The Truth on Purity Culture: Conversation with Rachel Joy Welcher

what did the church get right about sexual purity and what did it get wrong these are super important questions that we're going to talk about today and i'm here with a guest a new friend of mine her name is rachel joy welcher and she's written a book called talking back to purity culture and what i love about this is she reflects back on the sexual message that was given in the church for a long time saying here's some things we did well but here's some things we can do better with a spirit of grace but also a commitment to scripture so what's fun about this is we just met for the first time here digitally speaking but when i wrote my book chasing love i was trying to take some of the criticism of purity culture and write what is really a biblical sexual ethic for students she took some of the criticism of purity culture and saying all right adults what do we learn from this let's do better so similar vision but a little bit of a different audience and that's what we're going to talk about today so rachel thanks so much for coming on oh it's great to be here thanks for having me let me start by asking you why would you write a book called talking back to purity culture tell me the story behind it well there are a few different reasons uh when i was in graduate school at st andrews i decided to study this for my dissertation and to go back and reread the books of my youth to see if they um actually were taking messages from scripture or if we had veered um but the personal reason was that i grew up as a pastor's kid i grew up in purity culture i read the books and i followed all the rules to the best of my ability you know met a guy in bible college dated for years um had the influence and approval of my friends and parents in church my dad did the wedding ceremony and about five years into my marriage my husband walked away from the christian faith and divorced me and so yeah so i was left um to action if i followed all the [Music] marriage ending uh because i had been to books that if i obeyed god and stayed pure stayed a virgin until marriage that i would have a great marriage a great sex life and lots of children and that is not what happened and so i wanted to go back and ask the question were these promises that i have come had come to expect did they really come from the bible or did we get some things wrong in purity culture and so that's kind of how it all started well i know you greet and move on i'm so sorry that happened to you and uh at some point i just i'm intrigued by the story behind that i sense that might be a whole nother book that you tackle at some point but let's talk about let's define purity culture because sometimes i get the impression that purity culture is any bad experience somebody had in the church with a message about biblical sexual ethics it's lumped into this pot of purity culture but i think you mean something a little bit more specific than that right that's a very good point so when i talk about modern purity culture i'm specifically referring to american evangelical purity culture not because purity culture only existed in america or in recent times but i'm addressing this movement uh coming out of the 70s and that was really a response to this threat of cd residency okay so just parents and youth leaders and teachers who are worried about teenagers and a very understandable and genuine worry and the response was to present this message of abstinence that focused mainly on staying a virgin until marriage and while the core message of sex belonging in marriage between one man and one woman was biblical it gained a lot of baggage along the way okay and i can go into detail yeah as much as you want yeah about that go ahead yeah well i mentioned purity promises um we call it you know kind of the prosperity gospel with culture but in order to this active it had to it gained this um i'm trying to think of what to call it i call it a sexy carrot that was dangled in front of kids that not only do you just obey god but that if you obey god you will get these things so again you will get married at some point probably at a young age you will have mind-blowing sex from night one and you'll have children with ease these were some of the main promises and so purity was depicted as something that had a finish line and that the finish line was marriage um you know what's interesting christine gardner's book making chastity sexy that you cite in your book she says something effective abstinence is used to sell shoes shampoo cars and it's also used to sell abstinence and i thought what a fascinating point right that we actually peer to culture kind of took the script of the world and said oh the world you think you have good sex no no come to the church we have better sex but that's not a biblical sexual ethic now let's let's come back to this idea the sexual prosperity gospel but first i want to know what you think purity culture got right because to me i think at least got a few things right number one it shows that sex is a big deal it matters now sometimes the message was it was the biggest deal whereas that's not true but at least said it matters what we do with our bodies with our thought life with our relationships i think it got that right i think it also got right that young people can resist the sexual ethic of the culture that there's different scripts and young people can resist this i think it tried to empower young people to make a difference there's a number of positive things what do you think did i miss anything you'd say at least is positive from purity culture no i think you listed the main um the main things that i think purity culture got right as well there was an empowerment um i talked about in my book how that empowerment was positive but also had some negative consequences especially when it came to trying to empower women that they could control what happened to them so that's where things got a little complicated um but i absolutely agree that the main message that sex is for marriage and that our bodies matter that is biblical some of the things we added to that message are very damaging and i don't think it was intentional but it's our job now in hindsight to deconstruct that and see how we can be more biblical moving forward so how do you balance looking back in hindsight with grace to those who came before but criticizing their ideas because i know rachel if i was 21 years old and a book like i kissed dating goodbye was based upon my ideas i can't imagine how much rightful criticism i would get because what did i really know at 21 right so i look back and i think you know sometimes people have critiqued my father for the why wait campaign saying you know you talked about stds too much and scared kids i said okay like like fair but you got to remember just like