CULTURALLY REACTIVE PURITY

                          

I think I’ve done like two posts on purity, unfortunately I keep having to come back to it, this is one issue that breaks my heart. The church has tried to define purity, families have tried to do so but every time technology advances a new definition comes as well, every time society praises something a new definition comes, very rarely do we even have definitions, it’s more of rules, now I’m not against rules or anything, but I believe if we as a church told the truth about purity we wouldn’t need to revisit the issue every time there is advancement, We are guilty as a church, of being culturally-reactive with our “truth.” There are certain ideas about purity that we don’t share until society cooks up some bold-faced lie.  Then, we come out kicking and screaming with this truth that appears to have just come out of nowhere.  We react to the culture. The baby got thrown out with the bath water.  Every time culture praised something, the church condemned it– not society’s misuse of it.  Whatever ‘it’ was suddenly wrong.

We did it with sex too.  We still do it with sex. Society misuses it, so Christians shouldn’t even do it.  At least, that’s how we act.

We are guilty of teaching purity (or abstinence) not in a way that is grounded in truth, but in a way that is shielded from the culture.  That’s why it has to keep changing.  That’s why what started as a six inch rule has had to be clarified to include oral sex, petting, sexting, etc.  That’s why when 50 Shades of Gray came screaming onto our radar, Christians went into an uproar.  Now we need a whole new list of rules that covers reading material, cell phones, webcams, and Face book.

Truth does not change, which means we must be presenting it wrong if we have to keep changing our story. Pardon me if this sounds like condemnation of the church its not meant to be so, I say this with a clear heart towards the church, I attend church, I love the church and yes my church has helped me, but the truth has to be said, severally all the church does is out rightly condemn whatever culture praises, I mean some churches do not dance because people dance in clubs and whatever, we do not talk about sex because society praises it, we forget that as much as we are Christians we are at large a part of society and the only way we would never get to interact with society is if you stayed in a room locked, with no tv, no phones, talked to nobody, read nothing and did nothing at all, but for the most part you’re reading this so at least you have something, I believe purity is of the heart and comes from the understanding that God created all things, and nothing is sinful about all he created except when we begin to use all he has created without him being involved and out of the context he created it for us.

If our churches had a little understanding of this I guess we wouldn’t be so culturally reactive with our truth, we need realize we have teens and young adults in the church, if we do not talk about things because society praises them, because a whole lot of these things are natural things and the curiosity would develop soon society ends up teaching them wrongly, and we would make more rules and try redefining purity again.