December 17, 2024 • 28 mins
What if the values you were taught as a teenager about sex and relationships actually sowed seeds of shame and confusion? On this episode of the Psych and Theo podcast, we uncover the tangled web of purity culture, a movement rooted in the 1990s, aimed at ensuring Christian millennials saved sex for marriage. Yet, reality paints a different picture, with most folks experiencing their first sexual encounters long before tying the knot. This gap between ideology and real life has left many grappling with mixed messages about their bodies and desires.
Join us as we discuss the deeper psychological and theological layers of sexual morality and purity culture. Through the lens of 1 Corinthians, we delve into the profound nature of sexual relationships, exploring the consequences of sexual sins and the enduring memories they create. But it's not all about the weight of past actions; we also highlight the importance of redemption and the possibility of fresh starts, regardless of one's sexual history. We ponder the complex chemical bonds that form through these intimate acts and offer a path forward that includes grace and understanding.
In a world still feeling the ripples of purity culture, we turn to the themes of shame and redemption within Christianity. We acknowledge the struggles many face, yearning for healing from the scars of rigid teachings and unrealistic expectations. Our conversation emphasizes the power of community, mentorship, and grace in overcoming the shadows of the past. Finally, we tease an upcoming exploration into how purity culture has evolved and transformed into today's modesty culture, a topic ripe for continued conversation and reflection.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo
podcast.
Sam and Tim here talking aboutan important topic that has
actually come up in a lot ofconversations that I've had with
some friends and co-workersabout the impact of purity
culture on Christian millennials.
This has been a topic thatpeople have been discussing,
(00:22):
because I think I have I don'tknow if it's that I have a
different perspective, but Ihaven't felt the same amount of
impact that a lot of people thatI've talked to have had.
It's been very interestingbecause they see it with a lot
of bitterness and some angereven, and a lot of shame, which
I do understand that piece aswell as well.
(00:44):
But it'll be interesting as wego through our topic today,
through our discussion of thedifferent views of purity
culture and just how it'simpacted men and women, because
there seems to be a cleardistinction in how it impacts
each of us and also on what theeffects are from a psychological
perspective and how it'sdamaged even a couple of
relationships.
So if you've been tuning in,thank you for doing so, Remember
(01:06):
to subscribe to the podcast andshare with your friends.
Leave us a rating and wegreatly appreciate that.
All right, so let's talk aboutpurity culture and the impact
that it's had on Christianmillennials.
As we jump into this topic,everyone's going to have a
perspective on this, so I'llshare mine at the end.
But I want to share with youguys, I guess, a couple of
(01:27):
things.
One is just what the numbersare on how it's affected people
or what the kind of common themeis around this.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, first, what is purity culture?
Explain that for the audience.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So purity culture.
So if you're just tuning in, ifyou're a Christian and maybe
weren't exposed to this, maybeyou were this is something that
maybe was like a 90s.
It was a strong push in the 90sto seek out purity before
marriage, which essentiallymeant to not have sex until
marriage.
So the movement itself kind ofwanted to emphasize sexual
(02:02):
purity and they took someextreme measures in order to get
that done.
A lot of messaging, negativemessaging, that impacted the way
that people viewed themselvesand the way that they viewed sex
within marriage and evenoutside of marriage.
So essentially, the purityculture was that just the push
for sexual abstinence until youget married.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And then it morphed into what you said, a lot of
extra things, so we could agreethat sex before marriage the
scriptures say don't do it.
Yeah, like, yeah, the marriagebed is holy and sex is confined
to that union.
Yeah, but purity culture tookthis as we talked about in the
legalism episode.
Legalism starts out with thisgood intention of not sinning,
(02:47):
but what ends up happening is itcreates all kinds of rules and
principles for people to followso that they don't sin, but if
you violate the rules andprinciples, then you
automatically are sinning.
Yeah, that's what legalism is.
Yeah, and purity culture is oneof these things that cropped up
on this issue.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, no, I think just in my head I just started
thinking about, as you weresharing, that I mean, it was so
bad, it was almost cringy rightthe things, the messages that
they had for the youth at thetime, for the church in general,
and I was just picturing in myhead.
I remember seeing this youthpastor and he was talking about
he was doing like some sort ofrap song with these kids.
(03:29):
I don't know if you've seen it,but they're standing on the
stage and they're teaching theteenagers and the song was
virginity is cool, virginity iscool, come on, come on.
Virginity is cool.
What up?
Virginity is cool, he's got it,he's got it.
So they're chanting this allout.
Not that that itself is badagain, but you just realize this
(03:51):
was happening during that timeand the emphasis again behind it
was hey, save sex for marriage.
So the message virginity iscool is not that it's bad, it's
that the effort to communicate amessage hey, sex is good in
marriage, save it for that time.
But what's happening beforethen?
Right, what kind of life areyou living before then?
(04:13):
That's going to create all thisshame and doubt and have you
question your identity and so on.
So just to kind of share alittle bit about where this kind
of ended up regarding howpeople viewed sex, because it
didn't help.
This push for sexual purity orsexual abstinence actually
didn't help the numbers go down.
(04:34):
In fact, it made it made anincrease, even a little bit.
This is from Santelli et al2017.
The average age of Americanwomen and men's first sexual
encounters are between 17 and 18years old.
So right, when they're hittingthat, you know adult age of 18.
(04:58):
But the average age of marriageis between 27 for women and 30
for men.
So you can imagine when you'remost sexually aroused, which is
your teenage years, you'rereceiving these messages of how
you need to save sex formarriage.
And then you look at thecultural trend of people getting
married at 27, 30 years old.
Like that's a long time forbeing in that sexual space.
(05:22):
How do you maintain that allthe way until you're 27, 30
years old and you know what'sgoing on there.
So what's happened was that, asyou're getting all these
messages, no one was actuallytalking about having those
feelings come up as normal, likeeven having the feeling of
sexual urges or sexual desire.
That was seen as bad, and noone was talking to these
(05:45):
adolescents or teenagers aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So, if you become aroused, you are therefore
sending.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The arousal itself caused a lot of shame for people
because they're thinking tothemselves, especially for the
guys.
They're thinking why am Ihaving this sexual arousal when
I'm not even thinking of this?
This is happening and I don'tknow how to make sense of this.
Even thinking of this, this ishappening and I don't know how
to make sense of this.
So you're having these physicalexperiences and then you're
being taught that having anytype of sexual desire is wrong
(06:11):
or that you need to save thatfor marriage.
