The CBE Scroll

Comment by fjs

November 19, 2007 @ 4:53 pm

I agree with what has been said in the post - that often times modesty is expressed as the woman’s or girl’s job to keep men pure. I think it would be better presented to girls that it is important for them to dress with the dignity and honor of being a woman of God, because we do not buy into the objectification of women that the world often holds.

I find some of the presentation of purity in books on male purity to be shaming toward women. The eye bounce… I just want men to look me in the eye and make respectful eye contact. I want to be treated as a person first. The eye bounce reminds me of being seen as an object, and I feel the shame in that. I also find that putting the responsibility on women for the purity of men is shaming.

I had a friend who was very attrative, modeled for a while before becoming a Christian. Even when she dressed very modestly, (almost shabbily, with baggy clothes) she was a target of lustful gazes. It is not all about how one dresses.

Comment by reJoyce

November 19, 2007 @ 6:02 pm

Well, I once heard an elder say women should not be allowed to ‘do things up front’ because he’d be too distracted by them. Basically, he was saying he wouldn’t be able to worship because he’d be distracted by the women’s sexuality. (I’m not sure how he’d avoid this even if it was a reasonable problem. I’m pretty sure there were women to see everywhere he could have possibly looked in the sanctuary, except maybe towards the floor.)

Comment by LMcC

November 19, 2007 @ 7:22 pm

I consider this kind of ‘advice’ more proof that hierarchical teachings are actually self-contradictory. In traditional sex roles, the men are to be in charge and are to lead the relationship, and the women are to submit. End of story, no wiggle room. As I said earlier, if these men want the power, they had better take the responsibility as well. They are the ones who must keep their lust in check. (Hey, we have to do that anyway or risk a bad reputation.) They have no room to blame it on the women if they really believe that they are the rulers of the relationship. If she’s really dressing badly and he believes he’s in charge, he needs to speak up or break up - not take advantage of the situation and point fingers at her afterward.

A lot of times, the woman actually is dressed modestly and the guy just has his head in the wrong place. Let’s face it, some of us are curvy and can’t hide that. Even a burqa won’t hide some women’s figures. We have to do the best we can. Again, a little reasonableness and self-control on the man’s part is needed, not finger-pointing and blame.

We also have to deal with conflicting standards of modesty in different churches and in public alike. My dress slacks and long-sleeved shirt would be fine in every public place I can think of and a lot of churches, for example; but I could not go into a Fundamental church (I’d need a long skirt), an Orthodox synagogue (long skirt and headscarf) or a mosque (headscarf) dressed like this. Do we need the burqa when we leave the house because of these different standards? I certainly hope not.

See comment 73958.

I’ve heard that excuse for keeping women out of the public eye, and it stinks. Do any of these men think that we women don’t notice an attractive man up front, or a man who is dressed immodestly? Do we need a requirement that men up front must look like trolls and wear priests’ robes and masks so they don’t make us stumble? We’re able to behave ourselves week after week if we have an attractive pastor or music leader, and we’re supposed to be the ‘weaker sex.’ Surely those men who think of us that way can control themselves more easily than we do.

Do women need to dress modestly? Yes, and so do men. Do men need to keep their minds in check? Yes, and so do women. Jesus himself put the responsibility for men’s lust solely on the men. Pushing it back off onto the women is a major refusal of the hierarchically-inclined man to carry the responsibility he took on when he claimed he had God-given power over women.

For those of us who believe in mutual submission and mutual responsibility, we will have to answer for ourselves before Christ one day. That’s enough to make most of us think through our actions and their effects on others. Traditionalist men and women alike would do well to understand this and learn to take responsibility for their own actions accordingly rather than passing it off to the ‘one in charge’ or ‘the temptress.’

Comment by Renee

November 19, 2007 @ 9:55 pm

Last year, Australia’s top muslim cleric, here, said, ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside… and the cats come and eat it… whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat?’ he asked. The uncovered meat is the problem, he went on to say. ‘If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred,’ he added. Under public pressure, he apologized.

But, I can see this kind of thinking has extended into the church. The problem is that men are seen as uncontrollable animals and women as sexual goods, commodities. The cleric says that he meant to protect the honor of women, and I believe him. However, both he and some Christians have an idea of protection of honor that makes a woman a precious object rather than a human person.

When you are a valuable possession you act rather differently than a free person. All your thoughts are on pleasing the person who owns you.

Worldwise, women are still described as possessions. I think the phrase ‘all the money, cars, and girls’ speaks to that. It is still accepted that one can talk about women as part of a list of objects.

I’m not sure how to fix that one. Any ideas?

Comment by fjs

November 20, 2007 @ 12:16 am

Really funny story, really happened.

A few years ago, my husband and I visited a church pastored by a woman. When we entered the church a man greeted us. He proceeded to corner my husband and let him know that having a woman pastor was very different. My husband asked why… and the man said this, ‘You know, we men are so visual.’ My husband said, ‘Visual, what do you mean, what does that have to do with your pastor?’ The man replied, ‘Don’t you know? Men are so visual and have a hard time with a woman preaching.’ Now the pastor was dressed very, very modestly and was in all ways appropriate and dignified. After the service, the man cornered my husband again and said, ‘Well, how did you like the pastor?’ My husband shared that he really enjoyed the sermon and felt that the church’s pastor was an excellent speaker. The man seemed dismayed and asked again, if he was bothered by her appearance being that men are so visual!

We left and lost our cookies laughing because of how absurd this man was behaving. He was trying so hard to impune the pastor, it was so obvious and he only disgraced himself in our eyes. We only felt compassion for the pastor at having to put up with him and… we greatly admired her courage.

I find it most frustrating when it is assumed that God designed men to be so visual that they are tempted by the mere appearance of a woman, even a modestly dressed older woman who was attractive but very dignified. It seemed to us that women just being present was a problem for the man in our story.

I think humans have objectified women, the body. We should not blame God for how visual… some… men are. Nowhere in Scripture is it found that a woman cannot preach because of having a woman’s body.

Honest, I did not make this story up.

Comment by Tami M

November 20, 2007 @ 9:09 am

This subject always gets my goat eventually! I can have the best of intentions to discuss reasonably, but eventually…

I’m a woman. I suppose once one becomes a grandmother it’s fair to refer to her in adult terms. I am also ‘curvy,’ not in the fashion magazine use of the word when they use it to refer to fat women. In other words, I have an hourglass figure. In every discussion about modesty I’ve had, why do I come away feeling that they think it was me who was intentionally trying to ensnare men by growing these breasts and this fanny? Like maybe I did it on purpose.

I wear pants sometimes. Even v-necked tops. Am I to be forced to dress in shapeless sacks all my life and want other women to have to do it too?

There is nothing I can do to change the attitudes of those who feel that ‘men are visual’ and can’t help looking at a woman and that it’s the woman’s responsibility to dress in such a way that they are hidden. But I can raise men for tomorrow who will look at women as sisters in Christ. As joint heirs to the promise of grace. As human beings. And when I listen to my sons talk or respond when hubby and I talk about the church we used to attend who wouldn’t allow women to teach adults (I now teach the adult Sunday school class at our new church), I think maybe I’ve succeeded!

Comment by Christine

November 20, 2007 @ 2:29 pm

I have so been there!

As a youth director who ran Christian camps for five years, we had a ‘dress code policy.’ And now as a pastor, we had carried that same policy when going to water parks or any other youth event, until we realized what damage we were doing.

Two things happened:

1. Non-Christian girls came to our events and immediately were thrust into the legality of our program and were made to feel ashamed!

2. Young men were never taught to fight for themselves. When we realized that no matter how much we told our girls to cover up at a public water park, there was nothing we could do about all the others girls there that were wearing things more revealing.

That’s when we turned attention to teaching our young men.

Comment by sally

November 21, 2007 @ 2:15 am

I grew up in an eastern country where it is the done thing for women to cover up. I wore a shawl on my head all through my teen years. It never stopped the young men in the street pinching my bottom, leering, or making dirty jokes out loud at my expense. Obviously, dressing ‘appropriately’ wasn’t working!

A true story: the local zoo in this country, open to families, was doing a brisk trade, but the women visitors complained about groups of young men harassing them for being out in public (although appropriately dressed). The solution? Ban women from the zoo.

Another true story: a friend of ours at a theological college (in our Christian western country) had to pick an ‘issue’ for his issues paper. He chose ‘how to encourage young girls to show less flesh when they get dressed for church’ because it was too distracting for the boys.

