The Temptation to Think that the Law of Chastity Is Old-Fashioned
The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth:
but the word of our God shall stand for ever.
(Isaiah 40:8)
Just like the grass and flowers, the morals of the world (or complete lack thereof) bloom and wither. However, the laws of the Lord do not. They stay stock still, unchanging, never budging an inch. The Law of Chastity is one of these godly laws. Rather than being old-fashioned, it is timeless. The words of the last verse of the hymn “Oh Say, What Is Truth” fabulously express this idea as well:
Then say, what is truth? ‘Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o’er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth’s fountains burst,
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal, unchanged, evermore.1
The Temptation to Think It Is Easier In Life to Not Worry About Being Chaste
9 Rise up,
ye women that are at ease;
hear my voice,
ye careless daughters;
give ear unto my speech.
10 Many days and years shall ye be troubled,
ye careless women:
for the vintage shall fail,
the gathering shall not come.
11 Tremble,
ye women that are at ease;
be troubled,
ye careless ones:
strip you,
and make you bare,
and gird sackcloth upon your loins.
(Isaiah 32:9-11)
This can apply not only to you girls, but also to you guys.
Rise up, ye. . . that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless. . .give ear unto my speech - Why does Isaiah say we are “at ease” and “careless”? Because we tend to want to find the easy way to do things so that we can expend the least amount of effort possible. So of course it follows that we may think that being chaste and virtuous is hard to do. Some people even think it is unrealistic to expect anyone to put forth the effort it takes to remain sexually pure before marriage (and even perfectly faithful after marriage). They don’t want to worry about it. Isaiah has a message for everyone who wants to take the easy way out.
Many days and years shall ye be troubled. . .for the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come - Isaiah is firm on the fact that trouble, difficulties, and worry come to everybody. When he says “the vintage shall fail, the gathering shall not come”, he’s talking about the harvest we expect from our course of action; he says things won’t work out the way we expect. He even says that we’ll be worried about it for many days and years.
However, just because everybody gets to have troubles and worries doesn’t mean that we can’t choose just what we will be worried about. In fact, when in comes to chastity, if you choose correctly what you will worry about, you can save yourself from future worries and troubles.
If you choose to be careless about keeping the law of chastity, you will be troubled for many days and years about the problems caused by your relationships. Based upon what I have heard of other people’s experiences, I made a list of things they worry about, and I counted at least eighteen things, everything from “pregnancy” to “parents”, and from “STDs” to “deadbeat dads”. I counted at least seven additional worries Latter-day Saints experience.
On the other hand, if you choose to not be careless about keeping the Law of Chastity, you will not be troubled by those worries I mentioned above; you will be carefree as far as those go. Instead, you will worry about little things like how to escape a bad situation and how to show someone you love them without physical displays of affection, and how to set and enforce limits in your relationships. You may find yourself troubled as you wonder when you will get to harvest the fruit of your labors to remain chaste, which fruit is a temple marriage. There will be days when you wonder what is wrong with you. You will wonder whether you should drop your standards just a little bit so that you can enjoy what it seems like everybody else is enjoying. Yet, you will receive comfort from knowing that you are doing what is right, which will help you continue to be careful and chaste.
I chose to be careful about keeping the Law of Chastity by focusing on and worrying about those little things. For instance, I can remember when I was dating this really nice guy named Steve and at the end of the date he gave me a hug goodnight. It was such an amazing hug (so wonderful it made my insides churn and wrench) that I instantly wanted another one. As I was thinking about how wonderful his hugs were, the Spirit spoke to me and impressed upon me the absolute necessity of not ever hugging this guy again. I thought to myself, “But it’s just a hug! A little hug can’t be bad, can it?” The Spirit taught me that because of the manner in which it was done, the reaction I felt, and my desire for more, for my own safety I needed to set hugs “out of bounds”. Then I had to worry about how I was going to tell Steve that we shouldn’t hug anymore. I decided that the best way was to be honest. So I called him up and I told him I felt we needed to set some limits and I was overjoyed when he completely agreed with me! He had been worried about it too, and he was glad that I wanted to be open about it. So I told him everything that was in my heart. I told him that I had never been hugged ever before the way he had hugged me and that I liked it, but that I couldn’t handle it very well. He told me that was a high compliment. I told him how his hugs made me feel inside, and he told me he had felt the same way. So we decided to not hug each other, and we stuck to it, because we wanted to keep each other safe.