the pandemic right now people are scared with covet there was real fear of aids and i remember as a kid thinking like can you get aids from a mosquito bite like that was a genuine conversation so how do you look like in what spirit should we look back at those and say you know we need a correction here but trying to show grace to them that we hope people in the future who maybe watch this in 10 years go yeah sean and rachel miss this well i think that's it right there is when we think about the fact that we will be under the same scrutiny that um hindsight is always 2020 that there will be things i think i haven't said this in my book but there would be things that i won't get right and i recognized that just from the very beginning i mean the process of writing the book was a very prayerful one mainly because i knew that i was calling into question what other brothers and sisters in christ had spent their life doing and i took that very very seriously because i know that i am not a perfect person and so i tried my best to treat the the books and authors that i was critiquing with grace recognizing that their motives were very from everything i could tell their motives were very pure they were trying to help kids and that's what i'm trying to do and that's what you're trying to do and so we are always um prone to over correcting so like you said with the threat of stds when fear is involved it's very easy to over correct and so what purity culture critiques tend to be doing and you and i have both read the books a lot of them are over correcting and just throwing out god's sexual ethic altogether and and that's wrong and so my goal was to stick to scripture but to try to correct without over correcting and i guarantee i didn't get it perfectly right but i have a huge respect for the men and women who were trying to help young people pursue god with their bodies and hearts for those of you just joining us we're here with rachel joy welcher she wrote a book called talking back to purity culture and i've read dozens of books and articles and yours is the number one book i will recommend for i think staying faithful to christian sexual ethic but offering a critique of the message that went before saying we can do better so if you're looking for one book in this area i recommend it which is one of the main reasons that i wanted to have you on well let's move to the criticism in in this spirit now the sexual prosperity gospel ironically is kind of this idea that if young people will just not have sex now and typically that's physical sex and remain a virgin gotta reward them with endless sexual bliss in marriage it's kind of like the way you say we've made an idol out of marriage have we made an idol out of marriage right well i think if we ask the singles in our churches they would absolutely say yes um and one of the reasons that they would say that marriage has become an idol is because it's a constant focus when talking about purity as though the problem of lust or sexual impurity is solved by marriage as though that's the solution and that's the goal but scripture doesn't talk about sexual purity that way jesus was single um some of our greatest heroes of the faith were single and so clearly there isn't a finish line until we die when it comes to sexual purity so to depict marriage as the goal really discourages those who are in um a celibate lifestyle whether for many different reasons you know i have same-sex attracted friends who unless god changes their desire um will probably stay celibate their whole lives and so to depict marriage as the goal is very discouraging to them as they're trying to walk in christ likeness there are people who are single who would like to be married and to depict marriage as the ultimate fulfilling goal of the christian life is incredibly discouraging to them i think we have to honor marriage the way that scripture honors it but remember that marriage isn't the goal for the christian life it's one way to live for christ but it's not a promise and it's not the only way to become a mature christian rachel that is such an interesting point that sometimes peer to culture gave the message just keep yourself sexually pure now and then when you get married all of your troubles will go away but then when you get married right you still find other people attractive you still have you have conflict in your marriage and it's like wait a minute uh this didn't go away in fact sometimes it can increase because you think it's going to fix it and it actually doesn't so one thing i said young people say is if you can't learn to control yourself now and i don't mean by like grit i mean by the holy spirit by grace in your life you're not going to magically be able to when you get married so it's trying to help young people realize the choices they're making now carry we carry our character into that marriage and i think that's one of the things we're getting at now one of the criticisms that that you talk about in your book is just this over focus on virginity and you say the question is not what we did in the past but what we're doing now talk about that if you don't mind sure well i think that it's not that i want to demonize virginity or act as though it doesn't matter but if we are looking at scripture sexual purity is way more all-encompassing than just virginity right it's jesus and his sermon on the mount talks about looking at someone with lust being like adultery so sexual purity encompasses our thoughts our body our mind our heart not just this one act and so we've all heard the stories of you know bible church kids who tried to get around the virginity rule and did all sorts of other things that were dangerous sexually maybe not protected um things that could cause stds as well but also they thought that they were somehow fulfilling this abstinence pledge but they really weren't honoring god with their bodies and hearts and so my problem is that when we treat virginity as the definition of purity we're actually not being biblical and the other thing is is that virginity is a state that some people can't keep by choice so we all know people who've been sexually abused and to create this message that virginity is the ultimate gift you can give your spouse is incredibly discouraging to those who've had that gift stolen and also it's not true uh the greatest gift you can give your spouse is a life surrender to christ whether you're a virgin or not um so we have to get that right and this idea that being a virgin is the best thing when you get to marriage um that's that's not the rhetoric i see in scripture i think it's a great thing if you can do that um but it's not the thing and so those who've sinned sexually there's so much hope for you that you can have a good marriage and too many of the books i read tried to scare kids and say if you have sex before