I want to know… where do you draw the line?

Comment by Mary

November 21, 2007 @ 7:01 am

It seems to me that when people, men and women, are slaves to sin, this kind of thing is common (highly inappropriate clothing, leering, and ‘being distracted’). A man who is truly concerned about his sisters in Christ will look to himself and deal with his own sin. A woman who is truly concerned about her brothers in Christ will look to herself and deal with her own sin. Making legalistic rules about women’s attire is just another form of burqa-izing women for the sake of men’s sin, in my opinion. Remember, even with the burqa, the religious ‘authorities’ still roamed the public places and beat women who allegedly showed too much of their bodies. The difference between that and demands of ‘Women, dress modestly because you’re causing men to lust’ among Christians is only one of degree.

However, the modesty issue generally resolves itself quite well when a Christian woman is both genuine in her faith and free to dress according to her own conscience. The lust issue generally resolves itself when a man is both genuine in his faith and loves his Christian sisters as himself. Each takes responsibility for his/her own Christian growth and witness and doesn’t play the oldest game in the book: blaming someone else for their own sin.

Comment by Mary

November 21, 2007 @ 7:11 am

As usual, this post and comments are being taken out of context by those determined to smear egalitarians. (It does get quite old, and no truer for the repetition.) I am amazed that these Christians insist that women are responsible for men’s lust. I simply want to observe that no one here has advocated that Christian women should dress like ‘Miss Spears’ - how ridiculous!

I’m inviting Christians who link to this blog to deal with the truth, in context, about what’s being said in this post and comment thread. However, I suppose that there would be very little to complain about if they would do that.

One more time: Women are responsible for their own behavior, so as to honor Christ. Men are responsible for their own behavior, so as to honor Christ. And that is what has been said, consistently, on this topic in this venue.

Comment by jlp

November 21, 2007 @ 8:35 am

It would be good for the Christian community to encourage all men to look at women as people, rather than as sex objects. The Christian community needs to start dealing with the negative effects of treating women like sex objects, and how it’s hurting both women and girls.

I have been thinking about this topic for a long time. I’m wondering if psychologists within the Christian community need to start working with ministers, pastors and lay people to begin to tackle this problem.

Comment by tiro

November 21, 2007 @ 10:55 am

See comment 74061.

Mary, those who are inclined to find fault will find it because they will create it. Pulling a sentence out of context seems to be one of the primary skills of neopatriarchs. Those who have been at it for many years know exactly what they are doing.

Anyone who reads all of a post can tell that the primary aim here is to do what is right for the sake of both men and women.

Those who applaud male rule in everything, and who also make women responsible for men’s sexual sins, only move themselves closer and closer to the evils of viewing women as the property of men. And as someone shared, even the extreme position of having women encased in a burqa, the women are still beaten for not being hidden enough. There is no end. It never stops. It’s a bad road to follow.

Comment by LMcC

November 21, 2007 @ 12:12 pm

See comment 74059.

…the modesty issue generally resolves itself quite well when a Christian woman is both genuine in her faith and free to dress according to her own conscience.

This is completely true.

All of us girls who grew up at the strict Christian school and church I attended were put under heavy-duty dress codes, but we all talked about and wanted (and some even got away with wearing) the sexy clothes. Getting legalistic on women’s clothes instead of dealing with the heart of the matter for both sexes only creates a ‘forbidden fruit’ issue. Under a mix of the sexual double standard, legalism for women, men being free to blame women for their own lust problems, and teaching women that their only worth was as a wife and mother, the teenage girls at church and school had to live under a lot of confusion and pressure. The guys just turned out to have pretty much the morals of alleycats.

As an adult believer who takes faith seriously, is free from legalism, is free to examine what modesty really means, and is free to examine Jewish and Muslim views of modesty as well as Christian views, genuine modesty is actually easy. The revealing stuff no longer has any attraction. In our culture, modest dress just makes good sense. It doesn’t mean I’m in a skirt all the time, but it does mean I’m not putting anything on display that shouldn’t be.

The traditional Christian view of modesty is actually very dirty in many ways. I’m amazed now how much sexual imagery and negativity about men and women alike we were exposed to at an early age in an effort to keep us girls covered up. I realize now that some of the ‘pro-modesty’ arguments actually came from people with perverted ideas of sex and womanhood. I’m actually much more impressed with some of the Jewish and Muslim views of modesty (even if I don’t agree with how far they may take it). The Muslim women were pretty much ‘my body, my business,’ while the Jewish women wanted to make sure that what people did see expressed their personhood and did not objectify them. What I really liked about the Jewish views I found was that once the modesty requirement was met, beauty was then strongly encouraged. Try finding beauty in a lot of the frumpy and shapeless clothing being pushed at many Christian churches!

Comment by jlp

November 21, 2007 @ 7:05 pm

Frumpy and shapeless clothing? All the churches I go to women just wear jeans and t-shirts and other laid-back clothes. No one dresses up. Maybe that is the solution - don’t dress up for church and everyone will be dressed appropriately!

Comment by tiro

November 21, 2007 @ 7:20 pm

Try finding beauty in a lot of the frumpy and shapeless clothing being pushed at many Christian churches!

So true. And that is a big turn-off for some unbelievers. Not having a religious axe to grind, they think Christians have gone wacky. And some of the clothing the ultra-conservatives have sometimes pushed on women, I’d agree. Muumuus are only attractive in Hawaii… and not on all women.

Comment by tiro

November 21, 2007 @ 7:23 pm

I like that, JLP (see comment 74126).

Casual is the new dress look! But some jeans are pretty frumpy too. Clean, neat, casual, and covered without smothering… and no skin-tight clothes. Does that about ‘cover’ it?

Comment by Deb

November 21, 2007 @ 8:25 pm

Yup, yup. It is most annoying!

I blogged about a similar subject, here, earlier this year.

Comment by Rev. Carlene

November 21, 2007 @ 9:42 pm

Mary Ann, I hope you posted a response on that young woman’s blog asking her to remind those same guys that Jesus - the boss - told them they are not to look at a woman lustfully, otherwise they’ve sinned. So they need to take responsibility for doing that and not just pass the buck onto the girls.

Comment by Amy

November 21, 2007 @ 9:54 pm

I worked for a Christian outdoor agency which led backpacking, whitewater rafting, etc. trips. This organization had a policy where the male volunteers/staff could take their shirts off but the women could not just wear a jogging bra or bikini top but had to have their midriff covered. They used the reasoning that men are more easily aroused by the visual and they had had problems in the past. I objected to this policy mainly because it blames women for men’s lust. I said it would be better just to have a general policy advocating modesty and sensitivity to those around and to express that if there were any problems they would be addressed. Since the policy was laid out during a time when the guys and girls were separated, my comments never got very far. Personally, I had no desire to be exposing my midriff, but it really was not conducive to genuine Christian community, I felt, when I overheard a female raft guide asking the director if it would be all right for her to wear just a jogging bra in the 103 degree temperatures of Hell’s Canyon when all the male guides were bare.

What do you think?

Comment by tiro

November 21, 2007 @ 10:04 pm

See comment 74144.

Amy, I’d be more inclined to offer a compromise. I’ve seen those skimpy light weight sleeveless t-shirts with big scoops in front and back and huge arm areas, that both the men and the women can wear. Women can wear them over their sports bras. Keeps the midriffs covered on both men and women, yet airy enough to keep cooler in extreme heat.

Comment by Donna

November 22, 2007 @ 12:11 am

I think that Christian women should keep covered up mainly because it is correct. How covered is covered? Well, what I have seen is that when it is hot, women show much more skin than men do. Yes, men take their shirts off, but also tend to wear swim trunks that are longish.

Women, on the other hand, show as much skin as possible.

I’ll give one example, but I could give many. I was getting on a plane in Merida, Mexico. It is always hot there. Anyway, there was an American family in the check-in line in front of me. The father and the mother were both fully covered. The son was fully covered, maybe even in blue jeans. The daughter of the family had on really short shorts - as short as shorts can be and not be underpants - and a very skimpy tank top. I wondered why she was almost naked, but the rest of her family was fully covered up.

It was weird. However, this is how many girls tend to dress. We were in an airport, too, not at the beach. Yes, at the beach her dress was fine, but not in an airport.

