The Millennial Reign of Christ

Steve Pixler speaks about how the coming Millennial kingdom has come, is coming and will come in the world.

Kingdom Assignments: Blooming Where You Are Planted

Steve Pixler speaks about learning how to focus on our specific assignments in the kingdom of God and about blooming where we are planted.

Seeing the King

Steve Pixler speaks about how we must see the King in order to see the kingdom.

Strategies For Conquest

Steve Pixler speaks from Joshua 5 about spiritual strategies for kingdom conquest.

Kingdom Know-How

Steve Pixler speaks from Mark 4 about developing a deeper level of understanding about the kingdom of God.

The Kingdom's Greatest Challenge

Steve Pixler speaks about "the kingdom's greatest challenge": two misunderstandings about the kingdom of God that flourish among its members.

Modesty and New Creation

In this final post on modesty, I think we should begin by hearkening back to two things that we have brushed by several times as we hurried along. First, man was not created to be naked. He was created to be clothed in glory and beauty. Nakedness was a sign of man's innocence and immaturity, and moreover, the indications of heavenly haute couture glimpsed throughout history and in prophetic previews of the resurrection show that man's ultimate destiny is to be properly clothed. God is "robed in righteousness," and man is created to bear His image.

Second, the word rendered "modest" comes from the word "cosmeo," from which we derive our English word "cosmetics." The word cosmeo is a form of the word "cosmos," which means "order." Thus, to dress modestly is to dress appropriately, or in proper order. Both the created world and proper dress styles are described as cosmos, as orderly. Thus, scripture draws a straight line between the creation order and modesty. Modesty is endemic to the creation order.

Man was created as the universe in miniature. Or, to put it more exactly, the universe was created to expand and magnify the glory of God revealed in man. Both the body of man and the universe were created to be the temple of God, and as such, both were created to reveal divine order centered in true worship. Man was created according to the three-fold structure of the temple, outer court (body), inner court (soul) and Holy of Holies (spirit). The universe reflects the same pattern: outer court (earth), inner court (the visible heavens) and the Holy of Holies (the heavens beyond the veil where God dwells, the "third heavens). Thus, the way we dress must display the same sort of order that God etched into the night sky. The heavens declare the glory of God, and so must our clothing.

Now, I am leaning hard on this connection between modesty and creation order to make the point that modesty is more than cultural accommodation. Modesty is an embodiment of the divine order woven into the warp and woof of the universe. To parade through the streets in nakedness, which seems to me to be best defined by what God covered in Eden, is to strip the temple of it's glory. To be modest is to manifest God's creation order.

And, speaking of creation, getting dressed in appropriate attire is reminiscent of the opening days of creation. The Spirit of God brooded over the waters of unformed creation and began by His Word to make cosmos out of chaos. God clothed all creation in glory and beauty and decorated it with magnificent adornment. God dressed the heavens and earth in the garments of priestly worship. This is why the writer can speak of the heavens as garments (Hebrews 1:10-12) that shall be changed in the new creation, which is a point that we shall consider in a moment.

In a way, we could say that the clothing of Adam in Eden was a reenactment of creation in miniature, a microcosm of creation. God covered the chaos of nakedness with the order of modest clothing, of well-arranged garments. To return to public nakedness is to revert to the chaos that characterized the barrenness of pre-creation. Indeed, it is no coincidence that godly nakedness, the nakedness of the marriage bed, is a moment of creation when new life is brought out of the womb of water and spirit. Never is man closer to bearing the image and sharing the glory of God than when he performs his imitative role of creating new life. This is why fornication and adultery is such an affront to God. Creation must occur within the boundaries of divine order, within the secret place of a loving covenant. Otherwise, the world spins out of control.

So, modesty is cosmos. Creation was formed to reflect order. However, creation has become disordered through sin and death. In a way, we could say that the garments of creation have become tattered and torn. It is significant that nakedness in scripture is symbolic of man's fall into sin and shame. Just like a woman that has been brutally assaulted and left dying with her garments ripped away, so God's good creation has been violated by Satan and his hordes of demon powers.

