw that out. Well, one thing we've learned is that there are a lot of strong feelings about it because we knew we were going to talk on this topic. And so we put it up on our Facebook page on our Twitter account at 10 Minute Bible Talks. We had a ton of responses. Lots of people responded. Men and women. Here's one of the things I found interesting is that

a lot of people sent emails to us directly. In other words, they didn't want to post on a Facebook page or tweet something, but they had something to say, but it was too personal for them to put out in the public sphere. And we'll reference some of those comments that people sent us anonymously, but it's a really powerful thing in people's lives. And for some people, it was really good. For a lot of people, it did a lot of damage. Yeah, so on the masculine side, and I think this was done for both men and women, boys were often asked to sign pledges. And again, I think women were as well. In fact, I think we've got the words for it right here. I believe that God's design for my sexuality is for me to seek purity. And seek purity, because I saw the pledge. Our friend Dan

shows this. And seek purity were in all caps. So this is what you're supposed to do. Above all else seek purity. Keep going. I am making a commitment to God myself, my family, those I date, my future mate, ooh, a rhyme, and my future children to be sexually pure from this day forward. So on one level, I read this and I think, well, that is not a bad thing to commit yourself to. To want to be pure. God calls us to be pure. Jesus says, blessed or they're pure in heart. There's purity. But what I find so interesting is that it has narrowed purity down to just sexual sin. It reminds me of this conversation I had with a seminary in Dallas. I had come off staff with Camps Crusade. Some of my late 20s, I'm trying to find a seminary. I'm so glad you didn't go to Dallas for seminary. Oh, gosh. You

would have never come back. Oh, my gosh. You don't know. I mean, sometimes you look back and go, the Lord saves you. The Lord saved me. I had no idea what I was doing. But I had this conversation with the admissions, I think, registrar. I'm not sure exactly who. It was a representative of the school trying to get me to come there. And he said I'd have to sign a no drinking pledge. And I was like, well, you know, I wasn't a big drink or anything. I'm like, I got to sign a big drinker. Keith's like, I haven't, not drinking six years. I really started when I was 14.

I haven't stopped. At that point in my life, I hardly drank at all. But they wanted to sign me this pledge. So I'm like, well, so like I couldn't have a glass of wine at Christmas Eve. I'm like I said, my late 20s. And they go, no, not if you come to Dallas. You got to sign this pledge. And you got to not do that.

And I thought for a second, I go, well, you don't have anything about wife beating. Are you okay if I beat my wife? And there's just like a pause in the other hand. He's like, what do you mean? I go, well, you're asking me to sign a pledge to not drink, but you're not asking me to sign a pledge to not beat my wife, so you're okay with wife beating? And he goes, no, that's wrong. Well, why one pledge for drinking and not a pledge for wife beating?

And he said, well, because wife beating is obviously very clear in scripture. And I said, so drinking's not? And he goes, no, it's a gray area. So then I asked him, I said, are there other areas the Bible leaves gray that your seminary makes black and white? And there was this long pause. And that was the end of my conversation. with Dallas Seminary. I didn't go there because I thought if the Bible leaves something great,

maybe we should, but maybe we shouldn't make things clearer than the Bible does. And so back to your point is why focus on sexual purity among all the other sins that you could look out? Did the exclusion of so many other things? Just like I was asking the seminary, why focus on alcohol when there's so many other things that you should want from my character? If you're going to start pledging to things, let's pledge to like the scriptures and to Jesus. Let's don't just take out one sin and make that the deal. And that's what this ends up communicating to teenagers and to others, is that for some reason, sexual sin is the worst sin. There's nothing worse that could happen to you as a man or woman than having sex before marriage. Okay, but like you said at the beginning,

this is a mixed back. And while we think there are a lot of negative things, a lot of damage done because of purity culture, there are some issues that it raises that I think are helpful. And so let me just pause here to ask you, doesn't the Bible say that sexual sin is, in some sense, more serious or has more serious consequences? It's a sin against yourself, Paul tells us, in 1st Corinthians 6. How do you process that? Is it totally wrong to make a big deal out of sexual faithfulness? I think what I would want to say is, well, yes, sexual sin is a big deal. And not just sexual sin, all sin is a big deal. It's difficult to create a taxonomy of sin. Like, hey, let's go ahead and just put in order, here's the worst one,

here's the second worst one, here's a third worst one. But to reframe this, if you have to pick between your son being a greedy jerk who is rude to woman, unkind to people around him. But a virgin. But he's a virgin. Man, he's a virgin. Ping ding. He might be because of his personality.

Might be because he never had a shot. Now, my point here is which one of those is worse? Now, if you're asking me, maybe I'm some crazy person. I would rather have a son who is generous, kind, selfless, and who's committed the sin of having sex before marriage. And he's repented of it and he's fighting against that temptation. I think I would rather take a son who has good character and has done this one terrible deed that can't be undone. I mean, here's another example. It comes from the Christian school thing.

At Emily's Christian school, if you got pregnant, you're kicked out. And lo and behold, there's no pregnancies at this school. Now, it's not because people weren't having sex at the school. People were having sex. And people got pregnant because you know what you call people who have sex. Yeah. Mom and dad. That's exactly right. And so people got pregnant and they got abortion. I mean, there's just no way around it. There are people getting abortions inside of her school. You're guessing this. Well, I'm guessing. Well, I've talked to other people who said I've heard of specific cases of this happening. Now, that wasn't from my wife. I don't know that she ever personally did, but I know other people who went to the school. And I'm bringing it up to say they communicated to students at the school the worst possible. thing you can do is have sex and get caught because you got pregnant. That's the worst possibility.

And I just, I want to resist that. I want to at the same time say sin is serious. Your sexuality is serious, what you do. And we're going to talk more about this later. We've got it in the podcast. God does have a vision for your sex life, but he also has a vision for how you treat others. He has a vision for greed. He has a vision for your pride. He has a vision for your selfishness. And we shouldn't be elevating sex into this singular place. So sexual purity, sexual faithfulness, really important. But what? We shouldn't focus on it and make it the deal and the measure of the Christian life. I think that's right.

When you make it the barometer, when you fixate on it, I've talked with some guys, you ask him, hey, how are you doing with God? And the amount of times I've heard this response, well, I haven't looked up porn in a long time, so I'm doing great. Well, I mean, one, I'm like, yes, that's great. Please keep fighting the battle against porn. But if you watched porn last night, that may not mean that you're in a terrible place with God right now.

