I kissed purity culture goodbye

Michael Coutlakis

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2026-08-13

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie”

Introduction and objectives

I have a few reasons for writing this. Firstly, I need to work through my own cognitive dissonance in order to properly move forward. This means I need to justify my thinking, plausibly enough to convince even myself. This is not merely an exercise in some kind of self-justified self-righteousness, but a necessary step to avoid a lifetime of analysis paralysis.

This is not merely a selfish, self centred exercise either. To be honest, it’s probably one of the biggest hindrances to my faith. Look at the bigger picture: If I believe my faith advocates a psychologically damaging philosophy, how can I enthusiastically advocate it? Is Christianity nothing more than guilt mongering? And if I, and many others, are stuck at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, that is an opportunity cost for society as a whole. Neither is this a witch-hunt, opportunity to play the victim or blame others for bad ideas.

Secondly, some of the Purity Culture Christian ideas and sayings are just stupid and need rebuttal.

Finally, I believe I have to. As a fellow inhabitant of this planet the well-being of people in general is at least partly my concern. The state of affairs between men and women isn’t great currently. Marriages and birth rates are declining, the sexes are becoming more polarised and less trusting of each other and so on ¹. I don’t believe we need any other causes of friction and I’m not convinced that purity culture is helping us as I will argue below – so we should examine this further.

However, this topic doesn’t seem to be receiving much attention within the Christian community. I suspect this could mostly be a problem of proximal concerns. As a single (previously young) man, these matters are near top of mind. In contrast, most Christian leaders seem happily (or at least stably) married. I suspect as such these matters fall to the back of their minds. This goes further: As soon as I find a wife / girlfriend, these matters will fall to the back of my mind. So I have unfinished business here: Either God or myself will keep me single until I write this — so it’s time to wrap this up.

There’s also a question of priority: Christian leaders primary concern is for our eternal salvation, so of what relevance are these earthly relationships anyway? This dismissive attitude is another aspect I want to challenge. Further, there is nothing quite so messy and complicated as relationships: who would dare to be involved? Almost better to stand back and let people sort things out for themselves. Finally, there’s a bit of a reputation risk: holding opinions within a topic like purity culture could easily clash with Paul or some other verse from the Bible. I suspect that many “good” Christians would be hesitant to risk tarnishing their reputation visiting this alley. However, I’m not bothered by that and don’t have too much reputation to lose anyway. So this one has my name written on it. I’ll take one for the team.

A disclaimer

My first piece of advice is: Don’t take any. Or, at least, whatever you take from this is your responsibility and you need to own it. Jesus warned against leading others astray, saying it would be better for that person to be drowned in the sea with a heavy millstone tied around their neck than to cause a little one (vulnerable believer, child, weak person) to sin. Do you think I want to be thrown into the sea tied to a millstone? Of course not! So don’t let me lead you astray – don’t listen to me.

The problem though is there are a range of voices. Each speaks with its own agenda, motivation and differing level of conscientiousness to second guess itself. So, if all the cautious voices withdraw it introduces a bias. I might as well add mine to the mix. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives, I’m just contesting claims about what should be inferred from the Bible.

Finally, I’m writing from a male perspective. Evidence suggest that purity culture impacts women more, however, I can’t write from their perspective.

Purity culture – definition and context

Purity culture “was” a Christian movement, prominent during the 1990’s and early 2000s, that emphasised abstinence from sex before marriage².

Plain old vanilla Christianity upholds abstinence of sex before marriage too. So what’s the difference? I claim that placing an emphasis on one aspect like purity establishes a focus — it becomes the important thing, a dimension along which oneself can be measured, the optimisation axis for “purity maxxing” (as it might be said in today’s language). Once the goal has been set, this creates space for the subsequent shame and self worth tied to purity along inhibition for fear of mistakes — these are the commonly cited negative aspects of purity culture.

Purity culture is extant in Christian literature and the community

Purity culture has received a fair amount of backlash, including some from its original proponents, and has faded in popularity. Despite the definitions of purity culture as a bygone movement (by usage of the past tense) I believe purity culture is still very much extant. Allow me to illustrate with some examples:

Artifact 0: I kissed dating goodbye

My first direct exposure to purity culture was after I came across the now infamous 1997 “I kissed dating goodbye” book by Joshua Harris on my family’s bookshelf. No one suggested that I read it myself but my curiosity was piqued. Harris discouraged conventional dating, recommended group dates and courtship with parental involvement along with strict boundaries like no kissing before marriage. The high standards slotted in quite well given my conservative Christian upbringing. As I recall (having read it many years ago) there seemed nothing wrong with these ideas — they are a bit idealistic but seemed well intended and worth aiming for.

Adherence to purity culture doesn’t ensure smooth sailing. Joshua Harris went from evangelical pastor to renouncing his book and faith — he now sees himself as somewhat of a seeker, still drawn to Jesus³. His conclusion resonates with many other critics of purity culture:

…I saw my book had many flaws. In my effort to set a high standard, the book emphasized practices like avoiding dating and kissing before marriage and concepts like “giving your heart away”—things that are not found in the Bible. I see now that, in trying to warn people about the pitfalls of dating, the book instilled fear in many readers. Fear of making mistakes. Fear of having their hearts broken. Fear of failing to live up to an ideal. Fear of their own sexuality.

The book also gave the impression that following a specific methodology for relationships would guarantee a “happily ever after”—a perfect marriage, a great sex life, and a life free of relational pain. But life doesn’t work that way, and these outcomes are not promised in scripture.

…While I can’t recall all the copies of my book, I’ve worked to spread the word about its problems through public statements, media interviews, and the documentary. My publisher agreed to discontinue I Kissed Dating Goodbye and my other books in 2018.

…My own marriage ended in 2019, and I began to see in an even deeper way how damaging purity culture and its teachings about sex, gender, and relationships have been for so many people—myself included.

A Statement on I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris, excerpts from 2023 update of 2018 statement.

I respect him for having the awareness and guts to admit his mistakes and learn. I also respect his move to pull the book from publication. I can’t help noticing how the cover of I kissed dating goodbye shows a man with lowered head and covering his face with a hat. While presented as a “goodbye” gesture, hat tips don’t hide the face, so this looks more like shame. Was the psychological impact of the book already perceptible from the cover? The Christian community might do well to review its bookshelves and question which books deserve their space there.

Artifact 1: Outdated

In the 2021 book “Outdated (Find love that lasts when dating has changed)” by Jonathan Pokluda⁴, chapter 8 (No strings attached) is devoted to encouraging abstinence from sex before marriage. Chapter 9 (Try it before you buy it) is devoted to discouraging living together before marriage. In a one-page section titled “How far is too far?” he advocates staying as far away from any dangerous activities as possible. I classify this as purity culture teaching as it establishes performance metrics against which one can measure themselves. To the impressionable mind, the effect is conformance through fear of not meeting the stipulated standard and of the mistakes that could be made. By association with the amount of emphasis and endorsed with numerous verses from the Bible, following the guidelines must be really important!

It’s not like any of these ideas are new – he could have just said: by the way, I recommend abstinence from sex before marriage, go read the Bible for more, and referenced Paul (the de-facto quick draw for sexual morality) or one of the many other existing books. Instead we get a book-length reassertion — which creates space for an axis.

All of this while admitting that his own journey started out with purity culture, followed by a few years of unbounded hedonism before marriage and repentance. As for the implied promise of following purity culture: Harris shows adherence doesn’t guarantee the outcome; Pokluda shows the outcome can arrive without adherence. The pattern of writing a book where you recommend that other people learn from your mistakes and follow your teaching — rather than learning through their own experiences — seems quite prevalent. It’s almost like we learn better from our own lived experiences than what other people tell us. Very strange. It’s also a bit ironic — why shouldn’t one conclude from his story that the path to enlightenment is the practical one he followed rather than the purity one he teaches?

Unironically, Outdated was already outdated 3 years before it was published, at least from Harris’s frame of reference.

Artifact 2: Disciplines of a Godly Man

In the 1991 to 2019 (updated edition) book “Disciplines of a Godly Man”, R. Kent Hughes devotes the first chapter after the introduction to the “Discipline of Purity”. I must confess I haven’t read the whole thing – I don’t want to⁵. But skimming it I catch glimpses of phrases like

“…scare the sensuality right out of us!”,

“Pray daily and specifically for your purity”

“Never flirt – even in jest”

Could this be purity culture? The first edition was 1991, so this is an older book, perhaps one of the OG’s of the movement. The 2019 edition shows that these ideas are still promulgating in some circles. So, people might think of purity culture as a previous movement but these books are still being printed, read and ideas shared.

The curious reader may wonder how I came across the latter two books. They were given to me by well meaning individuals — as you may have guessed these are not the types of books I would typically go out in search of and spend money on. I will outline why I believe these books aren’t healthy for me. Knowing that, I can’t in good conscience pass them along for others to read. These are my books, and my responsibility for safe disposal. No hard feelings to the givers. (Harris wasn’t part of the shelf cleaning since I don’t own that book).

The inference to the impressionable young / naive mind might go something like this: People are writing and giving books advocating purity culture. So, it must be socially endorsed (at least, within my Christian community). Therefore, as a social creature I should play along and toe the line within this framework.

Is this really the way though?

In the beginning

Shortly after the beginning God considers the situation, declares “it is not good for the man to live alone” (Genesis 2:18), whatever that means, and goes ahead and makes a woman. The rest is history.

Actually, God makes all the animals first, but they don’t cut it as a suitable companion (or rather, God gives Adam the opportunity to realise something is missing), so then he makes a woman.

This is actually important. At this point in time, Adam already had:

• A task or job: to cultivate the garden
• Authority
• Meaningful work (stewardship)
• Direct communion with God

This was before the fall, yet God himself declares the situation “not good”. We are relational beings, created in the image of a relational God, and even the perfect job in the perfect environment with perfect spiritual intimacy does not satisfy the human need for human companionship.

Also worth noting was that Adam was genuinely happy to see Eve while also acknowledging that up to then something of himself had been missing: “…At last, here is one of my own kind…” (Genesis 2:23). More on that later.

This calls into question various ideas like the “gift of singleness” and “if you aren’t happy single you won’t be happy in a relationship”. These are just missing the point. The point is not that men are incomplete without women, it’s that humans are not meant to exist in isolation, interdependence is good, isolation is harm.

Next up, we get the wonderfully cryptic narrative that “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one”⁶.

