The Problem of 90s Purity Culture

 If you grew up in church youth groups in the 90s, then the title of this post tells you a lot what I'm going to talk about today. But, for those of you who don't know, I'll start with a bit of a summary.

The 90s was when the "True Love Waits" movement. complete with signing pledge cards and purity rings was in full swing. While the message of what the Bible says about how we should love with our sexuality was well-intentioned, it was carried to an extreme that caused harm and hurt to a lot of those who grew up in it.

As part of trying to get teenagers to understand what happens when you go outside of God's plan for our sexuality, the example of pulling tape apart after you stuck it together was often use. While it is true that God has good reason for the way He instructs us to handle our sexuality in Scripture, and we can live with the consequences of our choices, that example was harmful. In many cases, it left those listening feeling like they were forever damaged and unforgivable for things they had done.

Even for those who didn't cross those lines, there was hard, although it may not have been as immediately visible until into our adult years. In all the purity culture teaching of the 90s, there was an implication that if you follow God's plan for your sexuality as a teenager, God would reward you with marriage in your early twenties and great sex in your marriage. Neither of which were a guarantee or a reality for many.

What this purity culture teaching did was create a generation of people who were brought up afraid of experiencing God's judgement. And forever wondering if you've been good enough in this area. We keep quiet about our struggles in this area out of shame and fear of judgement.

And, if we haven't stayed on the path we were taught in youth group, we struggle to believe we can be forgiven for it. We live in defeat, condemnation, and judgement of ourselves.

The only way to bring healing to the spiritual trauma in this area for many of us is to acknowledge the pain, bring it out of the secret places, and let it be witnessed. Exactly what I've written about in previous posts on the topic of spiritual trauma.

But bring this into the open isn't easy when the teaching is ingrained in you causes shame if you've stumbled or struggled in this area. There's shame and a stigma that carries over. Speaking up and sharing personally, if at all, often comes in mumbled admissions, faltering words. And how others respond can begin the healing journey or further the wounding.

What Do We Do Now?

 Horrifying. Saddening. A light shed on the atrocities committed.

This news has continued to come over the last couple months. The horrors of children ripped from their homes, and ultimately being buried in unmarked graves. Missing the dignity of a proper burial and a chance for family and friends to say good-bye. The terrible reality of things done in the name of country and in the name of God.

Things that never should have been allowed. Things we quickly condemn when we hear about them happening in other places. Things that break the heart of God and should break the hearts of those who claim His Name today.

As I've watched this unfold. Heard the news. Read the reactions. I've wrestled with how to respond myself. With how to even try to make sense of any of this. How do I respond? What can and should I do?

To be honest, it's only in the last few years that I've become more clearly aware of this lengthy part of Canada's story. I wasn't trying to ignore it, but I'd never heard much about it.

It's unfortunately easier than I thought to come up with explanations and reasons. To keep it at a distance that means I don't have to do anything. 

But, I don't want to do that. I don't want to continue in the patterns of the past. It doesn't do any good for anyone.

While I would never compare what my family went through leaving everything behind when they fled the persecution they were facing and came to Canada. But, I did learn an important lesson from stories my great-grandparents told about their experiences or the experiences of their parents.

I learned how important it is to really listen and care about another's story. Not listening to confirm your opinion or understanding. Listening to hear the other person and what they're saying.

I had a quote from Beth Moore come up again recently that explains what I'm trying to say better than I can:

"We cannot have compassion if we don't go sit with people and enter in to how they see it."

As we grapple with what has been discovered - as a country, as a church, as individuals - we have to learn to sit with people and enter in to their experiences of this part of history. Not to analyze, or argue, or convince them of something. But to learn what it was and is like for the other person.

This isn't easy. It takes hard work. It's hard to hear. As Danielle Strickland writes:

"Presencing yourself to enter into the other person's experience. To be part of the joy and the pain. This is the most transformative part of listening and the hardest one to allow yourself to do."

But it is exactly what we need to do. We need to really listen to those who are still living with this. To those who still deal with the results of this terrible part of Canada's story. To those who live with the pain.

We cannot ignore this. Or try to pretend it didn't happen or it wasn't that bad.

It's only in really listening that we can begin to heal. That we can begin to move forward.

No More Sin?

