My Journey Through Purity Culture: What I Believed, What I Unlearned

I have a complicated relationship with purity culture, and if you grew up in the church, you probably have a complex relationship with it too. It’s not just sex, we could go off on the teenage awkwardness that happens during your first purity-themed month in youth group because the awkward is real. But as the years go by and you keep sitting in these purity-themed months through jr. high, high school, and eventually for me as a youth leader, it starts drifting from awkwardness to ickiness.

I can only speak from a woman’s perspective on this, but when you are told as a young woman that your existence is dangerous to a man, that his sexual integrity is solely in your hands, that’s a weight no woman can bear. And I used to fight against it in classic youth group fashion; if girls have to cover up at the pool, so should guys. The response was always the same: no—a “no” that unleashed so many lies into my mind about lust and desire.

Lust is a two-way street. Objectifying the human body and desiring another human in the most disrespectful and dishonoring way isn’t a “man problem,” it’s a human issue. It took me years to disengage from the shame I felt in my own lust and desire, because for years I was taught that it was not an area women struggle with. I felt alone and trapped. God can’t free me in an area I’m not supposed to struggle in.

You are not alone in any struggle you have with objectifying another human being. You aren’t trapped in the desire that has led you to lust. While we’re here, lust and any action on it isn’t the sin that’s going to make God turn His back on you. He’s not going to turn away from you ever. He’s with you in whatever area of life you're struggling in.

Since we weren’t talking about lust during our girl-only sessions, we were talking about how to be a godly wife. At the age of 12, I was taught how to be a godly wife when all I wanted to know was how to be a good friend and girlfriend to the guys around me. Purity culture gave me a list of things to live up to and an impossible idea of what a woman should be, the Spirit of God to every man around her.

No human being can or should take on the role of the Holy Spirit—hard stop.

Through His spirit, we are given self-control in a world that wants us to be fast and loose with our sexual lives and let our lust rule us; we do have control. It is because of the gift of self-control that we have freedom, we can turn away from our temptation, we can walk away from that conversation about his “hot abs” and “hot a**” and everything everyone wants to do to them. We can walk away. We can shut off that sexually charged show or switch that song off.

Most importantly, we can say, "Jesus, help me here, because I don’t want to walk down this road anymore." Our choices are in our control. There is no hope in a purity culture that tells us it’s all on us and about us. It’s really all about the power of Jesus in us. His grace is alive and active in our stories. It’s His grace that dismantles the lies of purity culture.

I wrote Forgotten Purity, my new 30-day devotional, to help us all remember that no matter our story, we are not pure, but Jesus is. Purity culture has left out the biggest key, and that’s Jesus. Waiting until marriage isn’t what makes us pure, and not waiting doesn’t make you dirty. It’s because of Jesus that we are made pure and clean. It’s all about Him; our purity is from Him, and I hope we never forget.

You can order your copy of Forgotten Purity: A Devotional for Finding Freedom From the Lies of Purity Culture today!