Pursuing Titus 2 » Modesty (to be discreet, chaste)

The Top Ten Reasons Modesty Gets a Yawn

Mrs. Parunak — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:03:01 +0000

My family and I have had the privilege of hanging out with some unbelievably awesome single guys lately. A big reason I say they are so awesome is that they actually care about winning the battle with lust. Most men gave up long ago. Titus talks about Cretans whose “god is their belly.” In our culture, deity seems to have migrated several inches south.

But these guys have a problem, and it’s a problem that we have to own as their sisters in Christ. Everywhere they go, women are unbelievably unhelpful. Flaunting. Revealing. Immodest. Out in the world, we wouldn’t really expect anything else, but when it’s women in the Church, that’s a different story. Over and over, our friends have lamented that Christian women just don’t seem to understand what they’re doing to their brothers. I think that’s because no one is out there trying to teach them. And guess what, ladies, that’s OUR job. The Bible says that it’s up to women to teach other women how to be discreet and chaste (Titus 2:5).

But so many women can’t muster much passion about this issue. It conflicts with other values, or it just isn’t on the radar screen. So, in honor of awesome guys everywhere, I would like to present my Top Ten Reasons Why Modesty Gets a Yawn in hopes that all of us ladies can wake up, start being “teachers of good things” and consider how to provoke other women to love their brothers by making the gathering of the saints a safer place for battle-weary soldiers of purity.

10. I’m too old to be a problem.

You’re never too old to be discreet and chaste. Just because you don’t look like a teenager doesn’t mean that you don’t still need to be careful. When you’re bending over in tight jeans, your crow’s feet don’t show anyway. And if your cleavage is spilling out of your neckline, it’s likely to be a challenge whether or not you have a few gray hairs.

Even if, for the sake of argument, you really ARE too old to ever cause anyone to struggle, you’re still not too old to set an example for the younger women who are naively exhibiting themselves. After all, if their mothers and grandmothers are doing it, why shouldn’t they?

9. I don’t have a body like a Victoria’s Secret model, so who would ever lust after me?

This one is similar to #10 and reveals a way in which most women don’t understand men. Women think that they have to have a perfect total package to provoke anyone to lust. Actually a man will feel a twinge of arousal from seeing ANYthing that is hyper-accentuated and immodest about a female body even if something else is less than perfect.

8. But my husband wants me to dress immodestly.

Usually, when husbands express this, it’s because one of two things is happening (sometimes both at the same time). Either you are not paying attention to satisfying his deep desire for visual stimuli when you are alone. (And wives, when you’re alone, go ALL OUT!) Or he’s a lust junkie who’s getting a buzz anywhere and everywhere he can and is annoyed that he isn’t getting the same buzz from you. A man that is fighting hard will not want you to be as inconsiderate and unloving as all the women he has to put up with all day. But a man who’s wallowing in other women’s immodesty will want to pull you down into the pit with him with absolutely no regard for how many men you cause to stumble along the way. If your husband doesn’t care if other men are lusting after you, it is a HUGE red flag that he is probably lusting after everyone else.

7. Are you saying that if a man is lusting after a woman, that it’s HER fault?!

Nope. Not even close. Lust is a sin. And if a man is committing it, God holds him and him alone accountable. I’m not advocating the Islamic stereotype “blame the woman for her own rape” kind of mentality that says that men are not responsible for themselves in the presence of a beautiful woman.

But we CAN help our brothers. Being immodest is like throwing a party for a bunch of recovering alcoholics and deciding to have an open bar. If your guests got totally smashed it would, of course, be their fault, but no one is going to think for a minute that you really loved them or cared about their struggles.

6. But my husband never has any trouble at all with immodest women.

Apparently, there really are a few men out there who are totally oblivious. I don’t personally know any of them, but I’ve gotten enough comments from wives insisting that their husbands are in this category that I’m willing to acknowledge the possibility. However, just like I am taking your word for it that your husband has no difficulty, you might want to consider taking my word for it that a lot of other men do.

5. If Christians look like freaks no one will want to be a Christian.

People who don’t want to be Christians don’t want to because the Gospel sounds outlandish, or because they firmly believe something else, or even sometimes because they they don’t understand their own sinfulness and what they need to be saved from. That “Christians are too weird” is just an excuse, as evidenced by the “Christians are no different from anyone else” excuse that we hear equally often. God frequently asks His people to do things that make us look weird (turning the other cheek, not lying, esteeming others as better than ourselves, for example). We need to be concerned with what’s right, not what’s normal.

4. But I want to dress like my friends.

Sure, but somebody has to be a leader. Imagine how much easier it would be for your friends to be considerate in their dress if you were already doing it.

3. I want to look cute and stylish.

This is a hard one. Probably every woman really wants to have everyone think she’s beautiful, but at what cost? Is following fashion so important that it’s worth placing a stumbling block in your brother’s path? When we decide that our own sense of style matters more than helping men avoid lust, fundamentally, it is just selfishness on our part.

2. Guys won’t pay attention to me if I’m dressed in a sack.

Yeah, a lot of them probably won’t. But you have to ask yourself what kind of attention you really want. Are you looking for a godly husband or a long trail of panting, drooling puppies who will abandon you in a heartbeat just as soon as another piece of meat strolls by? Quality men want virtuous women. The problem is that the world is mostly populated by non-quality men, so virtuous women necessarily get less attention. This isn’t really a problem when you consider that drooling puppies make lousy husbands (assuming they ever quit playing video games long enough get around to marrying you). You’re wasting your time if you’re trying to appeal to them.