marriage your marriage is doomed and that's just not true there's so much forgiveness and grace in christ you know there's something powerful about somebody who understands biblical teaching and makes the decisions god wants us to make for life because there's a kind of flourishing that comes from living within god's will but equally as beautiful is somebody and we all it's not like it's one or the other who falls short makes mistakes but becomes renewed and transformed and let's forget the term secondary virginity because that implies like you know the bee prize what christians about is grace and redemption and transformation that is just as beautiful of a story and a life in some ways even more so so i think that balance that you're bringing in is really helpful now you said uh we shouldn't define uh purity just as virginity i'm curious how would you actually define sexual purity what would be your definition of it well so one of the reasons i avoided creating a list of extra biblical rules in my book is because i grew up reading too many lists like that so i actually define sexual purity as jesus himself that sounds strange but he is the source of our purity and so when we look at it that way those who are in christ actually have a purity that is permanent so this these images that i grew up with the the crinkled rose the used car the chewed up gum those were images um to communicate your worth after you sin sexually those images not only are they incredibly damaging to victims of sexual abuse and sexual sinners um which we all are but they're also not biblical because when we're saved our purity and our forgiveness and our righteousness come from christ and hebrews says that jesus is the same yesterday today and forever so it's not that what we do in our bodies doesn't matter it does obedience matters scripture is so clear on that but when it comes to our purity it really is something that can't be damaged if we're in christ and i think that's a really important thing so i can't tell you how much i appreciate you resisting specific rules here so let me tell you about a conversation i had with my students we're talking about how we love god with our bodies and with our souls the way we think and with our actions and we were talking about how a kiss on the cheek actually means something different than a kiss on the forehead one's like a blessing one is equal and then i said what about kissing the lips they're like well it could be romantic but in some cultures that's even like a brotherly affection i was in russia and saw two christian men kissing the lips and it was like a sign of just brotherly love even though that means something different our culture and i asked him i said what about a french kiss and all my high school students that point are like a french kiss carries romantic and sexual inclinations like you can't escape that one and then a girl says to me she goes does that mean if a kiss is sexual you shouldn't do it before you're married now instead of answering i said now you're asking the right question i said i don't want to give you a specific rule i can tell you oral sex is out that's obvious but the question we need to be asking is what do bodily acts mean and do we have the right relationship to express those bodily acts that resists the rules and i think brings the question back to what does it mean to appropriately love somebody so that's how i approach it do you agree with that would you look at it differently tell me your honest thoughts no i i really appreciate your approach that your goal is to get them to think because one of the problems with handing teenagers a book or sliding it under their door which is what so many parents did in good faith they they really were trying to do the best thing but the problem with that is that it doesn't teach teenagers to develop discernment and so then when they actually are in situations where they have to make the decision themselves there's no parents around nothing like that they don't have the discernment to know what to do and so the best thing we can do for our teenagers is to help them to develop that conscience and discernment and so you're asking them questions and that's where we have to start it's not that there aren't some very clear biblical rules but when we get to extra biblical rules those just negate thinking and they negate discernment one of the analogies you talk about in the book is called the light switch analogy the expectation that someone can go from virginal and non-sexual to uninhibited sexual activity on the honeymoon just like flip on the light switch you say as a result of this some people associate sex with shame because they've been told sex is bad or just right don't do it what's the solution to this problem in your mind well some might say that the solution is to slowly work up to intimacy before marriage but what i would say is that actually the solution is patience within marriage there is something so beautiful about getting to know your spouse in a way that no one else is getting to know them in that covenantal very exclusive bond and it takes time and the books didn't talk about that in fact the books were so intent on getting kids to to get to abstinence that they said that your honeymoon night night one would beat this uh nirvana sexual nirvana well most most uh you know christian virgins who got married would tell you that's not what their honeymoon was like not that they would say it was bad although some have some traumatic stories but there's so much pressure on christians to have sex on night one and actually i think that's very um i don't think that that pressure should be there because they need to be willing to build up to it if they want to um you can have sex on night one or you can take your time and get to know one another but this idea that it'll immediately be amazing um takes away from the fact that you have to get to know your spouse sexually and that's there's something very beautiful about that and i think we need to emphasize that that it can take years and that's a good thing it's this beautiful exclusive mysterious relationship i i love to hear you say this because there's something about coming into a marriage and not having it figured out and like figuring things out together and making mistakes and growing i think is a part of the bonding experience that is beautiful and it's good and uh not having those expectations on night one is just gonna set you up for much more realistic experience there's one other thing that i i think is a part of correcting the light switch analogy which is to not give the message just don't do it one of the messages that my father gave me growing up is he would say over and over again he'd say sex is good and it's beautiful what happens is we take it outside of god's command that's where people get hurt that's where sinfulness