I'm a recovering puritan. For about six months a decade ago or more, God would ask me if I was a Puritan. I didn't know how to answer and got frustrated when asked. Based on my limited knowledge of the Puritans, I came to an answer and said yes. I want purity as well. God said in my heart, "At least now you know." I didn't understand what God was saying to me at the time.

I have a cultural understanding of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Puritans and not a complete historian view. The Puritans are best known for being the sect of pilgrims that sought purity in all things, even to the point of seeing a demon behind every rock, hence the Salem witch trials. Puritans, in its name, suggest purity. The Puritans even banned Christmas here in the United States for many years because it was filled with impurities.

The Puritans were a godly people but maybe also a miserable people because life was so impure it was impossible to live pure for Christ. Reform was always on their mind. And when reform wasn't creating the society they wanted, they took their bat, ball, and glove and separated, extinguishing their light in the world.

Puritans then and now see life as black and white. And I think so, too, with the thought that sin is sin and righteousness is righteousness, but it goes gray regarding the thoughts and motives of the heart and mind. It gets complicated living in a fallen world. What is to be kept and protected, and what needs to be cut off?