1. But I don’t see any men lusting after me!

Ha! Yes, there are a few creepy guys out there who ogle women openly, but 99.9% of the men out there are much more subtle. They know that it’s socially unacceptable to stare, so they don’t. In fact, most men will not look at your body when you are looking at them. If your attention is on them, they’ll look at your face, nod politely, play the gentlemen. But turn around to talk to your friends, and they’re watching you out of the corners of their eyes, and it is NOT your face they’re looking at this time. You have NO idea how many surreptitious second (and third and fourth…) looks are being stolen. You also have NO idea how many of your brothers in Christ are fighting hard not to take those second looks and are feeling really beaten up by how aware they are of your body.

Our brothers’ fight deserves much more than a yawn. Be modest yourself. Share the truth with your sisters. Let’s wake up and help each other out.

And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works –Hebrews 10:24

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Curves

Mrs. Parunak — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:36:46 +0000

Body image. Ouch. I spent a long time suffering under its tyrannical thumb. When I was a teenager, I didn’t quite have the self-discipline to be anorexic, but I was constantly on a diet, and constantly dissatisfied. Those years seem like a lifetime ago, but I still remember.

Squirming under the heavy weight of glossy photographs, I shifted in my waiting room chair. I had come to have my braces tightened, and I had picked up Seventeen. There, from the pages they stared up at me, with perfect make-up, and flawless skin, and curves, gorgeous curves in all the right places. I flipped through advice on back-to-school must-haves, and how to get sexy hair, and always they looked out at me, with heartless, silent laughter. The orthodontist’s assistant called my name, and I walked through the door, with a lump in my throat, believing I would never be good enough.

When we’re little girls, we want to be brides and mommies, queens of households. We get older and we want to be cherished, wanted, adored. And as we grow we get some idea of the type of girl who gets that much attention. We hope we’ll grow up to be beautiful, to have the sort of bodies that men are shopping for, that the magazines tell us are hot. And day by day, the blossom opens, until we stand in front of the mirror, all grown up, and many of us, especially those who have been steeped in the idealism of retouched images and skinny models, are crushed by what we see.

Some of the hopeful ones go on trying to follow the dictates of magazines and television, becoming increasingly immodest and plasticized as they compete with pixelated perfection for the attention they desire. The less hopeful just get depressed. And body image is tossed around as a buzzword for a secret feminine pain. We’re so liberated, but not really. In a large sense, women are still commodities, our worth defined by our bodies.

I want to share some of the things that have helped me start to get victory in this area, both to help anyone else who is struggling, and to help those of us who are moms know how to help our daughters understand themselves as women in this body-obsessed world.

Put yourself on a low-lie diet.
Certainly, women have coveted each other’s beauty for generations, but nowadays we have more provocation to covet than ever. Women today are surrounded by lies, the twisted half-truths of marketers hoping to profit from the feelings of inadequacy their lies create. They don’t care if you cry yourself to sleep over your imperfect skin as long as you shell out your money for Noxema or Oil of Olay. They don’t care if feeling outdated in the clothes God has provided for you makes you ungrateful and jealous of other women just as long as you send a little money their way for the latest issue of In Style. They don’t care if despair over not being as thin, or as busty, or as leggy as their cover girls leaves you borderline suicidal as long as you buy the new jeans in the ad on page nine. They want you to covet what you see in their pictures. They’re selling things, products and information, and the first rule of selling is that you have to create a need. That need is born in women’s natural desire to be desired and is fed by images of an unattainable standard. The marketing is designed to provoke you to covetousness, so that you’ll pay money to have a chance at measuring up. But you never will measure up because then you would stop needing their products and information.

Covetousness is a sin, a destructive poison that separates us from God. The first step in overcoming the demon of body image misery is refusing to listen to the lie that you need to look a certain way to be OK. Go on a media fast and detox. Turn the television off. Stop watching movies for a while. Quit reading the magazines that give you trouble. When I first realized how much the world’s impossible ideal was hurting me, I put a little Bible in my purse. In waiting rooms, I didn’t look at the magazines, I read the Bible instead. Even in the checklane at the supermarket, I refused to look at pictures that tempted me to covet what other women looked like. I pulled out my little Bible, and glued my eyes to it.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do our best to look beautiful. We absolutely should! Looking neat and clean and put together is a good testimony, a delight to our husbands, and a big emotional boost to ourselves. I’m just saying that if we’re feeling bad about ourselves, it can really help to shut of the voices that are screaming at us about not looking good enough.

Worship the Lord.
Covetousness is idolatry (Colossians 3:5), and coveting other women’s appearances means that we’re worshiping a false god of beauty, thinking that if we only looked thinner, or curvier, or had better hair that somehow we’d be happier, that our lives would be better. But true happiness is only found in God. Our lives are best when they are poured out in service to Him. When we are worshiping the true God, we weaken the power that false gods hold over us. And when we’re delighting in the Lord, it’s a whole lot easier to see that the world’s offers of happiness are counterfeits.