As you can see, I was careful about some very small things. At times I would wonder whether I was worrying too much and whether I should just relax my standards a little bit. Occasionally I would worry about whether I would find a righteous man to marry in the temple. When my standards of care clashed with others’ carelessness, I worried there was something wrong with me. At these times, the Spirit did whisper to me that I was right to be so careful. I was able to discern how I would be miserable if I dropped my standards. The Spirit promised me that if I held out for righteousness, I would get it. And I did. I finally got to harvest the fruit of my efforts, and it’s sweeeeeeeeeet.
Tremble, ye. . .that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones: strip you, and make you bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins - Isaiah is telling us to repent of our past carelessness. (The sackcloth and ashes thing is how they showed extreme sorrow for their sins back in Isaiah’s day) I too challenge you to repent of carelessness. I challenge you to cultivate an attitude of care and awareness of what you should do to keep yourself chaste.
The Temptation to Think that Breaking the Law of Chastity Doesn’t Hurt Anybody
The Temptation to Think You Can Play With the Sacred Powers of Procreation and Not Get Burned
24 Who gave Jacob for a spoil,
and Israel to the robbers?
did not the LORD,
he against whom we have sinned?
for they would not walk in his ways,
neither were they obedient unto his law.
25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger,
and the strength of battle:
and it hath set him on fire round about,
yet he knew it not;
and it burned him,
yet he laid it not to heart.
(Isaiah 42:24-25)
This scripture shows us that in breaking the laws of the Lord, we sin against the Lord. (We cause Him more suffering than He would have otherwise, because He atoned for our sins.)
This scripture also shows us how we actually hurt ourselves and our future children without realizing it, if we break the commandments, like the Law of Chastity.
Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? - How does breaking the Law of Chastity cause us to be spoiled and robbed? When you and someone else break the Law of Chastity, the purity of you both is spoiled and you both are robbed of your virtue. When it results in pregnancy, you both are robbed of your youth and are thrust into the role of parent before your time, which will spoil the plans you each may have had for your own future. Additionally, you have also robbed one of God’s spirit children of the right to be born into the everlasting covenant of marriage and spoiled their chances of entering a family that is eternal. And guess who suffered for people who break the Law of Chastity whether they repent or not? Jesus Christ did. So now let’s add up the number of people directly hurt when the Law of Chastity is broken. You, someone else, and Jesus Christ. And possibly a baby. As many as four people, not counting parents, leaders, siblings, and friends.
Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle - How does the Lord pour upon us the fury of his anger and the strength of battle when we break the Law of Chastity? Well, for one thing, having the “the fury of his anger” poured on us means we know that we have displeased Him, because the Spirit is withdrawn. The Lord pours upon us “the strength of battle”, meaning our conscience (the light of Christ) won’t leave us alone, but will throb with guilt pangs and battle with us to repent. The pain of conscience is so great that one is faced with two choices – repent immediately, or try to rationalize the guilt away. (But take the word “rationalize” apart and you have “rational lies”, which is exactly what rationalizing is.)
