A great deal is being said in recent days on the topic of virginity and the role of the purity movement within evangelical/fundamentalist circles. Back in August, Carolyn Custis James responded to Olympian Lolo Jones’ public statement that she was saving her virginity for her future husband. James’ goal with this Huffpost article was not to minimize the value of virginity but to reassure us that virginity is not the gospel. Fair enough, but I’m confident it wasn’t the intent of Jones’ to obfuscate her saved virginity with saving faith.
Fast-forward to the last week or so and the inundation of writings on the implications of sexual impurity teachings:
Elizabeth Esther broad-brushes the purity movement when she suggests an implication (not a direct quote of anyone in particular) of it is the belief that a “woman’s inherent worth and dignity could be measured by whether or not a man has touched her.”
Sarah Bessey writes about an unfortunate and even unsanitary experience of having sexual impurity compared to the glass of water spit into by anyone willing to contribute. That’s definitely not how I would go about illustrating the matter, but she gets it wrong too as she concludes, “There is no shame in Christ’s love. Let him without sin cast the first stone. You are more than your virginity – or lack thereof – and more than your sexual past…You don’t have to consign your sexuality to the box marked ‘Wrong.’” I think Bessey is sincerely trying make some great points about how we handle the topic when the audience, in one way or another, has already lost their virginity, but she is unable–or maybe unwilling– to articulate how promoting it as a higher value can be accomplished with this kind of audience. It is still good to teach about sexual purity even to an audience that lacks sexual purity. We aren’t to stop teaching about the sins of theft, gluttony, and greed even to those who have committed the sins of theft, gluttony and greed. Why should teachings on sexuality be any different?
Rachel Held Evans promotes the discussion by raising the strange question, Do We Idolize Virginity?
Jen Pollock Mitchell at Her.meneutics reminds us that while virginity isn’t the sum total of our worth, “it’s still something.” Unfortunately, she leaped from a movement’s emphasis on the value of virginity and answered affirmatively the question Evans posed.
…virginity has arguably become a modern-day idol of the church. According to Tim Keller, idolatry is fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Virginity, which is rightly good, has unfortunately become ultimate, idolized in some churches as, in Bessey’s words, become “a barometer of our righteousness and worth.” Virginity is not a moral merit badge. Whether or not we have had sex before marriage, we are all lawbreakers (James 2:10).
Mitchell is correct that we are all lawbreakers, and while we can agree that virginity should not be viewed as “ultimate” it points to what is. Promoting sexual purity is about promoting God’s plan for marriage and, ultimately, serves as an an illustration of Jesus and his relationship to the Church, his Bride. There are oddities in any group or movement that will take things to the extreme, but its unfortunate that these writers have made the determination that virginity has become an idol. Mitchell and Bessey are correct that our virginity should not become a “barometer of our righteousness and worth” but our abstinence from sin and how we respond to God about our sin should be a barometer of the shape of our heart.
What is glaringly obvious about each of these articles is the desire to save people from feeling bad about sin they may have committed or may commit at some point in the future. Shame is being discussed as primarily a weapon wielded against the innocent by the pharisaical fundamentalist out to diminish an person’s inherent worth before God. Shame is noticeably absent in these pieces as the well-place, proper reaction of someone who, before God, has a contrite heart. Why shouldn’t we be ashamed when we sin against God?
Genesis 3 documents when sin first entered the world and provides insight into how we should deal with personal sin ourselves. When Adam heard God walking in the Garden, he and Eve hid themselves from God because they knew they were naked. Even though they made for themselves loincloths, they could not avoid their nakedness before God. Despite their best efforts, only God could provide a suitable covering because the standards were His.The end of innocence included a period of shame that would reveal to God a human awareness of what had transpired. Like Adam and Eve, Shame causes us to do one of two things–we hide and pretend no one has noticed our sin or we find ourselves at the foot of the Cross seeking the forgiveness of the One who alone can provide the proper covering for sin.
We lose sight of the power and depth of the gospel if we refuse to call sin what it is–no matter the kind of sin that it is–theft, jealousy, greed, gluttony, fornication, or adultery. And we cheat people out of knowing true grace by denying them the knowledge that virginity is the standard to which God has called us. Obviously those who are victims of sexual assault have no moral guilt and this should be reflected in teachings on sexual purity. Purity education should also be combined with a robust understanding of grace–all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But if we abolish personal shame, if we insist we shouldn’t feel badly about the sin we commit, we won’t be able to recognize it for what it is and seek God’s forgiveness. Perhaps this already happened. An overly grace-centered sanctification will drive us to embrace more sin in our lives. But a proper view of sanctification insists on a struggle, a reality based understanding that we do sin, and when we do we should feel bad about it because when we do we pursue God and his forgiveness.