Or, more literally:

“Therefore a man shall leave (ʿāzab) his father and his mother and cling (dābaq) to his woman (ʾishšâ), and they shall become one flesh (bāśār ʾeḥād).”

This is a very interesting statement:

• it does not use any socio-legal terminology like “marriage”. This is not only because this statement precedes marriage (no legal systems had been established yet) but because it is describing something that is built in to creation / human nature. When Jesus later quotes this⁷ he does not update the terminology (e.g., to say “marriage”) because this remains a pre-social, pre-legal, pre-cultural reality that just is, because of the relational mechanics God built in to creation. In this way the essential nature of the union is conveyed without any additional “baggage”.
• It illustrates a high degree of loyalty and mutual commitment. Ancient Israel was virilocal – the wife would join the husbands household. This statement is best understood ⁸ as signifying a drastic recalibration in loyalty, the original human kinship bond is left / “forsaken” in favour of forming the even stronger new bond with the woman.
• dābaq is the strongest Hebrew verb for loyalty, the semantic range spans affectionate attachment (Ruth 1:14, Genesis 34:3) to covenant level steadfast allegiance (Deut 10:20)
• ʿāzab is a qualifier for the loyalty: It came with cost / implications, represented here by leaving the father and mother but more commonly by “forsaking” other options.
• The outcome, “one flesh”, includes sexual union, but is broader, meaning a shared life, identity and destiny — that is, to become one flesh means to become family.

When Jesus is asked about marriage⁹ he quotes Genesis 2:24. This is an interesting choice as he deliberately went behind all the Mosaic law. He then adds a further unsolicited titbit: “They are no longer two, but one. No human being must separate, then, what God has joined together”. And on further questioning he explains that if you divorce and remarry you basically commit adultery unless it was because of the others unfaithfulness. This is wild because under a legal framework for marriage you could divorce and remarry. The “one flesh” union is not dissolved by legal process.

The “one flesh” family kinship already signified permanence and Jesus reinforces that. It’s kind of like contracts can be terminated but once you’re family you can break the family, become estranged, but you can’t “un”-family. Your wife will be your ex-wife and your son your son, not your un-son.

God created people in his image, as relational beings. He created all of the necessary “ingredients” or relational mechanics that would allow us to form pair bonds: at a simple level, the attraction, the hormones, the chemistry and at a slightly deeper level the psychology, desire and need for human connection, to be part of something beyond yourself and so on. Couples, knowing this reality, can then consciously choose to enter into and play along within this framework – provided mutual loyalty (the cleave part – inherently necessary for the mechanics to work). And then God looks at this and is like they’re playing my game, I like it.

This is why:

• marriage is universal across cultures, it is pre-legal and rooted in creation.
• marriage is covenantal and sacred – God built the architecture
• marriage is vulnerable to infidelity / adultery because loyalty is intrinsic to one flesh: the nature of the union shouldn’t be contradicted. (A legal view alone could not explain this)

Understanding marriage as a bonding layer with a covenant layer can also help understand other concepts. For example, casual sex invokes some of the bonding layer but not the covenant layer. This means the participants do not get “married by accident” as some might interpret. However, as the bonding mechanism is invoked, it creates some relational / emotional entanglement and is fundamentally dishonest because it uses the deepest bonding mechanism while withholding the covenantal loyalty necessary for a full, wholesome expression of the entire mechanism. Basically, bread-crumbing. For example:

• Exodus 22:16, If a man seduces a virgin, he must pay the bride price and marry her — because sex did not automatically marry them, but it did have serious relational (and probably at that time also social) consequences.
• 1 Corinthians 6:15: Sex with a prostitute (no loyalty, no commitment) counts as one flesh (bonding layer, the Greek uses kollaō, “to glue/join”), but no covenant / relational layer.

Don’t dismiss the earthly life

Why was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden anyway? God foresaw the possibility they might eat the forbidden fruit – it was even a hypothetical scenario he warned against earlier.

From this point, Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden and we get the whole story of the Bible, culminating in Gods offer of redemption through Jesus Christ and the promise of a new kingdom. Some Christians therefore point the focus to the future, dismissing our current earthly lives to insignificance. But if it was Gods plan to offer redemption, could he not have offered it to Adam and Eve there and then? What difference would it have made? I guess for a start there would have been only two people — maybe God wants more of those?

In any case, my takeaway from this is that our choices now matter and we are not in some kind of “limbo” period. God did not apply some quick fix in the Garden of Eden, it was many years until Jesus came and now over two millennia and counting and he’s not back yet. So, we can assume this time still has relevance – we are not simply “waiting” for Jesus to come back. I point this out because I think Christians too easily dismiss aspects like relationships – often comforting and downplaying the state of single-hood as insignificant in the bigger picture of eternity. I’m not convinced – God’s original observation (it is not good for man to live alone) and commandments (“Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control” Genesis 1:28 — also known as the “Creation Mandate”) remain in effect. It seems to me that to console singleness by dismissing it as insignificant is to contradict or at least, call into question, God himself.

I realise that not everyone’s lives or circumstances are the same. Jesus noted (see later) that not everyone even marries¹⁰, for different reasons, and that may be perfectly fine. However, my opinion is that marriage is a good default which shouldn’t be discredited lightly.

At an earthly level I think neglecting relationships carries the risk of a less fulfilling life (we know from large studies that relationships are probably the most important aspect¹¹). Lack of relationship, whether due to unavailability or forfeit, could be a real cause of grief or regret. For example, Jephthah’s daughter wept for her virginity (Judges 11:38). I think this should serve as a wake-up call to people “voluntarily” (or brainwashed, e.g. via overpopulation arguments) giving up on relationships or deciding not to have kids: Those who have the opportunity taken from them might understandably mourn the loss. Voluntarily forfeiting something this valuable should be considered carefully.

At another level, sometimes I feel lonely being single, and then I wonder if any single girls feel that way. Then I wonder if I’m being selfish by being single, as roughly speaking a single guy corresponds to a single girl. Then I wonder whether I’m being selfish towards God. After all, he wanted us here, he wanted us to have relationships and to make more babies (Creation Mandate). So what does it mean if I say no thanks, not interested in your game, I’m just going to go and sulk in my corner? I worry that I might be trying to punish God by being miserable, and that won’t make anything better.

The problem with purity culture is that it treats the mechanics God built as hazards to be avoided. Purity apologists counter that they are merely arguing for the mechanics to occur in the correct context (marriage). However, this is done with the collateral of scaring the sensuality right out of us — pathologising the very machinery that makes one-flesh possible.

While purity culture does affirm that the mechanics are good and created by God, this is typically a disclaimer paragraph and the warnings get the rest of the book. Purity culture authors may write that sex is a gift from God, to be used in marriage, while also writing to pray daily for your purity and never flirt — even in jest. Therefore the problem is practically attributed to the machinery even while it is theoretically affirmed as good. Since the diagnosis is that desire is the hazard, the remedy is to suppress it.

The Genesis model offers an alternative axis: A dishonest relationship where loyalty is withheld versus a wholesome relationship where both layers are expressed. With that diagnosis, the real question is how these layers align.

Ruth

The book of Ruth is short and well worth a read if you have not recently.

Ruth Chapter 2

Naomi had a relative named Boaz, a rich and influential man who belonged to the family of her husband Elimelech. ² One day Ruth said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields to gather the corn that the harvest workers leave. I am sure to find someone who will let me work with him”. Naomi answered, “Go ahead, my daughter.” ³So Ruth went out to the fields and walked behind the workers, picking up the corn which they left. It so happened that she was in a field that belonged to Boaz. ⁴Some time later Boaz himself arrived …. ⁵ [and] asked the man in charge, “Who is that young woman?”… ¹⁴At meal-time Boaz said to Ruth, “Come and have a piece of bread, and dip it in the sauce”…

Chapter 3

Some time later Naomi said to Ruth, “I must find a husband for you, so that you will have a home of your own…

I would like to offer a commentary:

• Boaz was a rich and influential man. This is an interesting unsolicited comment. Nobody asked, but the narrator knows that both of these points are relevant and important — and states them as matter of fact without disclaimer, explanation or apology. Wealth gives Boaz the ability to provide and social standing means people notice and value him. This combination made him highly desirable to women and sets him in Naomi’s sights.

• Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s (late) husband Elimelech. This context is important later as Elimelech had a field and property law stipulated that if an Israelite were to sell their land due to poverty, the closest relative should buy it back (Lev 25:25). We hear later (Ruth 3:12) there was a closer male relative.

• It just so happened… Yes, of course it did. Everything was purely coincidental, we totally believe that. No reason to think otherwise.

• While the narrative does not describe Ruth’s appearance it does read as though she is a young woman men notice and Boaz finds her attractive. Upon arriving, Boaz immediately spots Ruth (2:5) even though there were multiple women working there (2:8). He probably knew most of the people there (social standing) but his first concern for Ruth was that she had a high likelihood of being molested by the men (2:9), pre-supposing that she’d be noticed. Later, he implies that she could have pulled any young man she wanted, rich or poor (3:10).

• Boaz saw Ruth, liked the look of her, interacted with her, and then made no move on the relationship front — so much so that “Some time later” Naomi hatches a plan. This might seem surprising given that Boaz practically already had Ruth eating out of his hand. Why then does Naomi need to come up with this plan? Boaz had his own business to mind, he didn’t need to go chasing some young woman. He had signalled some level of interest but didn’t know what Ruth’s intentions or level of commitment were – those were untested. Boaz had clearly demonstrated what he brought to the table: ability to provide and share generously and social status. Ruth was a pretty, loyal young woman but she hadn’t yet put that on the table for Boaz. The ball was back in Ruth’s court. I think Ruth was going to have to show Boaz that she was in as opposed to simply saying she was in. Boaz needed an indication that Ruth was going to choose and commit to him (and not just head off into the sunset as soon as a better option came along). His response to Ruth acknowledges that the question of loyalty has been answered for him (Ruth 3:10).

• Naomi / Ruth did not ask what God’s timing was. They knew the timing was self evident and went with it. Naomi said “I must find a husband for you, so that you will have a home of your own”. They didn’t need to consult scripture or wait for any prayers to be answered or spiritualise their choices. They knew this was within their sphere of control and never questioned responsibilities. They made their decisions and owned them.

