"We create opportunities to be disappointed with God when we put our hope in things he never promised."
Quotes:
She points out how we prioritized events, role models, and books and often neglected discussions with parents (or other mentors, friends, community, etc). "Our choice to detach the topic of sexual purity from the whole of Scripture and life, turning questions that are meant to press us further into prayer, the church, and God's Word, into books, conference and websites. But the subject of sexual purity is too nuanced to squeeze into one book or conference. It must be integrated into our regular conversations" (12).
"Virginity as purity neglects Jesus' call for the pursuit of whole-person purity, which includes not only the hymen but our whole body, mind, and heart" (22).
"One question Christians need to ask is: What happens to the message of sexual purity when it is taught apart from Christ?" (22).
Observations about how purity was marketed to American teenagers: "The books I read growing up focused on how my sexual behavior would impact my life, my reputation, and my marriage" (23). "Growing up, the emphasis was on 'me and Jesus' more than my role as a member of the body of Christ. I didn't even become familiar with the term 'common good' in regard to Christian theology until I began graduate school in my early thirties" (23).
She points out that purity was often portrayed as a gift one gives their spouse upon marriage, not primarily about something between a person and God.
She calls attention to the truth that "sexual self-control is a lifelong pursuit." Unlike many of us were implicitly taught, temptation doesn't go away when one gets married. From a later chapter: "Christian dating books communicated a similar message: sinful lust was just a byproduct of singleness, and once I was married, I would be so sexually satisfied that lust would become a nonissue. Sex would love it. Sex would solve so many things" (95).
"Virgins or not, Christians are real people who wrestle with sexual temptation. Instead of fixating on our virginity, our goal as Christians must be God's glory in our sexual brokenness. The elevation of virginity and the promised reward of great married sex for the chaste not only creates false expectations but makes the pursuit of sexual purity all about personal fulfillment.
"Christine Gardner put it best when she said that the solution for evangelicals is not 'to value virginity less but to value God more.' Too often our elevation of virginity neglects the true source of our purity.
"Books like Every Man's Battle reinforce lust as the problem, and rules like Graham's make avoiding women the solution. Christian write Katelyn Beaty acknowledges that men who practice the Billy Graham rule likely do so with good motives, believing that 'it's better to limit interacting with women altogether than open the door to temptation.' However, she also points out that this way of dealing with sexual sin elevates 'personal purity' above the biblical command to love our neighbors. Instead of teaching men to avoid women, a proactive strategy for battling sexual lust urges men to see women as neighbors" (63).
"I think about what I would tell my son--that his body is a gift, something God declares good. That his sexuality is not a threat to fear or a weapon to wield. That women are not objects to use or to avoid but are beloved of God, partners in the gospel, and coheirs of the kingdom. That we are all image bearers of God but are born into Adam's sin. That we are endowed with dignity, but dignifying others is hard and takes care and effort. And that it is worth the effort, and God is with us as we wage war against sin and selfishness" (64).
"We create opportunities to be disappointed with God when we put our hope in things he never promised. Jesus did not die so that Christians could live out their own Nicholas Sparks novel. He died to set us free from slavery to sin, to make us new, and to draw us into the kingdom of God forever. It is not earthly marriage but the marriage supper of the Lamb that we are promised. It is adoption as sons and daughters that we receive, not because we stayed sexually pure or dressed modestly but because Jesus spilled is blood for our sins. Whatever our relationship status on earth, Christians can stand firm in their identity as children of the living God and as the church, his body, and his bride" (73).
"Marriage is not the goal of sexual purity. God and his glory are the goal of sexual purity. Practicing purity is a form of worship, another way we praise God through obedience with our bodies, hearts, and thoughts" (80).
Pointing out the "Problems with the Promise of Sex"
"In I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Harris says that a commitment to sexual purity in singleness is like 'delaying our gratification' and 'storing up passion' that will make married sex more meaningful" (92).
"My desire for sex as a divorced single differed from my desire for sex as a single virgin, but I was asking the same question in both seasons: What do I do with all this longing?" (101). THIS is what we need to talk more about. Some unmarried people long for marriage. Some married people long for children. Married people with children have unmet longings too! We all have longings. This should point us to the fact that we all have a deep longing for Christ, for heaven.