Yet, we have a wonderful promise. God will make all things new, which He has already begun in the resurrection of Christ. When new creation comes, the heavens shall be changed like a garment. The nakedness of creation shall be covered in the resurrection glory of new creation. The universe shall put on new clothes.

Therefore, immodesty is an embodiment of chaos and decreation. Modesty is an embodiment of new creation, a foreshadowing of the day when all things shall be made new. When we dress in modest apparel we are modeling the world to come when the nakedness of sin and death will be "clothed upon" with the garments of resurrection glory.

We should never be intimidated to dress modestly. By doing so, we become living placards, walking billboards, as it were, announcing the coming new creation. When we reject the nakedness of pagan culture, we are proclaiming the descent of heaven to earth, as the heavenly city comes down from God out of heaven "adorned as bride for her husband." She "has her wedding garments on." To dress modestly is to preach the transcendence of Christian culture and that the church will not be forced into adapting cultural expressions of chaos and decreation. To dress modestly is to declare that we have left the hog pen of prodigal wanderings and have returned to the Father's house to be clothed with the best robes and to wear the kingly ornaments of glory and beauty.

One final point, and this may be one of the most urgent things we have considered. Modesty is an expression of holiness unto the Lord. To dress immodestly is unholy. Yet, we must be careful right here. Modesty is an expression of holiness, but it is not holiness per se. Just because we dress modestly does not mean that we are holy. This point must be carefully considered and soaked into the pores of our mind. This distinction must be understood to keep us from becoming like the priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. They walked quickly by on the far side of the road because they thought that helping the stranger might defile their purity and contaminate their holiness.

Christians that emphasize modesty often tend to do the same thing. We often wear modesty like an armor to protect us from being contaminated by the world, and the arrogance of this attitude is keenly felt by the world around us. The man at Starbucks wearing the wife-beater shirt and the montage of tattoos knows very well when he is being looked at down the nose. But modesty is not intended to set us apart in a superior way. Rather, modesty is intended to model new creation. Modesty should inspire interest in beauty and glory. As noted early on in this series, holiness is not homeliness. Modesty should be attractive.

Holiness flows out like a river. Holiness is not intended to stay bottled up like an aquarium where enthralled spectators view another world through glass. No, holiness flows out into the world to heal the world. The resurrection of Jesus in the middle of history means that the coming new creation when all things shall be made new in the resurrection has already broken into the world now. Holiness must be a foretaste of the world to come. Thus, modesty must inspire modesty. We must model holiness in such a way that the world longs for new creation like a thirsty man longs for a cool drink of water. We must gladly share.

Modesty and Worship

There is a direct connection in scripture between modesty and worship. Or, to put it negatively, there is a direct connection between immodesty and idolatry. In the Bible, the worship of the one true God was necessarily done while clothed in garments for "glory and beauty" (Exodus 28:2) while the worship of idols was often performed in nakedness.

God not only commanded His priests to wear garments for "beauty and glory," but He also commanded them to wear linen undergarments that would "reach from the hip to the thigh" and hide their nakedness when they ministered before Him at the altar (Exodus 28:42). Even when David danced before the Lord and removed His royal robes, which his wife, Michal, sarcastically calls "making yourself naked like a fool," he was covered with the linen ephod that the priests were required to wear in worship. The Law of God is explicit that true worship is expressed in modest clothing.

Pagans, on the other hand, were infamous throughout various cultures for worshipping their gods while stripped naked. In fact, many forms of idol worship throughout the ancient world specifically included sexual deviancy as an expression of perverted worship. The temple of Aphrodite in ancient Corinth had a thousand temple prostitutes to serve the worshippers. Pagan worship included all forms of sexual sins such as homosexuality, pedophilia and bestiality. As far back as the Golden Calf, Israel ended up naked when she imitated the practices of the heathen. (I Corinthians 10:6-11) There is always a direct correlation in scripture and history between idolatry and fornication. Of course, getting naked is the first step toward fornication. Immodesty and idolatry always go together.