• We don’t know exactly what went down on the threshing floor. Some may say this was a full on seduction (note that “feet” may have been used as a euphemism for genitals), others may try to water it down. In any case, there was a certain level of intimacy involved (lifting the covers). Some notes:

  • Whatever went down, some perfume and the covers of darkness were important ingredients in the plan. This plan wasn’t something that could have been executed to the same effect say, during daylight. Sure, when he wakes up she basically asks him to marry her, but the scene had been orchestrated implying that this was the perfect moment and situation for that question and it likely would not have had the desired impact and consequence had it been asked in a different scenario.

  • Ruth’s marriage request was more literally: spread your cloak over your maidservant, for you are a kinsman redeemer (Ruth 3:9). The idea of kinsman redeemer has several contexts, none of which apply here in a clear cut manner: There’s the field (Lev 25:25), but it says nothing of widows, there are slaves (Lev 25:49), but that says nothing of marriage, there are widows whose late husbands have brothers (Gen 38:8, Deut 25:5) but that says nothing of kinsman redeemers and does not directly apply to Boaz.

    Ruth is not invoking a legal clause that entitles Boaz to her. This was not a property transaction with no attraction: in that case they should have targeted the closer relative (3:12). And Boaz is not obliged to marry Ruth: in 3:10 he says she could have picked any man, not just one from a finite list of her kinsman redeemers.

    Ruth uses Tamar’s strategy of going up the inheritance hierarchy (Genesis 38:14) once the brothers had run out (Ruth 1:11). Boaz packages the principle of providing a widow with family along with the field purchase, convenes a meeting of ten elders (using his social standing) and argues it as precedent. The elders recognised the move well enough to associate the precedent with Tamar (Ruth 4:12).

  • Ruth put her reputation on the line with this one. Boaz knows this (doesn’t want her to be seen). However, Ruth is risking her reputation with other men because all that counts to her is her reputation with this one man. I believe this is one of the signs Boaz needed to see to convince him: Now he knows Ruth is all in. She is by his side because she chose to be there, he doesn’t need to go searching to find her and he isn’t going to need to fight to persuade her why she should like him / be with him. This is the ʿāzab of Genesis 2:24: Boaz noted how Ruth left her country and people out of loyalty to Naomi (2:11), and now she has forsaken all her other options in favour of Boaz.

  So I pose the question: If the aim was seduction, how would the plan have been any different? The plan was seduction in service of family.

Now, I pose the question: How well would this have worked if Ruth was “fleeing evil” and Boaz had the “sensuality scared right out of him”? Might she have turned her nose up at the plan? Might Boaz have jumped up and fled? Had Ruth been indoctrinated with purity culture, could this have happened? Fortunately for us, she took the risk, God used her actions and she became the great-grandmother of David and ancestor of Jesus.

The problem with purity culture is it asks the question: how far is too far? That is the question to ask when you want to stay separate. This distracts us from the real question we may need to ask of forming relationships: how close is close enough? Magnets held far enough apart have no tangible attraction, get them close enough together and they pull in. I contend that Naomi’s plan was to bring Ruth and Boaz close enough.

Another problem with purity culture is that it exalts character while diminishing attraction. For example, in the Section “Next Steps”, point 3, Pokluda reduces finding a mate to: “Identify the godliest single woman you know. Walk up to her and ask her out on a date.” That is so mechanical. Boaz first notices Ruth (2:5) and is attracted, then learns about her character (2:11) but only on the threshing floor declares her as a woman of worth (3:11). Purity culture inverts this by requiring godliness first and only allowing attraction at the end — before which it is hazardous.

Purity culture might read Ruth 3 as one of their strongest examples, since it illustrates both maximum opportunity and maximum restraint. But that’s not the full story here: rather, it is just the right balance of bonding and covenant:

• Bonding without covenant would not have achieved the goal of finding Ruth a family
• Covenant without bonding (attraction) is Pokluda’s mechanical case. Without Naomi’s plan, Boaz goes about his own business. Without the threshing floor, Boaz has no motivation for further action. In real life, there’s no spark, and people lose interest.
• Both bonding and covenant: With enough attraction to bring them together, and enough understanding of each other’s loyalty and intent, Boaz follows through with the legal case, not because he is obliged to, but because he wants to.

Purity culture would have sunk Naomi’s plan at its first step, which is why it is problematic.

Esther

In the book of Esther, King Xerxes undertakes the task of finding a new queen. He issued a proclamation to gather (conscription style) young, beautiful women from all over the empire and give them a year-long beauty treatment involving massages with oil of myrrh and then balsam.

King Xerxes uses a method where he spends one night with a woman and is then able to determine whether he would like to see her again and she had a chance at queen. I speculate this one night approach allowed them to cut through the pretence and see if they had any chemistry. While this is not a practical or moral approach for most people (for example, I’m not attractive enough to have a queue of women lining up, and I’d worry about how I was treating them even if I did) there is still an important takeaway here.

Compatibility matters, that should be obvious but I need to state it as it’s so often downplayed. For example, Pokluda argues that because couples only spend an estimated 0.625 % of their time together having sex, sexual compatibility isn’t as important as the stuff they do the other ~99 % of the time. This is a silly argument as duration does not correlate with significance. By that logic, a wedding is 0.001 % of a long marriage, and therefore insignificant. Anyone who doubts this should at least question why Xerxes didn’t screen the candidates over lunch.

The narrative doesn’t tell us what happened between Esther and King Xerxes that night. However, King Xerxes loved her more than all the women. From this I infer that Esther was not operating under a purity culture framework where the encounter would be prohibited. Inhibition would have shown as reluctance¹² in a scenario where every other candidate wanted to be selected.

The book presents Mordecai, Esther’s guardian, as a man who will risk death rather than bow to Haman. We might wonder – how does a parent respond in a situation, where his daughter is taken to spend a night with some guy, with no guarantee to be selected as queen? Surely this would go against his beliefs? He’s definitely concerned, we see him pacing in the courtyard and following along. But he doesn’t make a stand against Esther’s situation. Elsewhere we see him wailing in the city dressed in sackcloth and ashes. The book does not hide his reactions but the purity objection is notably absent.

Purity culture treats every sexual situation as a test with a correct answer. It advocates for adherence to the correct behaviour while noting that God is merciful and can forgive mistakes. Esther is in a situation where there is no correct answer. The Bible simply narrates the story without verdict. It doesn’t note that she was exempted due to lack of choice. It just doesn’t entertain the topic. Despite the available space – ten chapters to explain a holiday – neither Mordecai, Esther nor the narrative make the moral objection that purity culture would make.

The fact that we always gravitate towards a moral reading says something about us. Purity culture teaches us to apply a rule and give a moral verdict to every situation. But not every situation is a moral test. The book of Esther knows when to decline a verdict. Do we?

Hosea and Jesus

Hosea was a prophet, and one of the hard core ones who had to prophesy through actions.

When the LORD first spoke to Israel through Hosea, he said to Hosea, “Go and get married; your wife will be unfaithful, and your children will be just like her. In the same way, my people have left me and become unfaithful…”
[Presumably in this interval his wife was unfaithful and became estranged]

The LORD said to me, “Go again and show your love for a woman who is committing adultery with a lover. You must love her just as I still love the people of Israel, even though they turn to other gods and like to take offerings of raisins to idols.”.
So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and 150 kilogrammes of barley to buy her. I told her that for a long time she would have to wait for me without being a prostitute or committing adultery; and during this time I would wait for her.

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate this from Hosea’s perspective. He did not get into this naively, he knew upfront what was coming. Psychologically and emotionally it isn’t easy to have your wife go wandering – there’d be the bitterness of rejection and the self esteem knock of knowing that these other guys are somehow more attractive than you are. I don’t know how much he could console himself with the idea that this was bound to happen anyway. When he goes back after her there’s probably a social knock from being that loser (simp) who is still chasing their unfaithful lover. Imagine if one of your friends was hell bent on making a relationship work with a cheating girlfriend. What advice would you give him? “Have some self-respect man, dump her! Stop being such a simp!” In spite of this he still loves her.

Love doesn’t let purity get in the way.

Hosea knew in advance she would be unfaithful — but he marries her anyway. Then after she is adulterous he buys her back and loves her anyway. He is cautious though – giving her a “probation period” to see if she really will be faithful. This is necessary as the minimum requirement to form a relationship going forward – all can be forgiven, but there needs to be willingness from each party to actually participate in the relationship.

God deliberately uses Hosea’s story as a summary of the story between God and us humans. God made us, intending us to be part of his family, knowing we would be disobedient but he made us anyway. We went our own way and one might wonder why God would even bother with humans any more – this seems like a good point to abandon project human and try something else.

The relationship has fallen apart, as a last ditch effort we go for marriage counselling to see if there’s anything to salvage the relationship. At its core, a relationship needs at minimum willingness from both parties to work together, so maybe we can come up with some kind of deal, like sex once a week or you stop drinking or whatever. As the counsellor we’d need to see this willingness from each party. So let’s start with you, God. Are you in, are you willing to try and make this work, what are you willing to put on the table?

And God is like, well, I still love her, and from my side am willing – but this is not a forced marriage – it’s only a relationship if she chooses to have it. I can’t be sharing heaven with someone who’s scampering around in an open relationship. I’d like some token gesture of her commitment.

Or, less metaphorically but perhaps more accurately:

And God is like, well, I still love her, and will demonstrate how much so by sending my son to be lifted up as a sign like the bronze snake in the wilderness. But if this relationship is going to work she needs to be onboard. I’m all in – but for this relationship to work, you need to choose it.

And then the counsellor turns to us: Well, we’ve heard from God, what about you? Are you in?

In the song “One of Us” (with the well known chorus “What if God was one of us”), Eric Bazilian poses the taunting scenario of Jesus going “back up to heaven all alone… .”. And this is a good question: Why wouldn’t Jesus go back up to heaven all alone? Like seriously, what’s in this for Jesus or God?

The God of Hosea loves past the point where human self-respect and logic would drop the sunk costs and walk away.

I say this because as Christians we can understand God as both a just and holy God who cannot let any sin go unpunished but also a loving God. I think how you balance these concepts is important for your spiritual health. Sure, God is a holy God, and would be perfectly justified to blast us into oblivion, but God is also a loving God, and he chose to pay the bill himself. I think it’s healthier for us to err on the loving side. God did not pay for his wife to come home only to have her tiptoeing around heaven wondering when she’d next be scolded for not having lived up to his standards. He also isn’t expecting her to feel bad about the bill she racked up. He is a loving God and she can return in confidence knowing that she is loved. Otherwise, the relationship is neither healthy nor fixed.

Theological castration

Note that for this section I’m talking out of my own experience, so the following may be ill-founded (although I don’t think so) or apply more strongly to some.

