"Seven Virtues and Your Marriage: Chastity"

Chastity is the ‘state or practice of refraining from extramarital, or especially from all, sexual intercourse’.  In a nutshell, it is sexual purity.  I do not think since the creation of man that there has been a culture of sexual purity other that Adam and Eve before they ate the apple.  Having sex outside of marriage, before marriage, or whenever has been around a very, long time.  Let’s look at it in two contexts - single and married. Being single and choosing purity before marriage is not the most popular thing in our culture today.  Many see it as an out of date concept and probably most people could not give you a very good definition of the word ‘chastity’.  As a counselor, I have counseled many people that have abandoned purity as a single.  They bought into peer pressure, or the pressures of society, or they just made the decision to have sex.  Being single and abstaining is tough.  Today many people do not get married until at least their mid to late 20’s.  That means that their bodies became ready for sex at eleven or twelve and they have had to fight temptation for 15 to 20 years in a culture that throws sex at them from everywhere.  I have never talked to a person who waited until marriage to have sex that regretted it.  I have talked to a lot of people that did not wait that did have regrets.  I have also talked to a number of people that from a certain date made the decision to stay pure till marriage.  It is giving themselves a second chance at purity.  I have seen individuals and couples do this and never had one regret it.  The choice is yours but do not buy into the idea that God’s plan is out of date.  God is the one Who invented sex in the first place.  Out of date?  Are you kidding?

The other side of this coin is for those of you that are married.  This will be short.  If you are married, do not go outside of the marriage. It is wrong.  It is destructive.  It breaks trust that probably will never be rebuilt.  It ruins lives and usually the destruction has an incredible ripple effect.  The best sex ever is in a Christian marriage.  Why settle for anything else?

Chastity is a virtue.  Embrace it as a single or as a married.  No matter what your past, embrace it today.  This is one decision that you will never regret.

Dr. Kim