Conversely, if you didn't watch porn last night, it may not mean that you're in a great place with God right now. That's part of the picture, but man, that is not the whole picture. So let's go back and try to figure out where did purity culture come from. And we should go back at least to the 1990s when it really started to become more popular. And there are some social things happening that probably contributed to the rise of purity culture. One is that in the early 90s teen pregnancy was at an all-time high. A second thing is that AIDS was a huge national crisis. In fact, AIDS was the number one cause of death in men between the ages of 25 and 44. So that's the context that this comes out of. And context caused things to happen. For example, this quote from Michael Scott where he talks about how he wants to give to the apparent AIDS epidemic in Afghanistan.

Okay, you know what? I will not donate my winnings to comic relief since apparently it doesn't exist. I am going to donate to Afghanistanis with AIDS. Nope. I think you mean the aid to Afghanistan. No, I mean Afghanistanis with AIDS. Afghani. What? Afghani. That's a dog. No, that's Afghani.

That's a shawl. Wait, canine AIDS? No, humans with AIDS. Who has AIDS? Guys, the Afghanistan nannies. You know what? No. No. AIDS is not funny.

Believe me, I have tried. There are certain topics that are off limits to comedians. JFK, AIDS, the Holocaust. The Lincoln assassination just recently became funny. I need to see this play like I need a hole in the head. And I hope to someday live in a world where a person could tell a hilarious AIDS joke. It's one of my dreams.

We're not saying that to actually make light of anything. It's just a funny office quote. But the point in here is the purity culture came in a context. We had the AIDS epidemic on the rise. We had teen pregnancy on the rise. And the true love waits rally. So these were these big events where people would be taught some of the lessons of purity culture. They're adopted by the SBC in 1993.

Over 100,000 purity cards are signed. In 1994, there's 25,000 in Washington, D.C., 210,000 cards on the National Mall. So these high school students were told to come to D.C. and sign their purity card and put them out on the mall, and they collected a bunch from their friends and took them with them. So the true love weights curriculum was huge, but that was kind of targeted in one denouement. like you said, the Southern Baptist Convention. The book that really went national and affected Christians of all denominations and no denomination at all was the Josh Harris book, I Kiss Dating Goodbye. Did you read that book, Patrick? I actually never read it, although I was given many principles from it. I mean,

it was cited continually. I mean, it sold millions of copies. He must have made a ton of money off of it. So he was 21 years old whenever he writes this book, and it tells the story of his and his wife's relationship. Yeah, I think he gets married like a year later than that. He kisses his wife at the altar for the first time. But kind of the essence of the book is that courting replaces dating. So high school students, college students, you shouldn't date people in kind of a one-on-one environment, but instead you go and you talk to the parents, you spend time with family and friends and in groups. But you don't single up and date one another. And eventually Josh Harris has these really significant concerns, maybe even heard he's. He's left the Christian faith. But he had concerns that were big enough about his book that he asked the publisher to stop publishing it. But he had a huge impact on a lot of people. There's a documentary that he put together called I Survived. I kissed dating goodbye. So Josh Harris has had a ton of regrets about what he taught in that book. I read the book, not as a student myself, but after I was married and had kids as kind of a dad trying to help my kids think through dating. And I think Josh Harris

has gotten probably a worse rap than he deserved. I don't think it's this all bad as people make it out to be. Clearly, he has some reservations about it. Again, I haven't read the book, but a lot of people have said that he was not the worst offender of the bunch. But like you said, he's had reservations about it. And we'll explore more why. Because I can imagine there's some people, maybe even parents who are listening to this thinking, well, gosh, this doesn't sound that bad. like all these things from my kids. What could possibly be the problem here? But this purity culture thing, a lot of stars picked up on it. Brittany Spears wore a purity ring. Jessica Simpson, same thing. Selena Gomez. They all had their purity rings. Even Miley Cyrus had one. Remember she was

Hannah Montana? My kid used to watch her all the time, the Hannah Montana thing. But then all of a sudden she came out as Miley Cyrus. This is before she's obviously a lot more, I guess, you'd say, sexual now. and her dances and her songs and all that stuff. But she had a purity ring and bragged about it, loved her purity ring. Yeah, let's listen to this clip. It's Miley Cyrus first, and then right after her, it's the Jonas Brothers talking about their purity rings. I am living my life the way that I think should be lived, and that's staying pure.

They're actually purity rings, and their promises to ourselves with the God that will stay pure until marriage. So, again, I mean, it's pretty amazing. No one probably expects Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers now to have said those things who talked about remaining peer. And we've got this other great clip from purity culture. Let's listen to this one. I want you to listen to me.

I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Ms. Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time. Never. Now, obviously, we're joking. But here's what's interesting. So Bill Clinton was famously from the Southern Baptist Convention.

He grew up in Arkansas, so this is partially part of his background. What I find interesting about the Bill Clinton case is that it relates to something else, which is that in purity culture, the question of what is sex was always a question. And for many people who signed these cards, who took these purity rings, it simply became penetrative sex is sex. Anything less than that is sexual, but it's not actual sex. So the question, am I a virgin or am I not a virgin, all centers around penetrative sex. If you haven't done that, you're still a virgin. And so why would someone like Bill Clinton say, I didn't have sex? Well, it's actually interesting to me.

It seems like he's coming out of the same cultural movement, which is, well, we had oral sex, so that doesn't count. That's not real sex. It's only penetrative sex, ergo, I did not have sex with that woman. So if it's possible, I'd like to distinguish three things. And it's probably take the whole episode to do this. But first, I'd like to distinguish Josh Harris's book from purity culture. I kiss dating goodbye or any other book out there is not the same thing as purity culture. Purity culture is something that churches developed, that Christians develop, Christian groups,

like Campus Crusade or other campus ministries developed around the idea of keeping kids sexually faithful. So purity culture has developed more rules and more penalties than necessarily you would find in any one book or any one teacher. And I also want to distinguish purity culture from the biblical call to sexual faithfulness. Those are different things. We are all called to treat our body in a way that it is a vessel from God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and to obey God in the sexual area of our life. That is not the same thing as purity culture. Unfortunately, as people have responded to some of the abuses within purity culture, they've swung the pendulum to the other side, and the cost is that they throw out the entire biblical sexual ethic. That is not what we are trying to do.