Many physiological and psychological processes have feedback loops and are a fine balance of many factors. It’s no different for sexual attraction and relationships. On the one hand, we have factors that push us towards sexual relationships: sexual desire, desire for intimacy, desire for companionship, desire for family (some say most men don’t realise that one beforehand though). On the other side, there are inhibiting factors: fear of commitment, choosing wrong, lack of energy/self esteem, having been burnt too many times. Think of it as the classic “balance scale” with these factors hanging as weights on either side.

I claim/postulate that a large inhibitory weight is the psychological damage incurred from an overly purity emphasised theology. I would like to coin the term “Theological castration” to describe this phenomenon.

What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say I like pretty girls. But then the theology, or, at least the way it is taught / emphasised, says:

• Desire is bad
• Sensuality is bad
• You must be pure
• Don’t sin
• No sex outside of marriage
• Flee from evil
• Never flirt – even in jest

And I internalise this, because I’m a reasonably conscientious and agreeable person. How will this impact my interactions with girls? Well, for one, I’m going to second guess my motives. It’s also going to impact my desire, because now my limbic system says pretty girl but my frontal lobe says you sinner. And so, the scale tips away from any possible relationship. You might say: That’s good — those girls don’t need you messing around with them anyway. But I say really? If not me, some other guy — and how do you know his intentions are any better?

Here in South Africa there are traditional initiation ceremonies where young men head off to the mountains or bush with elders to get circumcised and learn from the elders. Sometimes there are health complications for various reasons beyond the scope of this text. One young man basically lost his penis as result of the practice. Doctors, however, managed to perform the first successful penis transplant for him in 2014 and in 2015 it was reported that his girlfriend had conceived ^{13 14}. This is really great news and I want to highlight two aspects here:

Firstly, as a true doctor you really want the best for your patients. You know what it means for a young man to be healthy. The surgeons wanted him to be able to have sex and they were “very pleased”¹⁵ that they had accomplished their mission.

The cynic in me has to wonder how some Christians might view this scenario. Might they ask: why are you doing these things with your girlfriend, shouldn’t you be married first? And yes, they might argue that over and above the doctors desire for physical well-being, they also have spiritual well-being in mind. But I would be unconvinced: how good is this spiritual well-being if it does not align with physical well-being?

Secondly, as I read this sometime during the latter half of the 2010s, and reflect on it now around ten years later, I can’t help but compare myself to this young man. I mean, he basically lost his penis, yet still managed to find/ keep a girlfriend and become a father. What then, is my excuse? God has blessed me with good health yet I am unable to accomplish what this young man did in much more challenging circumstances? So what’s my problem? This is a real question, because whatever this problem is, it’s more inhibitory than having my penis cut off.

In Matthew 19:12, Jesus gives three examples of eunuchs/people who cannot marry: “…some, because they were born that way; others, because men made them that way; and others do not marry for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. Let him who can accept this teaching do so”.

I would categorise the third example as “Kingdom castration”. It is a self-elected state by those willing and able to do so, not imposed by lack of mate or opportunity. In contrast, Theological castration is a form of the second example: made by men. The annoying thing that some people do is to mis-classify someone as a category three eunuch with the gift of singleness whereas in reality they are in another category.

Breaking the yoke

Purity culture draws its text from several places:

• The Old Testament: Creation (Genesis), Laws and Wisdom/Prudence (Proverbs)
• Teachings on the heart (especially Jesus)
• Various new testament references to porneia (sexual immorality)
• Holiness teachings
• And a few more, omitted due to space and time constraints.

For purity culture to have a Biblical basis, the claims it makes need to have reasonable support from the texts. Purity culture makes many claims across each category. I will consider some claims, constraint limited. To be fair and take an accurate representation, the claim needs to be quotable so that I do not misrepresent it.

The following content focuses primarily on Pokluda but this choice was mostly one of access — I had the book as my primary and most recent purity culture artifact for the first part of the essay, then burnt it and review showed I needed this section to deserve my concluding claims. The blogs then filled the gap of quotable purity culture claims. Consider this a critique of purity culture as it reached me rather than a targeted attack on Pokluda.

The Old Testament on premarital sex

Purity culture claim:

Premarital sex is sin, and the Old Testament proves how seriously God takes it: under the law a woman found not to be a virgin could be stoned to death.

Here’s an example: In the section “God’s word on Sex” of Outdated, Pokluda first accuses some Christians of trying to make the Bible say what they want it to say and then argues it clearly does say that premarital sex is a sin. He notes the “whole worthy of stoning thing in the Old Testament”.

Let the man speak for himself via YouTube:

…so here it says this in Deuteronomy chapter 22 the context of this verse is that if someone gets married and someone raises the point that who he married was not a virgin then he has to prove that she was a virgin… if however the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death …

…they literally had the right according to the Bible according to the law that time to kill them by rocks… God really really cares about this…

…in exodus chapter 22. … if he convinces a girl to have sex with him then they are married and they cannot get divorced … he has to pay her father a dowry and so this is how the scripture just kind of starts out saying hey sex is a really really big deal…

What Does the Bible Have to Say about Sex Before Marriage? | Jonathan “JP” Pokluda (my emphasis)

The “whole worthy of stoning thing in the Old Testament” as applied to premarital sex, is only one passage in Deuteronomy 22:13-21. (Adultery (involving married/betrothed parties) has more, but that’s not the focus here). This is a scenario with very specific criteria – it only applies to a woman, only after she’s already married and her husband then accuses her of prior premarital sex (because he later decided he didn’t want her, v13). (It’s the husband accusing – not someone from outside – Pokluda fumbled there).

The offence is framed primarily as fraud against the husband and dishonour to the household (rather than sin against God). It’s not the premarital sex, it’s the marriage with virgin expectation: had she not gotten married, the criteria for the case would not be met.

One would have to ask how many men would accuse their newly wed wives like this given the implication. Like sure, I might not be thrilled, but I wouldn’t want her stoned for it! And neither would Joseph (Matt 1:19) — he “had the right¹⁶” to stone Mary, but his concern was not even about whether to stone her, but how best to not disgrace her. Later, Rabbinic tradition required so much evidence that stoning in this scenario was effectively unenforceable anyway. It existed enough to make it into law but I would question prevalence.

The most generic (applies to virgins) and only applicable Old Testament text related to actual premarital sex is Exodus 22:16-17 (which Pokluda skims). What this effectively conveys is that premarital sex is treated by the man paying the bride price and them marrying (unless the father objects, in which case he keeps the money and the daughter keeps the stigma). So, actual premarital sex is prescribed civil/economic remedies rather than capital punishment. Deuteronomy 22:28-29 covers a non-consensual case with similar remedy.

Pokluda’s argument is that the penalty severity reflects how much God cares. The fraudulent virgin has maximal capital punishment, the true premarital sex has bride price and marriage (effectively zero if you were going to get married anyway). So by that logic, God doesn’t care about the morality of premarital sex. The logical end of marriage is still pressed due to cultural/economic reality. (Also, wouldn’t want her needing to pretend to be a virgin with someone else).

Pokluda also fails to question why premarital sex is missing from any morality laws, including the otherwise exhaustive list in Leviticus 20. Timing sex during menstruation gets the couple cut off from their people (karet, Lev. 20:18), making it worse by comparison than the omitted premarital sex. No one preaches about that though.

The reality of Old Testament sexuality is that it was not optimising for sexual purity in a moral sense, but rather for community honour and bride price. What bugs me most about Pokluda’s take on this is his confusion with where the stoning came from: Was it because God cares, and made the people execute, or did he allow the people to take this practical measure? Later in the above video, Pokluda references John 8 — Jesus and the woman caught in adultery — as an illustration of grace. The stoning Pokluda treats as evidence of God’s concern is not what Jesus wants.

I hypothesise that premarital sex got so little mention in the Bible not because it didn’t happen (Exodus clearly shows it did) but rather, if it did happen, society would press it to its logical conclusion: marriage. This is not a far fetched idea: We already saw it’s in the Bible! In later oral law, the Mishnah Kiddushin¹⁷ specified that a woman could become wife through money, contract or sex, showing the idea persisted. Might Paul have been arguing along these lines in 1 Corinthians? (The bonding layer should progress in proportion to loyalty though, otherwise it would be imbalanced.)

A healthier approach than pathologising pre-marital sex might be to do just this: treat it as a legitimate path to marriage. If purity culture was interested in more people getting married, it shouldn’t pathologise such a lucrative stream. It would definitely grate less to hear a pastor say “if you do this, I’m marrying you” rather than “sex is sinful and taken seriously by God”.

Wisdom/Prudence

Purity culture wisdom/prudence claim:

Wisdom means maximising distance from sexual temptation. Because the Biblical model is flight rather than resistance, the prudent option is always the more restrictive one — even if that means never being alone together before the wedding.

Let the advocates speak for themselves:

The Bible says to “Flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians [6:]18a). If you are fleeing something, you’re not concerned with how close you can get to it. You’re concerned with how far away you can get from it. …

… What does that look like in a dating relationship? As I mentioned in the “Dating Decisions” talk, if your body starts preparing to have sex, then you’ve gone too far. You are not following God’s life-giving instruction to “flee.” If that means you can’t even be in a room together alone before the honeymoon, so be it.

How Far Is Too Far? Jonathan Pokluda, Aug 12, 2013 Blog

Fleeing from sexual immorality is not Paul’s original idea. This goes as far back as Joseph, who fled Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39:12).

The theme of keeping out of trouble returns in Proverbs 5-7 which has many warnings against adultery. Adultery is argued to lead to personal ruin (6:32-33), clashes with jealous husbands (6:34), and is a shortcut to death (7:27). Take home point: stay away (5:8).

Both the Joseph and Proverbs 5-7 are associated with adultery. Paul highlights prostitution. Corinth was a port town and commercial prostitution was essentially part of daily male social life: taverns, baths, the slave household, dinner parties, etc. Some of Paul’s audience would have thought there was no issue with prostitution at all, but he picks the hard argument: It results in one flesh (Genesis 2:24) and means you’re caught up in a love triangle between the prostitute and Christ. Not recommended.

In any case, flee was the typical idiom of moral exhortation, for example, flee love of money (1 Tim 6:11). Does that mean I should never be alone in a room with my salary?

The problem with purity culture is it tries to apply these principles to discretionary pairing — a process that was not so present in Biblical times — and joins a malignant hazard to what could be a healthy relationship. In the Bible, the hazards are adultery and prostitution. Fleeing these is reasonable.