Trust your husband to the Lord.
For a lot of women, the “voices” that scream the loudest are the eyes of men. These women want desperately to be married, but they don’t feel like the type of woman that turns heads. Or, maybe they are married, but their husbands are always looking at other women. (I also talked about this situation in this post.) The women in the media just serve to further convince these women of all the ways they aren’t good enough for the attention they long for. Let me be a little blunt, when men are staring at women, taking long looks and second looks, they are almost always doing it for that little floaty zing it makes them feel. And that is just old-fashioned lust. It’s looking at a woman for the purpose of feeling sexual feelings. The Bible talks about this here:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. –Matthew 5:28

And guess what? Any woman is powerless to hold onto a man who is in this state. Men who have given themselves over to lust are going to look at every pair of x chromosomes that walks by, hoping for a zing. We women often think that if we were just prettier, if we just dressed a little better, if we just lost a few more pounds and looked more like those girls on the magazine covers then we’d win the great beauty pageant of life and be crowned with a husband’s unswerving attention. It just isn’t so. Men in that state are like women in a shoe store. It doesn’t matter if they have the perfect pair of strappy sandals tucked under their arm, they’re still going to linger over the half-price pumps.

A godly husband is from the Lord, and that’s true whether you’re hoping to be married, or you are broken over a current difficult marriage. Faithful, honorable men happen, not when their women reach a pinnacle of beauty that satisfies them so much they are never tempted to look at anyone else, but when the Lord get a hold of a man’s heart and teaches him to say with Job,

I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid? –Job 31:1

Work on being adorned with good works.
Last of all, we should put our focus on what God thinks is beautiful, developing meek and quiet spirits (1 Peter 3:4), and being adorned with good works (1 Timothy 2:10). If you’re not married, this will greatly increase your chances of attracting a quality man, instead of a lust muffin anyway, and if you are married your husband will be blessed. Best of all, you’ll feel much more beautiful because you’ll be pleasing the Lord instead of obsessing over how you don’t measure up to the vanity of the world.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised. –Proverbs 31:30

On Second Thought, Maybe God was Right

Mrs. Parunak — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:43:21 +0000

When I talk to people about pornography, I am frequently amazed (and saddened) by the number of people who just don’t get it. They don’t see porn as a big deal, don’t understand why it upsets women so much, and figure that anyone who is opposed to it must be a Victorian prude. Naomi Wolf has written a great piece that busts right to the heart of the matter, The Porn Myth. The fact is, porn makes men want real women less.

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn….

…The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.

What’s her solution? Wolf can’t bring herself to actually recommend modesty, but she does a pretty good job of praising the wisdom behind it and shares a powerful vignette from a visit with an Orthodox Jewish friend in Jerusalem.

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

Due to the nature of the subject matter, I’m definitely not recommending this to younger readers, and I do suggest that you exercise discernment. However, given how pornography has swept our society, it would behoove us (especially those of us with sons to raise) to understand its true effects so that we can adequately warn our children. It all reminds me of what C.S. Lewis wrote in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,

Nothing spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food.

If you want to appreciate fresh fish and potatoes, stay away from the Witch’s Turkish delight. If you want a steamy sex life, stay away from porn.

It works.

Read the full article here.

But Some Men Lust after Nuns!

Mrs. Parunak — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:07:47 +0000

Sometimes keeping up our end of the bargain isn’t enough to ensure that others will keep up theirs. Rarely is this more true than in the daily cesspool of illicit immodesty and lust. Women are supposed to be modest in public. Men are supposed to not lust. But some (OK, most) women don’t care about modesty. And some (if not most) men think of lust as their primary form of entertainment. How does a man hold up his end of the bargain in a world of beautiful bodies just begging to come home with him in his dreams? And how does a woman hold up her end of the bargain if the male mind seems totally hardwired to lust even after women who are trying to be modest?

Recently, someone left this comment:

I am a new Christian and the idea of modesty is very confusing to me. It would seem to me that men should be able to have some control over their thoughts. I agree that a bikini is more likely to cause a man to have impure thoughts, but an impure person can have those thoughts about a nun in her habit. So, how am I to know what would not excite a man, particularly a stranger? If there are no real guidelines in the Bible, how do we know?

How DO we know? How can we be sure that our clothes leave no room for impure thoughts? How can we be absolutely positive that no one is going to lust after us, at all, ever?

We can’t.

About a year ago, I had a man obviously, disgustingly undressing me with his eyes, and guess what I was wearing? A long-sleeved, ankle-length, fairly loose fitting dress and a headcovering, with a baby strapped to my front. Men are out there who will ogle you no matter how hard you try to help them not to. Basically, if you aren’t repulsive, someone runs the risk of feeling attracted. Men don’t always hold up their end of the bargain. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to try to hold up ours. Thankfully, modesty is not defined by what a few random weirdos might be able to get their motors running about.

Consider the following examples: “a modest home,” “a modest income,” “Mary was modest about her achievements.”