No, I don’t care if the midriff shows when it is hot, but why do women want to be so undressed? What motivates young women to want to expose a maximum amount of skin without any thought to what is appropriate? Leave the whole ‘guy’ thing out of it. What are girls thinking?

What are older women teaching younger women about modesty anyway? Then, shouldn’t we Christians have a higher standard in dress than the world does?

I am not sure what world you ladies live in, but girls are being exploited big time by our over-sexualized culture. Don’t you agree? It shows in young girls’ dress, in my opinion. Don’t you care at all about that?

Comment by Donna

November 22, 2007 @ 2:39 am

P.S. Yes, I am sure that you care about how young girls are sexualized. Sorry to imply that you did not.

I agree that women and girls should not be singled out and told to cover up when guys are allowed to do as they please.

Yes, guys need to learn to control themselves, as should gals. I agree. I do think that girls like to dress so as to attract guys and that guys like to dress and act so as to attract girls. Showing more skin is one way that is done, so we have to be careful, in my opinion. At this point in time, I think that we females tend to be more careless in our dress in this area of showing skin than males in general.

I think that in the Old Testament, both men and women were supposed to cover up. In fact, when the priests ministered, they were never supposed to expose their nakedness and all that.

If what is portrayed in Christian art as typical Old Testament clothing is true, both men and women were pretty much equally covered up. That makes more sense as far as I’m concerned. God has his reasons for wanting us to cover our nakedness.

Yes, I know that we can ask ‘how covered is covered.’ However, if we want to glorify God, we will at least factor in his revealed will on the subject and at least pray about it and challenge one another to pray about how to dress to the glory of God. I don’t think that’s a complementarian versus egalitarian ‘thing.’ It’s a godly ‘thing.’

I think that it is true that guys tend to have a bigger problem with looking at women than women have in looking at men. This is conventional wisdom, and I don’t see that it is false. However, I don’t think that appealing to young women to cover up because their brothers will be stumbled is all that motivating myself. I think that it is true, but that it does not impress us women all that much - and maybe never has.

I think that dressing to the glory of God should impact Christian women and that is what should motivate us. I think that we should consider why we wear what we wear and who we are trying to impress. This leads to thinking about how others are impacted by what we wear, when, and where. No, we don’t have to be frumpy or all in bondage about it, but if we know the Lord, we will want to dress to please Him, right? Then, we are also to consider one another as better than ourselves, per Philippians 2. No, I am not saying that we should allow the weaknesses of others to control us, but we should factor the ‘one another’ principle into how we dress and act around the opposite sex, no?

I don’t think that what I say should be all that upsetting, right? I suppose that it is, though. By the way, have a blessed Thanksgiving, all of you. God bless.

Comment by Mary Ann

November 22, 2007 @ 3:37 am

Carlene, Yes, I have written on the blog that I originally saw this post. The discussion is still going on there, and I just submitted the following post:

The reason why I commented in the first place is because of the underlying inaccurate message that unfortunately gets communicated again and again in Christian circles. As I mentioned earlier, when in a discussion about sexual purity, the line of thought goes:

1. Men get aroused by what they see visually, so…

2. …women need to cover themselves to keep them from lusting.

There is usually an omission of an exhortation to the men. The message that therefore gets communicated is that it is women’s fault and responsibility, and the responsibility is taken off of the men. My beef with this is that it gives women an inaccurately negative concept of her body and her sexuality.

Let’s talk about what this means practically. As a Christian woman, I hear the message that my body causes sexual feelings in a man and that is sin. Therefore, sin and guilt are related to my body and sex. As a Christian woman, I am told that I am not a sexual being (and should not be one) - at least not as much as men are (men are the sexual ones and that is sometimes implicitly excused because ‘they are visual; they can’t help it; it’s biological’) - and besides that, being a sexual being is bad and evil, so if I am that, then I am bad and evil. As a Christian (single) woman, I am told to keep pure, stop thinking about sex. All this seems fine when I am single - but what happens when I am to get married and God sanctions the freedom to have sex?

I’ll tell you what happened to me and to many other Christian women when we got married to these wonderful husbands that God gave us - it’s difficult to turn the switch from off to on in a split second and say yes to this great gift that God had in store. It’s difficult to really embrace it as a beautiful, good, right and pure thing - even if I know it in my head, it’s very different than getting through to the rest of my body. Just because I say ‘I do’ doesn’t mean that all those years of thinking of ’sex as bad’ can change as soon as I say those words. It took a lot of processing and prayer to get to the right understanding about my body and sexuality - and frankly, all that angst could’ve been avoided if the right message had been taught in the church. (Sadly, I have married friends who have not yet resolved and think of what they are being robbed!)

This is why I believe it is important that we communicate the correct message when it comes to sexuality. Women, your bodies were created by God; you are a sexual being, and this is good. You need not ever be ashamed of who you are. Men, if you are having trouble lusting after women, you need to submit your passions to Christ. Learn to control your passions; do not put the blame on women.

Christian women should not be responsible for men’s lust.

Comment by Mary Ann

November 22, 2007 @ 3:47 am

Hi Donna (see comment 74151). I think we are all in agreement here that we do not want girls to be exploited by our over-sexualized culture. I don’t think any of us would allow our daughters to wear skimpy clothes. But the main issue, as I see it, is the underlying message about a girl’s body and sexuality - and the matter of responsibility for men’s lust. Christian women should not be made responsible for men’s lust. See comment 74163.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 10:31 am

I’m a big fan of women dressing modestly. But I know that there are cultures where people don’t wear clothes or don’t wear much clothes. And yet women’s bodies are not sexualized in those cultures. That’s why I think psychologists need to get involved in the issue of why men sexualize women’s bodies as they do. It’s not something that goes on in all cultures like it does in ours. We need to ask ourselves why women’s bodies are being sexualized in our culture, and what we can do to change that.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 10:40 am

I want to add that I’m not implying women shouldn’t get married and enjoy sex, they should. What I’m talking about is the fact that the shape of women’s bodies are heavily sexualized in our culture, such that women have to constantly watch what they wear. Yet in other cultures, both men and women go around without clothes on, and the women’s bodies are not sexualized. People in those cultures obviously enjoy sex also, yet women’s bodies are not seen as something that just by their very appearance turns men on. Women can move around in those cultures without clothing and yet have no fear of being sexually objectifed by men. Why is our culture different?

Comment by Mary

November 22, 2007 @ 10:42 am

JLP, I think that the church, if (big ‘if’) we get our heads screwed on straight about the issue, is uniquely qualified to make a real change about the sexualization of women. If the church will reject this world’s notion of patriarchy and start holding all human beings responsible for our own behavior and for behaving in a Christlike way to one another, that will be completely counter-cultural. Change must be at heart-level. If we accept as godly the world’s notion that women are responsible for men’s lust, we become just a legalistic, ‘Christian’ version of Sharia law. Instead of clerics beating women, our leaders presume to judge ‘You’re dressed like Miss Spears; you look like a cheap tart!’ any woman who doesn’t conform to their nebulous, shifting ‘modest’ standard in some way.

Only when women are free to choose modesty will it be true modesty. Otherwise, it’s outward conformity. Modesty is about far more than clothing choices. And especially in the areas not having to do with clothing choices, some of the men trumpeting patriarchy in the church could use a whole lot more modesty, in my opinion.

Comment by tiro

November 22, 2007 @ 10:49 am

See comment 74138.

JLP, excellent observation. I have wondered the same thing. The next question is whether it has always been this way since America was colonized, or did it start with the British. And if it started with the British, and I’m not inclined to think it did but it might have, then when did it start there?

This attitude has been around for a long time. And, it seems to be getting worse in that more men are viewing women as objects rather than fellow humans. Yet, interestingly at the same time there is a growing revelation that women are indeed human with the same emotions and intelligence then men, just operating differently. Hopefully, the revelations of equal but different will win out.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 11:22 am

I believe that our culture teaches men to associate the shape of women’s bodies and nakedness with sexuality. It also teaches them that anytime they are stressed out, down in the dumps, have their feelings hurt or one of any number of other negative feelings to reduce them by focusing on sexuality. I don’t think men naturally have stronger sexual feelings than women do, it’s just they are encouraged to use sexuality to cover up painful feelings. They get used to using sexuality as a way not to deal with unpleasant emotions.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 11:39 am

Tiro, I think the sexualization of women’s bodies in Western culture has gone on probably for at least a thousand years or more and probably just as long or longer in the some parts of the Islamic world.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 1:54 pm

Tiro, the emphasis on large breasts is a fairly recent development, it probably started around the middle of the twentieth century. Although our culture emphasizes large breasts as being naturally more attractive to men, it’s strictly a cultural phenomenon. I think the increased sexualization of women’s bodies that we see nowadays is due to the influence of pornography, which worships female body shape.