Is it really possible for those who follow God to stop sinning completely?

It kind of seems like Scripture tells us that if we're in Christ, we shouldn't sin anymore. But, in my experience this really doesn't feel possible.

I just finished reading 1 John. In this letter, John seems to say that if we are in Christ, we don't keep on sinning.

"Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous just as He is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God." (1 John 3:7-9)

What does John mean when He says those born of God don't go on sinning? How is that possible given that we all still struggle with sin?

This seems especially strange for John to say in light of what John writes earlier:

"If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8)

How does that fit?

I think John's point here is more about our attitude toward sin in our lives. 

When we're not walking in God's ways, sin is no big deal to us. We're not bothered by it. Mostly, we don't even think about it. It's probably not even called sin in our lives. We just go on doing whatever it is we want to do.

But, when we're born of God, we're bothered by sin in our lives. We can't just merrily go along pretending it's all okay. We're bothered by sin and do something about it.

It's not that we never sin again. It's that we're not content to stay in our sin.

We decide to make different choices. We stop doing certain activities or going to certain places or hanging out with certain people.

We fill our time and our minds with choices that keep us from sin.

We seek out accountability and support from other Christians as we work to rid our lives of sin.

We do whatever it takes to remove that sin we've become aware of from our lives.

Why We Need to Practice Confession

Why do we pray for healing or freedom and we don't seem to receive an answer?

James 5:16 has something to say that might help us answer this question:

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

I think this verse holds a key to why so many Christians today feel stuck with this question. Why we wrestle with this question. Why our prayers often seem to change nothing for us no matter how fervently and passionately we pray.

We like most of James 5:16 - where we're told to pray for each other and that our prayers can be powerful and effective. But, we miss the first part of the verse, or we see it as unimportant or unconnected to the rest.

Confession.

The part we'd rather skip in this verse. But, what if it's the important part?

The thing that makes the rest of this verse make sense.

There is something that happens when we confess our sins to each other and pray for each other about our sin.

Something is broken and something is released when we confess our sins to one another, that doesn't happen otherwise. That thing that was secret and in darkness is brought into the light and it loses power over us. This thing that we've now confessed, that was hindering our prayers, is now gone.

When we confess our sin, we're then able to step into a healing and a freedom we wouldn't have otherwise known. This impacts our prayers in a huge way. This is the prerequisite to our prayers being powerful and effective. When we start with confession of sin with others, it changes things in our prayer life.

Do you regularly practice confession in your life?

A Doer of the Word, Not Just a Hearer

Is just reading the Word enough? Or is there more to it?

James 1:22-25 says:

"But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like someone looking at his face in a mirror. For he looks at himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of a person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer who works - this person will be blessed in what he does." (CSB)

It's not just about reading the Bible to gain head knowledge. If that's all it becomes, we've missed the point of it all. It's not just about hearing what the Bible says. It's supposed to change our lives - the way we live.

I was really struck by the phrase "forgets what kind of person he was" when I read these verses from James recently. For me, it helped make the difference between hearing and doing clear.

When we hear the Word, we do look into a mirror and see the kind of person we are reflected back to us. Any time we open the Word of God we'll see things in our lives that are good and things that aren't that we need to deal with.

If we're just hearers of the Word, this is where it stops. We hear the Word, we see what it reveals in our lives, and then we walk away, quickly forgetting what we've heard. We heard what kind of a person we are, but didn't do anything in response to it.

On the other hand, the doer of the Word, goes beyond what they heard and what they saw about what kind of a person they are. They choose to do something with what they've heard.

When things are revealed, when they see things about the kind of person they are that don't line up with God's ways, they dig deeper to allow God to transform them. They allow the kind of person they are to be changed. As they look intently at God's Word, they find real freedom.

Discard Darkness & Armor Up with Light

What does it mean to discard darkness?

How do we armor up with light?

"The night is nearly over and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." (Romans 13:12, CSB)

There are a few words in this verse that really jumped out at me when I read them recently.

The first thing was where it talks about discarding the deeds of darkness. Other translations say to put aside the deed of darkness in this verse. For me, the word discard when I read it in this translation was what stuck, rather than saying put aside. I tend to see putting aside as leaving something to come back to it later, but discarding speaks of something more permanent to me.