The measure of the modesty of the home or the income is not whether or not some isolated person manages to be covetous, but whether on average, these are showy or impressive things. And the measure of Mary’s modesty about her achievements is not whether or not Sue is jealous of them, but whether or not Mary is making a big deal out of them, being sure that no one could fail to know what she had done. So apply those same principles to how we cover our beautiful, sexy, bodies, handmade by a brilliant sculptor (God). Are we dressing in a showy or impressive way? Are we making a big deal out of our curves, being sure that no one could fail to notice how enticing we are? It has to do with us. The measure of our obedience is whether or not we are flaunting our assets, NOT whether some pervert with a religious fetish manages to lust after us. We are never called on to prevent all lust. That’s not possible. Although, it is possible to help the guys who actually want help. And being modest in dress and behavior is the best help we can give our brothers, just like being cheerful ourselves helps others not to be grumpy. But if someone is determined to sin, we can’t always stop them. An angry, sour store clerk may not smile at us despite our smiling our sweetest smile at her. A nun in a habit can still be an object of of lust despite her modest clothing. The sins of others are exactly that: the sins of others. We are only called on to be modest. Modesty simply means not showing off.

What that means is going to be different for every woman because every woman has different assets. What’s especially beautiful on one, may not be that striking on another. That’s why legalistic “guidelines” are not always terribly helpful. What’s modest for one woman may be showing off for someone else. I’ve got a friend whose cleavage starts practically at her collar bone. A neckline that would be modest on most women would be showing off for her. Do you have killer legs? Maybe you should consider keeping skirts a little longer and looser. Are you full figured? You might want to think about little jackets or sweaters over your top for an extra layer. In general, ask yourself with every outfit what your motives are for wearing it, and what about you it will draw attention to. Are people going to be inclined to look at your face, or something else?

Preparing our Daughters to be IMmodest

Mrs. Parunak — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:35:13 +0000

About a year ago, I wrote a post called, A Garden Enclosed: The Importance of Modesty…And Immodesty. In it, I discussed an issue that’s very near to my heart: the principle that the reason we are modest out in the world is that immodesty is so beautiful, so special, and so powerful. It is a force that feeds our marriages, thrills our husbands, and helps ensure that we produce the godly seed that the Lord says He desires (Malachi 2:15). It is a force that applied in the wrong place can be deadly, destroying purity, feeding lust, and leaving broken relationships in its wake.

Recently, a great comment was left on that post:

A question I have been pondering is how do we educate our daughters in this regard? As a young girl in a Christian home I received lots of teaching about not having sex before marriage, being modest etc. It was very hard for me to get my head around the fact that once I was married I could now be passionate and sexy without feeling bad. I want my children not to only receive “no” messages about intimacy as they grow up. How do we teach them about the “yes” messages without making it more difficult for them to remain pure?

This is so important. If we raise pure daughters by making them prudes, then we’ve crippled them. We’ve helped them save themselves for marriage without teaching them how to give themselves away when the time comes. They are treasures in a chest with no key that will have to be hacked open slowly, painfully, with frustration and disappointment. Every woman who’s had to struggle through that awful feeling of internal conflict when something that was “bad” her whole life is supposedly transformed into something “good” in the course of one afternoon just because she put on a fancy dress and got a new piece of jewelry, every one of them wants something better for her daughters. But at the same time, every woman who watches her husband get beat up and brutalized by the daily battle for purity in an “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” world, wants her daughters to be considerate and not trash the men around her. How do we train them to be both pure and modest in public and yet prepare them to one day be their husband’s burning fire in private?

My oldest daughter is still only five, so I cannot speak from the perspective of someone who’s walked this road all the way to the end (and I’d really love to hear from any older women out there who’ve actually raised daughters all the way to marriage), but my husband and I have given this a lot of thought, and I’m happy to share what we’re attempting to do in hopes that it sparks ideas for others.

My husband and I are taking a two-pronged approach. First, we try to tell it like it is. We believe that we cannot afford to take the easy path of ensuring our daughters’ modesty by grossing them out. “Oh dear, that nasty woman over there is showing her cleavage. Ew! We certainly don’t do that in this family.” We tell even our young children that God made our bodies beautiful, and that looking at immodest bodies is exciting, but the reason God made it that way is to bless our marriages. When we look at people we’re not married to, who are showing off their bodies in immodest ways, we’re stealing from our future spouse. We tell our children to look away from immodesty, not because it’s “yucky,” but because they need to “save their eyes.” We encourage them to be modest, not because immodesty is so “shocking” or “embarassing,” but because immodesty is “only for your husband to enjoy, not everyone else.”

Secondly, my husband and I try to be good examples to our children. Our culture is hyper-sexual, with indiscriminate use of immodesty everywhere: splashed across billboards, magazine covers, ads, fliers, even packaging (tried to buy anything for use in a swimming pool lately?). It would be easy to equate all immodesty with evil if you’re constantly inundated with the wrong uses of it. The only place our children have a chance of being exposed to godly uses of immodesty is at home. One way, we do that is at laundry folding time. Our children know that I don’t wear much to bed. We don’t go into any details about what might happen in bed. We simply say that it’s very important for husbands to get to see their wives’ bodies, and bed is a convenient time because then no one else is around who might be tempted to look at what isn’t theirs. So, out of the laundry basket comes something small and married, and I say cheerfully, “That’s one of my immodest nightgowns I wear for Daddy.” Sometimes, my older daughter will ask me why I wear immodest nightgowns for Daddy, and then I get to say, “Oh, because it’s so much fun for Daddy. God wants men to be able to enjoy their wives’ bodies.”

Now, a lot of people worry that any exposure to sexual subjects will make it harder for their children to be pure. But I think that mindset misses two important points. First, our children will be exposed to sexual things. We can’t prevent it unless we plan on moving to a desert island someplace. And the version of sexuality that the world promotes is warped, and twisted, and ungodly. We have to ask ourselves if that’s the only one we want our children to know, or if we’re willing and committed to offering an alternative.

