let’s call out: PURITY

There was a game my friends and I played once, you can actually find it online, it’s a purity test. Through it you tick off all the things you have done and at the end it tells you how pure you are out of 100. Some of my friends had high numbers like 98 and others were lower in the 40s. None of us really knew what to do with these scores except laugh about it. Those who had lower numbers seemed a little off - like they were unclean and not as “good” as the rest of the group. I managed to lower my score by 20 points over the next two months and was kinda proud about that - for a time.

Here’s the thing, purity isn’t based on a score. It’s not about what you didn’t do or the so-called terrible things you did do. Often we think of purity going hand in hand with statements like:

Say no to sex because you’ll get STI’s and die. Say no to drugs and alcohol because you will get addicted. Say no theft because it’s wrong. Say no to…..you fill in the blank.

When we start these thoughts with “no” statements we immediately put ourselves into a poverty mindset. We were never made to be in poverty. I’m not talking about financial poverty - I’m talking about emotional, mental, spiritual, physical poverty. God did not create us for poverty. He created us for life in abundance.

So, let’s flip the script.

Purity is about what you say “yes” to.

If you say yes to abstinence - that is saying yes to your values, your body, your partner, whatever reasons you have to be abstinent. If you say yes to sex before marriage - that is saying yes to your values, your body, your partner, and the other reasons you may have. Both viewpoints have varying different reasons as to why to engage in them and those reasons are your own.

Yes, I have opinions on this topic and I’m sure you’ll hear my take on it later on as I had to question why I was abstinent and then why I stopped. Some of those reasons start here - with a new purity mindset.

I am no longer under poverty where everything I do will cause me to end in the gutter but instead I question where my beliefs and morals came from and what is actually good for me. In that, how can I move forward in freedom and new life.

It’s about taking my emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health into consideration before acting on impulse. To say, I value myself so, is this good for me right now or not? In asking those hard questions, and not holding back, I can start to see where I stand and why. It’s not easy and often I fall back into old ways but as I shift my mentality towards real purity, it gets easier.

I hope you too can start to take on this new mindset and really question your actions, not seeing them as detrimental - or if they are, find out why and how to reverse it - and start stepping into a life of freedom.

You were created to be pure and whole. You were not created to live in darkness, in the gutters of life, or in poverty.