When it comes to purity and chastity, as Christians, it seems as though we’re always looking for the line between sin and virtue, always looking to define exactly what that line is, and what makes us cross it. And unfortunately, it’s often not because we want to stay away from the other side, it’s usually because we want to get as close to it without crossing it as possible.

It can get a little tricky when a particular line is defined for us too, because different boundaries apply to different people. For example: If you’re of drinking age, is one beer in a pub too much to have? Many people would say that it absolutely wasn’t, and for many people, it isn’t too much. But what if you’re an alcoholic? Then I’d say you’re flirting with disaster.

In our fight for purity it’s very important that we know ourselves. It’s important that we know our strengths, but most importantly, that we know our weaknesses. And furthermore, it’s important that we’re honest with ourselves about them. A fall into lust can very easily be accomplished by convincing ourselves that we’re stronger than we know we really are. “Oh sure, I can surf the internet even though I’m feeling particularly tempted right now. It’s no big deal.” Normally, surfing the internet might not be an issue. But if we’re suffering a temptation of lust, it can be chastity suicide.

So why all this talk of lines? It all came to mind because I had been thinking about one particular example of someone drawing a line in regards to looking at beautiful women. The question has been asked many times, “Is it wrong to look at a beautiful woman?” and I’ve heard many answers. But the one that I’ve commonly heard is, “You can look at a beautiful woman once and say, ‘Praise God!’, but if you look twice, then that’s lustful.” Now, I have an issue with this line of thinking. Because that is most certainly not what Jesus told us. Christ said that if we look at a woman with lust, we have committed adultery in our hearts. He doesn’t mention any numbers. If you think about it, you could be at the beach on a hot day, and look at dozens upon dozens of women only one time each. Would that still be considered pure?

While that example was the seed of this article, I think the more important issue here is an understanding of why we are striving to be chaste men of God. We are striving to be chaste out of a desire to love. Whether that be a desire to love our present or future wives, or a desire to love God through some other vocation, the purpose of chastity is to free us to be able to love properly. Fully. So when we think about it that way, if we want to love someone, we shouldn’t be flirting with disaster by coming as close as possible to the line between purity and impurity. In fact, it would be a more loving act to understand how we react to temptation, and then set a decent buffer between us and that line, so that we don’t ever come even close to it.

Think about the lines that you might struggle with staying on the right side of, and set a new line that is a significant distance from the first one. If we exercise chastity in this way, we have much more of a chance of moving away from purity, and moving closer to God. Because... line dancing isn't pretty. In terms of chastity. But... also in terms of real line dancing. *shudder*

"Holy convenience Batman! You're telling me that there's a spray that removes my responsibility?"

"Not just any responsiblity Robin. You're responsibility to behave like a man. Now you can be a boy who looks up to responsible men, wishing he could be more... FOREVER!"

Have you ever noticed how amazing Axe (North America) or Lynx (Europe) spray is made out to be? Alls you gotta do is, give your body a once over with their magical spray, and women will be all over you man! Seriously, did you see that one where all he had to do was test it in the store, and women were knocking over shelves to get a piece of him? Or the one time where a guy stood on the beach, and the more he sprayed, the more bikini clad women flocked to him from miles around in a sexual frenzy. It seems like finally, someone has found a foolproof way to encounter women and make them dig you. Finally, someone has found a way to easily pick up women, any where, any time, no matter what.

In 2002, Jack White of The White Stripes decided to take a slightly different direction with their third studio album White Blood Cells, deciding that the album would feature no slide guitar, and no blues songs. Considering the fact that the blues was both a dominant influence and component of their previous two albums, this decision was particularly surprising to the music world. A guitarist who Rolling Stone Magazine consider the 17th greatest guitarist of all time, significantly based on his abilities as a blues-based musician, deciding to leave the slide alone and abandon blues songs for an album altogether? Why?

Lemme drop this bomb on you guys:

“Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.” - W. C. Fields

As followers of Christ, one fact that we cannot escape is that actively living our faith in our day to day lives is a massively counter cultural thing to do. I’ve brought this up briefly in a previous post, but I think it’s important enough to talk about a little more in depth.