One of the earliest moments of the whole Bible is God clothing the man and woman with a modest garment as opposed to nudity and their fig leaves. Their coats God made are a Hebrew word for tunic all the way to the floor and long sleeves. This is the same word used to describe the priestly robes. Genesis 3:21 says, God "clothed them." God wants people clothed.
Why in particular do young women want to take the will of God on clothing in a different direction? God wants them clothed, but they want to take their clothes off in front of people. Even when they're wearing clothes, they're tight. I've walked behind so many males and females in these colder winter months, both wearing pants. Two were in front of me at the bank today, and consistently young women wear leggings, a garment that could be mistaken for paint, leaving nothing to the imagination. The male usually wears loose fitting trousers and the woman has some kind of very tight pants, which is mostly what differentiates them from what the man wears.
Young women are wearing their underwear in public, tiny little things that barely cover anything. They are scriptural nudity. They leave a lot of their skin and body parts uncovered on purpose. They are going for people seeing their legs, their breasts, their navel, their bellies, and many other things in between. When they choose a skirt, they on purpose choose one that is well above the knee. They also stand in a manner, one leg in front of the other, for a fuller exposure. The shoes, whatever kind and if any, accentuate a bare leg.
All of what I'm describing, that young women are doing, is wrong. That's not why I'm writing this. There are many biblical arguments against young women dressing like they do today, and sadly how professing Christian women are dressing, or worse undress, especially because churches are not teaching on it. They don't preach biblical dress standards or enforce them, even defend or justify unscriptural dress for young women. I'm writing this to explain the tragedy of the undressing of the young woman.
The first tragedy is that God isn't pleased. He isn't being honored by these young women because of their dress. God's angels cover themselves in His presence. An argument for modesty for a woman is shamefacedness, which relates to the presence of God. The pure in heart shall see God. These young women are not pure in heart. They are not ashamed. They glory in their shame. They snub the holiness of God.
Also while I was standing at the bank today, a woman twice in exclamation said the two words, "holy ___________," the latter word a crude word for excrement. She said it to a younger woman, while looking down at something together. The nature of those words is what these young women are doing with their undressing. They are made in the image of God and they are profaning that image with their immodesty.
The second tragedy is that these young women are defrauding their fathers. Their fathers or their brothers may not care. I say brothers, because I think of the Shulammite's brothers in Song of Solomon chapter eight, who protected their younger sister by guarding her modesty and her virginity. If she was a wall, they would reward her, and if she was a door, they would enclose her with boards of cedar. Instead of enclosing her, some fathers and brothers are exhibiting her in her nudity today.
Today the young woman may say that the brother or a father, which seem to be absent, would not have a right to enclose her with boards of cedar. That is for her to decide. What scripture says is that when she is a door, that is, she gives intimate access to herself, that she is defrauding her father. He is to give her away, not her giving herself away. 1 Corinthians 7:36-38 says that she belongs to the father to give away. That's a joke in today's culture, a joke protected by the actual me-too movement.
A young woman, who undresses herself in public, is giving herself away to everyone. She is intimate to everyone. She is defrauding her father of that right, but she is also defrauding her future husband, profaning herself, making herself common. She isn't special any more. She isn't unique. She is a trampled garden in the parlance of what the brothers were protecting. They were saving her beautiful garden for a future husband. She would have greater value. So, third, she's defrauding a future husband.
Fourth, the unclothing young woman forsakes future intimacy when she takes off her clothes in public, related to what I said in the previous paragraph. She isn't the gift she once was and by her choice, so, fifth, she has become easy for someone, who will not have to be a man or show manly qualities. He can avoid a father, because she has given herself to not just him, but everyone who sees her. She has done this because she wanted to. She loses this. She can get some of it back, but once she's out there, she can never get all of it back. She's lost something. This matters too, because it will never be as special now. She'll never know.
Related to the previous paragraph, she is opting for less of a man or not a man at all. A real man would only go through her father. A real man would have the confidence to do so. She has narrowed her pursuers to those who need it easy for them. She has made it easy. Those so-called men who take that easy road will have an easy woman. She has made it that way.