Second, it’s going to be hard for our children to be pure. Even if we never say a word about sex, it’s going to be hard. Sex is a biological drive, like the drive to eat or sleep. By the time our daughters reach their early teen years, the vast majority of them are fertile, and let’s not ever forget what that means. It means that they have ALL the same hormones that we have. They may be pimply, they may make bad choices sometimes, they may still talk back, forget to do the dishes, or complain about a math lesson, but their bodies are just as eager to reproduce as ours are (possibly more so). If we are silent on sex, or worse yet, act embarrassed, disgusted, or like we can’t imagine its ever being even on their radar screens, we’re not discouraging our daughters from thinking about it, we’re discouraging them from talking to us about it. They need to know that we’re on their side, that we we want them to be modest and pure, not because we never want them to have sex, but because we want them to have the best sex possible: married sex, completely untainted by past experiences, lustful fantasies, or inappropriate emotional attachments.

That’s where my husband and I have come in our thinking so far. Does anyone have other ideas to share, things you’re doing to help your daughters, or ways your parents helped you? I’d love to hear about them, and I’m sure others would, too. If we want our daugters to have wonderful, healthy marriages, this is an issue we can’t afford to ignore.

ROTFL

Mrs. Parunak — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:49:07 +0000

OK, this one is not to be missed. If you have ever tried to go shopping for something modest to attractively cover the extra pounds gained in giving life to another human being, and wound up dragging yourself wearily from one depressing store to another, wondering who was responsible for stocking their ridiculous racks, then I Went Out to Buy a Skirt will condense all your pain into one hilarious read. Jennifer at Conversion Diary got permission from Simcha Fisher to reprint this, and I’m so glad she did. Here are some favorite quotes:

Well, except for the clean carpet, I might as well be at home. I have managed to find four outfits which are exactly like what I already own, only bigger. And anyway, I can’t wear black to a baptism! People will think I don’t like babies, and why would they think that? I giggle to myself, and my belly jiggles. Okay.

This time, when someone asks if I need help, I confess that I do. “I am looking,” I explain, “for a long skirt.”

The saleslady actually laughs.

She shows me what they do have, which is some kind of apparatus made of streamers and elastic, with tasteful iridescent sequins in the shape of sea horses. And there are also some tops, which were designed to be worn by — well, what did the designer have in mind, exactly? Prostitutes, certainly, but there is also some hint of the world of toddlers. And Elizabethan England, plus gymnastics class.

You can read the rest here.

Getting to the Heart of Modesty

Mrs. Parunak — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:05:08 +0000

Some of you may have noticed the new button that appeared on my sidebar a few weeks back. A little while ago, I had the privilege of becoming a contributor for At the Well…In Pursuit of Titus 2, an online gathering place for Christian women, with articles written by around 20 ladies plus guests. They’ve just started a new series of questions and answers, and one of the questions was about modesty. Those of you who’ve gotten to know me will be able to imagine how my eyes lit up when I read that one. I wanted to share the question and my answer here. (And I encourage you all to check out the full post to read the other ladies thought-provoking responses as well.)

Here’s the question:

I was wondering how you view the Bible’s take on modesty? I was raised very conservative and still dress alot differently than the world, but it seems like so many Christian women don’t think that’s important anymore. Alot of people I know say it’s just a difference of opinion or a personal standard, but that doesn’t make much sense to me really. And I also struggle with knowing that it makes it more difficult for my husband when women in the church are dressed indecently. It’s bad enough that there’s so much temptation out there anyway but it seems like the men should get a break from that when they’re around fellow Christians. And unfortunately it’s not just the younger ones either, but alot of the older women that dress badly…ones that could be setting a better example. I’ve enjoyed reading all the posts on different topics and would love to hear someone else’s thoughts on this subject, according to what you think is right by the Bible and what the Lord would be pleased with us doing. I want to be someone who not only sets an example by my actions in this area, but also someone whose able to give a reason for why it’s the right thing to do when questioned.

And here’s my take on it:

Modesty is one of those Jell-O concepts. You try to pick it up, and it squishes fiendishly out between your fingers. 1 Timothy 2:9 commands women to dress modestly, but what does that actually mean when we’re getting dressed in the morning? How many inches long do our skirts really have to be? Some people have a hunch that there’s a cultural element in there somewhere. After all, in the Victorian era it was scandalous to let your ankles show, which makes the average Amish woman scandalous by Victorian standards. And then there’s our “freedom in Christ.” Modesty rules so often smack of legalism that a lot of people would like to throw them out completely. But then there’s that pesky 1 Timothy 2:9 again, commanding us to dress modestly.

What to do? What to do?

I believe the answer is: Be loving.

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. –Galatians 5:13-14

Women’s bodies were designed to excite and delight men. It’s pretty simple biology: woman shows her body off, man notices it’s getting a little warm in here. But here’s the thing we all need to remember: God made women that way to bless our marriages, not to give men a constant buffet of lust-provoking eye candy.

Now for the love part. If the way I’m dressing is causing a man to take his eyes and mind off of his wife and put them on me, then I’m not being loving. Actually, I’m being selfish. I’m putting my own desire to be stylish, or to get attention, or to show off my cute figure above my brother’s purity or my sister’s marriage.