The positive vision of the wisdom literature is “Enjoy life with the woman [wife] you love…” (Ecclesiastes 9:9). And I must find this woman whilst not being allowed to feel arousal (an involuntary physiological response) towards her? That would mean I treat her just like I do the woman whose house is the road to death. Mine is the road to life and it needs a woman I can love.

The problem of Porneia

Purity culture claim:

Porneia is a collective term for prohibited sexual acts. Premarital sex is central amongst them — when Paul tells the Corinthians to flee porneia, an unmarried couple is directly in scope.

In the words of a proponent:

… what some people will do is argue that the original Greek word, pornea [sic], has been misinterpreted. The word basically means “a forbidden sexual pleasure”, and some people have argued that it had a very narrow meaning and referred only to sex that was part of idol worship. Those people say that it is fine to have premarital sex, as long as you are not doing it in a pagan temple.

It is essentially impossible that Biblical authors wrote the word with that suspiciously narrow definition in mind, though. Look at how Paul, the author of 1 Corinthians, used the exact same word just a few sentences later:

But since there is so much immorality (pornea), each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. – 1 Corinthians 7:2

Paul is an extremely logical person, and his practical solution to the problem of pornea was to get married. Why was that the solution? Because within marriage you can have sex. He actually spends the rest of that paragraph encouraging married people to have sex together more often, and specifically tells the unmarried that “it is better to marry than to burn with passion” if they find they “cannot control themselves” (verse 9).

If he was talking specifically about idols, marriage would not be the solution; you can be married and worship idols. He is clearly and very frankly talking about sexual release within marriage as a solution to the problem. And if Paul’s logical solution to the problem is sexual release, why doesn’t he offer premarital sex or masturbation as options? Wouldn’t those be the most practical solutions to the problem of pornea?

The reason he doesn’t list premarital sex as a solution is because premarital sex is the problem. Premarital sex is pornea, and it is pornea whether it happens in a temple or not. That is why his solution to the problem, for those who could not control it, was marriage.

Why Premarital Sex is a Sin, Jonathan Pokluda, Jul 30, 2012

Ah, porneia (πορνεία)… . By any other name would lead so many to study Greek… . (Click to skip the study).

Before we dive in, Mr Pokluda has left me a pre-emptive rhetorical trap:

Any time you find yourself looking for loopholes, it means that you are trying to do what is intended to be wrong and somehow just escape the consequences for it. There is no one as creative as someone in the middle of self-justification.

Why Premarital Sex is a Sin, Jonathan Pokluda, Jul 30, 2012

This is an attempt to disqualify a rebuttal rather than providing a proper argument. Mr Pokluda, I hope my creativity will not leave you disappointed.

Porneia is literally translated prostitution¹⁸ and is derived from the same root that gives the verb πέρνημι, which means to sell. A πόρνη (pórnē) is a female prostitute and πόρνος (pórnos) is a male prostitute. There is a clear prostitution origin, however, the term expanded significantly:

• Secular moralists used prostitute as an insult¹⁹ that could be hurled when discrediting someone
• In Christian and Jewish sources, porneia became a placeholder for “sexual behaviours that the speaker/writer(s) view[ed] as objectionable”²⁰.
• The LXX uses porneia for marriage infidelity, particularly in marriage metaphors for Israel’s unfaithfulness – meaning it can include adultery/marital infidelity, both metaphorically and literally. It can also refer to premarital sex — but the framing matters. For example:
  • Marriage infidelity, metaphorical, Hosea 1:2, 2:4 (note 2 verse offset), 3:1, Jeremiah 3:9, LXX (Rahlfs)²¹.
  • Adultery through porneia, literal, Sirach 23:23 LXX (Rahlfs)
  • Metaphorical distinction between premarital sex and adultery, Hosea 4:13 LXX (Rahlfs), literal premarital sex framed as household offence, Deut 22:21 LXX (Rahlfs)
• Christianity uses the term both literally and metaphorically (e.g. describing religious infidelity)²²

Basically, porneia can be used to refer to literal prostitution, to express your disapproval of a sexual behaviour or to express disapproval of any target practice with sufficient parallels for the metaphor to hold.

The table below illustrates New Testament use of the whole porn- word group:

Table: New Testament usage of the whole porn- group including counts: πορνεία porneia (25, abstract act/state), πόρνος pornos (10, male prostitute, used for sexually immoral person), πόρνη pornē (12, female prostitute), πορνεύω porneuō (8, to commit porneia) and ἐκπορνεύω_ekporneuō_ (1, intensive form)²³.

Referent	Count	Texts
Metaphor — idolatry and empire	16	Babylon / the great harlot (13): {porneia 5: Rev 14:8; 17:2; 17:4; 18:3; 19:2} {pornē 5: Rev 17:1; 17:5; 17:15; 17:16; 19:2} {porneuō 3: Rev 17:2; 18:3; 18:9} · Jezebel at Thyatira (2): {porneia 1: Rev 2:21} {porneuō 1: Rev 2:20} · Unrepentant humanity (1): {porneia 1: Rev 9:21}
No referent given — vice list	15	Vice list proper (12): {porneia 6: Matt 15:19; Mark 7:21; 2 Cor 12:21; Gal 5:19; Eph 5:3; Col 3:5} {pornos 6: 1 Cor 6:9; Eph 5:5; 1 Tim 1:10; Heb 13:4; Rev 21:8; 22:15} · Rule about association (3): {pornos 3: 1 Cor 5:9; 5:10; 5:11}
No referent given — exhortation	5	Jerusalem decree (3): {porneia 3: Acts 15:20; 15:29; 21:25} · General (2): {porneia 2: 1 Cor 7:2; 1 Thess 4:3}
Referent stated by the text	17	Prostitution (10): {pornē 7: Matt 21:31; 21:32; Luke 15:30; 1 Cor 6:15; 6:16; Heb 11:31; Jas 2:25} {porneia 2: 1 Cor 6:13; 6:18} {porneuō 1: 1 Cor 6:18} · Cult sex at Baal-Peor (3): {porneuō 3: 1 Cor 10:8 (×2); Rev 2:14} · Incest (2): {porneia 2: 1 Cor 5:1 (×2)} · Covenant betrayal / exogamy (1): {pornos 1: Heb 12:16} · Sodom, “strange flesh” (1): {ekporneuō 1: Jude 7}
Referent contested	3	Divorce exception (2): {porneia 2: Matt 5:32; 19:9} · Illegitimate birth or idolatry (1): {porneia 1: John 8:41}
Total	56

When referring to a specific act, (commercial) prostitution takes the lions share. All of the other specific references are of the more exotic variety like cult sex and incest. Premarital sex does not get a specific reference. The large metaphor count illustrates the point of scope expansion. The vice list and exhortation categories demonstrate this is a serious issue, but doesn’t exactly define it.

Due to constraints I only want to dip into a few aspects: Jesus’s references to porneia, the Acts Jerusalem decree (exhortation) and Hebrews (vice list).

Jesus references porneia in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9:

… if a man divorces his wife, for any cause other than her unfaithfulness [πορνείας], then he is guilty of making her commit adultery [μοιχευθῆναι] if she marries again; and the man who marries her commits adultery also. (Matt 5:32)

… any man who divorces his wife for any cause other than her unfaithfulness [πορνείᾳ], commits adultery [μοιχᾶται] if he marries some other woman. (Matt 19:9)

My reading is that porneia is serious, it could be grounds for divorce. But the main point here is not about porneia, but about how divorce is only acceptable for reasons that contradict its premise. I take it Jesus was arguing against a kind of no fault divorce here.

It’s worth noting that adultery in the Old Testament meant sex with another man’s wife or betrothed — the woman’s marital status defined the act. This is asymmetric: A married man could have had sex with an unattached woman and not have committed adultery. Jesus changes that here, saying the man can commit adultery against her (Mark 10:11)

Some point to the use of different words for porneia and adultery and argue this means porneia could mean premarital sex here (e.g, before being betrothed) — otherwise adultery could have been used throughout. This is a possible scenario, but it’s not exclusively the only possible one. Let me suggest another that fits:

I would read this as a dual use of porneia – both literal and metaphorical. The Genesis union has two layers – bonding and loyalty. Acting like a prostitute (not bound to any contract) breaks the loyalty layer and using/being a prostitute breaks the bonding layer. Adultery does affect both layers but it doesn’t encapsulate everything that porneia does. For example, you could get married then withhold sex or act like you’re single. Neither of these are adultery, but they both undermine the nature of the Genesis union, and both are encapsulated under the dual literal/metaphorical use of porneia.

This isn’t too far a stretch – porneia was already used metaphorically as religious infidelity in the LXX, for example, Hosea. And Paul makes an argument in 1 Cor 7:15 that if an unbelieving spouse were to abandon/separate, that should be accepted for what it was. That is not adultery or necessarily sexual infidelity – but it is loyalty layer. They acted like a prostitute, as if they were not part of another. And what difference should it make whether they are a believer? Genesis speaks of no such things and people can say what they believe and act differently. So I don’t see why the decision should depend on the belief rather than simply the abandonment.

Jesus’s other uses are in the vice list category: “For from his heart come the evil ideas which lead him to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things[porneia]; to rob, lie, and slander others” (Matt 15:19).

The Acts porneia use comes about when the apostles put together what they frame as a minimal set of requirements for the Gentiles, also known as the Jerusalem decree:

… Peter stood up and said, “…why do you now want to put God to the test by laying a load on the backs of the believers which neither our ancestors nor we ourselves were able to carry? …” … “It is my opinion,” James went on, “that we should not trouble the Gentiles who are turning to God. ²⁰Instead, we should write a letter telling them not to eat any food that is ritually unclean because it has been offered to idols; to keep themselves from sexual immorality [porneia]; and not to eat any animal that has been strangled, or any blood. For the Law of Moses has been read for a very long time in the synagogues every Sabbath, and his words are preached in every town.”

Acts 15:7-21

A cross reference note in my Bible relates Acts 15:20 to Exodus 34:15-17, Lev. 17:10-16 and Lev. 18:6-23. The first two map via the association of two peoples living in proximity and subsequent implications, much as the apostles considered the congregations now merging Jew and Gentile:

• “… you will be tempted to eat the food they offer to their gods. Your sons might marry those foreign women, who would lead them to be unfaithful to me and to worship their pagan gods”. (Exodus 34:15-17)
• Lev. 17:10-16 relates to the foreigner living amongst the Jews – they must not eat meat with the blood in it.
• Lev. 18:6-23 is a list of forbidden sexual practices. The items include a substantive set at the incest level, period sex, adultery, bestiality and homosexuality. The practices are headed with a command that the Israelites are not to follow the practices of foreign lands.

