Purity Week Post #1 : Ivory Soap Isn’t Good Enough
Welcome to “Purity Week.” Our goal for this week is to share with you four posts that deal with sexuality and purity. The posts will come out today, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (our monthly email newsletter will be released on Tuesday). To make sure you don’t miss a post, simply click here to subscribe for free.
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Often when speaking about purity, I have used an illustration from ads for Ivory Soap. For many years, that brand of soap was marketed as being “99 44/100% pure.” In fact, one of their jingles used to include the lyrics:
I want my clean as real as Ivory;
It’s gotta be 99 point 44.
But, when I talk about purity, I like to ask the question: “What’s the other 56/100%?” In other words, how can you have something that is “pure,” but then admit that part of it is not pure!
The very first definition of “pure” is “free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind.” So, to claim that something is “almost” or “mostly” pure is really a contradiction in terms. It just doesn’t make logical sense.
But as we begin Purity Week, I want us to consider that this is how we often treat the subject of sexual purity. We seem to be comfortable with being 99 44/100% pure.
After all, there are very few areas of our life where you will hear Christians say that “As long as we don’t…, then we are okay.” But, for some reason, we will do that with sexuality. We know that the sexual relationship is not only designed by God for marriage, but that He has commanded that sex be only inside the bonds of marriage. So, for many people, we will see just how far we can go without crossing some line that we have set. We are “mostly pure” in our minds.
That just isn’t good enough!
God demands purity, and that does not mean that we can set some line of our own making and then think, if I don’t cross that self-made line, I am being pure. So long as we don’t “go all the way,” we are being pure. Where did we ever get that idea?
God, in the area of sexuality, has told us that we need to avoid making some attempt at seeing how close to “crossing the line” we can get and still be acceptable. The Bible clearly says, “Flee fornication” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Eugene Peterson begins the discussion that runs from verse 18 through verse 20 by paraphrasing Paul’s words as “There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin” (The Message). While an obvious paraphrase, Peterson could not be more correct in his interpretation of the Apostle’s thoughts! When we begin attempting to set our own “how far is too far” boundary, we are not really striving for purity.
Anyone who is biologically “of age” knows that the feelings of sexuality come upon us very quickly, and that it can be easy to become lost in the moment. However, just because the feelings are strong does not give us the right to give into those emotions or feelings and push God’s standard aside. Thinking “we didn’t go as far as so-and-so” or “well, we didn’t do such-and-such” has never been the standard of our Lord. His standard is is Himself, a perfectly pure Being.
It turns out that what is 99 44/100% pure isn’t really pure, after all.
Ivory Soap’s standard just isn’t good enough if we are going to be people of true purity.
QUESTION: Why do we think that “almost pure” is good enough?
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10 Comments
Brad Cobb
Great points, Adam.
Ben Giselbach
Excellent illustration! Satan has us if he can convince us that it’s okay to ‘flirt’ with sexual immorality. Looking forward to the rest of your week’s posts.
James Hayes
This issue gets tricky when defining what makes someone impure as it relates to non-intercourse, premarital sex. The “How far is too far?” discussion is readdressed with every generation because the answer always changes. One person says that kissing before marriage is immoral (an answer I’ve heard many times), while another person says that anything you do with your clothes on is okay, and so on. The person who promotes and practices the least amount of touching wins the purity argument, and then they view everyone else as sexually immoral. It’s the same with the modest clothing debate. A woman who says, “I’m modest” because she never shows skin above the knee or under the neck will always be out-modested (is that a word?) by an Amish woman who shows no skin above the ankle. And both will claim to be the definition of Christian modesty. I’m not disagreeing with anything in your post, I’m just fleshing out (intentional pun) some of these secondary issues of judging, guilt, etc. because it’s an important topic.
Adam Faughn
James, thank you for this thoughtful comment, and you are so right. My purpose in writing this post was to go against the mindset of “let’s see how far we can go” which far too many Christians seem to think is okay. When we have that mindset, we are really saying that we do not wish to avoid sin; rather, we are willingly inviting temptation. Thanks again for reading and commenting.
Amanda
Commenting also on what James said…I see so often that there are extremes to these hot issues. One purity, you have the “see how far we can go without crossing a line” extreme and then you have the “I won’t even hold hands until I’m betrothed” extreme. Obviously your point of being pure is well taken, but I believe a person can remain pure and still hold hands and/or kiss before marriage. But like James said, if I hold hands and kiss, then the person who doesn’t is purer than me. Is it a contest?
David A Dixon
Great article, Adam. Looking forward to the rest. And interesting comments so far. I’m anxious to see your response!
bald
Good article. Linked here from fb and your newsletter.
bald
Adam,
Don’t know how this posted at “bald.” It’s ok, since I’m not 🙂 I don’t use Disqus, so I’m not sure what happened. My name is Warren Baldwin, and I blog at Family Fountain: http://www.warrenbaldwin.blogspot.com
Adam Faughn
Thanks for the comment and the shares!
Adam Faughn
Amanda, thank you for taking the time to thoughtfully share your comment. You have expressed a great concern in a very well-thought-out way.
You are correct that this is not some type of “contest” (and I love that word choice, by the way). I am not trying to “out-pure” someone else. However, I am very concerned over how dating in our country has made it okay to do some quite intimate things. Yes, I kissed when I dated, but honestly, I wish now that I hadn’t. That is a very intimate act, and I am ashamed of having shared that with anyone other than my wife.
Does that mean that no one can kiss before marriage? I am not saying that. What I am saying is that we have normalized or “marginalized” so many things that are quite intimate that what we consider “pure” keeps moving further and further toward what is very clearly impure. Christians need to avoid being more and more intimate before marriage. I hope that helps explain my thoughts a bit.