steps in but sex in a god-honored relationship is a good beautiful thing and that i think helped me within the light switching algae thing that it wasn't like the end-all be-all but it wasn't the message don't do it and then do it the message was sex is good and you're meant to do it but in the right time in the right relationship that just took away some of those expectations for me and i would add too that um one thing i would add is that we need to stop demonizing our sexuality and recognize there's a difference between being a sexual being which is how god created us and he called that good um and sexual sin and so if christian teenagers can recognize that being sexual having those desires is not in and of itself sinful it's what we do with those desires if we're demonizing not just sexual sin but our sexuality as a whole it will be even more difficult than once in marriage to feel like we can express ourselves in that way so it's important that we teach our kids to expect their sexuality so that it doesn't take them by surprise and make them feel as though they are sinning just because they're having sexual feelings um that's something that's part of being human and i think we need to do a better job of distinguishing between sexuality and sexual sin amen i love that so tell me since you mentioned it what is the difference between sexuality and sexual sin well that's a tough question i don't know if you got the chance in your research to read deborah hirsch i think it's called redeeming sex is her book but she had a really interesting definition and i'm still kind of mulling it over to see where i land but she says that sexuality is not just the desire for intercourse it's also our just desire for human connection to know and be known and so if we take her definition of sexuality then we can express um aspects of that with in in friendship and community and what i'm not i'm not trying to sexualize friendship or community what i'm saying is that singles and wesley hill talks about this too um when he writes about spiritual friendship right that we can have a type of intimacy not the exclusive kind you have in marriage but we can have intimacy within the body of christ and so there is a place for singles to know and be known outside of just sex intercourse doesn't have the market cornered on intimacy and so i think that that's one kind of different way to view sexuality is the way deborah hirsch talks about it as a desire to know and be known and that there are different levels of that so that's just one thing to throw out there it was very thought provoking to read yeah there's a book called mere sexuality you maybe have come across this one i think it's andrew wilson he talks about jesus was a sexual being now he doesn't mean sexual activity but jesus was male jesus had sexual desires and that's good god made us male and female it talks about even in my relationship with my sisters or with my mom there is a sexuality component because it's male and female that's different with my wife but we bring who we are as male and female to all our relationships i thought that's so helpful because our culture wants to just say everything is about having sex and through a sexual lens and we're saying it's much bigger than this and our sexuality is tied in a sense to who we are rachel why do you think sexual issues are so important compared to other fleshly desires oh that's a really good question well our culture is just saturated in sex and so i think it's it's very much on our minds because it's everywhere right it's on the billboard driving to church and so um we can't really avoid it and so this idea that we think about it all the time might be true but i think we think about it all the time because it's everywhere we look yeah and so issues of sexuality satan just loves to use sexuality to cause um christians to stumble and we see it all the time right with these celebrity pastors that fall into it and so i think it's that we're really we're saturated in it and we're surrounded by it so it becomes more of an issue i remember a guy i interviewed said that when he became a christian he went to the christian bookstore to see what it meant to be a man of god and when he got to the section for young men every book was about lust and he was a little bit confused by that and he that really communicated to him that the main way to honor god was through this one focus on sexual sin and while i would agree that sexual sin is an important topic i think we have actually over emphasized it in in ways that have been damaging because if we were to study say the character of god we would be actually learning how to honor him with our bodies and so it's not that we shouldn't talk about it but i actually do think that in youth culture christian youth culture we've over emphasized it perhaps because we see that we're in a sex saturated society but if we would focus more on what it means to be a christian and to walk in godliness sexuality is a part of that i think that's a fair way to look at it yeah yeah i i wrote a blog a couple weeks ago and i said two mistakes about sex one is sex is nothing and sometimes in the sexual revolution it was like you know sex is like drinking a glass of water and i always like i don't know what water this person's drinking but the idea was to like make it just a normal bodily function well that's a mistake right it's also a mistake to say that sex is everything now i don't think it's the biggest deal but you know first corinthians 6 says sexual morality is the one sin you commit against your own body and it's also let's face it like food and sexuality are two of the strongest human urges that we have so there's something sacred about sexuality and marriage but we don't want to oversell that and say well gossip doesn't matter and pride doesn't matter that's just completely not biblical either so there's a tough balance there now a question came up earlier let me jump in and ask you about modesty what's your concern with how purity culture approached modesty oh did i lose you again oh no i hope she'll call call us back you guys are hanging in there with me doing awesome this just happens these days i guess all right she's back here we go i thought she was back i don't see an image um guest is in the green room i'm bringing her over but we are not can you hear me rachel it says i can't hear you or see you um oh there you are you're back can you hear me can you hear me rachel i can actually hear you but uh oh that's fine that's okay that happens adventure adventures and technology so you were asking me a question about modesty yep purity culture and modesty what's your critique oh boy that's a loaded question but it is the main question i think i could ask so the thing is is that scripture does talk about modesty um although if we study the passages that we tend to refer to