That's confusing for teenagersand I do understand for parents
who grew up during the 60s and70s right, the whole sexual
revolution.
It makes sense why they wouldwant to push back against that.
Right, they know what it lookedlike, they know how they were,
they know what the culture waslike.
So you know what.
I don't want to see my kids gothrough that.
(06:32):
So I'm going to heavilyemphasize hey, save yourself for
marriage, make sure you dothings right, keep your
boundaries and so on.
But they didn't talk about whatthose other elements are that
come naturally for boys and forgirls.
Right, the research and a lotof things for girls really
talked about how they viewedtheir bodies and how they were
(06:53):
the ones that were responsiblefor maintaining that purity,
that that was all their work,that if they lost that, then
basically they were worthless.
And that is a common theme andmessage they have heard from
many women where they felt liketheir value was attached to that
single thing and not all theseother things, other virtues that
you could have developedthroughout that time.
So we can understand how purityculture has impacted both young
(07:16):
boys and young women duringthat time.
So that was really reallyinteresting.
The expectation there was anexpectation that all women will
marry men and theobjectification that their
sexuality and bodies will thenbelong to their husbands.
There is an expectation thatcomes the night of a woman's
wedding, she will be competentenough to satisfy her husband
sexually despite a lifetime ofsexual oppression, guilt and
(07:40):
shame.
So it's all this pressuremounted up to this moment of the
honeymoon or the wedding nightand so on.
And for those who grew up with,did save themselves for that
time, now your body's justresponding completely different
now, because how are yousupposed to even have this
experience when all themessaging that you've heard
around that has been bad ornegative?
(08:01):
You can see a lot of that inthese marriages or these people
who have who saved themselvesfor marriage.
Another common thing that cameup as I was reading through this
research was the idea that ifyou do save yourself, you won't
experience shame after marriage.
And maybe I shared this withyou before, tim, but there was
there's a Christian sextherapist that we have in town
(08:25):
and one of the things that heand he's worked, obviously, with
a lot of couples and one of thethings that he said he saw the
impact of purity culture onmarriages who, either the man or
the woman typically it was awoman had experienced some sort
of sexual trauma or some sort oftrauma in her past, and when
(08:46):
she came to the wedding night,she associated any type of
physical touch to that priorabuse.
So even though she savedherself, she never talked about
any prior abuse that she hadexperienced before.
And now comes the wedding night.
Now her husband is pretty muchthe bad guy because of that
experience from her past.
So the belief that if you saveyourself for marriage it's
always going to be good, thatwas a lie for a lot of people
(09:07):
because they still experiencedshame.
They weren't on the same pagewhenever they did want to become
intimate.
They struggled withcommunicating about what's good
and what's not, so all of thesethings that still come with the
reality of marriage they stillencountered, but they weren't
taught how to manage thosethings.
They still encountered, butthey weren't taught how to
manage those things.
So what we're seeing isbasically through purity
(09:29):
cultures.
There was a lot of messagingthat was well-intended, or maybe
a little bit was well-intended,but had a lot of different
negative consequences that weremaybe unexpected.
The expectation was, if I savemyself for marriage, my sex life
is going to be great or it'sgoing to be blessed by God.
But the reality is that we'restill human and you still
encounter all these differentfacets of life, especially
previous traumas for many people.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
So there was, if you kind of put this in buckets
before marriage.
There's a false confidence thateverything's going to be great.
Once I'm married, all theseurges will have a place and I
won't have any problems, and afalse confidence in that, as
long as I'm not having sex,everything's okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(10:12):
Like, as long as I don't dothat thing, I'll mess up in a
lot of other ways as long as Idon't do that.
And then after marriage,feelings of guilt, shame
associated with sexualexperience, maybe based on
trauma from the past or justbased on shame culture, yeah,
around sex from from their past.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
There was a third one I just blanked on, but even
even even sexual experiencesprior to marriage mean that,
let's say, the person wascommitted to wanting remain
absent until marriage.
But they get in a relationship,they've been dating for a while
and you know, they had onenight where they messed up.
Even even if it was that onetime, maybe twice where they
messed up and they still go intomarriage, they still carry the
(10:56):
shame and guilt from thatexperience into the marriage
because it was so heavilyemphasized that that's all they
think about, like, oh, I messedup, it would have been so
different had I not messed upprior to that right.
So again, that false belief isstill there in that they get
married.
They had these previous sexualexperiences and they think to
themselves, oh, I wonder howmuch different it would have
been had I not given myselfbefore marriage.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
There's some legitimacy to that.
Yeah, in the sense that, youknow, paul says in 1 Corinthians
all sins that we commit outsidethe body are outside the body.
But the one who sins sexuallysins against his or her own body
, and he talks about how, if aman is joined to a prostitute,
they become one flesh.
(11:40):
There's a spiritual union there, and so there is a gravity to
sexual experience with anotherperson.
There's a gravity to it and aseriousness to it that shouldn't
be overlooked and downplayed.
So in one sense, yeah, whatyoung people need to hear is
that, yeah, sex is serious, allsin is sin.
(12:02):
But if I'm five years old and Isteal a candy bar from the
store, that's wrong and I'mgoing to learn from that.
But that's very different thanbeing sexualized as a
five-year-old.
You know what I'm saying youknow, and so man this, these
episodes are going to getthrottled.
We're talking about some heavytopics, but hey, this is
psychology and theology together.
So so young people need to hearthat sex is an important thing.
(12:26):
There is a gravity to it,there's a seriousness to it, but
I think what happened in purityculture is that if you fall,
that's it.
You've ruined somethingcompletely.
Rather than understanding.
Okay, that's a sin and it doeshave consequences that ripple
out into the future.
(12:46):
Yeah, you're going to havememories when you're married.
You're still going to rememberthose things from the past.
I mean, every guy who's everlooked at pornography knows what
I'm talking about.
Those images stay with you andyou can either choose to block
them out or forget them and workthrough that and get past it,
but those things stay with youbecause sex is just a powerful
thing.
It is.
So, yeah, my concern is thatsome people would look, listen
(13:10):
to our conversation and say, ohwell, see, there's not somebody.
Some people in the past made abig deal about sex and so I
should not make that big of it.
It's just sex.
You know it's like whoa, it'snot quote unquote just sex.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know it's a serious thing yeah, and you know
, you touched on it just now too, tim is that the sexual act
itself it's a bonding experienceand it's that experience that
God intended it to be, which iswhy he says to save that for
your spouse.