If the association between the Jerusalem decree and these passages is correct (and it’s not like I had to be too creative to find it — the reference was there) then this use of porneia could be best understood as the Leviticus 18 list. This is also consistent with the 1 Corinthians 5:1 instantiation of porneia as incest — the only New Testament referent where the element of the noun porneia (πορνεία) is explicitly named (and different from actual prostitution).

Considering the framing of the Jerusalem decree as the minimum required burden, it would not make sense that premarital sex in Exodus 22:16, needing only a civil remedy as the woman was unattached, is now in the top four things the Gentiles must not now do. A similar argument could be made for the vice lists. In fact, the LXX uses “lies with”, a euphemism, to describe the Exodus 22:16 case of a man having premarital sex (κοιμηθῇ, 22:15 in the LXX (Rahlfs)). In contrast, ἐκπορνεῦσαι is used for the unmarried woman in Deut 22:21 (LXX (Rahlfs)). The underlying conduct of premarital sex is the same in both cases but the framing and vocabulary is different. This means that use of the porn- word group isn’t a result of the act as such but is more a result of the framing: Is it an offence against the household, does it break loyalty.

This doesn’t mean that premarital sex can’t be an element of porneia. I think it shows that even if premarital sex is an element of porneia, it’s not the main one. In the context of premarital sex, porneia probably has more to do with how the act is framed (betrayal of loyalty) rather than the actual act.

Hebrews 13:4 is often treated as strong evidence against premarital sex and the typical residue argument is as follows:

1. God judges pornos (πόρνους, sexually immoral persons) and moichoi (μοιχοὺς, adulterers).
2. Moichos (adultery) covers married sexual sin
3. Therefore pornos must cover the other (residual kind) — unmarried sexual sin.

Premise 2 is wrong, and even if granted, step 3 does not follow.

Against 2: Moichos (adultery) does not name married sexual sin in general; on the definition the audience inherited it names sex with another man’s wife (Lev 20:10, Deut 22:22). Adultery attached to the woman’s marital status — a married man could sleep with an unattached woman and that would not be adultery.

This changed: Jesus says a husband can commit adultery against his own wife in Mark 10:11. This symmetric nature of adultery is what Christians typically understand the word to mean today. However, the asymmetric adultery was the default the LXX (Greek translation of the Old Testament which the recipients of the Hebrews were familiar) supplied. The symmetric nature stated by Jesus is only found in the gospels — the rest of the New Testament doesn’t explicitly reinforce it. For example, Paul references Jesus’s teaching in 1 Cor 7:10, but doesn’t repeat the symmetric nature. So, it’s possible the symmetric meaning hadn’t propagated fully to everyone’s understanding at that point. I’m not claiming that the symmetric sense was unavailable but that the narrower one was familiar enough that no reader could take moichos to cover every kind of sexual sin.

Against 3: The inference needs the two terms to be complementary and non overlapping, but they are not consistently. Adultery is a type of porneia, not its complement, and the two are listed elsewhere side by side (1 Cor 6:9; Matt 15:19). Also, the LXX uses “…ἡ πορνεία αὐτῆς, καὶ ἐμοίχευσεν τὸ ξύλον…” (Jer 3:9, LXX (Rahlfs)²⁴) (…her prostitution, and she committed adultery with the wood…) — metaphorical prostitution and adultery, in the same sentence, referring to the same subject (Judah) and the same conduct. The text is allowed to combine overlapping terms for weight and additional meaning without implying that they can be understood to apply separately to different groups of people. So the combination of terms doesn’t warrant using them to apply to different things separately.

Hosea 4:13-14 LXX (Rahlfs) does have a complementary pair: the daughters commit porneia (ἐκπορνεύσουσιν), whilst the daughters-in-law commit adultery (μοιχεύσουσιν). This is an example showing that porneia can refer to premarital sex in a sense, even if it’s some metaphorical form. As discussed previously, the choice of a porn- group here rather than a “sleep” euphemism probably relates more to the framing than anything else: The people had abandoned God in order to go and do these things. In any case, God’s immediate response is that he will not judge them since the men have acted similarly. The residue argument needs a complementary pair in Hebrews 13:4. One pairing in Hosea doesn’t transfer and Jeremiah shows the pairing isn’t complementary in general.

Given this I think a better interpretation would be that pornos is stated as a general term. It covers things like the married man visiting a prostitute or having other extramarital sex which would not have been adultery in the strict sense. In this way the combination expresses the symmetry that fidelity is expected from both the man and woman. What makes it pornos is the bond-breaking character of the act, not the marital status of those involved. This is a logical point to make following the marriage bed. Pornos is not grammatically restricted to the married couple here, so it could apply to any group of people.

Hebrews 13:4 does not establish that premarital sex is what is meant by pornos here.

Porneia: 1 Corinthians 7

Let’s get back to 1 Corinthians 7 and our chief protagonist. Paul clearly has had prostitution in mind — normal commercial prostitution, the order of the day, no mention of cult/temple prostitution here. First point is that we agree porneia does not have a narrow temple prostitution meaning. At literal minimum it is commercial prostitution, following the Jerusalem decree logic it is the Leviticus 18 list. Realistically it has expanded to include both of these.

Then, Paul argues that because of porneia, it is best if everyone is married, and keeps their spouses desires satisfied. That is sensible. Paul also notes it’s not enough to simply be married — the satisfaction needs to be ongoing — otherwise the temptation would be back (7:5). I think we all agree this far.

Pokluda then points to Paul’s advice to the unmarried who cannot control themselves to go ahead and marry (7:9). He asks (rhetorically) why Paul does not recommend premarital sex or masturbation as remedies instead of marriage, and then argues that the reason is because premarital sex is the problem.

This is where Pokluda lost me. Paul does not recommend premarital sex because it is not the end game — marriage is. At best, premarital sex might be a bridging step. As for masturbation (the suggestion seems facetious) — it doesn’t offer much in the way of human connection. Both of these are inferior options and Paul would not recommend them as an end.

Pokluda’s conclusion that premarital sex is therefore the problem is where he really went off the rails for me. Sure, premarital sex could be a problem, premarital sex could be an element of porneia, nothing objectively proves it isn’t. But to conclude premarital sex is the problem makes no sense. Prostitution, which Paul had in mind a few sentences earlier, could still be the problem, and Paul’s marriage argument still works. Men are going about their daily lives in Corinth and encountering prostitutes in various social situations. So, if they were married and sexually satisfied, the prostitution temptation might be less. Prostitution explains Paul’s writing better than premarital sex: his exhortation to “keep at it” means they might fall back to temptation had they not. Once you’re married you can’t “fall back” to premarital sex anymore: the options are adultery or prostitution.

He talks about the married couple, them not withholding themselves from one another, so that they will be “kept from giving in to Satan’s temptation ..” because of lack of self control. But this is talking about a married couple giving in to temptation, in the context of porneia, not a single person giving in to temptation! Clearly his concern is about something splitting the marriage because the husband and wife aren’t meeting each others needs!

Anyway, let’s get back to 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 – Paul shifts to the unmarried. Paul says to the single: it’s better for you to remain single, unless you cannot control yourselves (only one reason given), in which case, marry. So, the reason to marry is if you cannot restrain/control.

εἰ δὲ οὐκ ἐγκρατεύονται, γαμησάτωσαν, κρεῖττον γάρ ἐστιν ⸀γαμῆσαι ἢ πυροῦσθαι. (1 Cor 7:9, SBLGNT²⁵)

But if you cannot restrain your desires, go ahead and marry—it is better to marry than to burn with passion (1 Cor 7:9, GNB (TEV))

But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1 Cor 7:9, NASB2020²⁶)

Let me give two of my “creative” interpretations:

Option A: Asexual reading
Paul uses the same verb as ἐγκρατεύονται (self-control) to describe an athlete’s training discipline in 1 Cor 9:25. Athletic training is an ongoing process but also made up of many discrete activities: you need to do the training sessions, eat the right food and so on.

πυροῦσθαι (to burn) is a state rather than an act. Paul uses the same verb in 2 Cor 11:29 to express his intense concern. In this sense πυροῦσθαι could refer to the anguish of being alone.

In this sense the verse could be read: if you’re not managing living the celibate life (e.g, no motivation, life is meaningless, stuck on Maslow level 2) then marry – better to marry than live in a state of anguish. Possible, but perhaps not creative enough.

Option S: Sexual reading
Given the context with surrounding verses most people understandably interpret the verse sexually. The NASB2020 uses the italics around with passion to indicate that the type of burn is implied rather than literally translated.

In that context, first note that Paul accepts they might not have “self-control” but his solution to that is not to call them sinners, admonition, judge, etc, but rather “let them” marry. In contrast, purity culture would prohibit them from burning (with desire) and would be sure to let them know they were sinners. He also doesn’t provide a “how far is too far” scale for their self-control.

Now I ask: What is the test to determine whether a person cannot exercise self-control? Like seriously, you either control yourself, or you fail to do so. In the case of the athlete, self-control is not a single act but made up of multiple activities. Even so, not having self-control means failing on some or all of these.

At what level is this control? Some might argue it is at the level of an involuntary physiological response, an extra heart-beat, or a thought / desire. Let’s be serious though: in the context of an unmarried person/people, is “burning with desire” the maximal example of not having self-control? No, it’s not – they could burn with desire, and then act on those desires. Paul isn’t naive, surely? Let’s assume not, so he does realise what they could do beyond simply burning with desire. I think Paul makes this otherwise strange statement as he knows he is addressing a continuum of people. For some, losing control might be a thought, others might have slept together. Paul doesn’t need to insinuate that everyone or some of the people have been doing certain things, or to provide some external scale at which people should evaluate their lack of self-control. Or maybe he knows the boundaries of his responsibility. So he provides this statement which illustrates the principle rather than the specifics: Is celibacy sustainable for you, or are you being consumed? Regardless of the degree, his advice is the same: At whatever scale you’re failing the self control: marry.

If burning means lustful desires, then how is marriage a solution? You could be married, and then still lust after your neighbours wife. So marriage is no solution for that! — a mitigation, maybe.