In Romans 1, Paul shows us an explicit connection between idolatry and fornication. "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen." (Romans 1:24, 25) Improper worship causes man to lose his creational bearings, his natural orientation, and he begins to embody the collapse of his existential identity through sexual perversion. Idolatry leads inexorably to fornication.

When man loses sight of God as His Creator, he loses sight of himself as God's creation, for he is created to be a reflection of God, and humanity becomes inhuman. And inhumane, for that matter. Idolatry leads to a crisis in sexual identity because sexual identity comes from God and can only be properly preserved through right worship. Worship reveals who God is, which reveals who man is. Think about Isaiah beholding the glory of God and responding in terror, "Woe is me! I am lost!" Man sees himself in light of his revelation of God. Idolatry blinds man to himself and leads to the distortion of self that is expressed in sexual sin. Fornication is always a result of idolatry.

The loss of God-centered sexual identity leads to the loss of covenantal sexuality, which is sex in the sanctity of marriage, and the loss of covenantal sexuality leads to public nakedness. Private intimacy becomes public display. When men and women lose sight of God and His holiness--in other words, when they fail to worship--they fixate their gaze on one another. And when they start staring at one another rather than beholding the glory of God, they begin to lust after one another. As Paul says in Colossians, covetousness is idolatry. Lust is worship failure.

When God as the Creator is no longer the center of creation, then the covenantal expression of the one-flesh relationship that God ordained--sex in the sanctity of marriage--becomes a frustrating barrier to self-gratification. The love of God is replaced by the lust of man, and fornication becomes the only way that lustful man can express his pathetically impotent sexual identity. How are the mighty fallen!

Let me say it again. There is a direct connection between modesty and worship. Immodesty is an indication of self-worship, which is the root of all idolatry. Immodesty is an inglorious display of the body in a way that pleads to be worshipped. "Please," Immodesty begs, "look at me! Behold me! Worship me!" When lustful men demand that their women run naked in the streets, they too are promoting self-worship, for they are worshipping the female body in order to gratify their own desires. In fact, they are not really worshipping the woman at all; they are worshipping their own desires. Men look to lust; women lust to be looked at. Idolatry is always a selfish projection of human desires. Idolatry is always rooted in self-worship, the veneration of the body and its passions to the detriment of the soul and its visions. Immodesty is idolatry.

As noted above, God commanded that His priests be dressed modestly when they ministered before Him. This theme is carried out in the New Testament as well. In both places in the New Testament where Paul and Peter talk about modest dress, their teaching is set in the context of priestly worship. Paul writes about the public worship service and commands the men and women to dress modestly as a matter of decorum before God while "lifting up holy hands." (I Timothy 2) Peter addresses the idea of modesty in the larger context of worship in the world as Christians live out their priestly calling in all nations. (I Peter 2, 3) In both instances modesty is taught as a matter of priestly ministry. Modesty is an expression of worship.

In I Corinthians 11 Paul takes the idea of proper attire even further when he teaches the women of Corinth to be covered in worship "because of the angels" (I Corinthians 11:10). There is a wide spectrum of thought on what this means exactly, but whatever all it means it at least means that the way we dress in worship is observed by angels and affects their response to us. My point here is simply that decorum in dress is a worship issue. The angels of God take note of how we are dressed and regard it as a matter of preparation for priestly service. As Paul asks, "Is it comely for a woman to pray uncovered?" The way we dress expresses submission to God. Modesty and worship go together.

One final point. If modesty and worship go together, then we must consider where worship occurs so we can know where modesty should occur. Think about it for a moment. Worship happens in the temple of God, and the temple of God exists on three levels: the temple of our bodies, the temple of the church and the temple of the universe. This means that we must dress modestly in private worship, though we exercise the liberty of covenantal nakedness in the marriage bed; we must dress modestly in congregational worship, for we are gathered with the holy saints and angels; and we must dress modestly while ministering in the world wherever we anywhere in the universe, for our priestly ministry in the world mediates holiness to all creation.