I think you and I both firmly agree. We have actually a very, very high view of sex. Sex is incredibly powerful. It's like a nuclear power. Now, here's the deal. You can use nuclear power to blow up cities or you can use it to power cities. And sex in its proper context in marriage, it is a wonderful, great, good thing. But that also means because it is nuclear energy, we should take it seriously. We should have a high view of it. And so we shouldn't throw out the biblical sexual ethic and all of a sudden start saying, well, I don't like purity culture, so I can have sex with whoever I want to or I can have sex in any committed relationship. We do need to say true to what the Bible says. Well, I think you're right that a lot of people have used purity culture as a reason to throw out not just the biblical morality around sex, but also Christianity in general. And it's why I want to talk about it today, because I think that purity culture is a misrepresentation of what the Bible teaches. And unfortunately, when people get exposed to this misrepresentation, when they get exposed to the myths that we're getting ready to walk through that make up purity culture, it causes them. in some cases, to walk away from Jesus.

On the flip side, we're going to spend the rest of the episode walking through some myths around purity culture. And the problems that purity culture creates, I think there needs to be space in the church for people who were a part of purity culture to process these things, to maybe process some of the hurt, some of the harm that's happened in their life, how maybe purity culture has misshaped their view of sex, misshaped their view of themselves or their spouse. There's some serious damage, some very, very serious damage that purity culture has done. So let's go ahead and hop in. The first myth is this, that if you follow a...

the right rules for sex and dating. If you save yourself until marriage, then you'll get married, have mind-blowing sex, and great kids. If you don't follow the rules, you're going to be cursed. You'll have maybe never get married. You'll maybe have terrible sex in your marriage. Your life will go to hell. I think most of us listening to this would reject the prosperity gospel, the idea that if I give money to Jesus, he will give it back tenfold or a hundredfold. Wait a second. What? Have you, is that your retirement plan to give it all the way now? I'll be right back.

No, you can give me God. We all would reject the prosperity gospel when it comes to finances, but unfortunately, a lot of people have accepted the prosperity gospel when it comes to sexuality. And like you said, if I follow God's rules for sexual faithfulness, then I will be rewarded. Listen to this quote by Justin Bieber. I'm a believer. You're a believer? Can I just say this.

Justin Bieber really does seem to be a very sincere Christian. We're about to disagree with something that he says because it's sexual prosperity gospel. But go ahead and read. Kudos to Justin B. You know how hard it would be to try to walk with Jesus in the context that he lives in? Oh, I have no idea. So I'm all for him, but it doesn't mean that he's above examination. So here we go.

Here's what he says. He said this, by the way, to Vogue magazine. Sometimes people have sex because they don't feel good enough because they lack self-worth. Women do that and guys do that. I wanted to rededicate myself to God in that way because I really felt it was better. for the condition of my soul. And I believe that God blessed me with Haley as a result. There are perks. You get rewarded for good behavior. So the first half of that I think we'd actually really agree with. Sure, it's great to rededicate yourself to God, and it really does have benefit to your soul.

And it is easy to use sex to help bolster your sense of self-worth. It's the second half that becomes really problematic, which is, hey, I rededicated myself, and that's why God gave me Haley. Yeah, so Haley is now his wife. And when he says these are the perks, you're rewarded for good behavior. I think there are a lot of people who would say to him, Justin, that's not true because I was sexually faithful and I didn't get married and I wanted to be. Or I was abused as a kid. Or I followed the rules and it didn't turn out well for me. I think that's the major problem with this. It teaches a message of sexual self-salvation. And it gets two things desperately wrong. First of all, what is salvation? Salvation is being rescued by Jesus to be with Jesus.

is the most satisfying thing that you can have in your life. But this sets up a mind-blowing marital sex relationship as salvation. Just save yourself for what? For marriage? But the other half is that it trains you to think that if I do the right things, I get the right rewards. Well, what if you don't get married like you just said, Keith? Or what if you're same-sex attracted and you're going to choose to live a celibate life? And now you've been told you can't have the best thing in the world? Or like you just said, what if you've been sexually abused? Is that it? Is your life? Is your future over? Or what if you've just had sex? in your past and you're fighting against it and you're repenting, does that mean that your future marriage

is going to be cursed? In fact, it's the curse end of things that I think can do a huge amount of destruction. People who are still living in shame in their marriage, either because they were taught their whole lives to deny their sexuality and then all of a sudden they're expected to become a lady of the night, or on the other side of that, they had sex before marriage and they think that they are permanently broken. I can't help but think of this clip from one of my favorite movies, mean girls. At your age, you're going to be having a lot of urges. You're going to want to take off your clothes and touch each other. But if you do touch each other, you will get chlamydia and die. I've never seen that. That's pretty funny.

A different clip he says, if you have sex, you will get pregnant and you will die. Now, it's so stupid because it's obviously over the top. And yet, I think this was sometimes the implicit message. If you have sex before marriage, good luck having a good sex life in your marriage. finding a spouse. Good luck having a good life afterwards. Yeah, all this leads to kind of bragging about sex and shaming ourselves about sex. So you hear people talk sometimes about how, yeah, we've had sex every night since we've been married. Well, first of all, that's not true. You're lying to me. And second, why would you want to go around bragging about that? Well, and what does that do to people? Because, again,

if you follow the mythology, now I'm married, I have this great amazing sex. Like, well, guess what? not everybody has amazing great sex. Relationships go through abs and flows, ups and downs. That's not a promise of God that you're going to have a particular kind of sex life. But I think you made a really good point earlier that I just want to draw back out, is that this is using obedience to Jesus to get to something better than Jesus. It's using Jesus as a stepping stone to get to what you really want. So I'm going to obey Jesus in my life so that I can get married and have a great sex life. But that's not the gospel. The gospel is, as you alluded to earlier, that Jesus is the goal. He is what we want. We don't obey Jesus so we can get something different than Jesus. We obey Jesus so that we can have more and more of

him in our life. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I just want to speak to people listening to this. If you had sex before marriage, that doesn't mean that you can't have a great marriage. It doesn't mean that that's going to curse your sex life. It's not the unforgivable sin, right? An unforgivable sin. And if you know someone who waited to kiss until the altar, one, that's not anywhere in the Bible. I mean, part of me is like, I don't know how we turn that into something that should be idolized. But let's don't make fun of them. I'm not making fun of them.

That's great if that's what people did and help them. My point is it's no guarantee that they're going to have a better sex life or that they're going to have a better marriage. No guarantees about anything. No. Okay, let's move on to a second myth. The second myth is this, that you can be a sexually pure person. Yeah, in order to think of yourself as a sexually pure person, you have to define sexual impure in the most narrow possible way.

