True Love Waits
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January 27, 2010 • Micayla Greathouse, Staff Reporter
Filed under Feature, Top Stories
Purity rings: they’re a popular craze among high school students today. You may have seen your peers walking around the hallway sporting these rings. They vary in styles and have been around since the 1990s when the popularity of them expanded. An article about purity rings from ringsurf.com says that the market for purity rings is at an all time high, most of it coming from website sales. Today, you may notice people sporting these rings, but what exactly do they mean? According to Dictionary.com, purity rings are symbols that pledge abstinence.
“My purity ring symbolizes more of a reminder of how to put God first in my life, and that with my relationship with Him, I’m second,” junior Brandell Sterling said. “I’ve had several purity rings. The very first one that I had simply stated “purity” on the band, and it was given to me by my mom when I became a teenager. Then my freshman year, my dad gave me a ring for Christmas that was engraved on the inside. It wasn’t a purity ring, but to me it was symbolic of my heavenly father.”
“For me, it’s like I’m married to Jesus until I actually get married to a real person,” junior Becca Kohl said. “It looks like a trinity symbol on a ring.”
Purity rings are a personal symbol to each person who has one.
“I wear a purity ring to symbolize to everyone my promise to God and my future wife that I will stay abstinent until I am married,” sophomore Josh McGinnis said. “It also allows other people to call me out on things if I am not living up to that promise.”
There are all sorts of designs for these rings. Each person has one type that they would prefer for a reason.
“My ring is silver and has a circle with a cross in the middle,” McGinnis said. “The cross is beaten up. This symbolizes that no one is perfect, but if you stay true to your promise, you’re still standing at the end.”
“Mine is just a plain band. I don’t feel that I have to have an extravagant white gold ring that is titled a “purity ring” to know that I’m striving to live my life for Christ every day,” Sterling said.
Of those rings that do have sayings on them, one of the most common ones says “True love waits.”
“I wear a purity ring because it symbolizes my choice to wait,” junior Tara McGuire said. “Mine is a silver band that says “True Love Waits.”
Most purity rings are found at a Christian bookstore or online. The Good Book Store has provided these purity symbols for a long time.
“Purity rings were not as much of a popular selling item as they should’ve been,” former owner of the Good Book Store, Normadine Noone said. “People didn’t really know what they were and didn’t understand the purpose of them. However, a church did do a purity program once, which led to a period of time when more people came in for the purity symbols.”
Noone also says that the purity rings are a personal commitment, but more than that, they are “a visible reminder for each person to remember their promise and keep them on task.”
Parents are usually the ones who give the purity rings to their children.
“It’s a private commitment within a family,” former employee at the bookstore Karen Funk said. “It’s something young people cherish. Something that needs to be talked about. Instead of the whole abstinence fact, it’s about being pure in general.”
Noone talked about a story she remembered when a father took his daughter out for dinner and gave her a purity necklace talking to her about the importance of keeping herself pure. It was a time very special to the daughter and she made a commitment to purity.
“Very much like purity stuff becomes a symbol reminder to us, Jesus established communion,” Noone said. “He gave us a symbol that reminds us of what He did.”
Purity symbols can come in different forms. There are other types of jewelry that can be found other than rings. The Rock Good Book Store is a good place to find these purity items.
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