Boomers, Groomers, and a Little Perspective on Purity Culture
Beware the progressive voice condemning yesterday’s “purity culture,” if that same voice is condoning today’s radical transgender culture.
I don’t care how misguided parents may have been in the 80’s or 90’s, with GlamorShots, mullet perms, and Cosby sweaters… they weren’t endorsing double mastectomies for 15-year-old girls or allowing their elementary children to be sexualized at school… while calling it “gender affirmation.”
We’d like to think our parents were such troglodytes. “Abstinence and purity? Ugh. It was all so unhelpful and narrow minded…” Purity rings, modest is hottest, and dating Jesus… no doubt some of it went awry, some of it was poorly communicated, implemented, and harmful. A bad teacher can ruin any good lesson. God’s people are nothing if not faithful mark missers.
Thank goodness we have come so far, right?! Such clarity for the world behind us… but one big blind spot for the world around us.
We think we are pretty smart, don’t we? With our organic, locally sourced yet global, neutral while still affirming… approach to life. There are a lot of things we have to be proud of, like Spotify, car seats, the Mexican Pizza from Taco Bell, and other modern marvels. But our ability to demonstrate and educate the next generation on holy or healthy sexuality ain’t one of them.
What do you think our grandkids are going to say when they hear about us letting toddlers who refuse veggies determine their gender, peeling off dollar bills as our kids practice twerking with registered offenders in drag, hosting drag shows at Wednesday night youth, bringing home bindings for our daughters and tampons for our sons? How pray tell, will our tolerant parenting seem then… to the grown, broken, and possibly butchered bodies and hearts of our heirs?
And “boomers” had the audacity to try to articulate or justify the wisdom of modesty and abstinence?! Monsters!
“Wait until you’re married to have sex?!” Self-control is so 1900’s. Ain’t that the truth?! Riddle me this: Today’s enlightened generation will abstain from sex as a form of government protest or because of climate terror… but not family planning? Brilliant. How silly is a trip to James Avery looking now?
Do we really think preaching an imagined, twisted sexual reality that defies science or biology, much less any Godly authority, to our youth is less harmful than “true love waits?” Are we really choosing to die on the hill of grooming young people to believe they can manifest a new and personal reality, from their mind… and all the world goes along with it? LIKE THEY ARE GOD? Or this is idolatry? Y’all don’t see any trouble ahead with that approach??
It’s a bold strategy for sure— the generation of “children are sexual beings, and you have no gender,” finger pointing at the generation of “don’t even talk about sex, you’re children… and put a ring on that finger!” They keep saying “Love wins,” but I don’t know that it does or will. Not that kind of “love.” There is no winning for any child hoping to have a healthy adulthood and being met with absolute chaos and confusion. Love should be fighting back a depressing, devastating social agenda by any holy means necessary, instead of ushering it in for tea.
Perhaps a tad more perspective would be wise. Our current culture is high on temporal arrogance… new science, new ways, new words, new definitions, new genders… for our new old gods. We have become exceptional at judging everyone that ever lived through a lens of condescension and current pseudo-righteousness, while pseudo-judging ourselves as only righteous. But we are in good company, every generation thought they had the brightest bulbs in the box and maybe they did. But advancement in technology, bureaucracy, and even democracy do not equate to Godly wisdom. The moment we remove God’s Word as our standard of truth and good, we are fools all.
How are we not seeing this rightly? The heartiest defense of the children we were and almost none for the children that are. Pride. Blinding pride. The kind of pride that demands we play a dangerous game of “All or Nothing” with affirmation, instead of “This, But Not That” like the Friday night family nights of our dysfunctional childhoods. Lines can be drawn, my glad gamers. And they should be.
Let’s slow our “into oblivion” roll. There’s an opportunity here for wisdom to do better, grace for those who have already done, and humility about what we are doing now. We may not be able to guarantee our children virginity on their wedding day or the piety that belongs to those covered from neck to nubs, but my God “shouldn’t sanity be a goal?” He would say, “YES.” In fact, wanting our children to have sound minds shouldn’t be just the goal, but the starting place… the minimum.
There should be no boasting in trading the teaching of right things poorly for the teaching of wrong things very, very well. We’ll see how that plays out at the throne, but I imagine there will be enough shame to go around, both from our own youth and the raising of our youth