And obviously, just talkingabout the chemical bonds or the
attachments that you make whenyou have sex with someone, the
(13:43):
reason why people sometimescan't let go of a relationship
is because they have had sex andthey stay within that
relationship because they'rebonded chemically, because they
had that experience.
Maybe it was their first love,second love, whatever the case
is.
So those things I mean that'show God intended for that to
happen, when it's done withinits proper context.
So, to kind of repeat what Timsaid, we're not saying that
(14:04):
because this was emphasized somuch in purity culture that it's
not that important anymore.
We do still need to payattention to the fact that you
want to be pure until marriage,but let's say you're not there
right now, cause there's goingto be a lot of people who are
listening who maybe, maybe youhaven't saved yourself from
marriage, right?
So you're looking at it here inthis conversation.
(14:25):
I think to yourself well, whatdoes that mean for me?
I do want to be pure untilmarriage, and I have been since
that last time.
Order the case is so.
I think that's what we're goingto continue to talk about is
okay.
What does this mean for us?
And the group that seems to havebeen affected most is kind of
the Christian millennials, maybea little bit of the Gen Zers
(14:46):
afterwards, but Christianmillennials those are the
population that have beenhearing more about this, which
makes sense, being in the 90s.
But yeah, so these led to theseextreme psychological effects
of purity culture, led toextreme feelings of shame, guilt
and anxiety around sexuality.
Now, again, you may still haveexperienced that had you not
(15:08):
been taught or had you not grownup in purity culture.
Right, because again, the actitself or the being in a
relationship itself, thosethings bring on anxiety anyways.
So what we're seeing frompurity culture is that it
created anxiety, but in adifferent space, in something
that was meant to be good.
There's all this anxiety aboutit to perform well or that it's
(15:29):
supposed to be good, and it maynot have been like that.
So many millennials internalizemessages of shame and guilt
about their natural sexualdesires, which led to heightened
anxiety around intimacy andrelationships, and again, this
goes back to the point I wasmaking earlier about if the
(15:50):
emphasis of be pure untilmarriage was still there, but
also conversations about thereality that, hey, just because
you are saving yourself formarriage, you still have to talk
through a lot of things as well.
Right, you're still going tohave to talk about the different
layers or stages in life wherethere are different stressors
and there's different lifeexperiences that you're having
(16:12):
that may impact that sexual partof your marriage.
So some people just they thinkthat because they save
themselves for marriage, thateverything is going to be good,
similar to like living aChristian life where, okay, if
you follow all these principlesthat God has seen in scripture,
your life is going to go better.
Right, so they assume thateverything in their life is
(16:33):
going to go better without anystruggles or tribulations.
But you know that's not thereality.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Let's hone back in on the people who maybe have
regrets.
Yeah, because I think we mighthave left them hanging a little
bit.
My message to them would bethat the cross can cover sins,
all sins, just because you mighthave messed up before marriage
and you're a Christian and maybeyou weren't a Christian then,
or maybe you were a Christianand you still messed up and
(17:01):
you're going into marriage andyou're like well, crap, I've
just kind of screwed things up.
Well, there's redemption.
The Lord can redeem things.
You're still going to feel theeffects of sin.
Like I said, there's rippleeffects throughout life for all
the decisions that we make.
But the Lord can redeem you andhe's already.
If you're a Christian, he'salready forgiven you.
So I think at that point, ifyou are repentant of those sins,
(17:26):
then work on receiving theLord's forgiveness and I guess
forgiving yourself, allowingyourself to move on.
You know from that, because theLord doesn't want you to stay
bound to the guilt of previoussins, that he's already forgiven
you.
That would.
That will just hamstring yourlife.
It will hamstring your walkwith the Lord and what he could
(17:49):
do with you.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, you have to be able to move on from that?
Absolutely no, and thank youfor sharing that, tim.
I think that is something thatlisteners need to hear.
Is that there's so much weightgiven to this one aspect of our
lives?
And it does carry.
You know, we talked in oneepisode about just different
sins carry differentconsequences, and this is one of
those because it affects familylife, it affects everything.
(18:11):
But, that being said to yourpoint, there's still redemption
after that, and you know, wecome back to this aspect of okay
, what does life look like afterI fail in this area?
And there's this aspect ofrepentance, and repentance is
correct me if I'm wrong the ideaof confessing your sin and then
(18:33):
turning away from it.
Right, but sometimes people getstuck in that loop of once they
have crossed that line, itmakes it easier to cross the
next time, and I think that'smaybe where some of our
listeners may fall into as wellis that they may feel like I'm
still stuck in this, like I'mstill attached to this, like I'm
still attached to this personthat I had sex with whatever
(18:54):
number of years ago, or I'mstill struggling with this.
What does that mean for me?
And I wonder, from a biblicalperspective?
Still, the cross can cover that.
But practically what does thatlook like?
And we look at a couple ofattachments and those who do
commit to sin.
They create either an anxiousthought where they want to go
(19:15):
into a relationship, make surethey do everything right, and if
they don't do something rightthen they're going to be let go
of.
So there's that constant fearof I'm not going to be good
enough, so I'm going to be letgo and I'm not going to have a
great relationship.
Then there's the avoidantthat's not going to go into it
at all because they feel Imessed up, I don't want to get
into another relationship, soI'm just going to completely
avoid any type of relationshipso I don't mess up and feel the
(19:38):
Lord again.
So you have all this going on atonce and I guess the message
for that is that the healing canonly come in the context of
relationships.
So for men, I encourage beingaround mentors, other friends
who are in the same stage thatyou're in, who can encourage you
and continue to provide somesense of comfort and community
(19:59):
for you as you move through thatstage, and also for the women.
You know it's interestingbecause they tend to go a little
bit deeper when they're talkingabout these issues is that
they'll talk heavily about theshame and there's a lot of
healing for them and being ableto share that with each other.
And I don't know if it's thesame for men.
I don't know if you I meanworking with guys.
I don't know if you've seenthat where them sharing actually
(20:22):
makes them feel more shame, youknow, because they feel that if
other men are not strugglingwith that, that there's
something wrong with them.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think well, guys can get isolated quickly and
think well, I'm the only onestruggling with this thing, and
so they won't talk to anyoneelse about it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, there was some research done by.
Basically, she found thatfocusing on absence and
virginity can lead to anxiety,guilt and sexual problems.
The pressure to meet theseideals causes stress and
confusion about identity anddesires, and again that goes
back to again.