Yeah, and that way would be that you have not had penetrative sex. Because the Bible, when it talks about sexual immorality, has a lot wider view of sex than just that. Yeah, when Jesus talks about lust, he says, basically, you've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I tell you, don't even look at a woman with lust in your heart. I mean, so Jesus takes this idea of sexual purity, and he says, guess what, if you've even had a lustful thought,

you've already become impure. And that's a point. According to our theology, everybody has something called original sin. This means that the minute you come out of the womb, I hate to say it, you are already impure. That's not how we think about little kids, but there's no such thing as a sexually unbroken person. We're all sexually broken. We're all broken when it comes to greed, when it comes to selfishness, when it comes to pride, every other sin. We are all already broken. So no one gets to say, hey, I remain sexually pure. Well, I'm sorry. That ship has sailed. It is out of the harbor. It's not coming back. We're all guilty. We all have sexual sins in our life. We all come from a place of brokenness. But the idea of purity culture was that you saved your sexual purity for your wedding night. And there are stories of wives giving their husbands, their purity rings on that night. And again, if that worked for people, fantastic. If that was healthy for you, great. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. If my daughter or my son do that, I would be thrilled for them. But I would never tell them, but you were sexually pure before that.

But even more than that, sexual purity doesn't end on the marriage night. It doesn't end in marriage. In fact, what you could do is you could take that ring and put it back on your finger as a husband or wife because you're called to sexual purity now. There's still all kinds of sexual sins that married people can and do commit regularly. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's been married for 10 years where there hasn't been sexual impurity in some fashion. Again, you just quoted Jesus as saying that it's an issue in the heart and the mind as well as the body. So absolutely not. There's nobody sexually pure, whether they're single or married. And I think we should add to this. Purity is more than sex. There was a talk. I got an email from a guy

who said that, and I had actually seen this as well, when he was in college ministry and still to this day, there's this video by John Piper talking about Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see the face of God. And John Piper in the video, he narrows purity down to sexual purity. He says, if you are looking at pornography, you cannot see God. You've given up all hope of knowing who God is. I mean, it's a Pipery statement. You know how Piper does things? Yeah, I'm not buying that. You want to play the clip? If you want. I read a chapter in future grace. And I think all he's doing is using pornography as an example of something that can keep you away from seeing God in his fullness. Okay, so let me bring it to myself then. And in my own ministry with college, guys.

When I read that chapter and then when I had other guys read that chapter, it became whether or not it was Piper's goal for at least me and the guys I was around, that was the message. The message was what? Say it again. Purity equals sexual purity. In other words, if you were battling with any lust in your heart, if you've looked at pornography, that is the barometer of purity. There's nothing else to look at, that is the single thing that you have to focus on. Well, I guess we can read things differently. At least my recollection of it was that he was trying to help people who struggle with pornography by holding out the promise that the pure and heart see God. I wasn't sure he was equating purity with not looking at pornography. But we're all in different contexts and different conversation with the people. And maybe I misremember it. Well, no, and you're actually probably right is what I'm trying to say. Okay, that's wonderful. I'm saying you're actually probably right. But what I'm trying to say was that the effect was that at beginning. and to train guys to see themselves as somehow being able to be pure, if only, my sex life. But purity is more than sex. We talked about this 100 times, but we can't repeat it enough.

Purity is greed. Purity is pride. Purity is selfishness. It's the whole gambit. 100%. And so these messages that end up bringing shame in people's life. But what if you're a person who was sexually abused? You can't ever undo that.

So now are you going to wallow in shame? Or what if you're a person? What if you're a person who went through a divorce? Maybe you were divorced. Nothing you did wrong, but your spouse cheated on you and left you. Well, you've had sex. So I guess you're broken and kind of in shame and impure and unable to be used by God. You think of single moms.

You think of people who became Christians later on life. As I was preparing this, I actually had a number of people reach out to me. He said, when I started dating my current wife or husband, we weren't really serious about following Jesus. And we slept together, and that was part. We lived together. That was part of our life. And now, you know, if I could go back, I think I would have tried to resist that. I don't know if I would have done that.

But I've lived with a sense of shame in my life that we did this in our past. Like, it's a dark part that I have to hide. And again, I just find it weird. Like, if I met a guy who was tremendously greedy for years, only spent on himself was materialistic, and then he becomes a Christian, does he have to hide his materialism from me? Is that he's done the worst thing? I can't believe that we lived together before we were Christians. Or we lived together while we were Christians.

We just weren't that serious about our faith. Or we lived together when we were serious about our faith. just didn't fight, and I wish we would have. I mean those are all real things, and it doesn't mean you aren't a Christian anymore. Yeah, Paul says in 1st Corinthians 6th, some of you, and then he goes through a list of things to describe the sins that people were caught up in, and then they became Christians. That's the story of the gospel. That's what we're supposed to be celebrating. But of course, it doesn't just happen, like you said, to people before they're Christians, even while we're Christians. There's all kinds of sins that I'm struggling with all the time. But what happens is we've

made virginity and sexual purity into its own little idol, defined sexual purity in the most narrow of ways, and then said that if you don't have that, you are a bad person and going to miss out on the good life. So if I could take one takeaway from this myth, it would be this. I think we should change the goal from protecting purity, which, again, ship already sailed. It's gone. So change it from I'm going to protect this purity that I somehow think I have to instead talk to your kids, think about this for yourself, seeking sexual wholeness, seeking sexual integrity, trying to be honest before God and others about where you're at sexually, trying to be a whole person sexually. Bringing your mind, your heart, your body, the whole gamut.

So everything before God and saying, I'm yours, I want to be faithful to you. I want you to redeem my sexual brokenness. So that takes us to the third myth of purity culture, that women should never have sexual desires before marriage. It's only men who struggle with lust. So one of the things that happened, I just want to be totally candid. I mean, when I say, oh, purity culture happened to me, I was a college ministry leader, and I for sure taught aspects of purity culture. It was how I was kind of taught and trained to think about sex. And if I could go back, I would change that. But one of the things I both experienced as a college student and did when I was in my first years on staff with the college ministry was dividing up men and women into

different clusters, maybe the sex talk. What would happen is a woman would go, they would talk about modesty. How do you dress a particular way? in order to protect these lust machines called men from lusting after you. And men were taken into a room to talk about lust. Now, the obvious message that was sent to the women was that, hey, lust is a man's problem. In fact, the very first Christian book I was ever given was called Every Young Man's Battle. You were given that book? I was. Gosh, I've been spared a lot of this. My second one was Wild at Heart, which is also... Really? Did you read both of those? I did. First Christian books I mean, I'm familiar with both of those. They're titles that probably every guy. I've read

future grace multiple times and you've read wilda heart multiple times i've read future grace multiple times too oh in latin man yeah the latin edition it's real good so that was the first book that shaped your thinking about this it did and it did make me think lust is a guy's problem i mean i think if you had asked me i feel so stupid saying this but if you had asked me at age 20 do i think women struggle with lust i think i would have said no not really at least that would be a very small minority of people and of course that's idiotic It's not true. It's not remotely true. Plenty of women struggle with lust, and there actually are men who don't struggle with lust, which takes me to what happened whenever they split us up.