"As a church, we must question any teachings that depict sex as a reward, a promise, or a need" (103). YES to that last one! How often do those in the church portray sex as a need (though, usually only for men), despite Christ himself and Paul and so many others in church history showing us that you can be a fully formed and fulfilled person without it. It is a gift for some, not a need for all.
What made me say "UGH": "John Eldredge says in Wild at Heart that Bathsheba goes unnamed because God was disappointed with her" (119). This makes me want to vomit. And this is the kind of teaching that goes hand-in-hand with the purity teaching I grew up with, the sexism and authoritarianism of it all that I'm untangling. I'm so thankful for Sandra Glahn's Vindicating the Vixens for offering another perspective to me on the story of Bathsheba, because how we interpret stories like this shapes how we view power, responsibility, and God himself.
Welcher postulates that Jesus, as an embodied person, was a sexual person without sinning sexually. "why does the fact of his embodiment make us uncomfortable? I believe it is because we struggle to separate sexuality from sexual sin, and therefore it is hard for us to imagine that Jesus could be both sexual and sinless" (129).
"When we sin sexually, it is not because sexuality is corrupt or because sex is evil, but because we are corrupt, continually exchanging the truth of God for lies (Romans 1:25)" (131).
Welcher offers some quotes from others who are re-examining purity culture, and have arrived at different conclusions, conclusions Welcher and I both would consider outside of orthodox Christianity. She quotes Bolz-Weber, "When two loving individuals, two bearers of God's image, are unified in an erotic embrace, there is space for something holy."
Welcher then says, 'Beloved, do not be deceived by such thinking. The gospel of self is everywhere, and it tastes sweet, like wine. Which is why we must drink all the more deeply of God's Word--so that our hearts are not deceived: God is about his glory. God loves you, and your highest good is to be about his glory too" (135)...."There is forgiveness at the cross for every sin. And we can grow from our mistakes, learn from our failures, and even look back with thankfulness at times when God showed mercy to us despite our disobedience. But when we start calling 'holy' what God calls sinful, we have ceased to honor him. We have ceased to understand what holiness means.
"Holiness is not premarital sex without shame. Holiness is the Lord Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" (135).
"... if I am honest, I must admit that my genuine mercy often gets twisted up in my desire for human praise. I may start out with the right motives, but somewhere along the line my desire to be loving morphs into a desire to seem loving. And I can start to soften the edges of what sin, calling what God has deemed filthy, clean. And in doing so, I fail to love God and my neighbor" (136).
"So many of us walked right past the gospel on the way to a purity conference" (137).
"The Christian pursuit of sexual purity is biblical, but it must flow out of a recognition that it is Jesus who makes us pure. Otherwise, we become Pharisess" (137).
"I too believe that the church has failed in its approach to sexual purity. We have turned sex and marriage into household idols. We have talked about virginity as if it were a means of salvation. We have adapted a version of the prosperity gospel. We have shamed victims of sexual abuse for actions committed against them....But, beloved, upholding God's command to keep sex within marriage has not been one of our failings. And I will stand by all the other antiquated sticks-in-the-mud who still remember Jesus' words in John 14:15: 'If you love me, you will obey me' (WE)" (139).
"How can a Christian flourish sexually according to God's sexual ethic? By surrendering, body and soul, to God the Creator and lover of our souls" (139).
"Fergeson points out that 'it was not legalism for Jesus to do everything his father commanded him. Nor is it for us'" (141). I love this argument. All the "untangling" or "deconstruction" should be a quest to find what is actually right and for me, that is based on Scripture, and therefore I believe obedience does matter. That is what we must stand on! It makes me sad that later in the same paragraph Welcher goes on to defend this orthodox position with one of my least favorite arguments, what some apparently view as a self-evident observation but I find broken: "It is precisely the fact that men and women are different that makes their coming together as one through sex in marriage such a beautiful mystery. The communication it takes. The intentionality and patience" (141). It's as if the only thing that can make us diverse is our gender. It's as if any two people don't need communication and intentionality to be in close relationship.
She again quotes Bolz-Weber: "we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people" (142). And if that isn't just a summary of the spirit our day, I don't know what is.