This point of private, congregational and universal priesthood is very important to our discussion. It refutes the idea that modesty should happen only when we go to church. We minister as priests upon the altar wherever we are at all times. We are priests in our homes with our families. We are priests in the church when we gather to worship. And we are priests at the mall and at the beach. Therefore, because we are priests at all times and everywhere we go, we are called to be clothed in righteousness and covered in holiness. Modesty and worship go together.

Modesty and Legalism

One of the most common objections raised against teaching on modesty is that it is "legalistic." And this a valid concern, though, as we shall see, it often misses the point by attempting to tweezer a splinter while impaled on a pole. But we should grant freely and truthfully that much teaching on modesty is indeed driven by a legalistic impulse. This failing should confronted and confessed, and we should seek assiduously to avoid it. Or, carefully and persistently, if you prefer. Those of us who strongly emphasize a message of separation from the world do holiness doctrine no favors when we refuse to repent for the self-righteousness that tries to make Pharisees out of us all.

So, let us admit it. Much of our teaching on modesty is driven by the attempt to produce righteousness through external law-keeping. We tend to think we can make people modest if we make them dress modest. But this is an oft-demonstrated fallacy. Modest dress is often the best disguise for an immodest spirit. When a young woman climbs in the backseat of her boyfriend's car and removes her long skirt and high-necked blouse in order to better facilitate adolescent hanky-panky, she demonstrates that modesty doesn't come at all from the way we dress. It comes from the heart. But she also demonstrates that modesty determines the way we dress--or, undress, in this instance. Modesty may not begin on the outside, but it will certainly end up on the outside. Sort of like fruit on a tree.

However, legalistic holiness teaching gets the fruit all mixed up with the root, and, as any beginning horticulturist will tell you, this is a serious mistake. Quite serious. Getting the fruit and the root mixed up will have you aerating apples and pruning the ground. Simply will not work. But we often try it. We think we can make people holy if we simply teach them the rules. But, speaking of apples, this is the original sin, the attempt to be holy by learning the rules. This was Adam's mistake. He tried to become godly, "like God," by choosing the Tree of Law over the Tree of Life. It did not work.

Adam and Eve believed Satan's lie that they could be holy by simply learning to discern good and evil. Of course, discernment of good and evil is a good thing in the right context. Hebrews 5 tells us that discernment is the true mark of Christian maturity. But Adam sought discernment apart from relationship with God. He thought he could be holy simply by learning the rules. This is the first instance of legalism, and we still wrestle with it today. So, it is true that teaching on modesty often short-circuits the grace of God that imparts true holiness from within by choosing the quick and easy route of simply dressing up hypocrites with uniform standards.

So, let me say it again. Much of our teaching on modesty is indeed driven by this sort of legalism. And yet, now that I have admitted it, drawing applause from the liberals and stirring suspicion from the conservatives, let me add that just because something is taught in a legalistic way does not make it wrong. We can forbid adultery in a legalistic way, but that does not make adultery okay. Just so, the fact that the critics of holiness teaching can truthfully object that much teaching on modesty is legalistic does not ipso facto prove teaching on modesty wrong. No, just that it is being taught in the wrong way. This is a great mystery that requires much careful consideration. Selah.

Yet, while we are eagerly condemning legalism, I must point out that there are two ways to be legalistic. Herein lies another great mystery. Legalism has two forms, a "conservative" form, with which we are all familiar, and a "liberal" form, with which we are less familiar because it is so cleverly disguised as "Christian liberty." Liberal legalism is even more insidious than conservative legalism because it is less decried and thus less obvious.

In order to grasp this point, we must remember that legalism is, according to my handy dandy dictionary, "strict conformity to the letter of the law rather than its spirit." Think about this now. Strict conformity to the letter of the law can occur negatively as well as positively. In other words, those who rigorously point to the absence of law, which they equate with Christian liberty, as proof they are not required to do a certain thing are just as law-oriented as the person who rigorously points to the law as demanding certain actions. Both end up relying on the law for justification. One says that we are required to do such and so because the law says so, and thinks he is saved as a result of his careful allegiance to the rules. The other says that he is required to do no such a thing, thank you very much, because you cannot show me a law that says I have to. So there.