Comment by LMcC

November 22, 2007 @ 9:43 pm

JLP (see comment 74125), sorry, I forget that not everyone has had the experience of strict Fundamentalism. When I say ‘frumpy and shapeless,’ think some of those baggy long jumpers, culottes that are too full to be comfortable, out of style dresses that are so loose that only the curviest of women show any shape at all, often toned-down colors… we’re talking seriously depressing. Even the ugliest jeans would be an improvement.

Mary Ann (see comment 74163), I’m not sure if this will come off as disagreeing with you or agreeing but from a different viewpoint, but I know that Rebecca Groothuis mentions a hierarchical author who says that men are ‘human beings’ while women are ’sexual beings.’ We’re told certainly that we shouldn’t be sexual beings, but it seems that it’s been decided that women really are sexual beings - and therefore must be covered and controlled at all costs, or blamed for men’s lusts if they show a centimeter more than the powers that be allow. Who am I kidding here? Even if the women do toe the line and men lust, blame them anyway.

Ack. Both the church and the world alike oversexualize women. The world does it by encouraging women to expose all they can to attract a man and telling women they’re not worth anything without one. The church does it by blaming women for men’s lusts whether they’re covered up ‘enough’ or not - and also telling women they’re not worth anything without a man. When the church and the world both agree on an issue, it’s time for the church to realize it messed up somewhere and reexamine its views. I’m grateful that the egalitarian wing has already done so, recognizes the worth of women as God’s children regardless of marital status, and places responsibility on all involved instead of only the women.

An aside/prayer request: I got hit by a truck yesterday. (Okay, it was the back side of my car that got it, but still…) I’m fine (to the relief of some and the dismay of others, I’m sure) and so is the other driver, but we’re both about to find out if we’re really in good hands with Allstate (not the real company covering the person who hit me), if you know what I mean.

Comment by jlp

November 22, 2007 @ 11:00 pm

LMCC, I’m glad you explained. I have to admit, I’m glad I missed the ‘Fundamentalist’ experience over female clothing!

Comment by Liz

November 23, 2007 @ 1:13 am

One comment regarding culture. Things vary from one place to another, for example, in some places ankles are seen as very enticing while bare breasts in another country is a non-event. Others have a thing for the inside of a woman’s thigh, and so on.

The interesting thing is that there’s nothing recorded that I’m aware of in these countries about what is appealing to women when they look at men. It is just assumed that women don’t look - which is not accurate - just that it’s not culturally acceptable almost anywhere for women to notice men’s bodies.

While I’m all for modesty for both genders, I have observed that there is just as much illicit sex happening in the most conservative of circles as anywhere else, which suggests it’s a bit more involved than what clothes people wear.

Comment by Donna

November 23, 2007 @ 2:12 am

See comment 74165.

Hi Donna (see comment 74151). I think we are all in agreement here that we do not want girls to be exploited by our over-sexualized culture. I don’t think any of us would allow our daughters to wear skimpy clothes. But the main issue, as I see it, is the underlying message about a girl’s body and sexuality - and the matter of responsibility for men’s lust. Christian women should not be made responsible for men’s lust. See comment 74163.

As I see it, the main problem is that even many Christians do not live their lives in submission to God. We have believed the world’s message that ‘anything goes.’ We have swallowed the poison of the present age that says we are free to do what we want to do, where we want to do it, how we want to do it, and with whom we please. We are not free in that way as Christians. We are set free so that we can, in love, serve one another. We are set free so that we can freely serve God out of a heart of love.

If we are submitted to the will of God, then we can pretty much do as we please since our basic desire is to please God and not self. This submission to God and his will, for his glory alone will show even in how we dress. No, I am not saying that there is some kind of dress code for Christians, but even such mundane things as dress will be affected by the lordship of Christ.

Basically, clothes are about covering up our nakedness. Obviously nakedness is a sexual ‘turn-on.’ However, the main reason is that God wants our nakedness to be covered. Knowing that he wants it that way should be our guide, not cultural considerations, even. How covered is covered? The person who wants to know and understand will pray about it and follow the Lord’s leading, right?

Then, Scripture calls it an abomination when men dress like women and women dress like men in the sense of cross-dressing.

Clothes in Scripture are all about covering nakedness, identifying the sex of the individual, and modesty - especially in the sense of not drawing attention to oneself and one’s wealth by how they dress.

I agree that women should not be held responsible for men’s actions. Each person is responsible for his or her own actions. That is the message of the Gospel - I confess my sins and trust God to forgive me and cleanse me in the blood of Christ. Neither do I think that men should be blamed for the sins of women. A woman should not try to hide behind a man in any way in order to justify her own bad behavior, either.

Accepting personal responsibility for one’s actions is like ’sick-em’ as far as repentance and faith go.

Even so, there is a sense in which we can stumble one another and be held responsible for how our actions affect a brother or a sister.

Do you have any disagreements with what I say, here? I think that it is pretty basic Christian teaching whether one is egalitarian or complementarian.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

Thank you, Mary Ann. We had a very nice day. I’m still stuffed!

Hey, thanks for your response. No, women are not to blame for men’s sins, but both men and women can stumble one another - and not just by the clothes we wear or don’t wear.

God bless, Mary Ann, and please take care.

Comment by Christy

November 23, 2007 @ 7:29 am

The tribes that I am familiar with where the men and women dress with little or no clothing tend to be very patriarchal. The women are treated like property and conflicts often develop because one man shows too much interest in another man’s wife or wives.

The tribes we work with have access to clothes now, and almost everyone uses them - not to cover their nakedness as much to protect their skin from the elements - including insects. The status of women has greatly increased among those who have become Christians. Their full equality is still in process though… modesty is a relative term, defined differently in different cultures.

Comment by fjs

November 23, 2007 @ 9:31 am

I remember when I was breastfeeding my children… some were so offended when it was the most natural thing in the world to do. It is natural, God-designed… but some were so provincial that one had to feed one’s child in virtual isolation.

Also, I remember being pregnant meant that anyone could walk up and touch my body. I felt frustrated about all of the anxious body rules associated with being a woman.

I think we need to lighten up a bit about the body and see one another as human, functional, God-designed for amazing purposes… not idealized, sexualized, and objectified. It’s just a body.

Comment by jlp

November 23, 2007 @ 11:12 am

Christy, can I surmise that from the tribes you are famaliar with there still is sexual abuse of women, even though women’s bodies are not sexualized as they are in our culture?

Comment by Christy

November 23, 2007 @ 3:16 pm

See comment 74261.

There most likely is, though I am not close enough to the project to hear many details of that kind. Human beings are human beings - naturally prone to be self-centered and willing to dominate others to get want they want. Tribal customs usually restrain behaviors so that people can live in community. But men, in general, dominate the women. It is not uncommon for tribes who have newly made contact with the ‘outside’ (within the last several decades) to still have multiple wives. Many of these marriages were arranged before or when the females were just reaching puberty. But as I said, among the Christian tribes, the women are receiving greater respect.

Comment by Donna

November 24, 2007 @ 2:14 am

Christian women should not be made responsible for men’s lust.

In what ways do Christian women try to make men responsible for their bad behavior?

I can think of several examples. One is in the area of divorce. Many women, even Christian ones, excuse their adultery by saying that their husbands did not understand them and sympathize with them. Their husbands were too busy working or whatever. I can think of several women in my own circle of acquaintances who have done that, and several were even Christians.

Should Christian women be allowed to get away with that kind of nonsense?

Comment by jlp

November 24, 2007 @ 3:52 pm

Today I was watching a cartoon developed for pre-teens. I was dismayed to see the boys dressed appropriately and the girls dressed sexually. In addition, last night I watched a movie with two pre-teens. The boys once again were dressed appropriately, and the girls in one scene dressed sexually. Even when you watch adult material the men are always dressed appropriately and some of the women dressed sexually.

I think the Christian community need to think about conveying to women that the media is exploiting women and girls by dressing them sexually. They are glamourizing something that degrades women and girls. And the Christian community should be emphasizing that to their congregations.

