COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ON PURITY ISSUES (Pt 1)

The main aim of this series is not to produce a list of some dos and don’ts concerning purity as I am sure that there are a lot of those in our world. Our aim is to present the word of God in its entirety concerning this area that has plagued a lot of people and put people under some sort of bondage. We believe that the word of God has the ability to set people free and true freedom comes in knowing God’s word, what He says about us and how He expects us to live. Jesus said in John 8: 32, 

“Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” (MSG) 

Growing up as a girl child, it was very common to be instructed, advised, or taught about staying pure your whole life. Especially if you grew up in religious home, everybody tells you about how you need to keep yourself for marriage. About how the greatest gift you can give your husband is your virginity…bla, bla, bla. I would like to draw out some of them. I refer to them as misconceptions in this article, not because they are completely wrong but majorly because they contain half-truths, and most time half-truths can be very damaging. So, let’s get into these misconceptions:

1. Virginity is not the only aspect of Purity: Virginity has always been presented in a way that it is all that Purity is about. If you grew up in a Nigerian Family like mine, you would understand this very well. Purity entails much more than just “whether you have kept yourself for marriage or not.”
2. Purity is just for Unmarried Folks: When we consider the idea of Purity holistically especially in line of scriptures which is our main focus in this post, we realize that it applies to every one of us both married and unmarried. This also ties in with the strong information that is communicated when you hear the common purity message or gospel, which is that the reason for staying pure is for the benefit of the husband or wife. And then I am usually forced to ask the question, whose instruction is it to be pure?    
3. Purity is not just for the female gender: A lot of books, seminars and church meetings have been done to address the subject of purity but ironically, it has focused on only the females. So now we live in a society that has preached and promoted the message that men do not know how to control themselves when they see a lady, and this has indirectly advanced the rape and sexual assault issues for women and girls in the world today. However, we will show that both the female and male gender have been called to a life of purity.
4. The reward for staying pure is having a marriage without troubles: This misconception has put a lot of people in crisis. I cannot count the number of times I have heard people ask questions like they kept themselves for marriage, why do they have reproductive issues, bad marriages, fertility issues etc. It is so sad that a lot of people have come to believe that virginity automatically takes care of all these issues.
5. People who are celibate do not have sexual urges and should have no knowledge about sex before marriage: This is a particular touchy one and I believe the problem is not whether you have these urges or not but rather what do you do with them. Also, what kind of information do you feed yourself concerning sex, because if God ordained this act, he would have provided the right information for it and shouldn’t people have access to this right information when they begin the journey to marriage?

I am sure you have a lot of misconceptions to add to these ones. Please do share them with us in the comment section, we look forward to hearing from you. In our next post, we want to analyse what purity actually means, what the bible says about this subject.