The world looks at chastity and sees repression: a dull and frigid lifestyle that is probably the result of fear or not being able to find a date. “Those poor people living chaste lives. They don’t have a clue what they’re missing. If only someone could liberate them from their prudishness.” Sound familiar? This may come as a surprise to those who think that chastity and prudery are synonymous, but chastity has nothing to do with having a negative idea of sex. In fact, the foundation of chastity is the dignity of every person and the greatness of sex.
Sure, chastity says no to sex before marriage. This is not because sex or the body is bad, but on the contrary, because sex is a great gift and a person’s body is something to be treated with profound respect. Typically, priceless things are not open to all; they are only for those who meet the requirement, who pass the test. In the same way, our sexuality is not something that is meant to be given away freely, as if it has little value or meaning. Those who treat sex as if it were a fair exchange for a nice dinner or six months of commitment are the ones who have yet to discover its real value. As writer Elisabeth Elliot said, “There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized. By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.”[1] We constantly look for what we can get out of someone, how we can please ourselves and “live in the moment.”
If we understood chastity for what it is, we would see that nothing testifies to the goodness of the body and sex as much as chastity does. Just as humility is the proper attitude toward greatness, purity is the proper attitude toward sex. Purity guards the secret of sex because of its greatness.
Chastity has a bad reputation because it involves dying to ourselves. But this death serves a purpose. The world sees chastity as death because it does not have the patience to see the life and love that spring forth from the sacrifice. It is not repression or guilt that motivates the chaste man or woman; it is the desire for real love. As a result, the virtue of purity is deeply alluring. Freed from selfish sexual aggressiveness, the pure are empowered to love as we are meant to love.
The problem with lust is not that the desires are too strong; they are too weak, lukewarm, and self-absorbed. Prudishness is fittingly represented as cold and frigid, but purity is white hot. Purity burns with a passionate love that puts lust in the freezer.
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[1]. Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Revell, 1984), 21.