a lot of times they're talking about sandra glenn wrote a really great article on this for fathom but they're talking about not flaunting your wealth but modesty is is an important topic because our bodies matter and sexuality matters but i think the issue is that in purity culture there was an overemphasis to women on modesty uh men were not talked to about modesty hardly at all when women were talked to up to about it so often that the women i interviewed said that they grew up believing not that ma immodesty was a sin but their bodies themselves were sinful that beauty was sinful so one of the problems is that women are given this impression that they cause men to sin and it can happen i remember just thinking that you know if i bent over and didn't you know hold my that i i would be somehow causing a man to stumble and so there's this pressure placed on women as though the actions of men are on them instead of on the man so what i would tell a woman is if you are dressing immodestly to attract sexual attention you are being selfish and that is a sin if a man lusts after you that is his sin and it's really important that we separate culpability when it comes to this okay because it's so important um i have a whole chapter in my book about how there's certain rhetoric in purity culture that resembles rape culture where we get to the point where we blame women for what happens to them what men do to them and that's part of it stems from this rhetoric about modesty so it really is important that we get it right it is wrong for a woman to try to cause a man to stumble but if a man stumbles that is his choice and the reason i say that is because scripture says that those of us in christ have the power to say no to sin that goes for men and women that that's really helpful because i think about my daughter i want to talk to her about how she dresses and there is a truth that people will treat you differently judge you differently right or wrong based on how you dress so i want her to see that hey go to a party and you got to be really smart and you got to be wise there are people who will take advantage of you right but i don't want to shame somebody in particular my daughter if then somebody does take advantage of her so you're saying we can kind of have both in the sense of let's have some responsibility how men and women dress and carry our bodies we're responsible for ourselves if somebody else loves or takes advantage of us sexually physically that's on them and in a sense both those can be true at the same time is that fair that's fair yep that's exactly what i'm saying okay okay good that's that's really helpful um one of the sections i thought was really certain book is that you were told through sexual uh through purity culture that if you just follow a certain script you'll get married happily ever after there's no talk about singleness then all of a sudden you find yourself in your 30s cinco and that was a very different experience than in your 20s and i can only imagine 40s 50s 60s beyond the entire equation would change but talk about how you think maybe we've fallen short in talking to young people about singleness i don't think we prepared people for singleness we again we talked about marriage as the finish line and we also talked about marriage as though it was a promise and so so many women and men now in their 30s and 40s i talked to them and interviewed them and they feel as though god failed them that he had promised them something and you know to get real serious there are so many people who are walking away from the church and the gospel all together because of this god didn't make that promise but they heard it from the church they heard it from christians and so they're associating it as a broken promise from god himself and this is serious that's one of the reasons i wrote this book is that we have to untangle which messages actually came from scripture and god and which messages we kind of made up and became this christian subculture so i think that there are a lot of singles who are wrestling with disenchantment and disappointment and what i would want to tell them is that you are loved and you are valuable even if you never get married amen if you read 1st corinthians 7 and matthew 19 i think it's very clear that singleness and marriage to equal honorable ways of loving and serving the lord this is what scripture teaches but when i ask young people when i talk to them i'll say hey how many of you heard a sermon on singles singleness almost none of them almost none of them right now that people are getting married later and some less likely to get married it's not like we need a new theology we need to go back to the theology actually taught in scripture that values singleness as a beautiful way of knowing god and serving the church and it it grieves me that people lose their faith because they've been given a false promise um let me jump and ask you some more i'm curious how you think one of the things that we've done is we tried to sell uh abstinence because you'll get this awesome sex life in the future so that's a mistake because that's not promised it's not biblical and it doesn't always work out that way but on the flip side when you talk a number of studies that i've seen and even document in my book is that religious people in particular christians as a whole tend to report greater satisfaction in their sex lives and i think there's very good data to back this up so it makes sense on one level that if we live and use our bodies the way god wants us to there would be a kind of flourishing so in your mind unless you disagree with the premise of this question how do we talk about the good design and the beauty of the way sex is meant to be without using that as the selling point because it just doesn't always pan out that way for a range of different reasons right well you talk about this in your book you talk about essentially what it would look like if every single person on earth followed god's sexual ethic right um and in that case there would be no rape there would be no divorce all those things now one of the things i talk about in my book is that we have to acknowledge life um post fall right so there is divorce there is rape um there is you know people would cheat on their spouse and not tell them and give them an std i mean there are realities like that that we have to acknowledge and so what i what i really want christians young people to understand is that they can follow all the rules and they might still experience um unintent they might experience consequences that they didn't earn but that doesn't mean they're being punished by god the thing is is that we have to have a better theology suffering right so i think you are right and we know a lot of couples that follow the rules and are flourishing in their sex life and in their marriage