No. Nothing in your sexual history, whether it holds choices you regret, harm someone else did to you, or both, lowers your worth to God. The Faith That Makes Sense curriculum says it without hedging: “You can lose your virginity, but you cannot lose your value.” Your worth was never stored in your body’s history. It rests on the fact that God made you in his image, and that fact has not moved.
Knowing that answer is rarely the hard part. Many people who could recite it still feel stained, and the feeling usually came from somewhere: a sermon, an object lesson, a long silence, a person. This guide works on that gap. It separates two things shame tends to fuse together: what you have done, and what was done to you. God responds to those two differently, and treating them as one thing causes real harm. You can work through this guide alone over a few sittings or with a small group in about an hour. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone your story. Every exercise can be done privately, and every question can be passed.
If you are reading this because abuse is happening to you now, or because of harm you have never told anyone about, your safety comes first. A trusted person, a counselor, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 can help you take a next step. If shame has pushed you toward thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Where the stain message came from
Start by being honest about the teaching that did damage. The Sexual Ethics chapter of Faith That Makes Sense describes purity culture as an effort whose original aim was to encourage biblical holiness, but whose execution caused serious harm. Its worst tool was the object lesson: chewed gum, a crumpled flower, used tape. The curriculum names what those images did: “These metaphors taught a devastating lie; they taught that sexual experience permanently diminishes your value as a human being.”
The chapter also points to a second problem underneath the first. Purity teaching often came with a promise attached. In the curriculum’s words, “It promised that if you followed the rules, you were guaranteed a happy marriage and a perfect life.” That turns God into a vendor. Obedience becomes payment, and blessing becomes the product. So when people failed, or followed the rules and still suffered, they had nowhere to land except the conclusion that they were defective.
Notice the logic. The stain message is not a minor exaggeration of a true idea. It assigns human worth to the wrong source. The curriculum answers it at that root: “Your worth is fixed because you are created in the Image of God.” Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Nothing in that verse is earned, and so nothing in it can be spent.
A first observation, for your eyes only: When you hear the phrase damaged goods, what picture or memory comes to mind? You do not need to write it down or say it aloud. Just notice whether the picture came from Scripture or from somewhere else.
In a group, keep this step general. Ask where people have seen the message in sermons, media, or youth culture, not where it lodged in their own lives. The curriculum’s leader notes give a rule worth keeping through the whole session: “Never assume anyone’s orientation, history, or level of struggle.”
Two different burdens
Here is the distinction this guide is built around. The curriculum observes that “Purity culture often failed to distinguish between sins we commit and sins committed against us.” Because the teaching fixed attention on the physical act alone, it could not tell a choice from an assault. The chapter puts the result bluntly: “Because the focus was solely on the physical act, victims of abuse often felt just as guilty as those who had willingly sinned.”
So the curriculum draws the line clearly: “being sinned against is not the same as sinning.” It continues, “If you have been abused, you are not guilty. You are wounded.” Then it says what follows from that: “He does not ask you to repent of what was done to you; He asks you to bring the wound to Him for healing.”
Think about why the difference matters. Guilt and wounds need different responses. Guilt is answered by confession and forgiveness. A wound is answered by protection, care, and time. When a church tells a survivor to repent of an assault, it hands the abuser’s act to the person who suffered it. She is told to seek forgiveness for something she never did, and the medicine she is given cannot touch the injury she actually carries.
The distinction also guards against the opposite mistake. Where you did make choices you now regret, the answer is not to rename them as wounds and move on. It is to bring them to a God who forgives. The curriculum says, “The gospel is not for the perfect; it is for the repentant.” Repentance here is not a fee you pay to get your value back. Your value was never lost. Repentance is simply honest agreement with God about what happened, and it opens the door to forgiveness.
Many real lives hold both burdens, tangled together. Some choices are made in the shadow of earlier harm. You do not have to sort every part perfectly before God will receive you. He already knows which part is which.
Reading the two women in John
The curriculum points to two women in John’s Gospel. Read each passage slowly before deciding what it means.
The woman at the well (John 4:1-42)
Jesus names her history directly. John 4:18 records him saying, “For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.” He does not pretend her past is blank. He also does not walk away. The conversation continues, and it ends with her running into town. John 4:29 gives her words: “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
Look at what she chooses to tell people. Not that he overlooked her past, but that he knew all of it. Being fully known did not end in rejection. It became the center of her witness. The Faith That Makes Sense chapter makes the same point: Jesus did not shun her, and he made her the first evangelist to her city.
One honest note about this passage. The text never says why she had five husbands. Many readers assume a pattern of immorality. Other interpreters point out that women in that setting usually had little power to end a marriage, so her story may hold as much loss and abandonment as choice. John leaves it unsaid. What John does make plain is that Jesus’ treatment of her does not wait on that question being settled. That alone should comfort anyone who cannot neatly explain their own history.
