Instead of purity culture, a theology of the body

For too many Christians, Joshua Harris, Focus on the Family, and the purity culture of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s is all they know of a Christian sexual ethic. It’s become clear in a variety of ways that vision is not sustainable or livable—and not really biblical. So what should shape our sexual ethic? A robust theology of the body that is biblically rooted, theologically astute, and practically sustainable. Here are a few essentials of a theology of the body.

1. The goodness of the body

God created bodies. God created sex. God created marriage. God created singleness. The body and sex are not, in and of themselves, evil, shameful, or sinful. Rather, our bodies and sexuality point to the fact that we are wired for communion and intimacy. We are wired for beauty, to be drawn out beyond ourselves. Good sexual desire can be perverted, but we dare not identify the body or sex with sin itself, or we will warp both the biblical narrative and ourselves. 

2. The meaning of sex and marriage

Marriage is not the opportunity merely to gratify your sexual desire through your spouse. Rather, in marriage, I promise to give myself wholly, faithfully, and exclusively to my spouse, not just in our sexual relationship, but in all of life. Sexual union then is the physical symbol and consummation of those vows. In sexual union, I give my body completely to my spouse as a sign and seal of the fact that I give myself as a whole person to them. This covenantal view of marriage and sex is a far cry from the contractual language of purity culture. Often, the language and posture of purity culture (especially toward young men) is that you are entering into a kind of contractual exchange—you will love and care for your wife and, in return, she’ll do what it takes to keep you happy sexually. That’s a far cry from the self-giving, covenantal love of Jesus.

Furthermore, whereas purity culture has an idealistic view of sex—“just wait till you’re married, and we guarantee amazing, mind-blowing sex!”—a theology of the body demythologizes this view. Like anything in marriage, sex takes work, intentionality, vulnerability, and care. This is no sex prosperity gospel. Like marriage as a whole, the sexual dimension of our marriages may go through seasons of better or worse. Rather than holding out false promises, we must emphasize both the realistic difficulty and the immense blessing of the sexual dimension of marriage. 

3. The meaning of singleness

“True love waits.” But what if God’s intention was not that people just wait around for the perfect spouse. The Bible doesn’t idolize marriage, sex, or family. The “true love waits” posture assumes that single people should just repress/ignore their sexuality until marriage. But Scripture calls us to recognize that the ultimate destiny of our sexuality—our orientation to beauty and the ultimate meaning of our bodies—is that we are called to communion with Father, Son, and Spirit and to communion with our sisters and brothers in the body of Christ. This is not something that single Christians miss out on. In fact, Scripture suggests that those who are unmarried have a greater opportunity to do this in a way that married Christians may not. Though the purity culture lens looks at singleness as a waiting game, a theology of the body recognizes that single people can and do often embody the self-giving love of our single Savior in a whole host of ways that point to the deepest meaning of our sexuality and embodiment. 

4. Chastity vs. purity

Though it might sound medieval to our ears, the concept of ‘chastity’ is preferable to ‘purity.’ Chastity is the ability to see and know yourself and others as an integrated body-soul unity and to treat others as such. The opposite of chastity is lust, which is when I make sexual desire all about self-gratification. As Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung puts it, lust reduces sex to “a party for one.” Rather than calling us out of ourselves to love and give, lust constantly asks: what can I get out of this person? Worse, what it actually does is ignores the personhood of someone and turns them into an object for my own gratification. In other words, lust is the ultimate dehumanizer.

The remedy for lust, then, is not merely better porn-filtering software or more accountability. The remedy is a heart that learns to see people as God sees them: image bearers worthy of respect and dignity, not as objects to be used for my own sexual ends. Whereas purity culture focuses on behavior modification, chastity emphasizes Spirit-empowered heart transformation.  

5. The reality of the gospel

Much of purity culture is wrapped up in finding our identity as people who have achieved “purity” through our works. The gospel is the good news that Jesus saves us while we are still sinners. Purity culture produces either prideful Pharisees or shamed “sinners.” This is not the gospel and identifying it with the gospel ultimately drives people away from Christ. It’s just as damaging to those who ‘succeed’ in remaining “pure” as it is to those who stumble.

The natural and ultimate end of purity culture is divorce, precisely because it assumes that we sustain ourselves and our relationships through our own strength and not by daily reliance on Jesus and his Spirit to do a work in us that we cannot do ourselves. So the deepest problem with purity culture is not merely that it is misleading about sex and marriage but that it belies the way that much of conservative evangelical Christianity doesn’t actually get the gospel. A theology of the body, by contrast, understands that it is only by truly understanding Christ’s body—and God’s grace made manifest there—that we understand our own bodies. By grace we are saved. By grace we allow God’s grace, faithfulness, and self-giving love to be made manifest in our bodies on a daily basis, so that others may see and know him.