So when I was in college, I co-led a discussion called Porn Again Christian. Did you title of that? No, it was a Mark Driscoll thing, okay? Porn again? Yeah, and Mark Driscoll is very into the purity. Like Born Again. Which is a part of how I got a lot of this was through him. P-O-R-N, porn again Christian.

It was just for men to talk about how to fight against Lus. And the guy who I was co-leading with, his claim to fame in our campus ministry, was that he didn't battle with lust. So he went around and told people that. I guess if you knew it, and it was claimed to fame, he had a t-shirt, no lust here, no lust zone. Yeah, which really just meant he didn't look at pornography. That was his thing.

So lusting was equivalent to looking at porn. Yes. We had made those equivalences, which I think a lot of men do. And so we lead this discussion. We're helping other guys fight to fight against pornography, which again, on one level I'm like, that is a great thing. Let's talk about porn addictions. let's fight against it. Let's not make it the whole thing, but let's have those conversations.

So nothing wrong there. But then, years later, I found out that the co-leader was gay. And now, you could have been looking at pornography still. But it makes sense now why he told guys, yeah, I just, I watched it and it wasn't that interesting. I didn't find it that engaging. I know you're a big bachelor fan. Well, yeah, so that's another example of this. Colton Underwood, he was famously the virgin bachelor. You're on record for being a big bachelor. Yeah. We'll link to my blog on The Bachelor and let the people decide what I think about the bachelor. So he, we only know this because one of the people on our staff team helps us

with bachelor's references. That's what I was trying to get us to admit. Yeah. Neither of us have any idea of Colton Underwood is. Yeah, so everything I'm out to say could be false. I actually did it double-check this one, which I usually do. I just, this person's such a big fan. I trust anything she tells me. Anyways, he was known as the Virgin Bachelor. He said that he wasn't necessarily waiting until marriage. He just wasn't going to have sex. And then it just came out again that he was gay. Now, I'm not trying to make points about being gay or not gay. Which of course, gay people can lust and do lust. So what's your point? My bigger point here is that when you narrow for men, sex down to apparently heterosexual pornography, there's a whole group of people who are lopped out

of the picture, who are left behind in the picture. And that are men who are same-sex attracted. Or even there are men who really don't struggle with lust. They don't struggle with pornography addictions, I should say. And it also leaves out of the conversation many, many, many, many, many, many women who do battle with pornography and it shames them. It puts them into this place where they feel like, I am alone. I'm literally the only woman. I've heard one say this. I thought it was the only woman who struggled with lust, who struggled with looking at pornography. And it turns out, no, you're not the only one. And so they aren't trained to even think about it or talk about it. Okay, so I want to dive into this a little bit more. What I really, really don't like about this part of purity culture

is that it puts the responsibility on the women to kind of manage a man's lust. And what they're told is that if you don't dress correctly and men lust after you, that's your fault. That is absolutely wrong and unbiblical. Men are told to fight against their own sins. A man's sins is not a woman's responsibility. So I want to be really clear on that. On the other hand, the Bible does tell women to dress modestly. What do you do with that? Well, can I press back? I think the Bible tells us to fight lust, and I think the Bible tells us to be modest. Now, it's easy to find in 2 Timothy a very specific reference talking to women about being modest. But can I just say this? Modesty expands beyond women. It's not just women who have to think about

being modest. So here's the classic example for me. I've known people who've worked at Canacock and they have all of these rules about what women can't wear. And guess what? There's not a single rule about what a man can wear. And as I've had multiple people point out to me, the men run around. These are college age guys. They're running around shirtless. They're athletic, they're good-looking guys, and they talk about how their campers were attracted to them, talking about them, how they looked, that their fellow co-counsellers, again, attracted to them, lusting after them, wanting them. So you got all these guys who they get to run a shirt list. I'm not responsible for any of these women's lust. Patrick's waving his arms right now. But then,

hilarious. But then the women, here's the list of clothes you cannot wear, and if you do wear it, you have caused your brother to stumble. I mean, to me, it's an excess of stupidity. How about this? All Christians should think about modesty. And all Christians should take responsibility for their own lust. We had a listener who wrote this to us. She said, this is a college student named Anna, who used to go to our church and then moved away to go to college down south. Yeah, and she gave us permission to share her name and her story. So here we go. When I was on the leadership team of a college ministry that I am no longer involved with, I had to sign a contract at the beginning of the school year that I did not know existed when

applying for small group leader position that I was in. Can you imagine this now? This is just a college girl. Trying to lead a small group. And there's a contract that she has to sign. Okay, let's keep going. This contract. This contract was advertised as being applicable to both males and females. However, through the wording of the agreements we had to sign, it was pretty obvious

that stating it was for males was just a formality. And so she gives us some of the contract word for word here. So let's go. Here are the guidelines we ask you to remain within during your time on the leadership team. spaghetti straps must be covered at all times. Shear clothing must be worn with an appropriate underlay. Plunging necklines must be worn with an appropriate underlay. Croft tops must not show off midriff while standing, sitting, or leaning.

Some guy wrote this, and he's sweating while he writes it. What is a woman supposed to do? Okay, I'm going to sit down. Okay, that's good. I'm going to stand up. I'm going to lean. Okay, good. I've covered all my angles.

Now I can leave the house today. I make sure I haven't broken the rules. Let's keep going. Yoga pants or leggings must be worn with a long or overreesome. size top. You have a name for this. What is it? Laps. I don't know how you don't know what leggings his pants are. Leggings is pants. Yeah, laps. So in fact, in my campus ministry, no, this was not my personal cause, but I knew several women who this was their cause. To wear laps? No, to stop laps. Oh, stop it. And they would talk to girls about it. I remember

and it was staff members. And I'm not trying to make fun of them because I don't know what they would say right now, but they're probably listening to this. They're probably listening. That's fine. I've been in here saying, look, I've been a part of this. But we'd have to have a serious conversation with someone because she's wearing laps on a regular basis. So, gosh, there's so much in my own mind that I'm still working through. And so... Can I finish the rules? Oh, okay. Short skirts, dresses must meet finger-length requirements. Swimwear at events slash retreats should not be bikinis. Okay, so I remember being on staff at a missions project.