You're more than just your pastsexual experiences, right,
(21:08):
there's so much more that theLord is redeeming, but it is an
important part of your story tounderstand, to know how to
operate in future relationships.
One research study looked atmarried Christian women's
experiences with premarital andmarital sex.
They found that women oftenfelt guilty during their first
sexual experiences, whetherbefore or after marriage.
(21:30):
This is for those who grew upin purity culture.
This suggests that sexual shamecan stay with people, no matter
their marital status.
And we did an episode on shameand we talked about shame in the
context of identity and in thiscase it's sexual shame which is
directly related just to theexperience of sexual behaviors.
So for women in this caseparents have a lot of sexual
(21:55):
shame from those firstexperiences, because there are
things that you remember, right,first boyfriend or first time,
whatever the case is, they seemto have a stronger attachment to
that.
They kind of concluded again, itwas a paper, it wasn't done by
any Christian, but they kind ofconcluded that it enforces
gender roles and restrict howmen and women express their
sexual desires and experiencesexual pleasure.
So I don't know what it waslike for you growing up, but for
(22:16):
me it was emphasized on bothsides.
Like guys, you need to restrainyourself, control yourself, you
know, keep your eyes pure.
That was emphasized heavily.
But it seems what this articleseemed to suggest was that for
some men or for some Christiancircles, is that well, it was
justified because they're menand they're going to have these
natural inclinations to seek outsex, so it's not going to have
(22:40):
the same impact on them.
I didn't experience thatgrowing up.
Like it was heavily emphasizedon both sides.
What was that like it?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
was the same.
Oh yeah, yeah, heavilyinfluenced on both sides.
I remember a play I saw as alittle I was young, maybe like
11, 12 or something.
We went to this church and itwas a play.
Like 11, 12 or something.
We went to this church and itwas a play, and I mean the
opening scene of the play washell, okay, and it was
terrifying as a 12 year old.
They were depicting hell and theteenage boy gets pulled out of
(23:10):
hell by an angel or maybe it wasJesus, I don't remember and
they start talking about hislife and then he recalls what
happens in his life, life and heand this girl they meet, they
start dating and then they messup and they have sex.
That's like sets.
The whole drama of the show islike they had sex, you know, and
(23:32):
then I think she, I think shegot pregnant from that and they
were worried like what are wegonna do?
What are we gonna do?
And the thing whole playsspirals downward where the girl
ends up shooting him and thenkilling herself.
That was a play, that was theplay, you know.
And so and uh, when they, whenthey are before the lord, the
boy he had, he had acceptedchrist.
(23:53):
He was a christian already, sohe, he goes to heaven.
But the girl wasn't a christian, so she gets dragged to hell.
Yeah, I don't know whathappened to the baby.
I don't know what happened tothe baby, yeah oh man, yeah, it
was a play.
That was a.
That was a play when achristian christian church when
I was growing up.
Yeah, yeah, so that's purityculture baby right and again.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I just kind of reminded of how much it was.
I mean, you saw it everywherePlays churches.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And again there was the analogy of the rose.
So if you know that one where,like a youth pastor, you go to a
youth rally I saw this a coupleof times A speaker he would
take a rose and he would havepeople go pass it around and
they got to play with the pedalsand stuff and it just got
passed around the room the wholetime and by the time it got
back to him the rose wascompletely wilted and like
destroyed.
And he's like that's what it'slike when you let people have
(24:44):
sex with you before marriage.
You you end up like this yeah,like who would want this rose,
you know?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, oh man.
All of that right, all of thatmessaging, and yet still no
healthy conversation on whatthat would actually look like.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And again, there's always this element of truth in
things You're like.
There's an element of truth inthe fact that, yeah, if you
sleep around with a bunch ofpeople, that's going to affect
your future relationships.
So there's an element of truthin that, you know.
But the lack of redemption, thelack of grace in that kind of
(25:24):
messaging was what was soincredibly harmful about it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, I agree, and you know, kind of closing out
here in this last piece of, aswe talked about purity culture
and the different effects thatit has on people, one of the
things that you've mentionedthat is an emphasis that I
wanted to add to was that aspectof grace is that if you grew up
in a culture that emphasizedpurity culture or that's very
shaming you really need to studyheavily more on the grace part
(25:51):
to find a balance there, becauseit's likely that you're
probably still looking back atthose past mistakes and stuck
there.
Basically, looking back atthose past mistakes and stuck
there.
Basically, right, a person whoexperiences heavy shame thinks
that if they do enough work,that that shame will eventually
be removed from their identity.
If you become a good enoughChristian, at some point down
the road, that piece of you isgoing to disappear, and that's
(26:15):
not how it works.
The way that shame works whenyou've experienced so much of it
is that you learn how toidentify and you learn how to
manage it better, which meansthat you can look at that
younger version of yourself.
We can say, and you can sayokay, at that stage, here's what
I was working with or here'swhat I was taught, and that was
the decision that I made at thattime.
What would present day self sayto a younger version?
(26:39):
To provide maybe a different, abalanced view of where they are
at that moment?
Like you know, I have threeboys.
My oldest is eight.
Once he starts getting to astage, if he hears from me that
I don't want you to be my son,or it communicates him in some
way, shape or form that he hasdone the worst possible thing,
that I don't even want him to bemy son.
(27:00):
I communicated something wrongto him.
So I have to look at him andsay, okay, how does God approach
me whenever I'm in sin orwhenever I've messed up before?
What has he done for me?
And a big part of that has beenacknowledging that he gives me
grace and not that he's going tohammer me again for sinning
(27:21):
right.
So there's a balance, right.
There's the acknowledgementI've sinned, lord, I sinned
against you.
Help me to clean this from mylife and there's the aspect of
grace.
I don't deserve your mercy, butyet you're giving it to me,
right.
And I think that's kind of theapproach that you want to take.
Is that if you grew up in aheavily shaming, dirty culture
type of environment growing up,then you you want to take is
that if you grew up in a heavilyshaming purity culture type of
(27:42):
environment growing up, then youreally want to place some focus
on the grace so you canunderstand how God operates when
we do sin.
Because if you're onlyexperiencing shame again, not
all shame is bad.
Some shame is good and itbrings you back to the Lord.
But if you're only experiencingshame and not God's grace, then
I would encourage just kind offocusing on that.
It's a good place to wrap it upyeah, so yeah, do that.