Observation in the "What Will We Tell Our Children?" Chapter:
"By all means, go on dates. But do not fall for the purity culture lie that dating, courting, or marriage have cornered the market on intimacy. Our view of intimacy is too narrow, too entangled with the act of sex itself, when we thing that it can only be achieved by a dating or married relationship. That distorted thinking makes cross-gender friendships seem like a threat to purity instead of precious gifts from God" (153).
It wasn't mentioned in the book, but I heard Welcher discuss this on a podcast and mention that it is good for us to look back on what we were taught and question, work on constantly stripping away the extrabiblical, cultural, personality cult stuff and pushing further into timeless truth, and also it is good for us to have humility. She pointed out that in the same way that our well-intentioned leaders and parents and mentors espoused the teachings of purity culture, and later we are realizing what was harmful and less than true, we are likely reacting to things in our culture and teaching those under our influence things that are more than or less than truth and could potentially harm them as well. Let us do our work, and let us be humble and careful.
She quotes Joshua Harris from the I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye documentary: "You can change your mind about things." and then says, "This might seem like an obvious statement, but when it comes to our theological beliefs, changing our mind can look like sinking sand. One question could be one step toward drowning" (175).... "While writing this book, multiple friends and acquaintances have shared their concern over my questioning something the church has been teaching for so many years. With the recent news of Harris' deconversion, I can see why. Questions have led some, like Harris, to a full-on rejection of the Christian faith. Consequently, questions can look like the beginning of the end. But the idea that asking questions is something only 'liberal theologians' do is untrue. Asking questions can be a form of humility when what we are questioning is not God but our own fallible views about God. I have build my theological house on the foundation of God's Word. That is not what I am questioning. Rather, I want to examine the influence of Christian subcultures, like purity culture, on our interpretation of God's Word" (177).
"...we are a body made up of sinners saved by grace. We mess up. We get things wrong. And we ought to view it as a privilege, not a burden, to do the work of learning how to more clearly and lovingly represent Christ and his Word" (178).
"Sex is not a human right, and it is certainly not our Christian right. Some say, 'love is love,' but we know better: God is love" (179).
"We must talk more about the gospel than we do about lust because Christian obedience is about worship" (182).
"Purity is important to God--so important that Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, had to die so that we could live. But, too often, purity rhetoric hyperfocuses on what we should and shouldn't do instead of what Christ has already done. It neglects the gospel and places personal striving above the finished work of Christ" (183).
For me, purity culture teaching was so tied up in sexist gender roles
and authoritarianism, that even the title of this book felt a bit
rebellious. So I appreciated Welcher's words on the topic: "Questions have led some, like Harris [author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye], to a full-on rejection of the
Christian faith. Consequently, questions can look like the beginning of
the end. But the idea that asking questions is something only 'liberal
theologians' do is untrue. Asking questions can be a form of humility when what we are questioning is not God but our own fallible views about God. I
have build my theological house on the foundation of God's Word. That
is not what I am questioning. Rather, I want to examine the influence of
Christian subcultures, like purity culture, on our interpretation of
God's Word" (emphasis mine).
I found this work so helpful. So many observations of patterns worth examining. Was it perfect? No, but we all need discernment as we read, so: read it anyway. Is it possible to represent the nuance contained in these topics in 200 pages? Of course not. (The treatment of same-sex attraction, though integrated into the conversation in a way that is refreshing compared to the purity culture that doesn't acknowledge anyone could ever not be heterosexual, particularly left me thinking more space was needed!) Welcher points out from the beginning that these topics need to be fleshed out in everyday conversations in relationships, not just in books. That is kind of the point, and one of the critiques of purity culture that made sexuality seem so separate from the gospel. On the whole, my views have landed pretty similarly to Welcher's so far, and I'm grateful to have a book that dares to examine these things while maintaining an orthodox perspective, and a devotion to keeping the gospel central. Because ultimately, that is why it's worth even fussing about this stuff: "Purity is important to God--so important that Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, had to die so that we could live. But, too often, purity rhetoric hyperfocuses on what we should and shouldn't do instead of what Christ has already done. It neglects the gospel and places personal striving above the finished work of Christ."
