I'm a christian and am having a hard time understanding "Staying pure" Help?

Question

What is your defenition of purity and how exactly do you "stay pure?"
I have struggled with this question for a long time, but i just don't have the guts to ask people i know. Please help.

Answer 1

"Staying Pure" is a pure guilt trip. Religions like Christianity set up rules that you can't follow. This makes you feel guilty. In the case of Christianity, they then tell you that you have to repent to get to Heaven. Now you're in a viscious circle of trying to be good, failing because you're human, then having to repent. This keeps you bonded to the church. That's how religion keeps its converts.

Instead, just live your life and admit you're human. Much of what is considered "not pure" is ridiculous. For example, sex is not a bad thing. Thinking about sex isn't bad. You can't help it anyway. We were built to think about sex and have sex. Masturbation is healthy and natural, though religions will tell you it's bad. Of course, if you actually have sex, there are responsibilities you incur.

Just live your life and try to be fair to others. But don't beat yourself over the head for every fault.

Answer 2

You're getting yourself into a rut already. Being a Christian isn't about being perfect, it's about admitting you aren't and accept God's gift of forgiveness. If you think you are going to be able to "stay pure" without God's help, it's just not going to work.

Answer 3

I'm glad you have the strength to ask the question. It is indeed a relevant topic to us all.

Often as Christians we think that to be pure we need to rely on our willpower- to actively flee from temptation, choose to do the right thing vs. the wrong. But then we also know that we are not perfect and fail...a lot of times.

Why? In the most part relying on willpower is not wrong, but we've missed a key component- God.

In James 4:7 it is written: "Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." Notice that submitting to God comes BEFORE resisting the devil. If we try to resist the devil on our own strength, or even to outrun him ourselves we likely end up sinning.

So what does it mean to submit to God? That means having Kingdom values FIRST in our heart. Our hearts must be right before God. If our hands are a set of scales (balance), and we are to put God on one hand, and all our favourite sins, dreams, desires for life, plans and other indulgences into the other, which hand would sink down? Which is the more important one? Scary question huh?

Realise this- that unless God becomes our priority, and that we've made a whole hearted commitment to follow all his ways, plans and desires, and to do his work before ours we will continue to try and fail, try and fail and live as defeated Christians.

However, if we change our values to God's values, then purity will simply be a natural outpouring of what we hold dear. We will always choose purity, because it matters a lot more that the temporary satisfication we get from doing what God dislikes.

Blessings brother, all the best for you spiritual journey.

Answer 4

Take a look at the Amish. They are very pure in my eyes. They are there for one another, helping one another. They are very happy, yet live very simply. There are different levels of Amish (the extremely conservative, however, there are also "modern" Amish, who live by the same standards, however are harder to distinguish from everyone else because they don't dress in the same garb as the traditional.

Live simply.... That is my idea of being pure!

Answer 5

To me, being "pure" means being innocent. While innocence is a nice idea, it's not very practical. To me, it's tantamount to being ignorant, and that's seldom a good idea for anyone above the age of three.

Answer 6

Purity usually means pureness of heart. You have to cast down all impure thoughts that come into your mind. Read Philippians 4:8. The more we fill ourselves with God in our lives, the less likely we are to sin because we have no room for the unclean thoughts. We are told to put on the mind of Christ and put to death the old man( the flesh) daily. When our minds are thinking pure thoughts, our hearts are pure as well.

Answer 7

No sex outside of marriage,no impure thoughts. Basically anything that's going to make you sin against God. Jesus was also tempted in every area and God does provide a way out.

Answer 8

once you ask God to help you, the holy spirit will come into your life. whenever you are faced with a choice, if the holy spirit lives within you, you will not pick the choice that would be unholy because the holy spirit within you is the one that actually doesn't want to do it. staying pure is doing whatever it is that God want you to do at all times.

Answer 9

all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. Being pure doesn't mean in a physical sense it means pure of heart, being innocent in your thoughts.

Answer 10

first of all It really means not sinning or offending the Holy Spirit. As a young person you want to not open your life to wrong thoughts and acts. Stay pure sexually and wait for marriage before you have a physical relationship..