(28:06):
Surround yourselves with otherbelievers who also have that
perspective, because I thinkthat's where I experienced it
the most.
Is that what I was most shamedabout and I shared it to some
brothers.
They were able to kind of lookat it and say, hey, man, we're
here for you, here's what theBible teaches.
Let's walk through thistogether.
And they joined me in thatjourney and it was helpful.
That's how I acknowledged andsaw God's grace.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, I'd say we probably should do a part two
sometime on this, explainingwhere the legalistic elements of
this cropped up and what thatlooked like and how it still
plays out today.
Yeah, so it went from purityculture to modesty culture.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So that'll be part two sometime down the road All
right, All right guys.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, thank you for tuning in.
We will talk to you next time.
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo
podcast.
Sam and Tim here talking aboutan important topic that has
actually come up in a lot ofconversations that I've had with
some friends and co-workersabout the impact of purity
culture on Christian millennials.
This has been a topic thatpeople have been discussing,
(00:22):
because I think I have I don'tknow if it's that I have a
different perspective, but Ihaven't felt the same amount of
impact that a lot of people thatI've talked to have had.
It's been very interestingbecause they see it with a lot
of bitterness and some angereven, and a lot of shame, which
I do understand that piece aswell as well.
(00:44):
But it'll be interesting as wego through our topic today,
through our discussion of thedifferent views of purity
culture and just how it'simpacted men and women, because
there seems to be a cleardistinction in how it impacts
each of us and also on what theeffects are from a psychological
perspective and how it'sdamaged even a couple of
relationships.
So if you've been tuning in,thank you for doing so, Remember
(01:06):
to subscribe to the podcast andshare with your friends.
Leave us a rating and wegreatly appreciate that.
All right, so let's talk aboutpurity culture and the impact
that it's had on Christianmillennials.
As we jump into this topic,everyone's going to have a
perspective on this, so I'llshare mine at the end.
But I want to share with youguys, I guess, a couple of
(01:27):
things.
One is just what the numbersare on how it's affected people
or what the kind of common themeis around this.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, first, what is purity culture?
Explain that for the audience.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So purity culture.
So if you're just tuning in, ifyou're a Christian and maybe
weren't exposed to this, maybeyou were this is something that
maybe was like a 90s.
It was a strong push in the 90sto seek out purity before
marriage, which essentiallymeant to not have sex until
marriage.
So the movement itself kind ofwanted to emphasize sexual
(02:02):
purity and they took someextreme measures in order to get
that done.
A lot of messaging, negativemessaging, that impacted the way
that people viewed themselvesand the way that they viewed sex
within marriage and evenoutside of marriage.
So essentially, the purityculture was that just the push
for sexual abstinence until youget married.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And then it morphed into what you said, a lot of
extra things, so we could agreethat sex before marriage the
scriptures say don't do it.
Yeah, like, yeah, the marriagebed is holy and sex is confined
to that union.
Yeah, but purity culture tookthis as we talked about in the
legalism episode.
Legalism starts out with thisgood intention of not sinning,
(02:47):
but what ends up happening is itcreates all kinds of rules and
principles for people to followso that they don't sin, but if
you violate the rules andprinciples, then you
automatically are sinning.
Yeah, that's what legalism is.
Yeah, and purity culture is oneof these things that cropped up
on this issue.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, no, I think just in my head I just started
thinking about, as you weresharing, that I mean, it was so
bad, it was almost cringy rightthe things, the messages that
they had for the youth at thetime, for the church in general,
and I was just picturing in myhead.
I remember seeing this youthpastor and he was talking about
he was doing like some sort ofrap song with these kids.
(03:29):
I don't know if you've seen it,but they're standing on the
stage and they're teaching theteenagers and the song was
virginity is cool, virginity iscool, come on, come on.
Virginity is cool.
What up?
Virginity is cool, he's got it,he's got it.
So they're chanting this allout.
Not that that itself is badagain, but you just realize this
(03:51):
was happening during that timeand the emphasis again behind it
was hey, save sex for marriage.
So the message virginity iscool is not that it's bad, it's
that the effort to communicate amessage hey, sex is good in
marriage, save it for that time.
But what's happening beforethen?
Right, what kind of life areyou living before then?
(04:13):
That's going to create all thisshame and doubt and have you
question your identity and so on.
So just to kind of share alittle bit about where this kind
of ended up regarding howpeople viewed sex, because it
didn't help.
This push for sexual purity orsexual abstinence actually
didn't help the numbers go down.
(04:34):
In fact, it made it made anincrease, even a little bit.
This is from Santelli et al2017.
The average age of Americanwomen and men's first sexual
encounters are between 17 and 18years old.
So right, when they're hittingthat, you know adult age of 18.
(04:58):
But the average age of marriageis between 27 for women and 30
for men.
So you can imagine when you'remost sexually aroused, which is
your teenage years, you'rereceiving these messages of how
you need to save sex formarriage.
And then you look at thecultural trend of people getting
married at 27, 30 years old.
Like that's a long time forbeing in that sexual space.
(05:22):
How do you maintain that allthe way until you're 27, 30
years old and you know what'sgoing on there.
So what's happened was that, asyou're getting all these
messages, no one was actuallytalking about having those
feelings come up as normal, likeeven having the feeling of
sexual urges or sexual desire.
That was seen as bad, and noone was talking to these
(05:45):
adolescents or teenagers aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
So, if you become aroused, you are therefore
sending.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The arousal itself caused a lot of shame for people
because they're thinking tothemselves, especially for the
guys.
They're thinking why am Ihaving this sexual arousal when
I'm not even thinking of this?
This is happening and I don'tknow how to make sense of this.
Even thinking of this, this ishappening and I don't know how
to make sense of this.
So you're having these physicalexperiences and then you're
being taught that having anytype of sexual desire is wrong
(06:11):
or that you need to save thatfor marriage.
That's confusing for teenagersand I do understand for parents
who grew up during the 60s and70s right, the whole sexual
revolution.
It makes sense why they wouldwant to push back against that.
Right, they know what it lookedlike, they know how they were,
they know what the culture waslike.
So you know what.
I don't want to see my kids gothrough that.
(06:32):
So I'm going to heavilyemphasize hey, save yourself for
marriage, make sure you dothings right, keep your
boundaries and so on.
But they didn't talk about whatthose other elements are that
come naturally for boys and forgirls.
Right, the research and a lotof things for girls really
talked about how they viewedtheir bodies and how they were
(06:53):
the ones that were responsiblefor maintaining that purity,
that that was all their work,that if they lost that, then
basically they were worthless.
