In It’s All About the Money (and Greed, and Selfishness) my favorite Israeli blogger, the delightful Mrs. Anna T. of Domestic Felicity takes on overpopulation and the vast consumption inherent in the whole argument. She even fleshes out the machine gun idea. (And while you’re reading her great post, join me in being seriously impressed when you realize that English is this young woman’s third language.)

The American financial situation has been looking rather catastrophic lately. People are wondering if we’re heading for another depression. There’s worry over retirement investments, real estate values, inflation, tax increases. In short, we’re worried about our riches. The truth is, we may be headed for tough times.

But would that really be so bad? And what do we mean by “tough?” Most of the world for most of history has lived far, far, far, ridiculously, almost unimaginably far below our current standard of living. We’re talking one room huts, one change of clothes, and if it’s food, you eat it, and you don’t complain that you don’t like squash because there’s no cold pizza in the fridge to snack on later (there’s no fridge, in fact). What makes us think we deserve to be different, or even that it’s preferable to be different?

On a global scale, we are a nation of the richest of the rich. Even our slums are full of satellite dishes and big screen TVs. We’re the only nation in the world, perhaps of all time, in which vast numbers of our “poor” can afford to be obese. We are rolling, glutted in wealth, drowning in it, until all we can see is our comfortable prosperity. Few of us have ever had to wonder where the next meal would come from, or had the experience of having to actually trust God because there really is nothing left, no food stamps, no welfare, no WIC, nothing.

And you know what? Just like Proverbs 30 warns, we’ve denied the Lord. We are a nation completely given over to sensuality, exporting our pornographic filth, polluting the whole world. We have murdered 49,131,136 of our children since we made abortion legal in 1973 (Click the number to see how it’s grown since I posted this.). We have attempted to wipe out every reference to God and His law in all our public buildings and to erase Him from our history books. We have enshrined evolution and humanism in our schools, museums, and media. We have mainstreamed homosexuality to the point of validating it through civil unions and even marriage in some states.

One of our children had a bad attitude and wasn’t sharing well or considering others in the enjoyment of a new birthday toy. My husband took the toy away until the attitude improved. Maybe we’re experiencing a little of the same kind of judgment. Could it be that God is taking our prosperity away until our attitude improves? That wouldn’t be so bad, and if it draws people back from denying the Lord, then it would be a really good thing.

And what if we do have to live through “tough times?” We may have to take aging family members into our homes because their retirement savings have evaporated. We may have to quit hopping on airplanes or driving the family van hundreds of miles for vacations. Our children may have to learn a little of the spirit of the children in Little House in the Big Woods, who were awestruck with joy at receiving a pair of mittens and a stick of candy at Christmas. We may have to get serious about gardening, eating local, and creativity with beans (even squash!). We may have to learn to be like the newlywed Brother Andrew in God’s Smuggler, who was thankful that he and his wife had their own room, not their own house or their own apartment, their own room. We may have to wear the same clothes several days in a row. We may be brought face to face with real needs in our own neighborhoods and chances to give sacrificially.

Of course, I have no idea what it would be like to live like this, but I know that untold thousands of people before me have done all this and more and been happy in the process. And, yes, many untold thousands have also been extremely unhappy. This world has known great and terrible suffering of kinds that few of us can even contemplate. But if suffering brings us to the Lord, then isn’t it better to suffer on this earth and spend eternity with Him than to live comfortably here, and spend eternity without Him? Many of us have been praying for years for God to turn our nation to righteousness. Are we willing to endure the hardship it might take to wake people up to their need?

It certainly won’t be as easy as living in a world where everyone has a 3000 square foot house, two cars in the garage, and several Coach bags in the closet, but in the vast eternal scheme of things, isn’t the joy of learning to truly depend on the Lord and seeing those around us come to Him of far greater value than ease? I’m not saying we should go looking to suffer, but if God asks it of us, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. –Timothy 6:6-10

1. I was saved when I was four and a half.

2. My favorite book of the Bible is Psalms.

3. I ADORE Coke slushies.  (But I never have them when I’m expecting, and nearly never have them when I’m nursing, which leaves me about two months every other year to binge and have them three or four times a week.)

4. I grind my own flour (and bake a LOT).

5. I don’t usually use a pattern when I sew (but don’t be too impressed–I make pretty simple stuff).

6. Up until transition, I actually really enjoy labor.

My appologies to everyone. I’ve been away for nearly a week keeping my husband company while he was at a  conference. I had hoped to bring my computer to keep up with all your lovely blogs and maybe post a couple things myself, but at the last minute, we decided against it since I was planning to be taking the children museum hopping during the day, and my husband was concerned that the computer would not be safe in the hotel room.