The woman brought to the temple (John 8:1-11)
Here a woman is dragged before a crowd and used as a test case to trap Jesus. Her accusers have already decided what she is. Jesus turns their attention to their own sin until they leave, one by one. Then he speaks to her. John 8:11 reads, “She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”
Pay attention to the order. The refusal to condemn comes first. The call to a changed life comes second, and it is spoken to someone no longer under threat. The curriculum summarizes it in five words: “Grace comes first; transformation follows.” This is a narrative, so it describes what Jesus did rather than handing us a formula. But it shows his character. As the curriculum puts it, “He does not define anyone by their past or by what was done to them.”
Does this lower the standard?
A fair objection comes up here. If my value can never be lost, why would holiness matter at all? Doesn’t this guide simply excuse sin?
The curriculum takes that objection seriously and answers it directly: “The solution to the failures of purity culture is not to lower God’s standard of sexual holiness.” Sexual intimacy still belongs within marriage. What changes is the reason for pursuing that standard. The chapter goes on: “The solution is to correct the shame-based motivation.” And then: “We pursue holiness not to earn God’s love but because we already have it.”
Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 6:20 shows how this works: “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” The damaged goods picture is a resale picture. It assumes your value falls with each use. Paul’s picture runs the other way. Your value is set by what was already paid for you, and holiness is the response of someone who has been bought at great cost. The curriculum says we obey “to honor the God who bought us at a high price.” A purchase price cannot be lowered after the fact.
When the feeling stays
You may accept everything above and still wake up feeling dirty. That is not proof that you believe it wrong. Shame and trauma often live in the body and the memory, below the level of argument.
The curriculum warns against what it calls spiritual bypassing: using quick religious phrases to skip past real pain. It notes that when sexual trauma is minimized, people may assume that lingering anxiety or depression means their faith is weak. Against that, it says, “The Bible never demands this kind of denial.” It points to the psalms of lament, where God receives raw honesty, and says, “He can handle your anger, your confusion, and your grief.” Psalm 13:1 is an example: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” That is a prayer in Scripture, spoken without resolution.
The chapter also says something simple and hard: “You cannot heal what you refuse to feel.” Healing does not have a promised timeline, and no verse guarantees how quickly the weight will lift. But you do not have to carry it in isolation. Seeing a trained counselor or therapist is not a failure of faith. God works through clinicians, and caring for your mind is part of caring for the life he gave you.
A practice: sorting what you carry
This exercise puts the guide’s central distinction into practice. Do it alone, never in a group. Use paper you can throw away or a note you can delete afterward.
- Draw three columns. Label them: what I chose, what was done to me, and not sure.
- Write only what you are ready to write. One word or a symbol is enough. You can stop at any point.
- For the first column, bring it to God plainly. You might pray in your own words that you agree with him about what happened and receive his forgiveness. Then read John 8:11 again and notice which part comes first.
- For the second column, do not confess anything. Instead, tell God what it did to you. Anger, grief, and confusion are all allowed. Psalm 13 can give you words if you have none.
- For the third column, leave it with God for now. You do not have to solve it today. A counselor may help you sort it later.
- Destroy the paper or delete the note if you want to. The sorting was for you, not a record.
If this practice brings up memories that feel overwhelming, stop. Call a trusted friend, a counselor, or one of the numbers at the top of this guide. Stopping is not failure.
Questions to talk through or think through
- The curriculum calls purity culture’s promise a transactional view of God. Where else have you seen faith presented as a deal, and what happens to people when the deal seems to fail?
- Why does it matter that guilt and wounds need different responses? What goes wrong when a church gives the response for one to someone carrying the other?
- The woman at the well tells her town that Jesus “told me all things that ever I did” (John 4:29). Why might being fully known feel like a threat before it feels like good news?
- In John 8, what is the significance of Jesus refusing to condemn her before telling her to sin no more? What would change if the order were reversed?
- Compare the resale picture of damaged goods with Paul’s picture of a price already paid. Which one has shaped you more, and where did you learn it?
- What is one belief about your worth you hold in your head but not yet in your body? What, if anything, might help close that gap?
If you are leading this
Expect that some people in the room carry the very things this guide describes, and that you may not know who. The curriculum’s leader material says, “Validation comes before correction.” Never use object lessons that compare people to used things, even to criticize them.
Do not invite personal stories in the group. If someone discloses trauma anyway, the curriculum is clear: “If trauma is disclosed, stop debate immediately and move to pastoral care.” It adds, “Sexual trauma requires privacy, gentleness, and referral to trusted spiritual or clinical support.” Speak with that person privately, not in front of the group. If a minor discloses abuse, the curriculum’s instruction applies: “If abuse is disclosed, follow mandatory reporting laws immediately.” Know your local requirements before the session begins.
What to take with you
Second Corinthians 5:17 reads, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” In the King James wording, a new creature means a new creation, something God has made new. The curriculum draws the conclusion: “In Christ, there are no damaged goods; there are only new creations.”
When the old shame returns this week, and it may, try asking one question before you accept what it tells you: is this something I did, or something that was done to me? The first God forgives. The second God grieves with you and does not ask you to carry it as guilt. Neither one has ever set your worth.