Category: Uncategorized

I had a blog posted through growingfathers.com. You can read the article here.

My article in JETS arrived yesterday. Here is the info and a link to it:

“Finding Lady Wisdom: The Excellent Woman (אשת חיל) as a Synecdoche for the Order of Creation and Interpreting Ecclesiastes 7:28” JETS 66, no. 1 (March 2023): 53–71.

One of the hallmarks of the purity culture from twenty years ago was the oath. Fathers gave their daughters purity rings; singles covenanted that they would save themselves until marriage; Joshua Harris wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye; and Rebecca St. James sang Wait for Me. At least that is how I remember it. Today, purity culture is being attacked. Joshua Harris has canceled and recanted his book; children of the movement have grown and attacked the movement; even the secular world has taken notice. Rebecca Joy Welcher has published Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality (2020: IVP Press) where she rejects the sexual license of modern culture, but writes critically of the purity culture which failed her. Brenda Marie Davies has published On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel (2021: Eerdmans) and tells her story of how purity culture failed her. She now has a podcast and YouTube channel which is a “guide to becoming an inquisitive, fearless, sex positive, free thinking Christian in the modern world.” While purity culture definitely had some problems, there were several things that were correct—like purity. And in the haze being created by these sources, true Christians need to recall what the Bible teaches about sexuality and not be persuaded by “Christian” writers and publishers which argue from worldly philosophies and personal experience.

Purity culture encouraged singles to take an oath, saying that they would save themselves until marriage. This oath has garnered particular animosity from the secular world and the children of purity culture alike. Welcher, still a strong proponent of purity, while not outright condemning rings and pledges, looks skeptically at the movement and the oaths sworn. Davies outright mocks her own purity oath experience, “In my doe-eyed ignorance—and I say this with compassion toward my sweet, young self—I planned a purity ceremony for my evangelical youth group. My girls and I had the rings. All we needed was to make our pledge official. One Friday night, while my peers were somewhere indulging in hard lemonade and indiscriminate hand jobs, we Christian teens were dressed in white, promising our purity to the Lord. I signed a virginity contract in the presence of my parents.” Davies’ book is profane and crude. The message for youths today is clear—oaths and rings are naïve and out.

Christian authors have unfortunately let their culture and experience guide them instead of the specific instruction from the Word of God. The female lover of the Song of Songs exhorts singles (i.e., the daughters of Jerusalem) to take an oath not to awaken love. This refrain is repeated three times in the Song of Songs (2:7; 3:5; 8:4). The text reads, “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the does of the field, do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases” (NKJV). A primary audience of the Song of Songs is single virgin girls, identified in the refrain as “the daughters of Jerusalem.” This adjuration, however, is not directed solely to single girls. The “you” in “I charge you” is a masculine pronoun. The primary audience of the adjuration is single girls, but the exhortation is directed to all. The verb “charge” is literally “to swear an oath.” In Gen 24:37, Abraham’s servant explains, “Now my master made me swear, saying, “You shall not take a wife for my son . . .” The word for “swear” is the same verb in Song 2:7; 3:5; and 8:4. Mocking oaths to purity as Davies does is not only unbecoming of Christian writing, it is antithetical to it (e.g., the mocker of Proverbs). The tagline for her website and podcast—a voice to inform and awaken—is the exact opposite message the Song of Songs teaches. The woman of the Song of Songs explains that an appropriate time to awaken love exists (Song 8:5). But the message for singles is clear, let love sleep.

The problem with purity culture was not their emphasis on purity or oaths, but the failure to define the oath and equip singles to fulfill it. Singing “Wait for Me” at a concert while ones’ peers are pledging to “wait for” their future spouses is not exactly the setting to make a solemn oath. How many promises were made more because of shame than personal conviction? Biblical oaths were serious arrangements that were not entered into thoughtlessly or emotionally. Furthermore, the oath purity culture promoted was to “wait for your spouse,” “to be pure,” or some other imprecise and malleable language that an individual with a wicked heart could easily redefine to fit the passion of the moment. As a result, singles participated in all kinds of immoral behavior that came just short of “all the way” so they could claim they were still “pure.” Purity culture also failed to address the heart desires of singles. The reason singles fail miserably is because they want to sin. The adjuration refrain of the Song, however, encourages singles to not “awaken love.” The Song of Songs does not say to “not have sex,” nor “go pastsecond base.” It says not to awaken love. Rather than tell you what this means, I would encourage you to consider what it means. Talk about it with your physical family and church family. Study it out and take the adjuration refrain of the Song seriously.

Finally, if you are single and reading this article, maybe you are even being convicted that you need to swear not to awaken love, I would encourage you to not swear an oath, at least right now. I’ve actually never encouraged a young person to swear this oath. Not because I don’t think there is value to it, but because I don’t think they know what they are swearing. Love is a powerful force (Song 8:5–7), and you probably don’t know what it is. Much less do you know how to go about fulfilling the oath. Davies was correct about one thing; in her youth, she made an oath in “doe-eyed ignorance.” Yet the problem was not the oath, the problem was the ignorance.