but i also know people who are experiencing unintended consequences of someone else's sin or just life under this you know in post fall so i would i think you're right and but i think we have to balance it with the fact that christians can suffer and still be loved by god right um so this this idea this study you talk about that christians report being more sexually fulfilled my first thought is that they um are feeling that way because they are hopefully they're emulating a selfless love right um and it makes sense that to love to try to love as christ loves would would absolutely mean you have a better sex life not necessarily more you know physically pleasurable or thrilling than um you know the world but you're going to have a it's going to be safer it's going to be more about love and selflessness and that is true sexual flourishing within marriage so that does make sense to me that statistic and i think we can teach that while not neglecting the fact that um there are people in christian marriages who have sexual pain and it's not anyone's fault right that's good um that's a good balancer ring i appreciate that now we've been rolling here and i forgot that you actually read my book yesterday and i said bring some questions feel free to ask me anything if you agree with something disagree something what were your thoughts that you wanted to bring to this this conversation well i really did appreciate that you framed your book you said that the the goal um in is always to come back to the question of how do i seek god in his kingdom and my relationships with other people so even though it's a book about love and sex you keep returning to this question which is basically the the first and second greatest commandment right how do we love god and our neighbor with all our heart soul mind and strength and i think that is the question we have to return to um whether we're single divorced married a teenager a widower whatever our circumstance or whatever even our uh relationship status that's the question we need to ask and you can't go wrong um if you ask that question right so in marriage sex is not just about you it's not just about personal fulfillment it's about expressing unity and self-giving and love and so that question relates to that in singleness how are you treating other people how are you treating someone on a date are you treating them with dignity and selflessness and love if you're taking advantage of them sexually that's not loving your neighbor and so i think that the way you frame your entire book leaves a lot of room to have a very biblical discussion of these things um but my main question for you actually was sure thinking through how the books of my youth about purity culture were internalized in some really damaging ways how do you want your book to be read that's kind of my question that that is a great question i appreciate that so one of the things i noticed you said in your book as you said there's a lot of books you'd recommend but not to have any of them read without an adult or other mentors to process it with you that was one of my big takeaways from what what you said even if we agree with something in a book a 14 16 17 year old doesn't have the ability to really process it so on one hand if any kid reads it for any reason that's a win because i believe in what i wrote but the intention of it is for example i had a mom who wrote a review on amazon she said i read this at night to my son i read that i'm like oh my gosh here's a mom i can't remember she said he's 14 15 years old and just reading out loud the chapters and talking it through with her son i was like that is beautiful that's the way it's meant to be i have a number of people using it in a classroom who will just well of course there's discussion and there's dialogue and there's space to agree and disagree and process the ideas youth pastors use it the bottom line is that quite a few times in the book i'll say i'm not going to tell you exactly how far is too far but here's the biblical principle talk to your youth pastor talk to your parents get some wisdom of those who've gone before you because it's a book about relationships it should be read in relationships so amen that's that's the big that's a big goal i think we have some some common ground there rachel one of my favorite lines in your book um honestly this might be one of the biggest this takeaways and when i heard this i was like why didn't i think about this this is something if i went back i would include in my book now had i read it before so i'm gonna give you huge props for this one but you said here's a direct line it says the problem of male lust is solved not by looking away from women but by looking at them correctly as more than their physical bodies that is beautiful tell me what you mean by that oh the books that i read about male lust they talked so much about women as obstacles to purity or as outlets sexually in marriage and it was really devastating to see that these books written to help men be godly turned women into one aspect their sexuality their bodies just reduce them to just one one thing about us but we are uh the imago day is um for both genders right we are all made in the image of god and i think that we we don't solve lust by first focusing on lust we solve lust first by viewing each other correctly and biblically which is scripture says we are brothers and sisters in christ in all purity it says that we are co-heirs of the kingdom it says we are image bearers of a holy god and if we don't emphasize those things first then we don't have a foundation for talking about viewing men and women with with respect and without lust okay so these books that just focused completely on the bodies of women as the um the temptation completely neglected culpability personal culpability and also the fact that women are not just bodies and so i do think that we have to start in the right place and that is with the imago day what i like about that is men are often told and young boys when you see a woman like dart your eyes look away like condition yourself that that's the first thought what you're saying is the first thought should be that's a person made in the image of god body and soul what does it mean to love that person in terms of my words my touch and in the way i look at that person that is so simple and yet it's profound and i think it's honoring so that i just got that is one of my favorite things that you said in the book and i hope that picks up and more and more people will talk about that um moving forward okay so about it's probably been a dozen years when i was teaching a christian high school class i asked my students i said these are high school seniors they'd been christian churches homes schools their whole life i said if you're gonna sum up the sexual ethic you've learned growing up what would