And there... Trying to wear a bikini. Was a girl who... So this is a college, high school college girl. And she had shorts that were incredibly short. And someone on staff, not mean, and not even anybody from our church, but somebody from the ministry we were at said, hey, we got to have a conversation because all the people were here serving are talking about you in sexual ways because you're wearing these incredibly short shorts. So now I'm trying to figure this out. What are we saying? That that was wrong and inappropriate for the ministry leaders to say, I think that's an issue here.

Keith, I think that's a great point. And here's what I would say about it. I would say, and I think you'd agree with me on this, trying to create a list of rules for clothing that works and doesn't work is silly. Let's just start there. And here's the first reason it's silly. If you think wearing a sweater is going to protect you from a man's lust, good luck. Well, I'm not going to buy that totally because, yes, you're right.

Let me first point. This stuff is cultural. So Paul, in 1 Corinthians, he talks about women covering up their hair. And there's lots of ancient studies that point out the fact that in the ancient world, woman's hair was viewed as being sexy. When Patrick's losing an argument, he goes back to the ancient world. So back then, so he talks about he is encouraging modesty, but back then, what's the sexy thing? It's their hair.

I'm only saying, like, the bathing suits, a one piece today would have been sexy back in the 1920s. Men didn't even run around shirtless because that would have been immodest for the men. So we have to accept the fact that a lot of these things are pretty cultural. I think rather than making rules for everybody, as though we know these are the proper lines that we go by, we need to encourage all people, men and women, to be modest. And if there's someone who's in a situation that's causing problems like what you're saying, then yes, I don't know that there's a problem on a one-on-one private basis to have a conversation about modesty, not saying you've got to stop wearing these shorts.

Okay, so fair. I agree that modesty standards change. I agree that women are not responsible for men's lust. I agree that modesty should apply to both men and women. But I'm not sure that I'm buying that men and women are sexually aroused by the exact same things. I'm not sure I'm buying that men and women are the exact same. We have to treat them the exact same, or somehow we are demeaning one gender. I firmly believe that what one person finds sexually arousing is probably different than what a different person finds sexually arousing, both across genders and across individuals.

And so that's my point where I'm saying, what for you might be, well, that's a different person finds sexually arousing, both across gregul. that's the thing. I think that's your responsibility. Fair. It's always the person's responsibility to fight their own sin. But when you say that a person can lust after, a man, I think you're thinking, can lust after a woman in a baggy sweater. True. Absolutely true. A man can lust after a woman or a woman after a man who's not even physically present, just in their imagination. Right. But let's don't be so naive as to say that a person more provocatively dressed sitting right in front of you is not more likely to engender lust than a person in a baggy sweater. It just seems naive. I agree with you. I'm not even trying to disagree on the point of different clothing can cause

different effects on people around them, and that we should again encourage modesty, because the same thing goes for men. There's clothing that men can wear that are going to evoke lust in women far more easily than other clothing. What I am trying to say is as a ministry, in our college ministry, let's say we were trying to do an outreach for whether it's men or women in the Greek community. That's something we really wanted to do. I don't want to have rules about how that person has to dress and show up inside of my community. You can wear whatever the heck you want to wear. You wear whatever you're wearing inside of your fraternity or your sorority.

We don't have rules here about what you have to look like, about what you have dressed like. Here's what we do say, though. Our men and our woman are committed to radical chastity, and they will honor you in your dignity. And they're not going to treat you differently because of their clothes, and they will take responsibility for their own sins. And that seems to me to be a far fair way of thinking about this issue than setting up a list of rules of how people must dress. I'm good with all that, and I don't want a list of rules either. I just don't want us to be naive and acting like how you dress doesn't matter, and that men and women are exactly the same in every single respect. But I don't want rules either, and the rules

that this woman listed out that she had to sign off to be a small group leader seem insane to me. And why does there know if you're a man, you can't run around shirtless? No shirtless frisbee throwing for you because who knows. So let's just get away from the rules or I guess your point is that if you're going to have them at least make them applicable to all people. Let's not focus on women. Let's talk about men. And if we're going to do it, let's do it. Guys, put your shirts on. Keep your shirts on. Another part of this myth that we're working on here that women don't have sexual desires before marriage and that only men are kind of lust machines. It kind of all gets thrown a curveball on the wedding night because here we want.

these women to be these pure vessels who never even think about sex. And then all of a sudden, when they get married, they're supposed to go kind of hog wild. Lady of the night. And please their husband. At least that is the message of purity culture. But it's wrong on so many levels. Let's just think of this practical one. It doesn't work. You don't just flip a switch. So let's take it out of the context of sex for a second. I see people out wearing their masks outside, while they're exercising by themselves, their face masks to protect them from the virus. And I am puzzled by it on a number of levels. But let's just think for a second.

These people have heard for months now that if they don't wear their mask, they're going to get this virus that does severe damage to them. Or they could be a risk to someone else. They could share it with someone else. That would be a risk to that person. So let's don't debate whether that's true or not or overblown or not. That's just what's been pounded into their head month after. month after month from friends, from TV, from news articles. That's what they've heard over and over and

over. And now all of a sudden, they're hearing, hey, you're outside or you're vaccinated, so you don't have to wear it anymore. And it's taking a while for that message to sink in. So here they are out in a beautiful day by themselves on a trail and they're still wearing their mask. Because it just takes a while for you to get comfortable with it. So now imagine these women who grow up in purity culture and all they've heard is sex is dirty, sex is bad, avoid sex, dress modestly, all these things pounded into their head through church, through school, through their families, wherever. And now all of a sudden, they're supposed to flip a switch. Well, it's just so incredibly impractical. It's just not the way the human brain, the human

heart works. And so you have a lot of people, men and women, who have heard this sex is dirty mantra for so long that they're unable to have the great sex life, which they were promised because they kept all their rules. And part of the narrative is that that happens. I mean, really, part of the narrative is you're going to get to your wedding night and that switch will flip, which is unfair. It's unkind. And again, I think it's particularly unfair for women. But I think it can go both ways.

