The following post is incredibly raw and honest and maybe even a little too outspoken for me, but it comes from the bottom of my heart and deepest conviction. I've found that the topics that people shy away from are the ones that are the most important, so here I am, throwing out my thoughts in the open to be tossed around, analyzed, chewed on, or....torn apart. I'd like feedback, whether you agree or not. This is something I've been thinking about and talking to God about for a while, but please inform me if you think it falls short.
Genesis 2:24
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
It's interesting that the phrase "one flesh" is used. The term, as I understand it, is not referring to a man and a woman enduring an hour-long church ceremony, moving into the same house together, or signing a document swearing their loyalty to one another. When God meant for a man and a woman to be together, he wanted them to become one flesh. God made the male and female so that when two of them make love, their bodies are entwined so beautifully and perfectly. It is the literal execution of becoming "one flesh" because at that moment, each person is no longer acting on their own, but moving together as one being.
Therefore, it's in that moment when the two of them become one flesh that, in God's eyes, a man and a woman are married. God didn't have Adam and Eve stand before a judge or a minister and declare vows, He didn't have them give each other rings. He had them give each other their bodies, so that they might become two in one; two teammates joined to form one team and two bodies joined to form one being.
I think it's hard today to find reason to remain pure until marriage. I have to be completely honest, I struggle with it myself because I haven't taken the time to understand why I made that commitment and when there's no conviction behind an action, it's not hard for that action to become meaningless.
So I looked into it. Bluntly, when God married Adam and Eve, one of the first things they did was have sex. They belonged to each other! No other ceremonies or documents necessary to seal the deal. I believe this is how God wants marriage to work. Humans felt the need to create a tangible representation of the procedure, one that everyone can celebrate, but in God's eyes, I believe two people belong to each other, body and soul, when they make love for the first time.
If that's the case, then every time you have sex with someone outside of marriage, you run the risk of not marrying them, and every time that happens, it's like getting a miniature divorce. And this makes sense when you think of all the emotional pain involved and caused by carefree sex. God didn't create sex to be a purely physical pleasure...it's an emotional one too. It's a form of attachment, and anyone who argues that it doesn't affect them emotionally has done it enough to completely numb the feeling. I recently watched the movie Friend With Benefits. As the title suggests, it's a movie about two friends who attempt to strike up a sexual contract in which they agree to remain emotionally unattached while sleeping together. As you can probably predict, that particular situation doesn't work out so well and they fall in love. There was another movie like this recently too! Umm....No Strings Attached? Even Hollywood knows that sex without emotional ties does not work.
Since the day I turned 16, I've been wearing a purity ring on my left hand ring finger and since it's been such a long time, it has turned into one of those things that's so commonplace that you forget to stop and notice it. I must confess that at times I've even acknowledged the ring on my finger and continued to make decisions that are contrary to what it stands for. My willfull blind eye, however, has not stopped others from noticing and I've been asked about it more than a few times. As a personal subject that not many people want to breach, I can easily get away with "it's a purity ring" and dropping the subject. It's actually quite the conversation killer...
The question eats at my own conscience though. I'm not a person to do any ritual kind of action if I can't give a reasonable explanation to anyone who asks, and when it's a moral action, "because I feel like it" just doesn't cut it. I want to be able to support my decisions based on logic and based on what I believe. When people asked me about my ring, I found myself opening my mouth to explain why it is I wear it, only to realize I didn't have anything to say (helloooo, awkward silence).
I feel like now I have something to say. I wear my purity ring because I believe God created sex as the final marriage ceremony; the final step in creating a perfect unity. After the glamour, the glitz, the vows, the service, and the rings, I want to marry my husband, ecstatically, passionately, emotionally, and foolishly, and for the very first time.
MandyPies