I still had hopes of checking blogs at night on my husband’s laptop once the children were in bed, but with the busy days and my being extra tired with the baby, pretty much the only thing I wound up checking at night was the softness of my pillow. We’re home now, though, and I’m hoping to settle back into normal life again soon.

So I’m looking for ways to streamline my life, and I’m wondering, what did/do you do when you’re expecting. Where did/do you cut? What are your favorite tricks? What cleaning/cooking/laundry shortcuts work best for you? (If you’ve never had a baby, then what did your mom do, or your friends?)

And after you do, Pluck.

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.

Those of you who know me (or have been reading my blog for awhile) know that I cover my head. For some time, I’ve wanted to share my story here, but I worried about how to do it. So often, Christians make little differences like this into litmus tests to decide who’s in their holiness club and who isn’t. And while I’m always thrilled to know other women who cover (even Muslim women and I have often exchanged special, knowing smiles), I want to make it perfectly clear that I can love you and respect you as my sister in Christ no matter what your position on headcovering.

Mat 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

My headcovering is my tithe of mint, so to speak. I fully accept that it is not one of the “weightier matters.” It is a million times easier to put a headcovering on when I fix my hair in the mornings than it is not to get irritated at my children. (Although, wearing the headcovering has often brought me up short when I am irritated because I realize that my children are looking at a tight faced woman with dagger-eyes, glaring at them under a covering, which is supposed to mark her as one who claims the name of Christ, and the ugliness of my rotten testimony has instantly quenched my fire.) But all in all, I recognize that there is infinitely more to the Christian life than covering your head, and if you’ve figured out how to rejoice always, conquered your irritation, or even learned to be a good steward of your time, you are way further along in holiness than I!

Why am I bothering to write this then, or even to cover my head at all? Because, “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” God still meant for His people to tithe their mint, and I cannot be intellectually honest with the Bible and not come to the conclusion that I am supposed to cover my head.

But it’s a strange practice today. And while it looks to me like headcovering is making a small comeback, there still aren’t that many of us who live this way, and because of that, though it is a small matter, I wanted to try to tell my story and explain my position in hopes of encouraging others who are on this path and of helping those who aren’t to understand a little better their covering sisters.

This journey began in my aunt and uncle’s fifteen passenger van in Grand Rapids. I was fourteen years old. The young man who would someday be my husband was sitting on the bench seat behind me. He was sixteen. We had just met me the night before. As we drove towards church Sunday morning, my aunt turned around in her seat, an assortment of headcoverings in her hand, “The women at our assembly wear little mantillas…”

The Christian practice of headcovering comes from I Corinthians 11:3-16. I’ve included the full text at the end of this post, but here is a taste.

“But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head…let her be covered” (1 Corinthians 11:5a and 6b).

When we got to church, I put on a mantilla. I saw my reflection in the van window. Intriguing. A strange feeling of protection, of being special. And the young man I’d just met was so adamant that the Bible taught this. Why hadn’t I ever learned about this?

The most common argument I hear against headcovering is that the passage is actually talking about long hair, not some sort of veil or hat. (If you want to read a very scholarly exposition of the passage and refutation of this idea and others, read my father-in-law’s article.) The reason that I cannot personally adopt this interpretation is that verse 6 does not make any sense with this reading. If you follow the “long hair” logic, you would be “covered” if your hair were long, and “not covered” if your hair were short. Verse 6 talks about not being covered. If we insert “have short hair” for “be not covered” in this verse, we get “For if the woman have short hair, let her also be shorn (have short hair).” How can you “also” have short hair if you already have short hair? The passage only makes sense to me if it’s talking about two things: long hair and a headcovering.

Young Mr. Parunak and I fell in love within the week. I returned home to my family in Oregon, my beau and I spanning the distance with letters and phone calls, headcovering being a common topic as I wrestled through this new idea.

Another common argument is that headcovering was just a cultural issue at Corinth. I’ve heard all kinds of ideas on how this was the case, the most bizare being that the Corinthian women were actually taking off all their clothes at church, and that since they started with their headcoverings, what Paul was actually saying here is that they should quit stripping. I haven’t been able to make peace with this view either. For starters, while 1 Corinthians was written to the church at Corinth, it was also written to “all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2), so its teachings are for everyone, and its commands are binding on any believer regardless of home city or culture.

But the biggest reason, I can’t convince myself of the “culture at Corinth” argument is that the Bible never says, “Cover your head so the people at the market place don’t think the wrong things about you,” or even, “Cover, so your brothers and sisters don’t think the wrong thing.” It says, “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels” (1Corinthians 11:10). The culture at work here is not Corinthian culture at all; it’s angelic culture. I don’t know anything about angelic culture, so if God says that He wants me to do something for His angels to see, in my mind, I simply have to do it, no questions asked.