And that is a common theme andmessage they have heard from
many women where they felt liketheir value was attached to that
single thing and not all theseother things, other virtues that
you could have developedthroughout that time.
So we can understand how purityculture has impacted both young
(07:16):
boys and young women duringthat time.
So that was really reallyinteresting.
The expectation there was anexpectation that all women will
marry men and theobjectification that their
sexuality and bodies will thenbelong to their husbands.
There is an expectation thatcomes the night of a woman's
wedding, she will be competentenough to satisfy her husband
sexually despite a lifetime ofsexual oppression, guilt and
(07:40):
shame.
So it's all this pressuremounted up to this moment of the
honeymoon or the wedding nightand so on.
And for those who grew up with,did save themselves for that
time, now your body's justresponding completely different
now, because how are yousupposed to even have this
experience when all themessaging that you've heard
around that has been bad ornegative?
(08:01):
You can see a lot of that inthese marriages or these people
who have who saved themselvesfor marriage.
Another common thing that cameup as I was reading through this
research was the idea that ifyou do save yourself, you won't
experience shame after marriage.
And maybe I shared this withyou before, tim, but there was
there's a Christian sextherapist that we have in town
(08:25):
and one of the things that heand he's worked, obviously, with
a lot of couples and one of thethings that he said he saw the
impact of purity culture onmarriages who, either the man or
the woman typically it was awoman had experienced some sort
of sexual trauma or some sort oftrauma in her past, and when
(08:46):
she came to the wedding night,she associated any type of
physical touch to that priorabuse.
So even though she savedherself, she never talked about
any prior abuse that she hadexperienced before.
And now comes the wedding night.
Now her husband is pretty muchthe bad guy because of that
experience from her past.
So the belief that if you saveyourself for marriage it's
always going to be good, thatwas a lie for a lot of people
(09:07):
because they still experiencedshame.
They weren't on the same pagewhenever they did want to become
intimate.
They struggled withcommunicating about what's good
and what's not, so all of thesethings that still come with the
reality of marriage they stillencountered, but they weren't
taught how to manage thosethings.
They still encountered, butthey weren't taught how to
manage those things.
So what we're seeing isbasically through purity
(09:29):
cultures.
There was a lot of messagingthat was well-intended, or maybe
a little bit was well-intended,but had a lot of different
negative consequences that weremaybe unexpected.
The expectation was, if I savemyself for marriage, my sex life
is going to be great or it'sgoing to be blessed by God.
But the reality is that we'restill human and you still
encounter all these differentfacets of life, especially
previous traumas for many people.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
So there was, if you kind of put this in buckets
before marriage.
There's a false confidence thateverything's going to be great.
Once I'm married, all theseurges will have a place and I
won't have any problems, and afalse confidence in that, as
long as I'm not having sex,everything's okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(10:12):
Like, as long as I don't dothat thing, I'll mess up in a
lot of other ways as long as Idon't do that.
And then after marriage,feelings of guilt, shame
associated with sexualexperience, maybe based on
trauma from the past or justbased on shame culture, yeah,
around sex from from their past.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
There was a third one I just blanked on, but even
even even sexual experiencesprior to marriage mean that,
let's say, the person wascommitted to wanting remain
absent until marriage.
But they get in a relationship,they've been dating for a while
and you know, they had onenight where they messed up.
Even even if it was that onetime, maybe twice where they
messed up and they still go intomarriage, they still carry the
(10:56):
shame and guilt from thatexperience into the marriage
because it was so heavilyemphasized that that's all they
think about, like, oh, I messedup, it would have been so
different had I not messed upprior to that right.
So again, that false belief isstill there in that they get
married.
They had these previous sexualexperiences and they think to
themselves, oh, I wonder howmuch different it would have
been had I not given myselfbefore marriage.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
There's some legitimacy to that.
Yeah, in the sense that, youknow, paul says in 1 Corinthians
all sins that we commit outsidethe body are outside the body.
But the one who sins sexuallysins against his or her own body
, and he talks about how, if aman is joined to a prostitute,
they become one flesh.
(11:40):
There's a spiritual union there, and so there is a gravity to
sexual experience with anotherperson.
There's a gravity to it and aseriousness to it that shouldn't
be overlooked and downplayed.
So in one sense, yeah, whatyoung people need to hear is
that, yeah, sex is serious, allsin is sin.
(12:02):
But if I'm five years old and Isteal a candy bar from the
store, that's wrong and I'mgoing to learn from that.
But that's very different thanbeing sexualized as a
five-year-old.
You know what I'm saying youknow, and so man this, these
episodes are going to getthrottled.
We're talking about some heavytopics, but hey, this is
psychology and theology together.
So so young people need to hearthat sex is an important thing.
(12:26):
There is a gravity to it,there's a seriousness to it, but
I think what happened in purityculture is that if you fall,
that's it.
You've ruined somethingcompletely.
Rather than understanding.
Okay, that's a sin and it doeshave consequences that ripple
out into the future.
(12:46):
Yeah, you're going to havememories when you're married.
You're still going to rememberthose things from the past.
I mean, every guy who's everlooked at pornography knows what
I'm talking about.
Those images stay with you andyou can either choose to block
them out or forget them and workthrough that and get past it,
but those things stay with youbecause sex is just a powerful
thing.
It is.
So, yeah, my concern is thatsome people would look, listen
(13:10):
to our conversation and say, ohwell, see, there's not somebody.
Some people in the past made abig deal about sex and so I
should not make that big of it.
It's just sex.
You know it's like whoa, it'snot quote unquote just sex.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know it's a serious thing yeah, and you know
, you touched on it just now too, tim is that the sexual act
itself it's a bonding experienceand it's that experience that
God intended it to be, which iswhy he says to save that for
your spouse.
And obviously, just talkingabout the chemical bonds or the
attachments that you make whenyou have sex with someone, the
(13:43):
reason why people sometimescan't let go of a relationship
is because they have had sex andthey stay within that
relationship because they'rebonded chemically, because they
had that experience.
Maybe it was their first love,second love, whatever the case
is.
So those things I mean that'show God intended for that to
happen, when it's done withinits proper context.
So, to kind of repeat what Timsaid, we're not saying that
(14:04):
because this was emphasized somuch in purity culture that it's
not that important anymore.
We do still need to payattention to the fact that you
want to be pure until marriage,but let's say you're not there
right now, cause there's goingto be a lot of people who are
listening who maybe, maybe youhaven't saved yourself from
marriage, right?
