Shaming The “Impure” and Those Who Stand Up For Them

ariseandawakenme asked a question:

Hi can you check out “sadmomhair” she’s a young sister in Christ who posted something kinda controversial and I feel like I kinda know where he heart is but I’m not sure how to speak up about the whole thing Thanks in advance 🙂

Hey dear friend, I read up on her blog, and I think it’s great. Normally I would never comment on another blog this way, but she is very refreshing and very clear, with a very strong viewpoint that’s missing in so many voices today.

If I may summarize, I believe her thoughts about purity in one sentence is, “It doesn’t make you a better Christian if you’re a virgin, because God’s love will redeem us all.” I know I’m simplifying what she said here, but that seems to be her thesis. And she’s absolutely right. God will accept and redeem and offer grace to anyone, in any condition, or else He isn’t the God of the Bible.

I also saw all the comments and anonymous messages thrown at this blogger (who by the way, is 18 years old and needs much grace and prayer for her influence and leadership), and I was once again disheartened by our hasty church-culture.

I hope to remind us — especially fellow brothers and sisters in Christ — about how we communicate and criticize ideas. When someone expresses a thought, this is not their entire thought on the issue. No one can possibly cover every base and angle and “what-about” and caveat in a single blog post, or even a whole book. We will miss the exception or forget to include some small gray area. When someone does not elaborate on a tiny caveat, it doesn’t automatically mean that the person believes the opposite of what he or she neglected to say.

We presume this kind of thing too quickly, and there has to be grace for that instead of jumping to ill conclusions.

Of course we want to be as clear as possible, but we must also be concise.  Communication gets started by first presenting an idea, not every “exception.” We meet in the gray area to talk. Unfortunately, the internet world has turned the gray area into a mine-field.

Here’s what I mean. The fact that she’s saying virginity is not some kind of “higher status” doesn’t mean that she’s demeaning godliness or holiness or purity. If I said, “There’s nothing wrong with secular music,” it doesn’t automatically mean that I’m okay with worshiping the devil and wearing a beer hat with goat blood. We find the truth on a common ground, not our extreme parodies of the opposite view.

I have a feeling that the reason this wonderful blogger wrote about virginity this way is because of our reactionary church atmosphere, in which we draw the line too close to saints and tend to leave out “sinners.” Grace is often the first thing to leave a church. It’s as if the church hopes to change our behavior by telling us how bad things are, without recognizing that most people walk through the doors wrapped in the consequences of things they’ve already done.

I’m all for fighting towards purity and basking in the awe-inducing holiness of God. But in the end, purity is not something we fight for but something we fight from, because purity is God’s gift to us who have embraced all He’s achieved through His Son. It’s only this restoration that would motivate us to fight for holiness at all.

— J.S.