We should be removing the deeds of darkness from our lives for good. We discard them and they're not there for us to take back up again. They're not something we can go back to.

This isn't easy, but it's necessary. This verse goes on to say what we should take up when we discard the deeds of darkness.

We put on the armor of light. I'd never really thought about light as armor before. Light exposes and reveals, but I didn't see it as something that protects like I think of armor. Light doesn't hide anything.

But, I guess that really is armor against the deeds of darkness. These deeds depend on darkness to hide them from view, so when we take up the armor of light, we expose them for the what they really are. In this way, it does make light armor - it protects us from being deceived into doing the deeds of darkness.

To discard the deeds of darkness, we first have to allow God to point them out to us. We go His Word and we go to Him in prayer and ask Him to show us the places where we are engaged in the deeds of darkness.

Once they've been revealed, we repent of them and turn to God's ways. We choose to walk in His ways, and that means we are walking in the light. Walking in the light is how we armor up with light. We refuse to walk in  the shadows, and instead choose to walk in God's ways and stay in the His light.

Where are you engaging in the deeds of darkness in your life? Are you willing to allow God to point them out?

Will you choose to walk in the light of God's truth and God's ways instead?

Into the Light

Darkness, silence

Often hand-in-hand

To keep up bound

Fearful of the light

Hiding secrets

Carrying burdens

All to keep us down

Fearful to be found out

Slowly, carefully

Uncovering what's beneath

Will we be okay?

Can we bear the light?

Freedom, healing

Free of fearful hiding

No condemnation

No need to fear the light

Chains broken

Secrets freed

Now life can grow

In the presence of His Light

God is Gracious!

Recently some of my posts have been talking about the dangers of building our life on lies, of refusing to listen to the truth, and of going our own way. If that's the only part of the picture we see, then it would be easy to get depressed and lose hope. But, as we continue to look at Isaiah 30, we see the hope and the way to grab hold of it again.

"People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you. Although, the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying: This is the way; walk in it."
                                                                                  -Isaiah 30:19-21 (emphasis mine)

These verses begin to outline how God responds when Israel turned from their disobedience and cried out to Him. In the verses following these ones, some of the specific ways God would bless Israel's repentance and obedience are outlined.

I was struck by the words: "As soon as He hears, He will answer you." God's response to a cry to Him of true repentance is immediate. All we have to do is say the words.

He doesn't wait for us to start changing things to prove it, he responds immediately. He will help us change our actions as soon as we acknowledge we turned away and that we want to go back to His way.

God will become our Guide again. He will help us to walk according to His plan for us. Then we can life His life for us.

It all begins with simply calling out to God.

Is there a place in your life where you've gone your own way and you need to get back on God's path?

Are you will to confess it?

Exposing what Hides in Darkness

"This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is Light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sine, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
                                                                                                            1 John 1:5-9

Fear hides in darkness.

Fear causes us to hide in darkness.

We don't want what we've tried to keep hidden in darkness to be brought into the Light.

This means we don't let God in, because He is Light.

Because God is Light, He exposes what we try to keep hidden in darkness.

Sometimes we only allow Light into part of the space. We'll allow the Light to shine on the places we feel we've had time to clean up a bit.

We think by doing so we're walking in the Light, but there is still a darkness beyond the entryway. We've been confused by the enemy to think that doesn't matter, and the he uses it to gain back ground in the areas we've begun to let the Light into.

In these times, we think we're walking in the Light as long as we're facing the door so we can't see the darkness behind us. We're lying about walking in the Light, because the enemy has confused us.

We have to make the choice to let the Light go beyond the door and the immediate area we feel like we can keep somewhat in order in our own strength.

We live with a fear of what will be exposed if we allow the Light to come completely in and dispel the darkness. What we see in the shadows of the Light we've allowed in only so far scares us and we feel like it would be better if we just leave those places untouched and in the dark. But, Jesus wants to expose those places to the Light so the good work He has begun in us can be finished.

These verses in 1 John speak of exactly that. Our need to admit our darkness and let the Light in. The process of taking that first step may be full of fear and anxiety, but once we actually let the Light in, we'll never regret it.

That first step is confessing our sin, our darkness. God gives us forgiveness and purifies us from our sin. He removes the darkness by flooding that place with His Light. Darkness cannot continue to exist when the Light comes.