Both of these folks are governed by law rather than love. Both are legalists. There are some things for which there simply is no law. Like, love, joy, peace, etc., the fruit of the Spirit: "Against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:23) But love requires that we seek the good of our neighbor even when there is no explicit law. And this should be what drives our teaching on modesty. We should seek to manifest love in the way we dress.

This is an important point for the discussion on modesty. Those who point to the absence of any explicit commandment defining what modesty means are still law-oriented in their quest for justification. This is legalism. We must go beyond this legalistic approach and seek a Spirit-led interpretation and application of scripture for these uncertain issues. And because we must be led by the Spirit in deciphering inexplicit principles of scripture, we must afford one another some reasonable leeway in working out the details. This is where charity would be quite helpful.

In conclusion, please allow me to emphasize that I am sincerely seeking a definition of modesty from scripture based on its overall witness from Genesis to Revelation. This is why I point to the coats with which God clothed Adam as the basis for modesty. Their aprons were not enough. This what I have called "the robe standard." This is also why I have pointed to the robes of the saints in the Book of Revelation as proof that the ultimate destiny of man is to be fully clothed. I want to let scripture define modesty. I have no desire to be legalistic in either the conservative or liberal form.

My point rests on this: God explicitly forbids public nakedness and commands modesty. We are required, then, to deal with this issue. We have three options. First, tradition. Second, culture. Third, scripture. We must choose the third way because the others are legalistic in the sense that they impose or refuse rules apart from Christ.

Of course, it is obvious that scripture does not spell out specifics regarding modesty as clear as the Ten Commandments. But that does not release us from the obligation of seeking to explain modesty scripturally. It simply prohibits us from absolutizing our interpretations in a way that disqualifies differing, sincere opinions. We can work with those who differ with us within reason on how scripture defines modesty, be they more conservative or liberal than we are. What we cannot do is reason faithfully with those who deny the authority and sufficiency of scripture altogether in the name of rejecting legalism. That is antinomianism, pure and simple. But explaining that monster word would require another post.

Modesty and Feminism

For some, modesty is seen as a form of patriarchal oppression. Since rules of modesty are nearly always focused more on women than men, requirements for modesty in whatever form, whether rigid rules or even simple discussions such as this, are often seen as expressions of misogynist chauvinism. The right to undress in public is seen by some as essential to feminine self-expression, and any man who states otherwise hates women. Simple as that. For many, nakedness is an ownership issue, as with the related issue of abortion, and women must be free to control their own body without interference. "No one has the right to tell me what to do with my body!" This is the dogma that the sexual revolution taught us.

And the old hippie dogmatists are correct that nakedness is an ownership issue. Indeed, this has been one of the assumptions I have worked from in these posts. (See the post on Modesty and Authority.) But no one owns their body or soul alone. Human being is a partnership. All parental and marital relations involve mutual ownership. Life is never a sole proprietorship, no matter how much we boast about our independence. As Paul tells us, no lives or dies unto himself. We are all connected.

The idea of mutual ownership may be controversial in these days of radical individualism, but in the Bible it is accepted as a given idea. Paul states without a hint of stuttering embarrassment in I Corinthians 7 that the husband owns the wife and the wife owns the husband. This idea is why he can speak of adultery in I Thessalonians 4 as "defrauding" a brother. A wife belongs to her husband, a husband belongs to his wife. And their nakedness, which is as much a prelude to sex as a romantic hug or kiss, also belongs to one another. If no decent man would ever approve of his wife sharing a kiss with strangers, then he should never accept her sharing her nakedness with strangers. A man who steals a peek is much like the man who steals a kiss. Both men are guilty of grand larceny.

Moreover, unmarried girls belong to their parents until they are "given in marriage," an old biblical phrase that is deeply offensive to modern sensibilities, but is still deeply true to human nature and the way God created the world regardless of our petulant protests against it. In the Bible, which reveals the way God created the world and what it means to be human as the image of God, men marry and women are given in marriage. Thus, we all are owned by the relationships that define our personal identity. I am a son, a husband and a father. These are aspects of who I am. I cannot be me apart from these aspects of me. Thus, I am owned existentially. I cannot escape it. This means that my body belongs to those who own me. I cannot do what I want with myself by myself. For example, if I become addicted to drugs or alcohol, I affect profoundly and negatively everyone connected with me. I am connected whether or not I like it. Mutual ownership of self is simply a fact of human existence. So, the feminists were right that nakedness is an ownership issue, but they were wrong about who owns it.