So you're looking at it here inthis conversation.
(14:25):
I think to yourself well, whatdoes that mean for me?
I do want to be pure untilmarriage, and I have been since
that last time.
Order the case is so.
I think that's what we're goingto continue to talk about is
okay.
What does this mean for us?
And the group that seems to havebeen affected most is kind of
the Christian millennials, maybea little bit of the Gen Zers
(14:46):
afterwards, but Christianmillennials those are the
population that have beenhearing more about this, which
makes sense, being in the 90s.
But yeah, so these led to theseextreme psychological effects
of purity culture, led toextreme feelings of shame, guilt
and anxiety around sexuality.
Now, again, you may still haveexperienced that had you not
(15:08):
been taught or had you not grownup in purity culture.
Right, because again, the actitself or the being in a
relationship itself, thosethings bring on anxiety anyways.
So what we're seeing frompurity culture is that it
created anxiety, but in adifferent space, in something
that was meant to be good.
There's all this anxiety aboutit to perform well or that it's
(15:29):
supposed to be good, and it maynot have been like that.
So many millennials internalizemessages of shame and guilt
about their natural sexualdesires, which led to heightened
anxiety around intimacy andrelationships, and again, this
goes back to the point I wasmaking earlier about if the
(15:50):
emphasis of be pure untilmarriage was still there, but
also conversations about thereality that, hey, just because
you are saving yourself formarriage, you still have to talk
through a lot of things as well.
Right, you're still going tohave to talk about the different
layers or stages in life wherethere are different stressors
and there's different lifeexperiences that you're having
(16:12):
that may impact that sexual partof your marriage.
So some people just they thinkthat because they save
themselves for marriage, thateverything is going to be good,
similar to like living aChristian life where, okay, if
you follow all these principlesthat God has seen in scripture,
your life is going to go better.
Right, so they assume thateverything in their life is
(16:33):
going to go better without anystruggles or tribulations.
But you know that's not thereality.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Let's hone back in on the people who maybe have
regrets.
Yeah, because I think we mighthave left them hanging a little
bit.
My message to them would bethat the cross can cover sins,
all sins, just because you mighthave messed up before marriage
and you're a Christian and maybeyou weren't a Christian then,
or maybe you were a Christianand you still messed up and
(17:01):
you're going into marriage andyou're like well, crap, I've
just kind of screwed things up.
Well, there's redemption.
The Lord can redeem things.
You're still going to feel theeffects of sin.
Like I said, there's rippleeffects throughout life for all
the decisions that we make.
But the Lord can redeem you andhe's already.
If you're a Christian, he'salready forgiven you.
So I think at that point, ifyou are repentant of those sins,
(17:26):
then work on receiving theLord's forgiveness and I guess
forgiving yourself, allowingyourself to move on.
You know from that, because theLord doesn't want you to stay
bound to the guilt of previoussins, that he's already forgiven
you.
That would.
That will just hamstring yourlife.
It will hamstring your walkwith the Lord and what he could
(17:49):
do with you.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, you have to be able to move on from that?
Absolutely no, and thank youfor sharing that, tim.
I think that is something thatlisteners need to hear.
Is that there's so much weightgiven to this one aspect of our
lives?
And it does carry.
You know, we talked in oneepisode about just different
sins carry differentconsequences, and this is one of
those because it affects familylife, it affects everything.
(18:11):
But, that being said to yourpoint, there's still redemption
after that, and you know, wecome back to this aspect of okay
, what does life look like afterI fail in this area?
And there's this aspect ofrepentance, and repentance is
correct me if I'm wrong the ideaof confessing your sin and then
(18:33):
turning away from it.
Right, but sometimes people getstuck in that loop of once they
have crossed that line, itmakes it easier to cross the
next time, and I think that'smaybe where some of our
listeners may fall into as wellis that they may feel like I'm
still stuck in this, like I'mstill attached to this, like I'm
still attached to this personthat I had sex with whatever
(18:54):
number of years ago, or I'mstill struggling with this.
What does that mean for me?
And I wonder, from a biblicalperspective?
Still, the cross can cover that.
But practically what does thatlook like?
And we look at a couple ofattachments and those who do
commit to sin.
They create either an anxiousthought where they want to go
(19:15):
into a relationship, make surethey do everything right, and if
they don't do something rightthen they're going to be let go
of.
So there's that constant fearof I'm not going to be good
enough, so I'm going to be letgo and I'm not going to have a
great relationship.
Then there's the avoidantthat's not going to go into it
at all because they feel Imessed up, I don't want to get
into another relationship, soI'm just going to completely
avoid any type of relationshipso I don't mess up and feel the
(19:38):
Lord again.
So you have all this going on atonce and I guess the message
for that is that the healing canonly come in the context of
relationships.
So for men, I encourage beingaround mentors, other friends
who are in the same stage thatyou're in, who can encourage you
and continue to provide somesense of comfort and community
(19:59):
for you as you move through thatstage, and also for the women.
You know it's interestingbecause they tend to go a little
bit deeper when they're talkingabout these issues is that
they'll talk heavily about theshame and there's a lot of
healing for them and being ableto share that with each other.
And I don't know if it's thesame for men.
I don't know if you I meanworking with guys.
I don't know if you've seenthat where them sharing actually
(20:22):
makes them feel more shame, youknow, because they feel that if
other men are not strugglingwith that, that there's
something wrong with them.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
I think well, guys can get isolated quickly and
think well, I'm the only onestruggling with this thing, and
so they won't talk to anyoneelse about it.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, there was some research done by.
Basically, she found thatfocusing on absence and
virginity can lead to anxiety,guilt and sexual problems.
The pressure to meet theseideals causes stress and
confusion about identity anddesires, and again that goes
back to again.
You're more than just your pastsexual experiences, right,
(21:08):
there's so much more that theLord is redeeming, but it is an
important part of your story tounderstand, to know how to
operate in future relationships.
One research study looked atmarried Christian women's
experiences with premarital andmarital sex.
They found that women oftenfelt guilty during their first
sexual experiences, whetherbefore or after marriage.
(21:30):
This is for those who grew upin purity culture.
This suggests that sexual shamecan stay with people, no matter
their marital status.
And we did an episode on shameand we talked about shame in the
context of identity and in thiscase it's sexual shame which is
directly related just to theexperience of sexual behaviors.