Comment by Trevor

November 24, 2007 @ 10:35 pm

Hi all, a lot of good and helpful things are being said in response to this original post in terms of Christian attititudes to one another and modest apparel within different cultures, etc. The over-arching thing of course is that in our industrialized and materialistically-driven culture, sexuality is a huge selling point. What is most disturbing to me, as a male, is the stereotypical attitudes from the prevailing culture are so evident and taken for granted in the modern church. What I mean by this is that so often, from the pulpit, the language, innuendo, and sexual suggestiveness of our host culture portrayed is accepted as the way things are rather than targeted as offensive to God and in need of being realigned. While ever we continue to unquestioningly adopt the attitude that men are sexually stimulated visually by a woman’s appearance and that women are ultimately responsible for men’s wrongfully expressed sexual urges we are not going to get very far in this complex debate.

For me the issue is as old as the fall. Innocence was the prevailing influence before sin entered the scene. We read in Genesis that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. If we are going to talk about how men and women were designed by God to interact together sexually then we need to go back to the garden. Since then everything has been corrupted. I mean everything. It’s no good our simply saying that men are this and women are that. While that is a sad reality, since the fall nothing is as it should be or could be without God. We can’t, or shouldn’t be so overly influenced by what men and women have become as a result of thousands of years of fallenness. Adaptation to our fallen natures and thousands of years of accumulated cultural conditioning have made us what we are today, not to mention sin and disobedience!

We can’t blame God for twenty-first century male sexual urges, or the women for simply ‘being there’ to stimulate them badly. In Christ, both men and women are to take responsibility for their actions toward one another. A huge leap forward would be to see one another primarily in a non-sexualized way, as people of significance, and to appreciate each other’s personalities, character, spirituality, gifts, and abilities, etc. The church has a great opportunity to major on this possibility but so often it divides congregations along sexual lines and so called gender roles by encouraging separate men’s and women’s ministries instead of embracing all as one in Christ and promoting cross gender inclusiveness. To my mind we will only finally free ourselves of the problems highlighted in this debate when we can fully embrace the Apostle Paul’s encouragement in Romans 12:2 (NLB) ‘Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.’

Naturally I believe that egalitarian Christian communities have the greatest ideological platform from which to engender this kind of inclusiveness. I also believe this to be God’s heart on the matter. Let me hastily add, in conclusion, that as a male I am bound to strongly resist the temptation to objectify and sexualize women on the basis that it is a fallenness problem and not simply a male problem. Equally, I would imagine that a Christ-centered woman would resist the temptation to display her body inappropriately because that desire, too, may emanate from the fall. Surely our motivation is that we both would want to behave, in our own generation, as new creations in Christ.

Comment by jlp

November 25, 2007 @ 9:24 am

Part of the problem (not all) is that the media makes dressing sexually look glamourous and fun for women and girls to engage in. So females of all ages have to deal with the constant message from the media that dressing sexually is the way to be female.

I know an eight year-old girl from a conservative Muslim family who wants to wear false breasts, bikinis, and short tight skirts. She’s dying to do this. Her parents are encouraging her not to want to do this, but she is not listening to them. They are trying to go gently on the issue so that she won’t be tempted to dress this way when she gets older out of rebellion. But they are really upset about this issue. So am I, as I love this child very much.

How do we explain to women and girls that dressing sexually hurts them, as it tends to encourage men to look at them as sex objects, rather than as human beings? And how do we explain to them that their value is not in being sexually stimulating to men, but in their inner person?

I’m not blaming women’s dress for male lust. Our society needs to start dealing with the destructive effect male lust is having on women and girls. But women do need to protect themselves from male lust. And the glorification of sexual dress for females in the media is keeping them from understanding the harm that comes to them when they dress sexually. What can we as Christians do about this?

Comment by jlp

November 25, 2007 @ 9:30 am

Trevor was talking about money driving the media to sexualize females. I wonder if the current sexualization of the dress of pre-teens isn’t an attempt to provide images that pedophiles want to see. After all, the media sexualizes adult female clothing to make money off of non-pedophile men. Perhaps now they have found a new audience to make money off of, pedophile men.

Comment by Brian

November 25, 2007 @ 3:39 pm

Actually, the one-sided teaching I always heard was that guys should not lust after women (absolutely true!). I was just commenting today to my in-laws that I have never heard one sermon about modesty for women.

Comment by Can Dance

November 25, 2007 @ 3:54 pm

I definitely think there is something to the pedophile theory. It’s interesting that girls are encouraged to look like women and women are encouraged to look like little girls. It’s totally messed up.

I have two young daughters and I hope to raise them in a way that they are confident to not buy into the message that their looks and sexual availability is all they have to offer. I hope to have honest conversations that were missing from my own life with my parents rather than just the ‘don’t have sex until you’re married’ and leave it at that.

I also breastfeed in public on a regular basis without a blanket because I think breastfeeding is normal and everyone else’s hang-ups are their own. That is what breasts are for, and I am not in a habit of ‘whipping it out’ but even the thought of what I am actually doing (gasp) makes people squeamish, to the detriment of the health of our society. It’s quite sad, I think.

Comment by jlp

November 25, 2007 @ 4:18 pm

Brian, I’ve heard both ‘men don’t lust’ and ‘women dress modestly’ taught, but very lightly. I wish both were taught in more detail but with a psychological bent. I wish men were encouraged to see if they are using sexual feelings as a way to drown out negative feelings and women were encouraged to realize that their value in life is not in the sexual pleasure their appearance gives men. Of course we need to encourage men not to objectify women, and women to understand how their dress can affect men also.

Comment by Terri

November 25, 2007 @ 6:57 pm

Whether a women wears modest or revealing clothes in the end really doesn’t matter in a lot of instances… what it really boils down to is an assumed male privilege which gives them power and control over women’s bodies and minds. (Keep in mind that a psychological inferiority of the female sex, if not introduced in childhood will surely make itself known in adulthood.)

I have a missionary friend that was in the Middle East for a time, and she said that she always went to the market places in groups (covered from head to toe of course). She said that the young men would line the market streets and check out all the ‘covered up’ women as they walked by. She said they did not hesitate to touch you or whistle to the other fellows down the line to let them know that thier was a woman coming thier way that they needed to ‘check out.’ She said that they were especially fascinated with plus size/larger women because they had larger breasts. Needless to say, she was on edge by the constant disregard of her personal space and the objectification.

Western women just set themselves up for the inevitable (i mean objectification) by dressing seductively, which in turn gives men a justified rationale for what they do. What did my friend do to deserve the hands on her behind? She wasn’t showing her behind. What did she do to deserve the pinch on her breast? She wasn’t showing her breast.

Don’t get me wrong, dressing modest is appropriate for Chrisitan women as well as for men… but in the end sometimes it just does’nt matter about all the precautions you take to ensure that you are not a temptation to men.

The Scripture says that men are drawn away of their own lust and enticed… it starts with the person and what is in his heart. Can a woman really draw a man away and cause him to sin, if the man had no inclination to lust in his heart to begin with? It’s a heart thing.

Comment by Trevor

November 25, 2007 @ 7:16 pm

To take up your last point, JLP (comment 74371), about money driving the media to sexualize females.

In Australia recently there was a television debate on this very subject, I think that the program was, ‘Difference of Opinion’ and the topic was something like, ‘Are we exposing young girls too soon to adult images of sexuality through the advertising medium?.’ Naturally, there were panelists from both the media and advertising present as well as child therapist educators and concerned citizens who had created a forum to combat such evils. The lady voicing concern had considerable experience and was citing what we considered to be irrefutable evidence to support her case and the child therapist educator was in total agreement. However, the advertising person, a woman with young girls herself, could not see that the suggestive advertising was in any way to be faulted. She and the media consultant, himself an educator in a leading Australian University, emphasised repeatedly that advertisers only give people what (through the advertising medium) they want. He was adamant that the media is powerless to influence and set agendas. He was convinced that people themselves know best what they want and advertisers just follows the trends. Now you and I know this to be a ridiculous assumption but that is their firm belief, therefore, in their minds, they are not harming anyone. The argument was put that surely a huge part of advertising, in order to make money, is to predict a market place and devise a market strategy that will capitalise on market potential. And, that with this in mind surely young women and girls were being exploited without full consideration of the images being presented and the harm it may do in over-sexualising young girls at far too early an age. A number of products were listed that fell into this category. Again, both the advertising and media gurus refused to see any connection. To the concerned observer and parent the connection was obvious but they failed to convince the media representatives. The usual argument was trotted out, insufficient tested data to make a case.