Where is porneia in this verse? I thought porneia was the problem. Paul has shifted focus to the unmarried and widows, is he still talking about porneia? But now he’s advising them to stay single by default — but porneia was the earlier motivation that it was best everyone be married. So it would seem porneia is more of a problem for the married couple than the unmarried! Why are we talking about self-control now? This is the verse where we’re talking about unmarried people, yet there is no porneia. Another candidate is 1 Cor 7:36, where Paul discusses a betrothed couple contemplating marriage, again porneia is absent.

1 Cor 7:9 doesn’t really help anyone besides pairs in a position to be married. Who would single unpaired people marry, or is he saying find someone faster? The slaves (part of the audience, verses 21-24) cannot legally get married – what should they do if they burn with passion? If porneia is a problem for those who cannot marry, Paul is not providing a helpful remedy to these people.

1 Cor 7:9 only really helps couples in a position to get married. “They” in the verse refers to the class (unmarried and widows) but it is ultimately individual couples who get married. Some of the people Paul refers to will be part of a pair, that pair can have self-control issues manifesting in loss of self-control together. Paul’s advice is the same: marry. This makes premarital sex a possible path to marriage.

Anyway, just because you hold a moral opinion concerning my behaviour doesn’t mean that I am obliged to find loopholes. What makes you think you have the right to police my morality? Or tell me how the Bible should be read? If the argument is inconclusive, it’s not a draw, it’s a loss for the person using it to prohibit something in someone else’s life. Inconclusive defeats the prohibition.

Is this not the right approach? What good is it to marry someone you can restrain yourself from? That means you were doing fine without them, and from Paul’s perspective, you could have just stayed single. Adam was happy to see Eve even though he didn’t know how godly she was. I won’t marry someone I can resist. I don’t claim everyone should apply this principle especially since 1 Cor 7:8-9 probably belongs with Paul’s outdated marriage advice. I’m so chuffed that my creativity managed to read it out of 1 Cor 7 though that I’m claiming it for myself.

The heart

Purity culture claim:

Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount teaching about the heart shows the principle that the internal state counts as the act. This maps directly to unattached single people: Sexual desire (thought or physiological response) for another unattached person is sin.

… unmarried Christ-followers ask me “How far is too far?” …

… if your body starts preparing to have sex, then you’ve gone too far. …

Jesus was kind of radical, when He said we shouldn’t just not murder or commit adultery; we shouldn’t even think about it (Matthew 5:21-30).

How Far Is Too Far? Jonathan Pokluda, Aug 12, 2013 Blog

There are multiple problems here. Purity culture takes the principle without paying much attention to the specifics. Jesus gave the Matt 5:27-28 teaching with two specifics:

• The reference is to adultery (Matt 5:27), as per the 7^th commandment (Exodus 20:14). Matt 5:28 does not make reference to the woman’s attachment, but the association with 5:27, the reference to adultery, the position before the teaching on divorce and the reference to Exodus 20:17 (see below) should be enough: This is not some unattached woman, it’s the equivalent of your neighbour’s wife (Exodus 20:17 LXX (Rahlfs))²⁷.
• The GNB (TEV) Matt 5:28 translation is “… anyone who looks at a woman and wants to possess her is guilty of committing adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt 5:28). The translation already does a good job of showing that this is more than a context free desire or thought: There is an element of wanting something that can’t be yours. The verb used is ἐπιθυμῆσαι²⁸, which is the same as ἐπιθυμήσεις used in Exodus 20:17 LXX (Rahlfs)²⁹. Jesus is making a connection between the 7^th and 10^th commandments here: You shall not commit adultery, and you shall not covet. Other translations render this as “lustful intent” (NASB2020) or similar. Purity culture then further flattens this to generic arousal.

However, purity culture strips all of these details. Firstly the teaching was given with an attached person in mind, purity culture gives it to single people (the stated audience of the above quote is the unmarried). Secondly they remove the part about coveting what cannot be yours because it is owned by a third party: Another single person could become yours without violating a third party³⁰, your neighbour’s wife can’t.

Jesus’s teaching in Matt 5:21-30 is basically about intensification by extending the principles inward to the heart — disposition and will. Matt 5:29-30 is hyperbole (“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away!…”). This teaching shows both extent (to our heart) and importance (via hyperbole), but:

• It’s targeted: You don’t want to cut off the wrong part just to minimize sin. Inaccurately identifying which parts are sinful could lead to useful stuff being cut off. An inaccurate diagnosis is dangerous here. In this context purity culture inaccurately diagnoses a healthy function by confusing it with the actual disease (coveting what is another’s) and recommends it be cut out.
• It’s self administered and applied: you don’t assess someone else’s eye and publish recommendations that they should cut it out.
• Hyperbole narrates the importance but not the threshold. Reading metrics like “if your body starts preparing to have sex” is the wrong kind of inference here. Arousal is involuntary and can’t be a threshold as it’s not a decision.

I’m not suggesting “lowering the standards”. I’m saying get them right: don’t give others inaccurate advice and do your own heart surgery first.

Holiness / Separation

Purity culture claim:

God has called us to be set apart as shining examples to the sinful world. Since sexual holiness is a key facet of this holiness (evident via emphasis) it should be maximised by following strict rules about pureness. Premarital relations are a major aspect here (evident via emphasis).

… unmarried Christ-followers ask me “How far is too far?” …

It is a different mindset, of trying to be as holy as possible rather than trying to get away with something. …

I know that is radically counter-cultural in today’s world, but increasingly that should be seen as a good sign—we should be radically different from this world (see Philippians 2:15, for instance).

How Far Is Too Far? Jonathan Pokluda, Aug 12, 2013 Blog

Philippians 2:15 talks about Christians living pure lives above reproach and acting as a moral contrast like stars against the dark sky. A better example for this context is 1 Thess 4:3-7 which has the following themes:

• God wants us to be holy by abstaining from porneia (v3)
• This should set us apart from the heathen (v5)
• God did not call us to impurity but holiness (v7)

At face value, this is a good argument. True strength or holiness is really shown in the areas where we are the weakest. Sexuality is an area of weakness that can trip anyone; David with reference to Bathsheba is a classic example of that (2 Sam 11). This argument definitely has merit and we can see that by David’s regret of the mess he got into.

With regards to sexuality though, holiness is related not to the sex itself but to how it relates to others. When Nathan confronts David (2 Sam 12:1-13), his focus is that David, while rich and having multiple wives, had had Uriah killed and took his wife — not that he had scored bonus sex that he shouldn’t have had (no mention of porneia there, trust me, I checked). In Psalm 51:4, David frames this as sin against God, but that is by proxy: Nathan also references God’s commands and links them directly to the impact on Uriah (2 Sam 12:9). In 1 Thess 4:6, the rationale is that no Christian will wrong their fellow brother or take advantage of them. And Jesus taught that our love for one another would be what set us apart as his disciples (John 13:35). I’d say it’s not about sex — it’s about how it impacts others. I think the guiding principle should be to question how the act affects others, yourself and your relationship with God rather than simply falling back to a rule which could be misapplied.

And how does purity culture impact others? I can’t give an objective review due to constraints (for example, not everything is free access). The field is still young and probably a bit niche anyway (some of the sample sizes are small). If you want I suggest do your own research. Here is a brief indication of what is currently out there:

1. Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, a book by Linda Kay Klein, discusses the devastating effects of purity culture
2. I Survived: I Kissed Dating Goodbye, documentary directed by Jessica Van Der Wyngaard, with Joshua Harris as subject and co-producer.
3. Gray, A., & Klement, K. R. (2026). Purity Culture and Sexual Shame. Journal of Counseling Sexology & Sexual Wellness: Research, Practice, and Education, 7 (1). https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/jcssw/vol7/iss1/1/. Original research that shows that purity culture exposure is associated with higher sexual shame, particularly among women, and only among those who no longer endorse purity culture. (This could mean that shame drives exit or exit reveals shame). It does not establish causality.
4. Paik A, Sanchagrin KJ, Heimer K. Broken Promises: Abstinence Pledging and Sexual and Reproductive Health. J Marriage Fam. 2016 Apr 1;78(2):546-561. doi: 10.1111/jomf.12279. Epub 2016 Jan 4. PMID: 27019521; PMCID: PMC4806393.

My opinion is that purity culture isn’t really the “shining star” example that Philippians 2:15 calls for. Anyway, holiness and set apart is not just about sexuality — Philippians 2:14 talks about doing everything without complaining or arguing. I would press this further and suggest that our minds and thoughts should also be set apart. We shouldn’t make silly arguments, stretching for evidence that isn’t there.

We already have the positive example: Song of Songs. If Christians really want to be set apart in this area, they should make marriage appealing again in this sense. That would be something the world could take note of.

What Jesus actually taught

Jesus gave the sermon on the mount, which is interesting from the perspective that he got to choose the agenda so we can infer the items relate to what he thought was important. He gave a teaching on adultery (Matt 5:27-30) followed immediately by one on divorce (31-32). Nothing on dating, nothing extra on sexual morality. If we want to extract an area to emphasise, here it is then. Adultery, then divorce.

Mark 7:14-23 shows Jesus voluntarily (he calls the crowd to come and listen) dismantling a purity system: ritual handwashing. Sure, the vice list in v21 contains porneia, and purity culture quotes it for that. But the premise of his argument is that defilement is not something you can contact externally, rather, it comes from the heart. Jesus demonstrated this by touching lepers. Purity culture teaches purity as a substance you have and can lose via contact.

In John 4, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman who has had five husbands and is currently living with a man who is not her husband. It’s possible she was widowed or divorced that many times and the current man is a dependency arrangement but most people read a moral frame into this. In any case, Jesus states this as a description, without accusation, and instead of asking about her morality, gets to the real question of who she worships.

Jesus referred to prostitutes in speech / parables in Matt 21:31 and Luke 15:30. Each time, the purpose was to indict the respectable listener rather than the prostitute.

Jesus set the burden of lust on the person looking — Matt 5:28 has the man gouge his eye rather than referring to the woman’s hemline.

Jesus was not permissive – he held ideals but did not weaponise or enforce them via shame. When questioned about divorce, Jesus explains marriage as an ideal (Genesis) with Moses’ divorce laws as a development concession. Moses’ concession is given an explanation rather than condemnation of everyone who used it. In John 8, he refuses the community permission to stone the woman caught in adultery but also tells her to sin no more. He told people to repent rather than come as they were.

So the discrepancy with purity culture is it copied Jesus’s ideals but added shame and made some of the holiness external again. We didn’t need those changes.