And it’s true that exactly where the line is will vary by culture, but since I’m a part of my culture, I really don’t have an excuse. I know what’s sexy in my sphere, and if I’m going to be loving, I had better save it for my husband alone and not flaunt it on the streets, or in the pew, or at my neighbor’s open house.

So when I’m getting dressed in the morning, I need to check my modesty level with my mirror, not my tape measure. It’s not really important how many inches my skirt is. What matters is whether my total package is “shamefacedness and sobriety” (1 Timothy 2:9) or “steamy little sex toy”. Guidelines may change, but our motivation should not. In our dress as well as in everything else, as Christian women, we should be ruled by love.

Sexy Sunday

Mrs. Parunak — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:12:01 +0000

Recently, my husband and I have been questioning the way we dress for church. We used to have the mild inkling that wearing your “Sunday, go to meeting” clothes was a way of showing respect to the Lord. Most people in the churches we’ve attended wear their “best” clothes for church, and we always did, too. But we’ve started to see some problems with it.

For starters, clothes can be a status symbol. Last Wednesday, as my husband was driving home from work just in time for Prayer Meeting (which is held in our home), he found himself a bit uncomfortable in his dressy shirt, and sport jacket under his black wool trench coat. My husband dresses like that for his job, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to walk in wearing those clothes because he thought wearing them might be drawing attention to the wrong things and possibly even “shaming them who have not” (similar to what was admonished against in 1 Corinthians 11:22). We women need to think about this as well, and not only this, but we have an added issue that I think deserves some consideration, the issue of not being a distraction to our brothers who have come to worship the Lord.

Our culture has developed a notion of dressing up for church. And “up” usually equals what we often think of as “attractive.” But recently I’ve been thinking about what the word “attractive” actually means. If we say that the south pole of a magnet attracts the north pole of another magnet, what are we saying? Unless something stops them, the two poles are drawn together until they touch. If a woman is “attractive,” it usually means she draws men to herself, and unless something stops them, they’ll eventually touch her. Attraction is the first step in sex.

OK, right about now, someone’s hitting the ceiling thinking I’m saying that if she doesn’t start looking unattractive or “repulsive” that I’m going to accuse them of initiating sex with everyone at church. Just come down for a minute and hear me out. Attractiveness is not a light switch, with only two positions: on and off. Attractiveness is a continuum. It is not the case that you have to be disgusting in order to be considerate.

A lot of us are committed to modesty. After all, the Bible does say,

1Timothy 2:9-10 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.

But what is modesty anyway? Is it just a function of what percentage of your skin is showing, or is there something more to it? The essence of modesty is not drawing attention to yourself for the wrong reasons: your wealth, your beauty, your fabulous sense of style. My husband and I have been talking about this a lot lately, and he feels like a woman is immodest when her appearance says, “Look at me! Look at this part here!” My husband, like all the other men out there who are fighting hard for purity in our sex-obsessed world, does not want you to beg him to look at you. He is, in fact, trying NOT to look at you. He doesn’t want to be attracted to you. Attraction, to be quite blunt, is the desire for sex. Realizing this, and helping men as much as we can is a huge part of modesty. Our “adorning,” our ornaments, the things that people are supposed to notice about us, are our good works, our meek and quiet spirits. And when is this more important than on Sunday, when everyone’s mind is supposed to be focused on the Lord, not on our gorgeous this or that?

But most of us women, myself included, have spent our lives trying to look extra beautiful on Sunday mornings, and the result is that we are more attention-grabbing, and therefore actually less modest, than usual. We do this largely because of tradition and because women like an excuse to be feminine and pretty. Also, there’s the herd mentality that if all my friends are going to be dressed up, then I want to be, too, which can sometimes even lead to the “church as beauty pageant” mindset, which can definitely take the “contestants’” thoughts away from the Lord as they’re busily comparing themselves to others. And some of us are dressing up for our husbands, to give them a chance to see us all scrubbed, and polished, and um, attractive. Let me be absolutely clear here! Without a doubt our husbands deserve and even need this chance like a drowning man needs a life preserver. But is church the best place to give it to them?

At church, not only are we out in public, we’re out with our brothers and sisters in Christ, people we are supposed to be building intimate relationships with, relationships which require talking, interacting, looking at each other. If we’re flaunting our nice jewelry, fancy clothes, and killer figures, how are our sisters going to feel up next to us? And if we’re looking attractive, what can our brothers do to keep from feeling attracted? Walk away? Not talk to us? What if we’re in some man’s line of sight as he tries to look at the preacher? What’s he going to do then? Stare at his lap the whole service? What if we’re walking right past a brother as we take a toddler to the bathroom? Is he going to have to expend mental energy on NOT feeling the way our delicate clothes, Sunday best make-up, and bust-line enhancing high heeled shoes are inviting him to feel?

I’m not saying we should look ugly, only that we should think of ourselves as going to church to interact with a large range of people, not to show off. We need to consider the effect we’re having. Don’t come in with garden dirt under your fingernails. But maybe save your $300 designer dress for your husband’s company banquet, and maybe don’t breeze past the brethren in a cloud of seductive perfume.