So for women in this caseparents have a lot of sexual
(21:55):
shame from those firstexperiences, because there are
things that you remember, right,first boyfriend or first time,
whatever the case is, they seemto have a stronger attachment to
that.
They kind of concluded again, itwas a paper, it wasn't done by
any Christian, but they kind ofconcluded that it enforces
gender roles and restrict howmen and women express their
sexual desires and experiencesexual pleasure.
So I don't know what it waslike for you growing up, but for
(22:16):
me it was emphasized on bothsides.
Like guys, you need to restrainyourself, control yourself, you
know, keep your eyes pure.
That was emphasized heavily.
But it seems what this articleseemed to suggest was that for
some men or for some Christiancircles, is that well, it was
justified because they're menand they're going to have these
natural inclinations to seek outsex, so it's not going to have
(22:40):
the same impact on them.
I didn't experience thatgrowing up.
Like it was heavily emphasizedon both sides.
What was that like it?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
was the same.
Oh yeah, yeah, heavilyinfluenced on both sides.
I remember a play I saw as alittle I was young, maybe like
11, 12 or something.
We went to this church and itwas a play.
Like 11, 12 or something.
We went to this church and itwas a play, and I mean the
opening scene of the play washell, okay, and it was
terrifying as a 12 year old.
They were depicting hell and theteenage boy gets pulled out of
(23:10):
hell by an angel or maybe it wasJesus, I don't remember and
they start talking about hislife and then he recalls what
happens in his life, life and heand this girl they meet, they
start dating and then they messup and they have sex.
That's like sets.
The whole drama of the show islike they had sex, you know, and
(23:32):
then I think she, I think shegot pregnant from that and they
were worried like what are wegonna do?
What are we gonna do?
And the thing whole playsspirals downward where the girl
ends up shooting him and thenkilling herself.
That was a play, that was theplay, you know.
And so and uh, when they, whenthey are before the lord, the
boy he had, he had acceptedchrist.
(23:53):
He was a christian already, sohe, he goes to heaven.
But the girl wasn't a christian, so she gets dragged to hell.
Yeah, I don't know whathappened to the baby.
I don't know what happened tothe baby, yeah oh man, yeah, it
was a play.
That was a.
That was a play when achristian christian church when
I was growing up.
Yeah, yeah, so that's purityculture baby right and again.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I just kind of reminded of how much it was.
I mean, you saw it everywherePlays churches.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
And again there was the analogy of the rose.
So if you know that one where,like a youth pastor, you go to a
youth rally I saw this a coupleof times A speaker he would
take a rose and he would havepeople go pass it around and
they got to play with the pedalsand stuff and it just got
passed around the room the wholetime and by the time it got
back to him the rose wascompletely wilted and like
destroyed.
And he's like that's what it'slike when you let people have
(24:44):
sex with you before marriage.
You you end up like this yeah,like who would want this rose,
you know?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, oh man.
All of that right, all of thatmessaging, and yet still no
healthy conversation on whatthat would actually look like.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And again, there's always this element of truth in
things You're like.
There's an element of truth inthe fact that, yeah, if you
sleep around with a bunch ofpeople, that's going to affect
your future relationships.
So there's an element of truthin that, you know.
But the lack of redemption, thelack of grace in that kind of
(25:24):
messaging was what was soincredibly harmful about it.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, I agree, and you know, kind of closing out
here in this last piece of, aswe talked about purity culture
and the different effects thatit has on people, one of the
things that you've mentionedthat is an emphasis that I
wanted to add to was that aspectof grace is that if you grew up
in a culture that emphasizedpurity culture or that's very
shaming you really need to studyheavily more on the grace part
(25:51):
to find a balance there, becauseit's likely that you're
probably still looking back atthose past mistakes and stuck
there.
Basically, looking back atthose past mistakes and stuck
there.
Basically, right, a person whoexperiences heavy shame thinks
that if they do enough work,that that shame will eventually
be removed from their identity.
If you become a good enoughChristian, at some point down
the road, that piece of you isgoing to disappear, and that's
(26:15):
not how it works.
The way that shame works whenyou've experienced so much of it
is that you learn how toidentify and you learn how to
manage it better, which meansthat you can look at that
younger version of yourself.
We can say, and you can sayokay, at that stage, here's what
I was working with or here'swhat I was taught, and that was
the decision that I made at thattime.
What would present day self sayto a younger version?
(26:39):
To provide maybe a different, abalanced view of where they are
at that moment?
Like you know, I have threeboys.
My oldest is eight.
Once he starts getting to astage, if he hears from me that
I don't want you to be my son,or it communicates him in some
way, shape or form that he hasdone the worst possible thing,
that I don't even want him to bemy son.
(27:00):
I communicated something wrongto him.
So I have to look at him andsay, okay, how does God approach
me whenever I'm in sin orwhenever I've messed up before?
What has he done for me?
And a big part of that has beenacknowledging that he gives me
grace and not that he's going tohammer me again for sinning
(27:21):
right.
So there's a balance, right.
There's the acknowledgementI've sinned, lord, I sinned
against you.
Help me to clean this from mylife and there's the aspect of
grace.
I don't deserve your mercy, butyet you're giving it to me,
right.
And I think that's kind of theapproach that you want to take.
Is that if you grew up in aheavily shaming, dirty culture
type of environment growing up,then you you want to take is
that if you grew up in a heavilyshaming purity culture type of
(27:42):
environment growing up, then youreally want to place some focus
on the grace so you canunderstand how God operates when
we do sin.
Because if you're onlyexperiencing shame again, not
all shame is bad.
Some shame is good and itbrings you back to the Lord.
But if you're only experiencingshame and not God's grace, then
I would encourage just kind offocusing on that.
It's a good place to wrap it upyeah, so yeah, do that.
(28:06):
Surround yourselves with otherbelievers who also have that
perspective, because I thinkthat's where I experienced it
the most.
Is that what I was most shamedabout and I shared it to some
brothers.
They were able to kind of lookat it and say, hey, man, we're
here for you, here's what theBible teaches.
Let's walk through thistogether.
And they joined me in thatjourney and it was helpful.
That's how I acknowledged andsaw God's grace.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, I'd say we probably should do a part two
sometime on this, explainingwhere the legalistic elements of
this cropped up and what thatlooked like and how it still
plays out today.
Yeah, so it went from purityculture to modesty culture.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
So that'll be part two sometime down the road All
right, All right guys.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, thank you for tuning in.
We will talk to you next time.
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