“Purity Ring Culture” is very prevalent in the American church. We have ceremonies where dads dance with their daughters and present them with a ring as the girls swear to abstain from sex until marriage. Girls often sit through seminars dedicated to teaching them to scream “NO” to any potentially shady propositions from teenage boys (I know I sat through plenty of these speeches). These seminars use pretty horrific metaphors to enforce the idea of abstinence onto these young women. Some that I have heard are that girls are like cheeseburgers – boys only want them to satisfy their hunger. Or that girls are like tissues – nobody wants to blow their nose into a used tissue.

Now before I continue, please understand that I am not against abstinence. On the contrary, I think it’s a very wise decision for young people to not have sex until marriage to keep themselves from the hurt and children that could potentially follow. What I am against is a culture that is still continuing the idea that a woman’s virginity has anything to do with her value, especially saying that it changes her in the eyes of the Lord.

What happens to the 16-year-old girls who say “yes” against the seminars and against the sermons and lose what they were told was essential for a young Christian girl to keep? Do they still get to go to daddy-daughter dances? Do they have to take their purity ring off until they fall on the altar in repentance?

Or what happens to the 17-year-old girls who say “no” in accordance with the seminars and sermons but the boy refuses to accept it? How painful is the sight of a “true-love-waits” ring after a violation like that?

Or how about the 26-year-old women who made all the right choices and were protected in just the right moments and arrive on their wedding day still “pure”? What do they win? After so long finding their identity in this jewelry and this promise, who are they once that moment is over?

There are many different ways to navigate the aftermath of moments like these, mostly with a lot of self-searching and prayer. We as a church place a great stress on sexuality as sin (preaching pro-abstinence, anti-homosexuality, etc.) and yet our discussions on lies and envy are much less frequent or fervent. We have decided to place more emphasis on these when they do not necessarily warrant this kind of response. I have never once been invited to a seminar about the dangers of idolatry, but I have gone to dozens about the dangers of sex outside of marriage. God does not see our choices in shades of grey, but in black and white. Teaching young people to protect themselves in sexual manners is a good thing, but implying (or straight-up declaring) that their worth is tied to their sexual experience is dangerous and bogus.