All of us are confronted by status and sexuality in the world all week. Shouldn’t church be a rest from all that? Why are we trying specifically to look extra attractive when we know we are going to be interacting with a whole lot of women who are continually trashed by the world’s obsession with appearance, and a whole lot men who are beaten up everywhere else they go by ungodly women trying to provoke them to lust? What if we tried to be clean and neat at church, but extra modest, even simpler and safer than usual, concealing our curves slightly more rather than slightly less, and left our attractive best for times when women who are less blessed either physically or financially won’t feel inadequate, and men besides our husbands are not forced to interact with us. And of course, when no one but our husbands can see us, ladies, let’s pull out ALL the stops: the shorter, tighter, lower-cut, more “heaven help them if they don’t touch us” the better.

But at church, maybe we should be adorned with good works and leave it at that.

Let me know what you think.

Cooking Chicken for Your 600 Pound Uncle, or “Do You Wear Skirts All the Time?”

Mrs. Parunak — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:44:39 +0000

I’d like to introduce you to your imaginary Uncle Freddie. You love Uncle Freddie. He’s been single all his life, so you feel almost motherly towards him since he doesn’t have anyone else to look after him. He’s jolly, and open, and sincere, loves kids and animals, never misses birthday parties. You know, he’s family. Unfortunately, Uncle Freddie also has an unhealthy relationship with food. In fact, he weighs 600 pounds, and his doctor has told him that if he doesn’t lose weight, he’s going to die because if the diabetes doesn’t get him, a heart attack will. Uncle Freddie’s coming over for dinner tomorrow, and you’ve got a family pack of chicken. How are you going to cook it?

Recently, Joanna, of Jo-with-it’s Portfolio left me the following comment.

Do you wear skirts all the time? I think I would like to try it for a week or something, but I don’t know if there are any verses that say you should, and I don’t know where to look. I don’t want to do it for the wrong reason.

Yup, I pretty much do wear skirts all the time, but not exactly because I think the Bible says I should. Rather, I think the Bible has certain principles that should affect our clothing choices, and wearing skirts is the easiest way for me to keep them all in balance. I do not think mine is the only way to do this. It’s just the one that makes the most sense to me. The personal outworking of Biblical principle, is exactly that, personal. And above all, we need to follow the leadership of our husbands and fathers in that outworking.

Uncle Freddie will be our constant companion through this discussion because, just as he has an unhealthy relationship with food, there are an awful lot of men out there who have unhealthy relationships with women’s bodies through lust. And the way we prepare food for dinner for an unhealthy loved one has a lot of correspondences to the way we prepare our bodies for a day out in an unhealthy world.

The first Biblical principle that should affect clothing choice is modesty. Modesty is like keeping your cooking low in calories. It’s a slippery issue, hard to make universal rules about, but vitally important, especially when Uncle Freddie is coming to dinner, AND in the case of modesty (not low cal cooking), it’s actually commanded in Scripture.

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. 1Timothy 2:9-10

The closest I can come to a good working definition of modesty is, “not drawing attention to yourself,” not putting up the big, sizzling, neon sign that screams, “Look at me!” “Look at me, I’m so rich!” or “Look at me, I just walked off the cover of InStyle,” or perhaps most crucially, “Look at me, I’m hotter than hellfire, I got more curves than the Pacific Coast Highway, and you’re gonna be dreaming about me all night, baby!” Maybe the simplest way of saying it is that modesty means not showing off.

And we really need not to show off because our brothers in Christ are living in a sex-saturated world, just like Uncle Freddie is surrounded by fast food restaurants and cheap candy bars. Sexual images are everywhere, easily available, addicting, and anonymous. A 1996 Promise Keepers Survey at one of their rallies found that over 50% of the men admitted being involved with pornography within one week of attendance. And according to a 2001 Christianity Today Leadership Survey 37% of pastors say that porn is a current struggle. It’s been a few years, and I’d be really surprised if the situation hasn’t gotten worse.

Men who are struggling with porn are guaranteed also to be struggling with objectifying the women around them, with viewing women as nothing but bodies, with living each day in a state of unbridled lust. And that lust is killing them spiritually just as surely as being morbidly obese is killing Uncle Freddie physically. Some of these men are completely given over, but others are fighting, struggling to keep their heads above water. And while we may sometimes be able to tell who these hurting men are, the numbers are so high that the majority of them are going unnoticed. You see them at church, at the store; they’re watching you from their cars as they pass you on the street. Do you love these men? Do you want to help them? Do you care if they lust after you? Or are you just annoyed with them? Are you angry at Uncle Freddie for eating way too many Twinkies and then overeating at your table?

The second principle is being feminine, the desire to look like a woman. This is akin to having what you cook taste good. The main verse people usually quote on dressing in a distinctly feminine way is:

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. Deuteronomy 22:5

The important thing to keep in mind here is that this is part of the Law, and Christians have argued for centuries about what that means for us. Many people would be quick to point out that this same chapter forbids plowing with an ox and an ass together (v. 10) and wearing fabric made from combined fibers, such as wool and linen (v. 11). Most Christians, even the ones who say that verse 5 means that it’s an abomination for women to ever wear pants, would not rise up in righteous indignation at a poly-cotton blend, so a lot of people would like to throw out the idea that a women wearing masculine clothes is wrong, too. But there is a difference in verse 5. It’s unique in that a reason for the command is given. And that reason is that “all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.” “Abomination” means God hates it. When God says He hates something we’d better take note, no matter which part of the Bible we find His declaration in. Indeed, we take very seriously other “abominations to the LORD” mentioned in the Law (idolatry: Deuteronomy 7:25, human sacrifice: Deuteronomy 12:31, involvement in the occult: Deuteronomy 18:10-12, deceitfulness in business: Deuteronomy 25:13-16, and many, many more). God, who does not change, has declared that He hates it when men look like women and women look like men. Now exactly what that means in terms of the actual clothes is going to be cultural, but I think we can at least take away from this the principle that God does want us to look like what He made us to be.