I think there are men who have expectations about what their wedding night is supposed to be like that they're terrified. They're not going to be able to live up to. And it causes a whole different slew of problems in them that sometimes can be very long term. Yeah, people just have unrealistic views of, that. And so they expect all this stuff. And I imagine one out of a hundred times does it go like they thought it was going to go? Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay, Keith, we've been getting a little bit heavy, so I think I need to read some more Christian pickup lines. Oh, gosh. Are they better than the last ones you gave me? I'll let you evaluate it. Okay, here we go. Are you going to do it all breathy again?

Yeah, I'll do it. In my pickup line voice, is it hot in here, or is that the Holy Spirit burning inside you? Oh, gosh. Yeah. Is that not good? Okay, how about it? No, not. That one wasn't it. How many times do I have to walk around you to make you fall from me? Got into your Old Testament to get that one. Your Jericho jokes. Yeah, maybe. How about this one? Hey, girl, I believe one of your ribs belongs to me.

I tried that on Emily last night. It didn't work. It didn't work. No, I didn't actually try it. I don't say stupid stuff like that to my wife. I say different stupid stuff. Let's hop into myth number four. Sex before marriage makes you defiled, undesirable, and irreparably brinkably. broken. So there's lots of stories that circulate about people in church or youth group or wherever

it is that they are. And they have something that they're passing around. Maybe it's a rose or a piece of chocolate or a piece of gum or a piece of paper. Yeah. In fact, every woman that I talked to over in the D.R. office, every one of them had experienced one of these things. So you're sitting in church and you're given something. Do the rose one. So they take a rose and it's beautiful, looks great. It's all of the petals, red. I assume, and they pass it around. They pull it off, the pedals. They twist it.

Twist it. It gets it from one person to the next person, the next person. It gets dirty. It gets defiled. It's just kind of ugly. And then all of a sudden, the leader stands up and says something like, hey, you are like this flower and you are beautiful before God. But if you let yourself be passed around from person to person, if you have sexual experience

after sexual experience, you will be defiant. You'll be ugly. You'll be worn out. And nobody wants this rose. Everybody wanted it at the beginning, but now that it's been passed around, nobody wants this rose. And that's how you're going to be if you have sexual experiences. Nobody's going to want you. Other examples are the gum where a bunch of speakers on stage will pass a piece of gum to each one of them will chew on it. Then they'll ask them, hey, who wants to chew the gum? And of course, no one wants to chew the gum. It's been chewed by six people. It said, that's you if you've had sex before marriage. Another one is a heart.

They'll take a heart and they'll rip off little pieces of this paper heart. And they'll say every time you have a sexual relationship with someone's like ripping off a piece of your heart and giving it to them. And at the end, they'll rip the heart and half them. And then they'll try to make someone come up and put it back together. And they're like, see, it can't be put back together. You've given away all these pieces of yourself. It can't be put back together. And honestly, the first time I heard of that,

I thought about Harry Potter and how Voldemort splits his soul up into seven different horrockses. And I was like, so we've got a Harry Potter theology. You basically become Voldemort if you have sex with anyone who's not your spouse. But the main problem here is this is the opposite of the gospel. It is literally the opposite of the gospel. Because Jesus, he wants the rose. Jesus wants the rose.

It's this great Matt Chandler clip where he talks about bringing a single mom who had a sexual pass to this event, and they do the rose thing. And he knows she's watching this rose, and she thinks, that's me. I am the rose that's been passed around. And he wants to yell at the guy. Jesus wants that rose. Jesus wants this woman at my side. Jesus wants that rose. Jesus wants the soggy gum. Jesus wants, you know what, that heart can't be put back together? That's the opposite of the gospel. The gospel is that we are all broken. So no one starts as a whole heart. That's where it all starts wrong. But you know what Jesus does? He puts us back together. He washes us. He cleanses us. He justifies us and he makes us whole again.

Myth number five, there's no such thing as male-female friendships. What it does is it makes all-male-female relationships into something romantic or erotic. And I kind of resent this one because Christine and I have a lot of couple friends and I consider the woman a good friend of mine and Christine would consider the men good friends of hers. And though what we've found is that it's possible to have healthy friendships of people of the opposite sex. Not all relationships have to be sexualized. I think that's totally true. Why don't you talk for a second about the Billy Graham rule? So the Billy Graham rule came out of something called the Modesto Manifesto back in Billy Graham's early days in ministry. I need to make all my manifestos in

Modesto, California. It'd be beautiful, wouldn't it? But what they were seeing is something that is unfortunately really sad, and that is people in Christian ministry, and of course outside the ministry who were having affairs committing adultery, and it was hurting a lot of people and affecting their ministry, ending it. And so what they did is they came up with kind of a covenant, a manifesto, and part of that is known as the Billy Graham rule, and that is that they would not be alone with a woman.

And they practiced that. I guess you could say out of a good spirit of saying, hey, if I'm not alone with another woman, then I'll never end up having an adulterous relationship. relationship and hurting my family and hurting the Christian ministry. But what then happened is that that limited access to women to their ministries, and it also created this idea that women were dangerous, that somehow they were trapped to be avoided. And while I appreciate the heart behind it, and I think there is some wisdom to it, unfortunately it did a lot of damage too.

Have you heard of the Microsoft Office rule? No. So here's a fun fact. If you write guy friends into Microsoft's Office, it allows those to be two different words. But if you write girl space friends, it corrects you. It gives you your little double blue underline and tries to make it into one word. So not even Office wants you to be friends with girls. You've got to have girlfriends. Wow. I know. That's in Word? That's in Word. So if you know anybody in Microsoft tell them that they're causing some problems. Who would have known the Microsoft Office bought into purity culture? Just like the Billy Graham rule. They've actually bought into the opposite, which is in secular culture, there's this notion that all relationships have a sexual component in them,

which, again, we would reject. What I find really problematic about the Billy Graham rule isn't the heart behind it, like you said. What I find problematic is that, first of all, it means that women don't have access. So if you're at a church and men are the ones who are making a lot of the decisions, that would have been especially the case back in the days of Billy Graham. How in the world is a woman supposed to be a part of the decision-making process if all those decisions are made when guys are off on hunting trips. The same thing goes in corporations. If you've got a board that's mostly men, how are women supposed to be a part of influencing the conversation if they can't have friendships? Well, of course, it would be the opposite. If you had a board that was a bunch of women, then men