A brief note on Paul

Since much of purity culture is derived from Paul’s writing we need to examine that a bit. Paul wrote a fair amount of pastoral advice. Purity culture, primarily rules based, feeds off this kind of instruction.

Because Paul had a lot to say, if you go searching you’re almost guaranteed to find something. However, Paul’s writing is a mixture of:

1. God’s word, guided by the Spirit (or what he thinks God thinks, depending on your perspective) (1 Cor. 7:10)
2. His own opinion, often acknowledged as such (e.g. 1 Cor 7:12, 25)
3. His thought process: Much of his writing reads as if he is one of those people who thinks by talking or writing. And I’m not sure what his edit options were. Today, we have backspace, version control, diffs and AI review.

The result of this is that it’s very difficult to take anything Paul wrote without doing a deep dive to understand the broader context and applicability. Paul’s writing is a very bad place to go picking cherries, yet that is what most purity culture adherents seem to do.

Another problem is that due to the scope and complexity of his writing, it’s very easy to get tangled. For example, let’s pick a cherry:

The right thing to do is to keep from eating meat, drinking wine, or doing anything else that will make your brother or sister fall

This could be misapplied to doing anything that could make your brother or sister fall. The problem though is the domain of actions which could cause a brother or sister to fall is both infinite and unknown. Like I could just say something that comes across wrong – and I don’t know what the implications will be in advance. This induces analysis paralysis since no action can be taken without risk. The more nuanced understanding of Romans 14 answers the question: what do I voluntarily give up for someone else — and I decide that in faith. As soon as this is applied to others, it is misapplied. To get this principle requires establishing the context — category, mechanism and audience first. Since it’s so tricky to unravel some might rather just quote and misapply it rather than unwrapping it fully.

As another example, take Paul’s advice on marriage to single people in 1 Corinthians 7:25-31. He basically takes a read on the calendar and decides that the current epoch is practically over, and on that premise he gives what he thinks is the correct pastoral advice, while also noting that it’s his opinion and what premise that is based on. The premise expired, and so should some of the dependent advice. Purity culture often strips the framing and pushes the advice context free.

What is left

Genesis 2:24 already gives us the positive statement: aim for wholesome marriage. That’s honestly enough. The Old Testament law is mostly targeted towards virgin economics, Wisdom towards the neighbour’s wife, Porneia towards the prostitutes, Holiness towards the brother and sister. There honestly isn’t enough on topic content related to purity culture’s primary audience: the single person. Discussing something like premarital sex based on the Bible is like trying to bake lasagne from a motor vehicle service manual: it wasn’t written for that and the result is misapplication of ideals.

That isn’t to simply advocate promiscuity though. Remember Ruth was not arbitrarily going around seducing just anybody — Boaz was targeted specifically. Ruth demonstrated her loyalty before the legal proceeding and Boaz took that as decisive (Ruth 3:10). Both layers need to be there, and if they’re not wedding vows won’t help. Intent and declaration are cheap, demonstrated loyalty is real. Ruth demonstrated this by forsaking other options at cost. So the questions could be: Have alternatives been forsaken, at observable cost, and has attachment formed towards this person?

Religion and morality aside, there can be good reasons not to be promiscuous. These reasons can be common sense or evidence based. Kids can probably be taught fine in terms of health economics / under my roof principle / how you treat others / common sense without even bringing rules based morality into it. Marital dissolution does increase when the woman has had more than one intimate premarital relationship³¹. Unsurprisingly to me, premarital activities (sex or cohabitation) with the future spouse only, did not lead to increased marital dissolution. This fits my understanding, if the union works, it works, wedding or not. Genesis 2:24 does not stipulate a wedding date. Weddings may be a fair default for some as a public statement of loyalty and forsaking of other options. This does not exclude the possibility of more practical demonstrations of loyalty.

Genesis 2:24 is pre-legal. If you need too many rules for it then it’s probably already broken. There’s no need to mix morality laws in here. The holiness principle does offer some guidance if you interpret it to ask how the act impacts others rather than being legalistic about the act itself.

At some level I think promiscuity could be dabbling with the bonding layer while withholding the loyalty layer. However, that supposes at least one party is looking for that layer, and who even knows.

So that’s my issue with purity culture: It optimises the wrong variables (purity and godliness based attraction), a result derived through misapplication and over extension.

Where to from here?

Firstly, realise it’s complicated. There is a time and a person to ask how far is too far. There is a time and a person to ask how close is close enough.

No sane person wants to take responsibility for another’s actions. Advice is liability. Decisions are our responsibility to be made and mistakes will be made one way or another. But we can’t let that stop us from doing anything.

Realise that a lot of the advice people want to give you from the Bible isn’t as clear cut as it might seem. Jesus pointed out that parts of Moses’s law were given simply as concessions because the people were hard to teach. Paul was just human. Remember the desire to control is a low level of thinking. People who want to use the Bible to control behaviour are probably at this level.

Choose life. Choose relationship over purity. Realise it’s not wrong to have reasons for liking people. We don’t need to have the sensuality scared right out of us. Question defeatist ideas that contradict the creation mandate and promote death (isolation) over life.

Why am I here burning the midnight Fable credits to argue this? Should I not be out looking for a wife?

Conclusion

And so, I kissed purity culture goodbye. Not because I don’t want to listen to God. Not because I’m an unbridled hedonist bent on living a life of pleasure without any commitment or responsibility. But

• Because life is complicated enough already and I don’t need to be theologically castrated.
• Because purity culture does not have the Biblical basis it claims.
• Because purity culture has not earned the right to police my morality.
• Because I choose life and purity culture tells me to treat women like the Proverbs 7 adulteress, whose house is the shortcut to death.
• Because purity culture and love are antagonistic.
• Because my question is how close is close enough.
• Because I won’t marry someone I can resist.

That’s what I’m doing. I won’t tell you what to do though, but if you want my advice, read Genesis. That hasn’t changed since Jesus last quoted it. At the time of creation this wouldn’t even be a topic. But I am so hard to teach, life is complicated and concessions exist (although Moses isn’t around to make any new ones). The ideal has not changed but the concessions speak to the difficulties and hardness of heart. If I tried to specify what those should be I’d need to hedge it in complex context, think about how an opinion might apply to different people across age, time, circumstance and other factors. I’d end up with a rule book to burn.

The church doesn’t have a high horse to ride either. I’ve heard premarital sex bashed from the pulpit many times — on divorce, I can’t recall a single word. Yet they both undermine the original union. I’m not suggesting the remedy for selective shame is universal shame, but rather, less of it.

Jesus told the purists of his time (the chief priests and elders) that “…the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31). The (impure) prostitutes recognised they needed Jesus and entered, the purists fell back on their self-righteousness and missed it. If Jesus didn’t want me, my purity or lack thereof would make no difference. So, my hope is in Jesus, that he loves me and as such, would prefer me in the happy, confident version.

Note on AI use

I used AI for brainstorming, research and review. Some of the arguments are based on points noted by the AI, for example the association between verbs used in Matt 5:28 vs Exodus 20:17 in the heart section. I “drove” the essay, AI had the role of researcher and reviewer rather than co-author.

Footnotes

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1. For example, #MeToo and backlash, Korea, MGTOW, men giving up on marriage due to the likelihood of divorce and being exploited, Women becoming more liberal in the US, etc.↩︎

2. Purity culture↩︎

3. A Statement on I Kissed Dating Goodbye Joshua Harris, 2023 update of 2018 statement.↩︎

4. Outdated Jonathan Pokluda↩︎

5. Like I’m tired of these ideas, I’ve read them before, I don’t like them, I don’t want to read them again.↩︎

6. Genesis 2:24, GNB TEV↩︎

7. Matthew 19:5↩︎

8. Genesis 1-15, Wenham, Gordon J, Word Biblical Commentary, 1987↩︎

9. Matthew 19:3↩︎

10. Neither Jesus nor Paul married, but they were both exceptional exceptions to the default↩︎

11. Harvard Study of Adult Development (Waldinger & Schulz, The Good Life, 2023)↩︎

12. After the night the woman would join the harem of concubines (Esther 2:14). So, this was primarily a sexual encounter.↩︎

13. First penile transplant recipient ‘to become father’, BBC↩︎

14. Penis transplantation, Wikipedia↩︎

15. First penile transplant recipient ‘to become father’, BBC↩︎

16. Since they were engaged but not yet married the governing text would have been Deut 22:23-24. Caveats apply – Mary was not caught, Roman law wouldn’t have permitted this at the time, but in the spirit of the argument she would have been “worthy of stoning” and that was not what Joseph wanted.↩︎

17. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Mishnah/Seder_Nashim/Tractate_Kiddushin/Chapter_1/1↩︎

18. πορνεία↩︎

19. Porneia, Jennifer Wright Knust, encyclopedia.com↩︎

20. Sexual Immorality (Word Study), Robert H. von Thaden Jr.↩︎

21. Septuaginta, hg. v. Alfred Rahlfs, zweite, verbesserte Auflage, hg. v. Robert Hanhart, © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, https://www.die-bibel.de/en/bible/LXX/↩︎

22. Sexual Immorality (Word Study), Robert H. von Thaden Jr.↩︎

23. Romans 1:29 excluded as not in NA28/UBS5. I’m only being pedantic for this table.↩︎

24. Septuaginta, hg. v. Alfred Rahlfs, zweite, verbesserte Auflage, hg. v. Robert Hanhart, © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, https://www.die-bibel.de/en/bible/LXX/↩︎

25. Greek text from the SBL Greek New Testament, ed. Michael W. Holmes. Copyright © 2010 Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://github.com/Faithlife/SBLGNT↩︎

26. Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org↩︎

27. Septuaginta, hg. v. Alfred Rahlfs, zweite, verbesserte Auflage, hg. v. Robert Hanhart, © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, https://www.die-bibel.de/en/bible/LXX/↩︎

28. Greek text from the SBL Greek New Testament, ed. Michael W. Holmes. Copyright © 2010 Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://github.com/Faithlife/SBLGNT↩︎

29. Septuaginta, hg. v. Alfred Rahlfs, zweite, verbesserte Auflage, hg. v. Robert Hanhart, © 2006 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, https://www.die-bibel.de/en/bible/LXX/↩︎

30. Purity culture might frame the offence against your potential future spouse but I think that goes too far. It’s a party that doesn’t exist yet.↩︎

31. Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women, Teachman, J. D. (2003), Journal of Marriage and Family 65(2), 444–455↩︎