We must protect purity

We must protect purity.

We live in a world which ridicules and tramples on purity. Books, music, movies, and TV shows mock purity at every turn. Countless stories depict the loss of innocence, often to peals of contemptuous laughter by surrounding characters. Media has force-fed us the narrative that purity is boring, peculiar, and stupid. 

How much more so is this exemplified by the war that is being waged on the purest of all – babies in the womb, and children in the classroom? Adults who themselves were stripped of their purity at too young an age are setting to work destroying purity wherever they find it. 

In its mad rush to destroy purity, humanity fails to recognize that it is nursing its own collective wounds. Wounds from the unjust loss of innocence that was imposed upon it by generation after generation of depraved adults who themselves lost their innocence.

But we are much more than victims, aren’t we?

We can only play the victim for so long. At some point, we are the perpetrator. At some point, we are to blame.

This is, after all, the cycle of life. When we are young, we are not culpable. As we grow older, we become responsible for our actions.

And thus, we replicate, and in many cases, exacerbate, the pain inflicted on us.

To assuage our splintered consciences, we declare that our frailties are something to be proud of, a badge to be worn with pride. We bury ourselves relentlessly in messages of validation and support, but we ignore the nagging voice of truth, or worse – label it low self-esteem and drown it out in a barrage of affirmations and celebrations. We are wearing our warped and mangled selves as though this is our very best and truest selves, when in fact, it is not. 

Our truest selves are buried deep within, caught in a tangle of lies which were designed for self-preservation, but even this self-preservation is an illusion. Our illusion built on illusions, our denial of our own denial, is the poison rotting away our bones and incapacitating us. It is preventing us from seeing the pure truth – of ourselves, of the world around us, of God Himself. 

Thus, we are always looking for a fight, unwilling to face the battle within. We are unwilling to recognize that we are at a constant war on all fronts. A war against purity. A war against our souls. 

And not just our souls, but our children’s souls, and their children’s souls. Evildoers promote the murder of the unborn because their intention is to destroy the soul and destroy God.

The soul – the quintessence of purity, the neshama God breathed into us, the piece of Him which resides within each of us. 

The soul – this is what’s at stake.

It was You who created my conscience; You fashioned me in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am awesomely, wondrously made; Your work is wonderful, I know it very well. My frame was not concealed from You when I was shaped in a hidden place, knit together in the recesses of the earth.

Psalm 139: 13-15