Seventh, is a comparison to fly paper. Fly paper attracts flies. Everything sticks on it. The young woman who undresses might have in mind who she wants to look at her skin, objectifying her, making her a mere object of lust by her choice. However, she's going to have everyone else sticking to that fly paper as well. Every creepy minded and practicing person will be in on her show.
Someone might say that the above undressed young woman just lacks the confidence to wait, the satisfaction with God, with Jesus Christ, what is characteristic of a true Christian, to stay covered and wait for the right person. That's all true too, but she's getting the lust of every man in public. Maybe she thinks that is high praise, that men like seeing skin, her skin and body parts. That doesn't require anything but lust and sin.
Eighth, the young woman who takes her clothes off in public is encouraging more of that with others. She is offending one of these little ones. She might not be taken advantage of to the extent that someone else is, but she will be partly at fault for it. She is downgrading the culture. She is turning it into Sodom and Gomorrah, a place for a righteous soul to have his soul vexed and for unbelievers to be made twice the children of hell they once were. She is doing that.
I've given you eight reasons explaining the tragedy of young women taking their clothes off in public. There are actually many more than these eight and those are all bad too. None of them are good. There is no good reason for young women to take their clothes off in public. You can take some time to meditate on these eight. They are enough reasons to stop this practice.
A lot of young women think they have a right to "shop around" and find a man on their own. They think they have a right to chose their own husbands instead of letting their father do it for them. They like to put themselves out therd and get in the dating game and attempt to make themselves look attractive by dressing immodestly. My church just discovered this book called "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and the pastor is doing a 3 month series on this and how wrong it is for young women to date. So many churches ignore courtship, which is the only method that Christians condone for women to find a spouse. A father has much more wisdom than a daughter and his choice for a mate for her is so much better than letter her choose her own mate.
ReplyDeleteI agree that if families and young ladies followed the Bible on obtaining their husband, this wouldn't be a problem. They "miss out" on dating, a worldly experience young ladies covet. They want to be wanted by men, to be admired, even if it isn't admiration really, but lust. And when it is by showing skin, it is lust. That would have been addition to the list too, that it causes men to lust, causes other people to sin. That isn't of God.
ReplyDeleteI was challenged about not having any piercings at all, even one in the ear for women, and a lot of the arguments that I have heard for that position are not conclusive. However, in Leviticus 19:28 the noun for "cuttings" can be used for a cut as small as a "pen-stroke, mark, like a punctuation mark, = κεραία Matthew 5:18" (KB lexicon). That would seem to include even piercing one's ear. They did have clip on earrings back in ancient times (and pierced ones as well), as one can verify by looking in museums. One could argue based on Lev 19:28 that the righteous Israelite women could have had clipped earrings instead of pierced ears. The Lev 19:28 argument was enough for me to not have my wife pierce her ears, which is also the position her father took and which her other siblings take. It doesn't get you to an Amish position, though, where what God calls beauty in Ezekiel is not really supposedly beauty.
ReplyDeleteHi Thomas,
ReplyDeleteYou put this comment under the wrong post, but it is the previous one I wrote this week, so everyone just look at that post on piercings. However, I am going to comment on it here, because I don't think it matters. This post is on modesty in dress, that one essentially also on dress or appearance.
Okay, so my post on piercings did want people to consider the piercing movement, that is pagan, and that men wearing earrings, a new development in culture, and then multiple piercings all over is ungodly. However, that understandable went to whether any piercing is wrong, a single spot on the earlobe to attach an earring on a woman. I'm fine with Thomas's position with his wife. It's definitely safe and will not dishonor God.
As is so often the case with leaders of churches, we've got to come down with a practice for the church, where the line will be drawn. I've said that the Leviticus 19:28 is dealing with pagan practice, prohibiting this ungodly practice, and contrasting that with the modest decoration, especially in light of Ezekiel and the single hole put in the ear for the bondslave. 1 Tim 2 and 1 Pet 3, regulating female appearance, seem to be dealing with a worldly pagan direction in culture and tend to modesty, not complete elimination of these accessories. That's where we draw the line and why. I don't want this to take away from our opposition to this movement of piercing that is pagan and ungodly and not modest.