I can think of another sense in which the Lord pours upon us the fury of his anger and the strength of battle when we break the Law of Chastity – anger and battle enter our hitherto peaceful relationships. Do you think a person can have a peaceful relationship with their significant other with whom they have sinned against God? It would be really easy to get into fights about who started it, who caused whom to break the commandments, and who is to blame. Steve Gilliland explains how this happens:
Love is the most divine attribute we can develop. But if we pursue acts of selfishness we make it difficult for the Holy Ghost to attend us. As we deny his influence, our relationship with God deteriorates, and feelings of insecurity, irritation, and self-centeredness arise. Then, because we lack one of the great sustaining, positive forces in our lives – the Spirit of the Lord – we become trapped in our doubts and fears, we make demands for reassurance that our partners are incapable of meeting, and through the whole process we become further insensitive to the needs of those around us, including our partner. Nothing can destroy a relationship faster than this kind of atmosphere.2
[A]nd it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart - This line of Isaiah describes how some become so desensitized to the twinges of their conscience that they don’t feel it anymore.
Another pain that Isaiah could be describing in this line could be the pain of breaking up from a relationship, the feelings of betrayal and the feelings of regret that we would feel for having gone so far in physical intimacy. Not many people think seriously about why they feel these pains after breaking up and what they can do to prevent them occurring again.
What I’m going to tell you now is a bit of wisdom that I learned about the emotional trauma of breaking up and regret and how to avoid it. You will be tempted to dismiss it, but I testify that it is an absolutely true principle. I know from experience that the only way you can escape feeling regret or feeling betrayed in a breakup is to not have any physical contact in the relationship before marriage. There’s just no way around it.
Once I figured this out in my dating and followed it, it made a big difference. When I thought on past relationships during which I had held hands or hugged or kissed, I had always felt regret, and finally I knew exactly why. I looked upon past relationships during which there had not been physical contact and those were the ones I remembered with the most satisfaction and enjoyment, even when I had been the one that got dumped, and finally I knew why.
Not only this, but not having physical contact with those I dated actually increased my enjoyment of my dating relationships. Because physical contact and physical displays of affection were no longer a factor to me, I could put all my focus on appreciating the other person and discovering who they really were. I no longer had to worry about when it was appropriate to hold hands or kiss goodnight or whatever, because I just wasn’t going to do it. And this is the most unusual thing - I discovered the enjoyment of wanting to hold hands or hug or kiss but not doing it. Bridling my passions filled me with love.
The Temptation to Think That Marriage Is an Unnecessary Formality
The Temptation to Think You Can Easily Repent Later
For thus saith the LORD,
Ye have sold yourselves for nought;
and ye shall be redeemed without money.
(Isaiah 52:3)
For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought - Promises to be faithful mean nothing on earth unless backed up by lawful marriage. If you give away your virtue before you get married, it is like you have auctioned yourself and your purity off to the lowest bidder, who bids ‘nothing’. The price of intimacy is marriage, and your virginity and physical bestowals of affection are not something that you can sell at a discount for anything less than marriage without feeling cheated. The price has to be paid before you enjoy the benefits of intimacy.
If you break the Law of Chastity, not only have you sold yourself to the lowest bidder who has paid nothing, but also you’ve put yourself in the power of Satan. In the heat of the moment, he will deceive you into thinking it is “so right”, but afterward he will torment you, make you think you aren’t worth the price of marriage, and make you feel worthless.
How easy is it to make something that seems worthless into something that is valuable again? It takes patience. It takes time. It means taking something out of free circulation and attaching a price to it. It means forsaking immorality. It means not giving out your physical displays of affection like free samples at the grocery store. It means hoarding them instead.
[A]nd ye shall be redeemed without money - How easy is it to pay for something without money? It isn’t. It takes work. It takes sweat. It takes time. The more expensive it is, the more work you have to do. But just because Christ sweat blood to pay for our sins doesn’t mean we don’t have to do our part, because immorality is one of the three worst sins you can commit, and thus one of the three most ‘expensive’ sins to obtain forgiveness for. The works we have to do are confess to our bishop and forsake our sins, repenting with a broken heart and contrite spirit equal to or greater than our sin. Remorse must be deep and abiding, rather than shallow and momentary.
The Temptation to Think That You Can’t and Shouldn’t Control Your Passions
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.
(Isaiah 11:5)
Girls, read this as “righteousness shall be the girdle of her loins, and faithfulness the girdle of her reins”.