So, JLP, we do have a real battle on our hands and I really do feel for your Muslim friends in the dilemma with their eight year-old that you have cited. The only way to combat these things, that I can see, is to dry up the money tree. Somehow we have to convince enough people to boycott these sexualized products and it will have to be done by the common people, for the common people, for the ultimate, common good. We cannot expect educated media people to come up with just solutions, that is until they themselves have been harmed by their own hype, or their children badly influenced by their own products.

I’m sure that the Lord will honor our efforts at flagging concern and modelling different lifestyle choices. Pray for media moguls to ’see the light’ and make a big noise among their professional colleagues. Of course we’ve not even made mention of the media fascination with movie stars and gossip columns that a frenzied teen bopper brigade is fed constantly and the way that this influences moral choices!

Comment by Trevor

November 25, 2007 @ 7:42 pm

Hi Brian. I’d have to say that I have heard both sides of the argument for modesty presented (your comment 74389) but very often in an apologetic, even humorous way that played down personal responsibility and played up men or women’s ‘natural’ propensities so as to minimise (though that may not have been the intent) the impact on the hearer.

In men’s meetings I have heard more specific messages about the harmfulness of lust and the use of pornographic images. I’ve not heard a great deal (from the pulpit) about the harm that society does in objectifying women in the way that it does. Again, it is my belief that we are best served to combat a negative with a positive. If we elevate women above stereotypical images and roles we are better able to appreciate them as people and are less likely to objectify or sexualise them. That is not to say that we do not find women attractive, or in the case of our wives, mutually sexually stimulating, but that we value women on a much higher level. Jesus did not seem to have this problem. It seems to me that (in the Gospel accounts) he didn’t have a ‘taboo’ mentality but just acted very naturally toward women and that they responded in the same way toward him. I think that we can learn a great deal about how we should behave humanly just by observing Jesus in his everyday walk with ordinary people. His own culture was very stereotypical and male-dominated but we see nothing of that from him. As Christians we have a great deal to rethink and relearn if we are to have a positive influence on a society and culture gone horribly wrong.

Comment by jlp

November 25, 2007 @ 8:40 pm

Terri and Trevor, you two really hit the nail on the head. You both gave me so much to think about. It’s such a difficult world where power and priviledge work together to hurt girls and women.

The media shouldn’t talk about sexualizing girls too young, they shouldn’t be sexualizing girls or women - ever. It’s not done to boys or men, why is it being done to girls and women? Are we not fully human? Guess not, in the eyes of the media. The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil (as well as power and priviledge).

Comment by Mary

November 25, 2007 @ 9:30 pm

I think much of the problem in the contemporary, Western church lies with those who focus primarily on the differences between men and women rather than our shared humanity. Over and over, I read influential voices that insist that we not treat men and women the same, that we deal with them as male or female, and very differently at that.

This preoccupation with that which divides us is, in my opinion, both juvenile and damaging to the body of Christ. It makes the most important thing about someone else into a matter of their sexuality. I appreciate your observation about Jesus’ dealings with women, Trevor; it’s one that did the neon ‘this is important’ thing for me some years back. Jesus respected women as human beings and dealt with them as the unique human beings they were. Just as with men, no two accounts of personal meetings with Jesus are alike. Jesus didn’t have two modes of interaction - pink and blue - that he used; he met each human being where he or she was and honed in quickly on what was most important to that individual.

I happen to think that it’s an interpersonal form of laziness to subscribe to a ‘men and women are different in x, y, and z ways’ mentality. We’re all different from each other in myriad ways, and we’re all a whole lot more alike than the ‘gender roles’ folks make us out to be. Our first father, speaking of our first mother, was right on the money, in my opinion: ‘Here, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.’ He got it: she was like him. Not that she was identical to him, but she was far more like him than she was different. I don’t happen to think that we have had significant developmental drift in the ensuing generations, to the point that the gender segregationists are justified in their churchified ‘Mars and Venus’ codes of law.

Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Both are supposed to become conformed to the image of Christ. Why settle for anything less?

Comment by Donna

November 25, 2007 @ 11:43 pm

I was just commenting today to my in-laws that I have never heard one sermon about modesty for women.

Modesty for women is definitely a biblical principle. I am not sure why all the cultural information about what is done in the ungodly media, Muslim cultures, or in tribal settings is all that relevant. The Bible runs counter-culture.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss has good materials for women and young girls, here.

Then, one of my big concerns about much that comes out of the egalitarian movement is the weak teaching about personal responsibility. For some, the main issue is holding men responsible for their behavior, with very little said about women being held responsible for their attitudes and actions.

Comment by Trevor

November 26, 2007 @ 7:24 am

You are so right Donna, the Bible does run counter-culture. But, I think that you are missing the point. What we are lamenting here is that much of what passes for church culture is being shaped by the dominant culture and the subliminal inculcation of media driven values, moreso than Scripture. In that respect what is being presented in these posts is incredibly relevant. We are encouraged in Romans 12:1-2, ‘… to not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.’ In order for transformation and renewal to take place we need to know what the world is doing to ’squeeze us into its mold.’ That’s the only way to learn how to resist this pressure.

Further, to your statement that ‘one of your big concerns about much that comes out of the egalitarian movement is the weak teaching about personal responsibility;’ again, most of these posts are about taking responsibility and living responsibly as Christ’s ambassadors in our personal world. When viewed in their totality most of the posts and comments on this blog site do attempt to be fair to both genders. Naturally, as an egalitarian site, much of what is posted is directed at the injustices that women feel and is of comfort to those who have been thus victimized. At times you appear to me to be taking statements out of posts and commenting critically on those while ignoring the substance and thrust of the entire post. I consider that unfair.

Comment by Mary

November 26, 2007 @ 7:28 am

Perhaps it needs to be repeated yet again:

Women are responsible for their own behavior, so as to honor Christ. Men are responsible for their own behavior, so as to honor Christ. And that is what has been said, consistently, on this topic in this venue.

Could we deal with the topic, please? Matthew 5:27-28 is quite plain about who is responsible for lust in the heart. Yet, the religiously popular ’solution,’ from people including DeMoss, is for women to be more outwardly modest while virtually nothing gets taught in the pro-patriarchal circles about the tough job of mastering sin (including the sin of lust) through the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit.

And, we wonder why women in the world scoff at Christian ‘modesty’ and men in and out of the church continue to have such uncontrolled lust in their hearts. People aren’t stupid. They see through superficial, inequitable human rules; they at least know that the Bible says if a man lusts, he’s sinning. Let them see true transformation of believers’ lives, however, and they notice. As it is, they’re hearing mainly blaming of women coming from the Christian patriarchalists.

Comment by Liz

November 26, 2007 @ 8:50 am

So many good, solid statements about the situation and the truth of each person being responsible for her or his behavior and attitude.

Biblical principle is what we should look for and put into practice but as has been said already… many Christians are more affected by the world around us than they realise. That’s why the Romans 12 verses are so applicable. It says ‘Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold’ which tells us that unless we purposely prevent it, we will be shaped and influenced by the world (whatever we perceive that word to mean).

The KJV says ‘Don’t be conformed…’ which suggests that unless we make some effort, we will be conformed to the world because it is so subtle and we are immersed in it whether we like it or not.

So much of Christian teaching (beginning with very young children) is what not to do rather than what is right to do - reactionary living and often without good solid reasons why we should or shouldn’t do certain things.

Very few people begin their Christian life without preconceived ideas, family influences and a whole host of culturally-influenced values. That’s what the ‘renewing of your mind’ is all about - allowing the word of God to work its way into all the crevices of our souls (mind, emotions, and wills). This all takes time and we are all a work in progress so we should be patient with each other as the old saying goes ‘God isn’t finished with me yet!’

I personally thank God for CBE and the many wonderful Christians associated with the group who want to honor Christ and the Bible and help people to see the heart of God in all the issues of life.

Comment by LMcC

November 26, 2007 @ 11:53 am

Egalitarianism weak on personal responsibility? Wrong. Egalitarianism is all about personal responsibility. If anything, I dare say that only biblical equality is truly concerned about personal responsibility for all believers.

