Is Purity Old School?

So what do you think, is the concept of purity "old school"? Is it out dated and archaic? Should people live together in sin and then get married? Is the idea of waiting to have sex until marriage a thing of the past? Should we accept the standards that abound in our society today about our sexuality?

Seems like many think staying pure until marriage is an unreasonable request. Many think we should have the freedom to "do what feels good" as long as we stay safe while were doing it. I too used to think this way. Even after I was saved, I couldn't see the problem of living with the one I was going to marry before hand.

It wasn't until I was deep in study that God took me on a journey to understand what He intended for us when He told us to remain pure. What I found was, it’s not for punishment or to teach us how to have restraint. Although restraint is not a bad thing to learn and practice. More on that topic some other time... Purity is for our own protection. God wanted us to remain pure so we would have fewer thoughts to cause us to be tempted and sin.

Let me explain, sin first comes from a thought in our minds. Something rolls across our mind and we now have the choice to stop and ponder on it or not. Once we begin to ponder on it, our next step is to act upon it. Before you know it we are knee deep in the act of sin.

When we have experienced sexual things, we have a memory of it burned into our minds. Not only is it now in our minds when we recall it, it also invokes a physical reaction from our body when we think on it. Now we not only have a thought cross our mind, we also have a vivid memory and a physical reaction that drives us. What it does is make it much harder to thwart off temptation.

God knew that if we were exposed to things impure we would struggle in our thought life with it. He knew how great sexual temptation would be, He understood our human weakness and He loved us enough to want to protect us. The best protection He could give us was to require us to remain pure.

It is not unlike what we do as parents. We want our children to stay completely away from certain things. We do not want our children to experience any thing that could hurt them or scar them later in life. We do our best to protect them from the things that could possibly do that. When they are too small to fend for themselves we do our best to keep them completely out of harms way.

Sexual thoughts can lead to many things, adultery, pornography, rape, sexual child abuse, teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, abortion, etc..... God wanted to protect us from these things happening.

But let’s take unwanted pregnancy right now. When we engage in sexual activity outside of marriage, we take the chance of unwanted pregnancy. Of course we say to ourselves, it could never happen to me, but then it does. Now we have a huge decision to make. God doesn't want us to have to even be put in these kinds of circumstances.

What about adultery, would it be less likely for a man or woman to stray if they had no experiential memory of sex from the past? It becomes a more real idea when you have something to go back to in your memory. Especially when there is trouble in the marriage and you can begin to think back on previous relationships. Those thoughts would not be there if the experience were not there.

Once the experience takes place, it puts a memory in our mind; a thought is forever burned into our memory of it. A random thought may be removed and replaced with another thought but a memory is there forever.

A memory is there forever to be used by Satan in a multitude of ways. When your marriage isn't going so well, He reminds you of the fun you had before or that person that got away. Then when you think on it, Satan tells you how awful you are. "You’re not a real Christian with thoughts like that, might as well give it up".

God never intended for us to struggle, so to protect us and take care of us He required certain things of us. One of those things He required was purity. He still requires it today, even in a morally bankrupt environment. We are to stand out from the world and remain pure in all ways. Spiritually and Physically.

Philippians 4:8 - Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virture and if there is anything praiseworthy - meditate on these things.