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins - If you gird yourself with righteousness, you in effect put on a spiritual chastity belt.
[A]nd faithfulness the girdle of his reins - The “reins” are the kidneys. They were thought to be the center of feeling back in Isaiah’s day, just like we think of the heart as the center of feeling today. Girdling your reins means holding your passions in place (like a seatbelt holds you in place when you are driving) and not losing control, much like Alma told his son Shiblon to bridle his passions, and to not give them a free rein. The faithfulness that must control your passions is faithfulness to God and His laws. You must love the Lord so much that you are determined to avoid doing anything that would displease Him. Also, another “faithfulness” that can help you remain pure is faithfulness to your future wife or husband.
Most of the years I was going to school at BYU, I had my eye on one particular guy named Chris who I had decided that I really wanted to marry. It didn’t matter that we hardly knew each other; I was convinced he was the one for me. I did my best to get to know him better. However, this didn’t mean I neglected the rest of my harem. Occasionally I would get really interested in one particular guy and start thinking I wanted to show how much I liked him with physical displays of affection (PDA). I managed to keep myself from actually doing it, though, because I would remember who I was really “waiting” for. It seemed like the height of stupidity to me to waste PDA on someone when I intended to marry someone else.. (Now, for the record, I feel I must tell you that in the end I did not marry Chris, but my extreme infatuation with him had been very useful. It had acted as a chastity belt and kept my feelings for other guys in place; it kept me from doing anything with other guys that I would regret later. When I finally got engaged to a guy who was better than Chris, I knew exactly how to control myself.)
The Temptation to Seduce
And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind,
and a covert from the tempest;
as rivers of water in a dry place,
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
(Isaiah 32:2)
Girls, you must read this as “and a girl shall be as an hiding place from the wind…”
This scripture gives us a hint as to how to act around members of the opposite sex. It tells us to be a refuge to which people can run when they are getting blown about by every wind of the devil’s doctrine and by the wind of peer pressure. It tells us to be a type of harbor from the storms of teenage life. It tells us to be the type of person who is refreshing to be with, like a river is refreshing in a desert, and protecting like a shadow protects from the hot sun. (Note aside: It’s rather funny how we mostly talk about how we are supposed to be a light to the world, and here Isaiah tells us we are also supposed to be a shadow to the world, in the sense that a shadow is a refreshing protection from the heat of the day.)
It’s not possible to be a refuge or a refreshing protection to people if you are trying to get them to drop their standards while dating. If someone would have to guard against you, you are not protecting them from temptation. Likewise, if you feel like you have to guard against someone else, they are not protecting you from temptation or refreshing your spiritual strength.
A girl I’ll call Kelly wrote to me, wanting me to tell you about a boyfriend she had in high school:
He was a member of the church, but he acted pretty worldly. He told me I was seductive, and he told me that he liked that. (I hadn’t meant to be seductive! I didn’t even dress that way!) But when he told me that, I was tempted to try to be seductive.. just a little bit. It kind of got to be addictive. I wish I had dropped him when I realized how preoccupied he was with the physical aspect of our relationship. He got resentful and protested if I tried to withhold physical affection from him, so I was forced to walk this narrow line between what I felt I could give and what my personal standards dictated I should withhold. It felt like he was always trying to wear me down. He didn’t protect me from temptation. But he should have. He could have protected me a lot if he had wanted to. If he had only said, “I know you like me a lot, so you don’t need to do that” it would have made a huge difference!
A few years after I broke up with him I realized that I could have protected him more from temptation too. I had protected him by dressing modestly, but I could have been much less touchy-feelie. I know that, because after breaking up with him I did my best to touch guys as little as possible when out on dates, and doing that gave me a good feeling inside and an inner conviction that I was keeping them safe from temptation.
The Temptation to Think that Sex and Other Forms of Physical Affection Are the Only Ways You Can Show Love
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)
Let’s compare the Lord’s ways and the world’s ways.
The world says that the only way to show your love for someone is to bestow physical affection upon them, and to have sex with them.