wouldn't have the same access. The point is that you don't want to limit access based on gender. We have at our church a lot of men and women leaders, and if we were unwilling to meet with them, the women leaders, that would really shortchange our church. And that's where I just find this rule totally impractical. In fact, I actually find it self-defeating in some ways. For the last five years, I've actually, my co-workers, my direct co-workers have been majority women. So if I had this rule in my life that I can never, in fact, we had a staff member come to the crossing who came from the South. And she said the weirdest thing for her was that when she came here and a man was talking to her in an office or in any other space, he didn't bring in another man with him. She said at first it really freaked her out, which I was like, wait, really? That was a thing. I don't even think twice about it. I work mostly with women. I spend a lot of time. And those women, they're my friends. They offer enriching friendship. It would be really sad if I said, ooh, I'm sorry. I've got to bring Keith in here before we start talking. So I was in a different conversation recently where the woman said that when she was thinking about leading a Bible study, she met with the pastor,

and the pastor had his wife joined them. And so she thought they were going to talk about topics and how it fit into the church and all that kind of stuff. And he said, yeah, I had my wife join me so that you wouldn't tempt me. She was, well, that sure made the whole conversation weird. Like, my presence here just tempts you? And that staff member I told you about that was kind of surprised that we weren't doing this. She started reflecting on it and she realized, wait, at my old church, did people see me as like some sort of threat? Temptress. So I was going to tempt. And she realized that's actually the narrative that's lying behind this. And it's ridiculous. And that's where I say I think it's actually counterproductive.

Because, one, men are stupid enough to believe that every woman is attracted to them. So that's part of the problem. They're not. Yeah. And so you wonder how some of these inappropriate relationships are happening. Well, if you're walking around thinking that every woman is a seductress who's just trying to get you, I mean, I've never had that particular problem in my life. I just don't think that way. You're going to end up in a bad place. Also, if being alone with a woman, the only time you ever experience it is when you're breaking a rule, don't you think that might actually lead you to start going down some other darker paths that you don't want to be on? There's something about rule breaking that creates more rule breaking, even if it's your own rules. And that's where it's just become silliness to me.

Okay, but I'm still the guy who's saying there is a heart here. There is a thought here that we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So you should know yourself. You do have to be careful of what environments you put yourself in. What did Joseph do? Yeah, man or a woman. What did Joseph do when he was with Pot of his wife? He fled out of that situation.

He got away. There are times in what you say, this would not be a good environment for me to be in. It's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be tempting in a way that I'm not able to resist. And I would want to say that again to both men and women. Sure, absolutely. Know thyself.

If you have a history of having inappropriate relationships outside of your marriage, you might need to put some stricter rules on yourself. Man or woman. You might need to think differently. There might just be practical things that you just say, well, that seems weird. I wouldn't do it. Like, I'm not going to go into a hotel room with a woman by myself. I don't want to go to a hotel room with a man by myself.

I don't know what you're in a hotel room for. But I don't know if this is good or not, but I try to, if I'm meeting women, that's great. Just one-on-one. But I try to do it in a public place. I don't do it in a private place. Which is where I meet with most men. Like, that's a funny thing.

Like, is that that different for you? No, because we have an office here with windows, the right outside, window in our door. It's very public and open, and that's where I meet most people. I'm just trying to thread a needle here. I don't know. Maybe I've screwed it up. You be the judge. I think what I want to say to people is be wise.

Know yourself. You might need to make rules for you. Don't make rules for other people. That's a good way of saying it. One last myth that I think we should talk about is that rules change hearts. That's a myth that too many Christians believe in all areas of our life, that we have a just-say-noe no policy to sin. Or, and if you watch the old Bob Newhart clip that you can see, it's super funny, of stop it. That's his answer to all kinds of problems in the life.

It's the DARE program, which didn't work. Well, and it was the abstinence program under Nancy Reagan, I think. It was just say no. That doesn't work at any sin, and it doesn't work when it comes to sexual purity. Actually, a lot of times it makes it worse. studies show that a just say no answer that doesn't give you a why, why am I saying no, what's the heart behind saying no, just actually often will draw you the opposite direction as you start fixating on the thing you're trying to say no to.

So like, for example, when high school kids are dating and they try to wrestle with, what is the line? And whatever the line is, you just guarantee that you're going to go up to it and cross it because that's just the way sinful human nature is. It's why a lot of people who wore purity rings didn't live up to that vow, that promise, that commitment they made. They started fixating on it, and they immediately crossed that line. So rules never change a person's heart.

I think the book of Colossians actually says that. And I think this is a message in particular for parents. It's something I'm trying to remind myself. One listener said that purity culture was more for parents than it was for kids, that it was assurance to parents, hey, my kids are going to stay pure. Look at my little Susie. She's got her ring on. She's clean.

Look at my little Dan. He's got his little pledge card sign. And see, I'm a good parent. And it outsources your parents. job of talking to your children about sex, to your youth pastor, to your church, hey, they've got the ring, they've got the card, I'm good. Or it makes you bypass the heart and the hard conversation and just rely on a list of rules. And if you've set up this thing in your child's life, that if you cross this line, again, it's the worst thing that you could possibly do. Do you really,

really think that if they cross that line, they're going to talk to you? They're going to try to live with integrity before you? Because here's a deal. If one of my kids has sex before marriage, I will see that as a sad thing. It's not something that I want to have happened their lives because I know the hurt and the pain that it will cause them. I don't think that their life is ruined. I do think that Jesus can redeem them. And I hope that they will talk to my wife and I.

Because if they don't, do you want to guess what's going to happen? They might get into a pattern of that inside of their life. And I think maybe we step back and say, what's God's heart in this? God's heart is a heart of love and grace. God has given us sex as a gift. He's told this how to use that inside of a marriage. He's told us that for our best, not to punish us, but to bless us.

And when we lose perspective and start coming up with these rules and start narrowly defining sexual purity and start putting it on women in an uncomfortable, unhealthy way, we just do a lot of damage. Unfortunately, the church has done a lot of damage. And if you're out there and you've been damaged by purity culture, I want you to know that even though I probably directly wasn't responsible, and of course, neither was Patrick. We are pastors of a church, and as much as we can, we just want to say we are deeply sorry, and we wish the church had not hurt you in that way.

And we would encourage you not to walk away from the biblical sexual ethic because Jesus knows what's best for me and you, and we would encourage you not to walk away from Jesus' church, not walk away from Jesus himself. His arms are wide open. No matter what you've done, no matter what's been done to you, Jesus welcomes you into our relationship with him. Thanks for listening today. Like Keith said, we actually really do sincerely hope that this is a podcast that's going to bring some healing and some wholeness and many lives. Maybe there's somebody who's been hurt by purity culture and this would be helpful to share it with them. That's up to you. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content,

please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.