However, this idea of modesty as misogynist repression is exactly backwards. It is actually immodesty that represses women and turns them into dehumanized objects of leering male lust. When men treat women this way, without a grain of respect for them as a person, as nothing more than an object to be ogled or a live sex toy to be handled, then the humanity of the woman as a woman--in other words, her existential feminine persona--is degraded. She is not just being degraded as a human; she is being degraded specifically as a woman. Most strip clubs are fairly gender specific. This exploitation should outrage true feminists.

Moreover, immodesty has deeply affected feminine self-esteem. From movie stars to swimsuit models, from the runways of Paris to the halls of the local high school, the modern immodesty ethos has pornographized our culture and forced our girls to believe that they must look like Barbie to be beautiful. Immodesty has put unbelievable pressure on our girls to keep their weight down unnaturally and their figure reduced unhealthily so that they can look sexy in a bathing suit. Breast implants, tummy tucks, and now, of all things, buttock implants, are tragic indications of a deeply disturbed feminine psyche. And it is the men that have done the deep disturbing.

Women feel like they must keep their eighteen-year-old body, even after they have been married ten years and have birthed three children, in order to keep their husband's interest. Men and women that should be cheerfully growing old and saggy together without a twinge of embarrassment have been deceived to think they cannot be sexually fulfilled if they are not chock full of silicone, collagen and Botox. Come on, Grandma! Grow old gracefully. When will we say that enough is enough and stop the madness? We are destroying our wives and daughters. And it all begins with enculturated immodesty that strips our women of their self-esteem.

So, ironically, it is modesty that best reveals femininity. Modesty celebrates femininity. It celebrates women as women, as full persons and not just as bodies to be gawked at and groped after. The feminine spirit attains its fullness in the context of covenantally faithful and self-respecting modesty. Thus, true feminism, the sort of feminism that actually loves what is womanly about women and does not seek to subjugate women as either caricatured, soulless sex objects or de-feminized pseudo-males, should promote modesty as self-actualizing for women and cut out the foolishness of encouraging young women to discover their feminine self by uncovering their female body.

Immodesty is unloving and unloved. The woman who dresses immodestly is not showing love, for others or for herself, and the man who ogles the immodestly dressed woman is not giving love. As C.S. Lewis said about prostitution, a man does not love the woman he pays for sex. She is simply the "necessary apparatus" required for his sexual gratification. The man cares nothing for her, for her children or her deepest needs and desires. She is just an object to be used, paid and thrown away. In fact, she is paid so she can be thrown away, so that no further obligation is expected. Douglas Wilson remarks that these men love women like little boys love ice cream. Just something to be tasted and devoured for selfish pleasure. Everybody scream for ice cream!

The cultural compulsion toward female public nakedness is a form of male dominance over women. It was men that dreamed this up. And quite a dream it was! Dissolute men have enculturated a so-called feminist philosophy of sexual liberation in order to get women comfortable with undressing in public. And the women went for it. What a deal! The men who first developed and articulated feminist philosophy--and have no doubt, it was men who first did so--went to great academic and intellectual lengths to persuade ordinary women to bare their bodies in public. And their most significant achievement was to convince the ladies that they thought of it.

Modesty empowers women. It does so because modesty is closely aligned with monogamy, and monogamy provides the greatest framework for enduring feminine influence. George Gilder in his book, "Men and Marriage," discusses the significant social power that women have with men when they require them to marry them and provide for their children in order to enjoy sexual prerogatives. It is a sign of feminine strength when a girl insists on marriage before sex. This sort of girl is saying in so many words that she is worth a lifetime.