it be i'll never forget word for word what this girl said she said don't have sex it's bad if you do you'll get aids and die word for word wow i heard that was like oh my gosh what happened now i want to hear from you if somebody asks that question what should like the twitter or short instagram post response be i'm looking for like that elevator pitch that just captures why what what so in a sense like why should a young person be sexually pure or what is god's desire for sexual period for young people what would that be well in my book i say that obedience is not a ladder to heaven it's a form of worship and so the pursuit of sexual purity is is not what earns our purity our purity comes from christ and it's unchanging but our pursuit of sexual purity is about worshiping the god who saved us and loved us and made us pure to begin with and we will fall and we will stumble and he will forgive and our purity it remains intact because jesus is the source of our purity so obedience is important as imperfect as we'll be at it but it is not a ladder to heaven it is a form of worship that's so in other words you rooted it in god's character and in our obedience not earning something right but the way god has designed us to live that actually sets us free that word obedience has a bad taste in our culture doesn't it is there a way to give that a good taste so to speak or does it really only make sense when we know who god is and it starts with his character then obedience makes sense like how do we and i'm not saying our message should i'm not saying give me this awesome sexual purity message where a kid goes yes i want to be obedient but on the flip side i also want to reframe the goodness of what obedience is meant to be that i think our hearts really cry out for so is there a way that we could reframe that with young people that they would grasp the goodness and importance of obedience well i'll tell you this even when i was sitting on my bathroom floor crying because my husband was going to divorce me so i was suffering even though i hadn't pred you know brought that on myself even when i was sobbing knowing that i was being obedient and i was following god um gave me this peace that surpasses all understanding and so even if your obedience isn't leading you to this you know romance novel whirlwind you know uh wedding in that moment even if you are suffering on the bathroom floor if you are obeying god you can have that peace that he is with you not that he abandons you when you sin but that there's a peace that comes with obedience and i think that's what flourishing means it doesn't always mean that we're happy it doesn't always mean that things will go perfectly but it means that god is with us and we can have that peace that we are following him and i don't want to oversimplify it but that's just been my experience that's a great story and you're speaking personally from what obedience brings a kind of contentment a kind of peace and really when we talk about sexuality isn't this what it's about that when we live the way god wants us to live regardless of whether it's the best sex or not whether you're married or single there's a deeper contentment there's a deeper piece of knowing that we're living the way we're designed to live that's some of the richness of the kingdom that's different from what the world has to offer um that's it right there that's it i think that's beautiful if you have questions for rachel uh throw them in the in the q a we'll get to those i have one more for you and then maybe we'll have time for a couple questions from folks um but one question i had for you is you critique the idea that women are supposed to tame men with a civilizing effect because it puts the duty on women to tame men tell me your critique with that i see the question just popped up here for meredith we'll come to that in just a minute but tell me what your critique was with that idea well the main reason i didn't like that actually there are two reasons is that i think it dehumanizes men and women and so this idea i don't see in scripture i see in christian culture and in books this idea that men must be tamed i see it in secular culture as well but in scripture you don't see adam as someone who needs eve because he's wild a wild barbarian you see adam as someone who needs eve because it is it is good for man to not be alone because he needed someone who was different but the same right the animals were not human yep and eve was the same but different um and so that's why he needed eve but there's not this there's not this depiction of adam running rogue and crazy and then eve gets there and suddenly he puts a napkin you know tucks a napkin into his shirt and combs his hair um i think it's actually very dehumanizing to men um and unbiblical to say that they need women because they're barbarians god says that men are image bearers of god and that in christ they have the holy spirit and so therefore they have the ability to say no to sin and they don't need women to say no to sin and women don't need men to say no to sin but we do need each other and scripture does say that right so i think it's important that we recognize that we need each other but that we don't um depict that need as something that where we're animals without each other that's not okay now that's interesting one one of the arguments that i've heard made for example dennis prager who's a jewish talk show host i'm actually reading his commentary in genesis right now and he says when you look at the vast majority of crime that's done it's single young men it's not married men because when men get married marriage has this civilizing effect on men that also know i've got to provide the the shift and the focus turn somewhat changes within and there is a natural way that this helps men i give a practical example i look at i don't know if you've seen the the cobra kai series based on karate kid i was watching this i'm like johnny and daniel sometimes want to kill each other but right who gives them perspective in this show is sometimes the women it's like they speak into them and is there a way to maintain the fact that god has made us different and men are full of testosterone they want to go to war and there's something about the women in their lives that do play that role without putting the responsibility on women saying yep it's your job is there a way to balance that or would you take issue with the way i even framed that no i mean i think that's very fair pushback and i did notice that in the series that the women have a calming effect on the men or they'll just say you're being stupid um i think that it is it is so so true that men and women need each other even when we think about singles in the church um we need one another we need one another's perspective and we need one another's difference right because god