purity

In the past year I’ve seen enough out of our national leaders that I didn’t think I could be shocked anymore. However, I have to say I did get a shock last week when a pastor claimed a politician, when in his 30s, dated high school girls “for their purity.” I thought the potential statutory rape was bad enough. Hearing a so-called man of God ascribe it to godly motives gave me a far worse jolt.

I confess I don’t understand how a man like that could say a thing like that, but Paul helped me a little bit in his letter to Titus. Look at this, from Titus 1:15-16: “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.”

If, as is certainly possible, this politician actually hoped to despoil the purity of those girls, then he is corrupt. That makes complete sense to me. Less apparent is any kind of faithful reason why his pastor would defend him. That sounds to me like a person who claims to know God but denies him by his actions. If so, then Paul calls him detestable and disobedient, and so he seems to me.

As always, instead of looking at others scripture calls me first of all to look at myself. It seems that one measure of my own closeness to God is how highly I value purity. Do I love the God-reflecting beauty of all those truly pure things, like young children and self-less service and committed marriages? Do I love those things enough to sacrifice for them? To fight to protect them?

I think I do, but I confess that sometimes it’s easy to put those concerns behind more urgent things like my job or writing  a sermon, or debating the value of a church building project. I know I can do better, and I have a way to go before I see purity with the high value that Jesus sees it.