Gilder shows that social order breaks down when women give men the sex they want without demanding covenantal faithfulness in marriage. When women undress themselves for public display and sleep with men outside of marriage, they are surrendering their primal power in society. They have the ability to tame the animal urge within men, as Gilder describes it, by domesticating them. This is why rape is such a universal outrage. Rape strips a woman of her natural right to say no, and when that right is lost, the fabric of human society comes apart. Modesty empowers women, and women empower the world. Whoever said it is a man's world must not have had a mother.

Moreover, modesty provides protection for women. Modesty is a protective covering, both physically and spiritually. Immodesty makes women more vulnerable to predatory men, and I do not mean this in the sense of the old canard that scantily dressed women are to blame for being raped. Not at all. But it is true that modesty protects women from invasive stares. No doubt some men will stare if a woman is dressed from head to toe in a hazmat suit. But all men will tend to stare when a woman is hardly dressed at all. Modesty protects women.

These ideas of power and protection come together in the practice of modesty. When women accept the false premise that female liberation requires immodesty and immorality, then the tyranny of patriarchy, such as seen in Islamic societies, is replaced by the tyranny of pimps and playboys, such as seen on MTV. Either way, the women lose. The men rule, and the women are enslaved. Unscrupulous men, understanding that men look to lust and women lust to be looked at, exploit the feminine need for male acceptance and the vulnerability of women's natural desire to be attractive, and their women are reduced down to common property in a public harem. This is not freedom, and neither is it genuine feminism. It is slavery.

Enculturated immodesty is a form of sexual abuse. And again, I am not seeking to be provocative, nor am I trivializing sexual abuse. I mean to say, and say it charitably, yet boldly, that persuading women to overcome their natural urge to cover their bodies is a form of sexual aggression forced on them by lecherous men. Most women can describe the extreme discomfort of being visually undressed by some creep at the mall or some other public place. But these days, the creeps have won, the women have given in and immodesty is expected--nay, demanded!--of our girls.

Then, the fathers and husbands who resist this lechery by advocating modesty are accused of being patriarchal chauvinists that seek to oppress women in an outdated, Victorian past (which, by the way, is as much a myth as the myth of repressed Puritan sexuality). Nonsense! Rather, these men simply respect women as women and rise courageously to their defense. Women who are surrounded by men like these are women who live within the security of godly protection and exercise the power of extended and enduring female influence. Who is more empowered and secure, the "hot" stripper dancing naked around the pole, or a dowdy grandma gathering three or four loving generations around her table?

I have carried on far too long in this post. But allow me to conclude with one final thing. It is true that some have taken modesty too far and actually oppressed women under the guise of teaching modesty through overbearing dress standards, though, oddly enough, it is nearly always the women in these oppressive cultures who are the harshest enforcers of the uniform code. There may be nothing quite as vicious as a pack of females attacking another woman that dares to flout the rules. Examples of modesty-distortion would be Amish-style clothing, the dress standards of some radical holiness movements and, most extreme of all, the burka required by some Islamic societies. In reality, this sort of pride-driven modesty is not modesty at all, and we repudiate these extremes.

However, just because some have distorted the idea of modesty and abused women as a result, does not mean that all teaching on modesty is legalistic patriarchalism. Those who equate the two simply have not worked all the way through the implications of their position. Although, speaking of working your way through the implications, I was tickled the other day (I probably should have been more outraged than amused, but I couldn't muster up the indignation) to read one critic of teaching on modesty say that he would not be offended if Christians chose to visit nude beaches and sunbathe in the buff as long as they did not feel condemned by it. Now, either this gentleman is profoundly naive concerning both the human condition and the teaching of Scripture, or he has other reasons for encouraging the freedom to visit nude beaches that the Lord will have to judge. Either way, we are forced to give him kudos for consistency! But, sadly, in an attempt to avoid being judgmental, some sincere Christians fail to exercise good judgment.

No doubt we must insist on discerning the difference between biblical modesty and legalistic modesty, and we shall consider this more closely in a later post. But for now we must strongly object to those who equate modesty with female oppression. In fact, we insist that immodesty is a form of female oppression just as much as overbearing legalism. Both are imposed by profligate men to subjugate women. The bikini is just as oppressive as the burka.