As much as we might wish this was a one time thing, it's something we must do continually, as we easily forget and turn out the Light in areas of our lives. We also have an enemy who is diligently looking for any way he can get in and turn out the Light on us.

We need to continually invite God's Light in to expose what's been hidden in darkness. And then be willing to confess what is exposed. That is the only way we can walk in the Light that brings fellowship with God.

Why do we Hide & Pretend?

In my post a few days ago I talked about the burdens of hiding and pretending that we do often carry. And about how we can lay down these burdens that take so much of our energy to carry.

It sounds so simple to say the way to lay down these burdens is to have people we're honest with about the good and the bad in our lives. In truth, it is as simple as it sounds, but there is something that makes living it more difficult.

"When it comes to living truthfully with others one of our primary struggles is that we seem to be of two minds: we long for the truth and we are afraid of the truth. Longing to be - and fear of being - known." (Stage 2: Community with Others, Vantage Point 3: A Way of Life)

At the same time as we long to be really known by other, we also fear it. And often this fear keeps us from living truthfully with others.

We fear being truthful with others for many reasons:

• we've been shamed for sharing things in the past
• we've been hurt for doing so in the past
• we don't know anyone who has done it before
• we're ashamed of our struggles
• we've been taught that sharing our struggles is a bad thing

I'm sure there are many more reasons that could be given. Each of us has our own reasons for fearing being known at the same time as we long for it.

The first step to overcoming this fear is to admit it. We have to start by acknowledging that it is a fear there. Confess it to God and to other carefully chosen people. As we choose to take steps to be transparent with others despite our fear of doing so, the fear loses its grips on our lives. And the next time becomes a bit easier than the last, until we're no longer bound by this fear.

We have to allow our longing to be known to be stronger than our fear of being known. It's not easy, but it is the most rewarding way to live.

The Burdens of Hiding & Pretending

"Confession is a discipline that functions within fellowship. In it we let trusted others know our deepest weaknesses and failures. This will nourish our faith in God's provision for our needs through His people, our sense of being loved and our humility before our brothers and sisters. This we let some friends in Christ know who we really are, not holding back anything important, but, ideally, allowing complete transparency. We lay down the burdens of hiding and pretending, which normally take up such a dreadful amount of human energy. We engage and are engaged by others in the profound depths of the soul." (Dallas Willard)


When I first read this quote, one phrase jumped off the page at me. It only makes sense within the context of the entire quote, but the words of the phrase are incredibly important for us to grasp.

We lay down the burdens of hiding and pretending . . ."

We don't usually talk about hiding and pretending as burdens - if we talk about them at all. For the most part, we don't admit we spend much of our lives hiding and pretending.

We live in a culture that encourages us to hide and pretend. We're taught that we need to look like we have it all together all that time. That it doesn't matter what is going on inside, on the outside everything should be fine.

Se, we pretend and we hide.

We pretend that things are going great even when they might not be. And we hide how we are truly feeling behind our answers of "fine" and "good."

But, if we're honest, even if only to ourselves, all of this hiding and pretending does get burdensome. It takes a lot of work to do it all the time. We've gotten so good at pretending and hiding, but deep down we want to stop doing it all the time. Deep down we want others to know what's really going on and how we really feel. We want to "lay down the burdens of hiding and pretending" that we've been carrying.

That's where the rest of the quote by Dallas Willard comes in. Willard is telling us how we can lay down the burdens of hiding and pretending. We can only lay that burden down by choosing to be honest with people and allowing them to know our weaknesses and our failures - by choosing transparency instead of hiding and pretending. We have to choose to be honest with each other about the good and the bad in our lives. Because it's only when we are really known by others that we stop carrying the tiresome burdens of hiding and pretending that have been stealing our energy.

It's not that we need to share every detail of the hard and the bad in our lives with every person we meet. But that, as Willard said, "we let some friends in Christ know who we really are." When we do this, things are different because we're not carrying the same burden anymore. It allows us to be more of who we really are with everyone, even if not everyone knows every detail.


"To confess our sins before others, though, helps let go of this exhausting need to keep up appearances. It frees us to live truthfully and humbly in the mercy of God." (Stage 2: Community with Others, Vantage Point 3: A Way of Life)