OK, now comes the hard part, a balancing act tougher than menu planning for a 600 pound uncle, because the easiest way to look feminine is to wear clothes that are small and tight, that show lots of your delicate skin, gracefully follow every curve, and leave no doubts about how small and soft you are compared to the average man. But, oops! That is not terribly modest. Now what? More fabric? Baggier? More androgynous?

It’s really easy to be modest without being feminine, and it’s really easy to be feminine without being modest, just like it’s really easy to cook low calorie chicken that tastes like rubber, and it’s really easy to cook succulent chicken that’s fatty enough to clog seven more of Uncle Freddie’s hardened arteries.

Take jeans for example. Jeans can be kind of modest if they’re really loose and straight cut. Some men, to be perfectly blunt, are going to have trouble with having their eye follow the line of your legs up to where they meet (a place it would be better if the men around you weren’t thinking about), but you could always mitigate that with a really big shirt that hangs half-way to your knees. And if you’re super careful about not letting your hips sway too much, depending on your hair, you might even pass for a wimpy little man, and then for sure, you’d be modest. But, ew, not to mention “abomination.” So maybe we don’t want to go there, but the minute your jeans are tight enough to show the world that you’re actually female, you’re cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible. And, um, we all know how men are about…cars.

So, what do we do? I tend to think that modesty has to come first, but not to the absolute exclusion of femininity (because God does want us to look feminine). We constantly have to strike a balance, and that is governed by the most important principle yet, the Principle of Love.

To illustrate what I mean, let’s return to Uncle Freddie for a moment. How are you going to cook that chicken? Look at these menu options and the thoughts behind them, and try to think which one is the most loving.

Well, option one is, you could say to yourself, “It’s Uncle Freddie’s fault he’s so fat. If he overeats at my house and gains six more pounds, he’ll have no one to blame but himself and his own out of control lust for food. I’m getting out the Crisco and frying that chicken because that’s the way my husband likes it. Anyway, if Uncle Freddie doesn’t eat fried chicken at my house, he could always stop at KFC on the way home, so it doesn’t really matter how I cook.”

Or, you could say to yourself, “Poor Uncle Freddie, food is just too hard to resist! Maybe if I boil the chicken in several changes of water, I can remove all the fat. My family’s not going to like it, but I don’t want to feel like I killed Uncle Freddie!”

Then there’s option three: “I love Uncle Freddie, and I know he really struggles with food. I want to make a nice dinner for my family, but I don’t want to sabotage Uncle Freddie’s efforts, either. Maybe I could fire up the grill to give that chicken a nice mesquite flavor without adding extra fat and calories.”

In my mind, option three is the most loving. You’re balancing your love for your family with your love for Uncle Freddie and sensitivity to his struggles. You’re trying to make food that will be yummy for your husband and children, but that won’t contribute to Uncle Freddie’s problems. Of course, he could still overeat, but you’re giving him a fighting chance at staying on his diet.

It is this balance that I’m striving to achieve in my clothes. I want to be feminine and pretty, to look like a woman, but I don’t want to show so many curves that the men around me start hearing engines revving and feel the salt air on their cheeks. And for me, that means wearing skirts. Skirts are obviously feminine (just think of the little outlines of the people on the doors of public bathrooms–the canonical woman is wearing a dress). You can tell at a glance that I’m a woman, but (if my skirt is long and full enough), I’m not showing all that many curves, far fewer than in the average pair of pants. It’s great mesquite flavor without too many calories. My family has a nice dinner. Uncle Freddie lives through the night.

***

Note: There are some women who have been sexually abused who cannot handle wearing skirts. My mom had a dear friend who was in this situation. I asked her to be in charge of the gift table at my wedding, and after much anguish, she finally told my mom she didn’t know if she could do it. She figured if she had an official wedding “job,” she’d have to wear a dress, and she just couldn’t bring herself to put one on. I told my mom to tell her that I cared about her, not her clothes. She could wear whatever she wanted to my wedding. I still wanted to honor her with a special role.

I do think that skirts are a great option for most people, but I would never want anything I say here to be used to make someone who’s hurting feel guilty.

Affordable Modest Clothing!

Mrs. Parunak — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:13:32 +0000

Ladies, I have added a new modesty resource to my sidebar, but I’m so excited about it that I thought I’d give them a little extra “press” here as well. The site is called Modest at Heart Clothing, and is one of the home businesses of the Appel family, a homeschooling family with five children. They sell new and gently used modest clothes at GREAT prices (like WholesomeWear swim suits for around fifteen dollars!). They have a wide variety of clothes for the whole family, everything from mainstream styles with good coverage to cape dresses, even a few headcoverings. I just ordered some maternity and nursing clothes from them, and they arrived quickly and were in beautiful condition. I highly recommend checking them out–and no, I’m not getting anything for mentioning them!