How the Purity Message of my Youth Was Incomplete

"God created sex for marriage."
"Don't have sex before you're married."
"Lust and pornography are sin."
"You have to decide beforehand that you'll stay away from sin in this area of your life, because you need to know where you stand in this before you're tempted."

I'll be honest, this is never a topic I intended to write about. But, as I've wrestled with the topic of singleness and the church, I've realized this is a part of the discussion I cannot just avoid.

I grew up in the church in the era of the "True Love Waits" movement, complete with signing purity pledges and wearing purity rings. Much of the message of this movement was good and in line with what Scripture says.

I truly believe church and youth leaders got on board with it with the best of intentions. They wanted to encourage us to and help us to live a pure life, that we in line with Scripture.

But, the message was incomplete and there was an implication to the message that went largely unspoken.

The message was incomplete because it didn't address what it looks like to handle our sexuality from a biblical perspective. The message was almost exclusively about what not to do in this area - about the sin we needed to avoid. Looking back on this, I also understand why. This is a challenging topic to address in that setting. They were walking on a line of what parents would see as appropriate. So, while the message was incomplete, I don't fault my youth leaders for that.

I think it's the unspoken implication that was more damaging anyways. It's the one I've had just enough conversations with those who also grew up in this to see the pain it caused many of us, whether we're single or married today.

The implication of all of this was, if you didn't have sex before marriage then you would have great sex once you got married. While this was rarely spoken out loud this directly, it was implied in what was taught.

As a single person, the long-term result of believing this is spending many years feeling like I was missing out on something I deserved for signing the "true love waits" pledge card in high school and not having sex. If the reward for those things was supposed to be great sex in marriage, then I was definitely missing out as a single person.

As you can imagine, this had a negative affect on my relationship with God. It wasn't until I realized that this wasn't true and was not what Scripture said, that I was able to move beyond this. I had to come to a deeper and more complete understanding of what Scripture said about this.

This is again a confirmation of why we need to be studying the topic of singleness more closely in the church. We need to correct our misconceptions and misunderstandings of all of this.