Back in my pre-biblical equality days, women had all of the responsibility and men had pretty much none… or if they had any, I sure didn’t see it. Women simultaneously had the responsibility to submit to the men in their lives and give them power over everything, yet they were somehow supposed to set the moral compass in their relationships. That made sexuality a minefield. If she gave in sexually, she was causing him to sin/not setting the moral tone/wouldn’t be forgiven this side of eternity. If she defied his sexual demands, even if what he asked was clearly wrong, she was unsubmissive. She was doomed if she did and doomed if she didn’t. Oh yeah, staying single wasn’t an acceptable option, either.

Men, on the other hand, got away with having the morals of alleycats. No, wait, I’m insulting the poor little alleycats by saying that. Sorry, kitties. It was ‘boys will be boys’ with a vengeance. If his sexual sins were found out? Her fault. She’s pregnant? Her fault. Where is the personal responsibility for him? Nonexistent.

Only biblical equality puts the proper focus on the interdependence of all believers and the responsibility of all believers to respond to God themselves, allows all believers the freedom to make their own choices, reminds all believers that their choices do not affect only themselves, and warns all believers of the consequences of improper actions. There is not an extra level of no-no-no for women and an extra level of we’ll-ignore-that-one for men.

I’m not even talking about just sex. I’m talking about the whole of life. Every believer has the freedom and power to serve God as he wills, and every believer has the responsibility to serve God as he wills. Women can no longer ignore or deny God’s calling by saying their pastors or husbands won’t support them. Men can no longer overrule God’s call on the lives of their wives and daughters. We’re all responsible for our own actions before God and before others, period.

Yet somehow, pointing out that men are just as responsible as women are before God for their sexuality is seen as saying that women have less responsibility. In reality, men and women alike have the highest possible levels of personal responsibility as a result of believing in biblical equality.

Comment by Terri

November 26, 2007 @ 12:04 pm

Coming from a holiness background from my youth, I was taught to dress ‘as becometh holiness’ and this was specifically directed at the women and young girls. I never had a problem with this, as it was scriptural. But, what I took issue with was where did men get the ’specifics’ of what was holy and what was not holy for women. What I noticed is that even like denominations placed different expectations on thier women from one individual church to another… no two churchs were ever alike. As for the holiness church that I attend the preacher has no need to preach ‘clothes line’ sermons as we like to call them because we know and accept the scriptural principles about modesty.

I look at personal holiness as just that… personal (between you and God.) Look at it this way, the Bible says that when a man finds a wife he finds a good thing - that’s great. But, the Bible never tells a man what woman would make him a good wife, that comes through personal revelation from the Lord Jesus himself. The Bible tells us to bring our tithes to the storehouse, but he doesn’t tell us which specific storehouse/church, that comes through personal revelation with Jesus Christ himself.

Sure, the Bible tells us to dress in modest apparal, but then never details what modest apparal is supposed to look like. We have to many men that have tried to ‘clarify’ God’s Word with much specificity and tedious details, and all they have succeeded in doing is confusing sincere Christian women and men that are on a search for truth in how to live out thier daily lives as a Christian (they remind me of the Pharisees in Jesus’ time). What happens in the process is individual growth is thwarted in the young Christian and they begin to depend on church teachings as thier standard of holiness instead of depending on Jesus to reveal to them his will and his standard of holiness.

Comment by fjs

November 26, 2007 @ 12:21 pm

I think we need a really solid theology of the body. I like the verse someone used… Trevor, I think… that spoke of being naked and unashamed in Genesis. The key idea being shame… there is so much shame circling around the body, for both men and women.

Shame for not having a ‘perfect body’ - too fat, thin, short, tall, etc.

Shame for not having big enough muscles.

Shame around the lust.

Shame at growing old and wrinkled… whatever.

The body is used in service to God and one another, a temple of the Holy Spirit and to be cared for and honored. It’s a body and we make so much of it. I think, too, Paul speaks about not relying on the flesh… we do not often take that idea literally enough. It is not about the flesh, it’s about the Spirit and what results when we are united with Christ and one another in the Spirit. If that is a reality we cannot look at one another from a human vantage point… but as brothers and sisters, joint heirs in Christ. We are literally, in the Spirit, united with Christ. It is a reality. If we could really grasp that… it might change so much.

I think we could relax a little and quit taking the body so seriously. Men and women… because I think the sexualization and lust is rooted in that vanity around the human body.

It’s just a body. It will return to dust.

I love observing older folk… they are so less concerned about such things. The men hang out with the women without worry and anxiety about being feminized, or lusting… they are so much more relaxed… grateful for life and movement. It might be a gift of aging that we could learn from.

Comment by Terri

November 26, 2007 @ 1:53 pm

Let me add a statement concerning my last post. God does give us some light in 1 Timothy as to what some attributes for holiness for women entails; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. When I refer to ’specifics’ around church teaching I am talking about things like these: women can’t wear open toe shoes, women must wear pantyhose, Women cannot wear a red dress, women must wear thier hair up, or the opposite: women must wear their hair loose and flowing… i have heard all of these placed in connnection with holiness for women. Have you?

Remember, Jesus said in Scripture that it was man’s traditions that made God’s commandments void. The church majors on minors and a lot of people’s faith becomes a burden to carry when Jesus said just the opposite - ‘for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

Comment by Will

November 26, 2007 @ 2:05 pm

I think we need a really solid theology of the body… The body is used in service to God and one another, a temple of the Holy Spirit and to be cared for and honored.

I agree with you, FJS, that evangelical theology does lack a real robust theology of the body. It would also seem that, in its absence, Christians (and their children) are prone to buy whatever the current culture is selling.

I would argue that what the current culture is selling is not merely the objectification of women, as has been well documented here, but mass objectification of the body (male and female) in general. That is, unsure of what the body actually is (to be ‘used in service to God and one another, a temple of the Holy Spirit and to be cared for and honored’) the current culture easily turns the body into an object merely ‘sexual’ or otherwise. This is more than just a bad thing, as anything that deprives the body of what it is meant to be – a vessel for the glory of God – is antithetical to a Christian understanding of the body and indeed evil.

I think the increased sexualization of women’s bodies that we see nowadays is due to the influence of pornography, which worships female body shape.

We need to ask ourselves why women’s bodies are being sexualized in our culture, and what we can do to change that.

I agree that we need to understand why our culture objectifies and fantasizes, lusts, and abuses, but I think that to a degree, we ought to view such issues as symptomatic and ask also why our culture treats the body in such an evil manner – as empty and meaningless.

Comment by LMcC

November 26, 2007 @ 2:45 pm

Terri (see comment 74451), I also had to put up with unusual and sometimes contradictory dress standards. Either women couldn’t cut their hair at all, or they had to leave enough to look ‘feminine’ (as determined by the pastor or school administration). Either they could wear no slits in their skirts, or they could only if the slit stopped at the knee. Sometimes wrap-around skirts were banned, sometimes not. My home church banned women from wearing any skirt or culottes with a front zipper because it ‘pertained to a man,’ but other churches didn’t stress over that. Sometimes pants were okay in the privacy of home, sometimes pants were forever banned.

The devil was always in the details. With my luck, if I had ever switched churches when I was a kid, I’d have had to pitch my entire wardrobe… not for immodesty, but for nitpicky and meaningless details. Ehhh, no thanks.

Will (see comment 74453), the Fundamentalists and charismatic groups I grew up around definitely had no clue about a theology of the body. Some had a reasonably sane view of the body, of course. Others were way out there. They got so hung up on the flesh-spirit split that anything ‘fleshly’ was sin. Make-up? Forbidden. Can’t let the women get vain, could they? Or it was allowed, but with nitpicky rules all over it. Ear piercing? Sometimes forbidden, but never more than two earrings per ear. Sex? Obsession, forbidden fruit, sometimes both at once. I even had a man tell me that his wife left him because his wife thought sex was for procreation only and he didn’t. She thought denying him was the godly thing to do, and they ended up divorcing.

I wouldn’t say the Fundamentalists ever went along with the culture on any issues dealing with the body, except maybe some below-the-neck fitness standards. If anything, they consistently did the opposite of the culture, even if they ended up with contradictory standards. Needless to say, confusion reigned about what was desirable in a mate in nearly every way, although nobody would admit that.

Comment by jlp

November 26, 2007 @ 4:56 pm

Hey everyone, all your posts have been enlightening. I have enjoyed them all.

I wish the church would deal more with helping men overcome their addiction to pornography. Of course, I would like them to use psychology to help men with the addictions part. Just working on this issue alone would help the Christian community stand out from most of the world.

Comment by Donna

November 27, 2007 @ 1:08 am

I wish the church would deal more with helping men overcome their addiction to pornography.

