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GUEST
ARTICLE
Modest Daughters
In
like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest
apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided
hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh
women professing godliness) with good works" (1 Tim.
2:9).
Let's
be frank. Immodesty is a very common problem in the Church
today. Further, it is a difficult subject to address. The
people who are the most concerned about what we all have
to look at every day are usually reticent to say anything
about the problems they see - because it might appear to
make them immodest in their conversation. And those
who are willing to chatter on about the subject are generally
ignorant about what the Bible requires. So let's try to
be frank, and see what happens.
This
has not yet occurred, but I have thought about it a few
times. Suppose there is some kind of Christian gathering,
and a woman comes to it dressed like she really shouldn't
be. She arrives in a tight top, and proceeds to headlight
everyone. What would happen if, after the pastor greeted
her, he commented on the size of her breasts? She would
be horrified, the people standing nearby would all turn
white, someone would bring charges against the pastor before
the elders, and so forth. And all because he commented
on the two most obvious objets d'art in the room.
In this scenario, the one guilty of a breach of decorum
would be the one who said something about them,
and not the person intent upon displaying them to a bemused
public. We are afflicted with a real problem of schizophrenia.
We are playing show and tell, but aren't allowed to tell.
We
have gotten ourselves into a difficult place. More than
a few mothers, more than once, have returned home exasperated
from a shopping trip for their young daughters. Many of
the current fashions for young women appear to be apparel
in standard use down at the local Hooker Training Academy.
As my wife recently put it, "It must be difficult
for men these days trying to figure out which ones they
have to pay for and which ones are free."
The
shopping-trip problem is simply a nuisance, but the sin
starts when Mom gives up in frustration and allows her
daughter to dress this way, and Dad then ratifies the decision
by letting her go out of the house.
We
have to do better than this, and the solution starts with
a willingness to identify exactly where we have slipped
up. There are three common problems with immodesty in women's
dress - too much, too little, and too tight.
"Too
much" is flamboyant or ostentatious - dressing like
a hooker. The sin is not avoided if a woman uses "gold,
pearls, and costly array" in order to look like a
courtesan - a higher class of hooker. In either case, a
woman can send immodest signals even when everything is
covered. This means that her immodesty consists, not in
what she is doing at that moment, but in what she is promising
to do later. The language of her clothing states unambiguously
that, however much of it there is, it comes off easily
enough.
"Too
little" means cleavage, vast expanse of thigh, that
sort of thing. Women with this problem dress like a sale
at J.C. Penney's - forty percent off. Too often Christians
assume that this kind of skin exposure is the only possible "modesty
problem." This is not true, but it remains common
nonetheless. This immodesty is compounded by girls who
wear short skirts and who do not know how to sit
like a lady, showing the world what's fore and aft.
"Too
tight" is the most popular mode of disobedience among
modern evangelicals. The whole world is invited to gawk
at the topographical evidence concerning exactly where
her underwear starts and stops, along with the exact condition,
location, and size of her breasts. Many Christian women
go to worship today dressed in a manner that would have
gotten them thrown out of a bar fifty years ago. Ah, Christian
liberty.
Related
to the problem of "too tight" is the nature of
some of the accessories. For example, the point of ankle-buster
high heels is to alter a woman's posture in such a way
as to accentuate her buttocks and breasts. Modest heels
make a woman look like a lady with good posture. Really high heels
make her look like some kind of bed bait.
It
is important for these things to be discussed in the home.
In this, a father and mother should take care to instruct
their daughters on the dangers of self-deception. We are
complicated beings, and our hearts are deceptive. A young
woman can be trying to turn heads, and be employing various
sexual techniques to do so, and all the while be pretending
to herself in her conscious thoughts that she is
doing nothing of the kind. More than one young female dope
has been consciously astonished at the sexual response
that her subconscious has successfully created. And at
that point, an indignant "What kind of girl do you
think I am?" can easily be countered with an appeal
to the obvious. And what is obvious has already
been discussed.
There
are those, I suppose, who would rather not read about this
subject in Christian magazines. This is actually a reasonable
opinion, and I think we can come to an amicable arrangement.
We would be more than willing to stop referring to all
this if the daughters of Zion would stop throwing themselves
around. And until they learn how to do it, their parents
need to help them.
--Douglass
Wilson
Credenda/Agenda P.O.
Box 8741 Moscow, ID 83843
Copyright © 2000 Credenda/Agenda. All rights reserved.
http://www.achristianhome.org/ModestFeminine/
Modest%20Daughters-Wilson.htm
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