A circle of lace from the fabric store, edged with a narrow, ruffled band, held on with a hat pin. My mind was made up, but my heart was beating in my ears. What would people think? Would anyone say anything to me my first time at my home church in a headcovering? It’s hard to be different. But I didn’t have a choice. I was starting to believe this, and as it turned out, no one said a word.

Some people say that headcovering is just “too weird.” Women won’t want to become Christians if it means they have to put some funky cloth on their heads. This argument is based on 1 Corinthians 9:22 “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. ” And it’s a good thing to keep in mind when we’re talking about things that we think up on our own. It’s a very valid reason not to wear a fake rhinoceros horn on the end of your nose, for example. But it’s not really a good reason to throw out commands that God gives us. Christians are called to do a lot of things that make us look weird, like saving sex for marriage, not getting drunk, or loving people who hate us. Would anyone seriously say, “I need to take up prostitution, so I don’t look too weird to the prostitutes I’m trying to reach,” or even, “I need to start gossiping, so the women I have coffee with will know they can become Christians and still be normal.” If God tells us to do something, we have to do it, even we look weird.

Eventually, I became known as “the girl who always wears hats.” I covered at church and college group functions, and I covered whenever I had my devotions. But gradually, I began to notice something. When I finished my devotions, I didn’t want to be “done.” I wanted the closeness with the Lord to continue, the prayer lines to stay open. I wanted the ease of just talking to the Lord whenever I wanted to without the hassle of getting my covering out again. I would have devotions and want to leave my headcovering on while I pulled out my textbooks. Before long, I had simply fallen into covering my head all the time in my dorm room. When I graduated, and became Mrs. Parunak, I covered all the time when I was at home alone, but quickly yanked my headcovering off when Mr. Parunak arrived home because I was just “sure” that he preferred me uncovered if we weren’t actually at church or praying together.

It strikes me as odd how many men there are who still take 1 Corinthians 11 seriously when it comes to NOT praying with their heads covered. They’ll take off their hats in a rain storm or the blazing sun to pray, and they would never, ever approve of a preacher getting up to pray before a congregation with a hat on his head. Yet these very same men seem completely oblivious to their wives praying uncovered. “1 Corinthians is talking about hair!” they’ll say, while I quietly wonder why, if that’s true, they still feel they need to take their hats off to pray since the hair under those hats is quite short.

It was on the road again, but this time it was our own little car, and we were on our way home from church, rather than driving to church. I was recounting to Mr. Parunak how I had told my friend about how much I wanted to cover full-time, but how I wasn’t doing it because I knew my husband wouldn’t like it. He said, “What ever gave you that idea?” That night, we went over 1 Corinthians 11 again. It really did seem to be saying that women should have their heads covered when they pray. That, coupled with the fact that we are to “pray without ceasing” (1Thessalonians 5:17), convinced us to go ahead and have me start. I was so excited.

Today, I wear a long kerchief style covering (looks a bit like our Charity sisters, if you’re familiar with them), and I love it so much. It’s still hard sometimes to be different. But oddly enough, it’s much harder among other Christians than out in the world. Strangers have visibly softened. I’ve noticed a gentleness and respect from a lot of people that I hardly ever saw when I tried to look more “normal” out in public. It’s made me more aware of my testimony out in public, too, because I know people are watching. And for someone who believes 1 Corinthians 11 means what I believe it does, full-time covering is a luxurious relief, freeing me to pray any time throughout the day without having to worry about whether my hands are covered with raw meat, bread dough, or garden dirt, or busy with laundry or babies, and unable to grab a headcovering at that moment.

And that is my story, a glimpse inside the head of a genuine oddity, a freak, but a convicted freak, and a happy one. That’s the view from under my veil.

***

1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1Co 11:4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head.
1Co 11:5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven.
1Co 11:6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.
1Co 11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man.
1Co 11:8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.
1Co 11:9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
1Co 11:10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.
1Co 11:11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord.
1Co 11:12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God.
1Co 11:13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?
1Co 11:14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?
1Co 11:15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
1Co 11:16 But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

You may be surprised that I’m announcing this so early. Why not wait until the chance of miscarriage is much lower? Well, I’ve always figured that I’d rather have people praying for me even if it means I have to tell them I lost the baby. (Anyway, if I did loose a baby, I’d probably want to blog about it!) If you get a chance today, please pray for our little one to develop normally, and most of all, to grow up to love and serve the Lord.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17