created men and women different because we need each other so i don't want to under emphasize that and i think it's fair that you point out that there are studies and you know that might prove that men do better in relationship with women i think that makes sense what i don't want to fall into is depicting women as having the moral responsibility for what men do right gotcha um so if a man does something that's monstrous first of all that man doesn't have to do something monstrous he has the ability to say no that's what scripture tells us right we are no longer christians are no longer slaves to sin so i don't want men or women making an excuse for their actions by saying oh i just you know i didn't have a woman to take care of me so i acted out i don't think that there's room for that kind of excuse in scripture but i do think you make a really important point that it is so clear that men and women are different and those differences um with that we need each other complement one another we do complement one another yeah and even the women weren't necessarily spouses although sometimes they are right and some of the times you said when they're like calm down i'm like i don't know if they would listen to a guy there's something about the power of a woman here in this role that compliments let me jump two questions if that's okay and then i want to i want to let you go uh meredith says let me let me bring this this over and uh make this correction here just so you can see it says do you think it's sinful or wrong to have these thoughts or desires about someone you have dated for four years they feel almost impossible to avoid at this age and in this society well it kind of goes back to the difference between sexual and sinful right so i think to have feelings uh to have a desire to have sex with someone that you love that you're not married to is a very natural desire and in some ways you know when you're leading up to marriage those feelings increase right and i don't think that that's wrong i think that's part of the way god created us but what i would say to meredith is that it's what you do with those desires and so this might sound strange but i think that um denying yourself sexual sin is um i think i'm trying to think of who's called a kind of a liturgy it's almost like fasting right you fast in order to pray okay so when she has those thoughts if she's not able to give in to them in a god-honoring way yet because she's not married she gets to take those urges and give them to god and say this is what i'm feeling this is what i'm struggling with would you meet me in this in other words don't try to do it alone don't try to do it apart from prayer god's giving you a chance to cry out to him the way that when you're fasting and you're hungry and you can't give in that you cry out to him through prayer i think that that's it's actually a really beautiful time in your relationship where you are depending on god um and you are just very vulnerable about your weaknesses a lot of wisdom thank you for that answer one one more question from brando says uh what is your opinion on the idea that you'll find a wife husband when you stop looking or if you don't go hunting you won't find someone i've heard both said towards me oh man um well you get the same thing when you're trying to have kids um so people yeah people will say once you stop trying then you'll get pregnant or once you adopt you'll get pregnant um listen people are always trying to figure out why god does what he does or doesn't do what he doesn't do and the truth is there is divine mystery and i know incredible people who would make incredible spouses who are still single and i know you know okay and we know people who maybe aren't very great spouses but they're married to a great so if we try to turn it into a math problem it's not going to work and i would say that if you have the desire to be married it is not wrong to pursue that but we just have to remember that it's not a promise and so god often meets us in his nose and um so if not giving you the desire of your heart now it's just like the other question desiring sexual intimacy but it's not the right time you desire marriage and he's not giving it to you yet cry out to god tell him your heart and that in of itself can be worship rachel that is awesome i i want to commend to our our our viewers here talking back to purity culture your parents your teacher basically anybody who is trying to teach a biblical sexual ethic in light of where culture is today i think they're gonna find this book really helpful so i'm more than happy to commend it really appreciate you coming on uh hang on at the end don't disappear but those of you uh watching today we have some super cool interviews coming up make sure you hit subscribe we have a medical doctor coming on to talk about near-death experiences i'm bringing on a professor to talk about cannabis and the christian we have some behind-the-scenes interviews with nancy piercy and lee strobel we just have some great interviews coming up and this channel is brought to you by biola apologetics so if you've ever thought about studying apologetics there's information below we have a certificate program now we are fully distance in our master's apologetics program so we would love to help train you to be a resource for the church so thank you for tuning and by the way on this topic while i have you i had a chance to interview you'll find this interesting rachel i had a chance to interview richard ross who was one of the co-founders of the true love weights campaign back in 1993 and i'm releasing that on this channel monday morning to try to spread the word and i was really gracious and respectful because he's someone i love and i look up to asked him the tough questions some people might think i didn't go far enough some people might have thought it went too far but he tells some story back to some of what's happened in purity culture from his perspective that was really really interesting so wow those of you who enjoy this conversation check that out it's it'll be released early monday morning uh on this channel again make sure you hit subscribe and notification got some often awesome interviews coming up so rachel hang on don't disappear with the rest of you thanks for coming on and hanging with us uh we lost rachel but she kept coming back and still had a great conversation it is what it is this is the world we live in so we'll see everybody really soon

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 8,628

Keywords: purity, sex, sexuality, Bible, scripture, dating, relationships, 90s, 2000s, church, advice, wisdom, Joshua Harris, I kissed dating good-bye, sexual prosperity gospel, youth group, true love waits, resource, book

Id: jry6Z9KRcYM

Length: 58min 38sec (3518 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021