The Lord, on the other hand, can teach us many alternate ways of showing love, none of which involve bestowing physical affection. Some of these are the following: Nabbing an empty seat next to them whenever you can, just to hang out and talk. Helping with homework, without giving them the answers. Telling them what you like about them. Favoring them if the two of you are playing board games or card games together, as opposed to playing all out to win. Giving them a pet nickname and calling them by it (after making sure they like it first). Asking them about their family and interests. Looking at them adoringly. Cheering enthusiastically when they come in the door of the classroom if you have a class with them. Supporting them in their after-school activities. Bragging to other people about how cool they are while they are standing by. Telling them that you like them. Inviting them to meet your other friends. Inviting them to meet your family. Leaving them love notes or tiny gifts in special places. Calling to chat.
The Law of Chastity is meant to help us learn how to do these things first so that when we are married we can add the physical methods with the non-physical methods we’ve learned and make marriage the happy state it was meant to be.
How do I know that non-physical affection is effective? I experienced it. It was a guy named Devon who showed me non-physical affection in its perfect form. He was a coworker of mine at BYU.
Whenever I had a question, he would drop everything he was doing to explain. He told me I had a cute face. He would leave little messages for me by typing them into my TI-82 calculator. When I had to do the smelly job of coating a bunch of tools with red plastic, he found a fan to blow the fumes away from me. He would occasionally sneak candy bars into the pockets of my coat. Sometimes he would walk me to my apartment. Sometimes he would drive me to get groceries. He introduced me to his roommates and his friends. He would show up at odd times to talk. If we ran into each other he would walk me to where I was going. If he saw me sitting on the floor in the hall studying he would get a chair for me to sit on. He had flowers delivered to me on Valentine’s Day, even when he was on the other side of the nation. Once he ordered a pizza to be delivered to my apartment so that I would immediately have something to eat when I arrived back from Christmas vacation.
We weren’t even dating and he was doing this! I knew he liked me; it was so obvious. I liked him too; I liked him so much it was scary. He was so kind, so thoughtful, so attentive, that I would think to myself, “He’s treating me like we’re engaged!.. But we’re just friends! I don’t quite understand this.” I would wonder if any guy could possibly treat me better than the way Devon was treating me. I would wonder if the relationship was going to go anywhere, but part of me loved that our relationship seemed so different from stereotype. There were no labels, nothing was expected, so everything was a surprise. Because it was all completely non-physical affection, and we never pulled anything on each other, I was sheltered from the storms of temptation. Devon was my Favorite. I married him.
Any idiot on the street can hold hands with someone. Any idiot can kiss. Any idiot can get married and have intercourse. But not everybody knows how to show love without touching. If physical affection were all that was required for a happy marriage, our nation would have no divorces. But since the divorce rate is so high, it is plain that most people do not realize those little non-physical things are the most important of all, that they can hold a couple together.
So what have we learned from Isaiah about chastity?
1) The Law of Chastity is not old-fashioned. It is eternal, which makes it timeless.
2) If you think you can be careless about the Law of Chastity and still achieve a temple marriage, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of trouble.
3) Breaking the Law of Chastity hurts at least three people – you, your significant other, and Christ.
4) Breaking the Law of Chastity brings down upon us the wrath of God, which we sense through a seared conscience, and by the withdrawal of the Spirit. This also tends to bring anger and battle into our relationships too.
5) When you break the Law of Chastity you sell your virtue for nothing, and in so doing, you cheat yourself.
6) Only Christ’s Atonement and our sincere repentance can redeem our sexual purity. Money can’t buy it.
7) We must control our passions with righteousness and faithfulness.
8) We must not only protect our own virtue, but also the virtue of those we date.
9) Non-physical affection is the necessary foundation of showing love, upon which a relationship must be built.
Notes
1 “Oh Say, What Is Truth”, text by John Jaques, Hymn #272
2 Steve Gilliland, “Chastity: A Principle of Power,” Ensign, June 1980, p. 16.
