At this point you might ask, "what about purity?" The New Testament mentions purity and impurity all the time, using multiple words. Purity's clearly very important in the Christian life. So what's so wrong with purity culture, then?
The problem is, there's no reason at all to assign a sexual meaning to the word "purity." This article dissects the idea far better than I can, and they summarize it thusly: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Purity is part of the virtue I called integrity and self-control. Purity not a sexual concept at all, except insofar as sexual desires and actions can cause us to behave in an impure, double-minded manner, without control over our impulses.
Lust perhaps also does not mean what you think it means. The word translated "lust," epithumeĊ, is not sexual at all. It's "to set one's heart on a thing, desire, covet." The exact same word is used in numerous non-sexual contexts, and even in contexts where it's a good thing to do! For a few examples:
- Psalm 119:40 and Isaiah 26:9 describe "lust" for the will of God
- 1 Kings 11:37 is God saying he will give Jeroboam what he "lusts" for
The entire idea that this is a sin of sexual arousal, instead of a a perversion of desire itself, is a deep misunderstanding. In the Ten Commandments:
- You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.
- You must not desire another man's wife, nor should you crave his house, his field, his male and female servants, his ox, his donkey, or anything else he owns.
To covet your neighbor's belongings means you do not Love and respect your neighbor as yourself. The action of coveting flows out of the lack of this virtue.
In Matthew 5:28 Jesus talks about this word. There are numerous translation variants, one of which is very important to understanding this verse. Here's the New English Translation, emphasis mine:
But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
A lot of translations just say "with lust" or "lustfully." But it's about the intent to desire. Jesus isn't saying sexual arousal is bad, so we legalists can say "Look, a checkbox!" He's saying that a person who goes out of his way to look at a woman that he wants and shouldn't have is already broken inside, no matter whether he acts on his desires or not. This is not a faithful person, nor is it a person satisfied with what God has given him.
A huge amount of purity culture teaching derives from this one verse. "Women have to protect men from the sin of lust by covering themselves up!" But as legalists so often do, this totally inverts the point Jesus was trying to make. The problem isn't with the woman, because the problem was never with action at all. The sin that needs to be healed is inside the man, and will be even if he never sees that woman again. A perfectly virtuous, perfectly Christ-like married man would have no desire to look at a woman so he can imagine possessing her.
Of course, there's another problem here: one does not possess a person. A Christian with the virtue of Love and respect treats other humans as beings to relate to, as peers. To covet a person implies that you view a person the same way you view an object, as a means to your own ends. Once again, this flows out of a lack of the virtue of Love and respect for your fellow human.
Sexual arousal for another person is not a sinful lust, in itself. And a desire to have relationship with a person, even if that desire includes a sexual component, is not a sinful lust, in itself. The sin lies inside you, in the part of you that looks at humans as objects, wants to break covenants, and is unsatisfied with the gifts of God.
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