Do you think that women have a problem with soap operas and erotic ‘romance’ novels?

Comment by Donna

November 27, 2007 @ 1:11 am

P.S. The idea of comparing men’s problems with porn to women’s problem with soaps is the fantasy angle. No woman can live up to the porn star image in real life. No man can live up to the idealized, romantic male that are often presented in the soaps.

I don’t think that men have a worse problem with fantasy than women do, myself.

Comment by jlp

November 27, 2007 @ 4:43 am

I look forward to a time when Christians, Jews, and Muslims can work together to solve the problems of porn addiction and the sexualization of the female body. I know it’s not just Christians who are concerned about this, but also people of other religions.

I think we need to examine this issue from a psychological and cultural standpoint as well as a biblical standpoint. I think using knowledge of psychology and culture can help us in our biblically-based desire to help human beings treat each other in a non-lust based manner.

Comment by jlp

November 27, 2007 @ 4:57 am

Will, you said:

I agree that we need to understand why our culture objectifies and fantasizes, lusts, and abuses, but I think that to a degree, we ought to view such issues as symptomatic and ask also why our culture treats the body in such an evil manner – as empty and meaningless.

That’s why I think we should be looking into using psychology in our tool kit of helping people overcome sexual addition. There are people out there like Dr. Patrick Carnes and other psychologists who are effectively helping sexual addicted people, both men and women, understand the roots of their problem.

Dr. Carnes has written several books on sexual addiction, I’ve read three or four of them and found them very insightful.

Comment by Mary

November 27, 2007 @ 6:55 am

JLP, I’ve noticed that in some Christian circles, it’s popular to trash professional psychiatry and psychology, much as some Christians also trash conventional medicine. They (wrongly, in my opinion) claim that to utilize these tools is to lack faith in God to heal and transform.

Then there’s also the patriarchalist mindset that equates admission of any sin with weakness, which is the ultimate sin for men. Thus, men deny there’s a problem so as not to be labeled in their religious culture with a worse problem (i.e. struggling with lust is ‘normal’ for men, but weakness is ‘wussiness’).

Sad state of affairs, it seems to me, but I see it over and over here in the Bible Belt, where it’s wrongly assumed that being a Christian means one agrees with the patriarchalist teachings of a number of notable leaders of that movement. in other words, the very worldview that contributes to the lack of accountability for men is also most likely to discourage those men from seeking (one form of) effective help.

Comment by fjs

November 27, 2007 @ 9:32 am

I agree with you, Will… the body of both men and women is sexualized and worshipped… and we need to go much deeper than we have been to determine the roots of this objectification. I have long been unsatisfied with the remedies for body worship and sexualization. (And maybe instead of speaking of lust, we should perhaps speak of body idolatry). They seem so much surface fixes… when perhaps as you suggest, idolatry is the bigger issue.

That would hit both men and women at the core. When a certain body form is idealized and set up as the item of worship… then women try to meet it and men seek after it. Serious anxiety ensues.

A healthy respect for the body as a vessel of God, honored in kingdom service, cared for and nurtured as part of being whole and holy but not idolized, sexualized, or objectified.

Will, just to play on your last comments… the emptiness of objectification of the body, both men’s and women’s, versus the body as being filled with the Holy Spirit, suggests so much more.

Paul speaks of the body as a tent that we live in while here on earth… it is wasting away. It, like idols, is temporal, not eternal. I think Paul invites the Christian to focus on what is eternal and enduring.

Comment by fjs

November 27, 2007 @ 9:42 am

Just to throw out some thoughts… might we go deeper to the philosophical underpinings of our Western worldview about the body?

I think that thinking about the male and female body originates in Greco/Roman philosophy. Attitudes are so inscripted in our culture that what is a lie feels true, because it has been said and done so long.

I think some of these viewpoints about the body, what men are and women are, need serious biblical challenge. Instead, I think what happens is that this world view is a lens that distorts our interpretation of the Bible. What is really cultural inscription becomes ‘God’s design for men and women.’ And we find in Scripture what we see in our culture and inherited worldview.

Comment by Donna

November 27, 2007 @ 2:58 pm

And we find in Scripture what we see in our culture and inherited worldview.

What we see in Scripture is God covering up naked people and exhortations about modesty specifically said to women. We are also told that cross-dressing is an abomination. We are told to submit the members of our bodies as instruments of righteousness, not of unrighteousness. Husbands and wives are told that they are not the boss of their own bodies for sexual gratification or the witholding of sexual union within the marriage.

What we also see in Scripture is that men are responsible for their own actions and women are responsible for their own actions. If a man does not wish to control his lust, he will have to give an account for that. If a woman does not wish to obey God when he tells women to dress modestly, she will have to give an account for that.

Holding men accountable is the right thing to do. So is holding women accountable for their own actions.

None of this comes from Greco-Roman anything.

Comment by jlp

November 27, 2007 @ 8:23 pm

Mary, it’s sad, even in other parts of the country some well-meaning Christians disparage the value of counseling and the help of psychologists. I can only pray that this attitudes changes.

Comment by fjs

November 27, 2007 @ 8:42 pm

Donna, you missed my point.

Comment by Liz

November 27, 2007 @ 11:50 pm

I’ll try to explain… when we talk about culture, Greco/Roman influences or church fathers’ pronouncements, we are explaining how this all came to be.

There’s a long time since what we call ‘the fall’ and the ramifications of the curse on the ground and the skewed relationships between men and women which developed from there are what we inherit - it is part of our sin nature.

When the New Testament was written, these results of sin were showing up in the lives of people from the different areas where the Gospel was preached. 2000 years on and the results are still there and in many ways are magnified where societies do not honor God and so give many opportunities for ’sin to abound.’

When we talk about counselling, etc. we use some of these ways to help people recognise how their sinfulness shows itself. By recognising how sinfulness works in our own lives, we have a better view of how to ‘put off’ the old life and ‘put on’ the new life in Christ. It doesn’t happen automatically but is a daily choice - sanctification is a growing, developing state as we learn to ‘walk in the Spirit and so not fulfill the lust of the flesh.’

This goes for men and women, whether it’s girlie magazines, internet, soapies, romance novels, or whatever.

Comment by fjs

November 28, 2007 @ 11:25 am

In the early development of the church, the church began a dialogue with Greek and Hellenistic philosophers… there was some syncretism that took place in theology that affected how we view the human body. Particularly, men are of the mind, more like god/gods, women are of the flesh, just above animals. Women were associated with lust, and Eve was imbued with this assumption, defined often as a temptress and the one responsible for the fall of humankind. These were associations about men and women that came not from Scripture itself but were part of the philosophic lens of the times.

I think some of these attitudes fuel the western love/hate relationship with the body and contribute to our struggles with lust/sexualization and objectification. If we could recognize these non-biblical roots and sort them out - deconstruct them, we could perhaps better deal theologically and spiritually with such issues.

We need to be very careful about attributing to God’s design and Scripture that which could be an assumption based on a philosophy in a time past that did not honor the dignity of women.

Comment by fjs

November 28, 2007 @ 11:29 am

Regarding psychology and therapy… very helpful because it can help us deconstruct some of our beliefs that fuel struggles with lust and body image, etc. It also helps us understand how we turn to sex and other things as ways to curb undealt with emotional pain, grief, and loss. Helps us become more reflective of what is ours to own and we are then able to stop projecting our stuff on others.

Comment by jlp

November 28, 2007 @ 9:59 pm

I just realized that Will and the others are right, our culture does sexualize men! They just do it differently than they do with women. I had never thought of that before.

Comment by Will

November 29, 2007 @ 1:14 pm

FJS (see comment 74524), for more on objectification being an emptying, just think of pornography. When a man (or woman) views pornography, there is no one else there - no person, no communion (as enacted sexually). Ultimately what there is is the act of communion emptied of its communal nature - leaving just the act. Objectification, then, is emptying in an utterly anti-personal manner.

When persons are emptied to the point of being ‘merely’ anything (in this case merely sexual), they cease to be communal and therefore personal. Standing opposite this is the utterly personal notion of communion with God (and consequently the possibility of communion with other persons) made possible in Christ.

How, then, are Christians to affirm the body as something, perhaps in a personal manner (that is, not emptied or objectified)? In other words, where would we begin to construct a theology of the body?

How are Christians to view the body? How have Christians historically, for better or worse, viewed the body? How does Scripture view the body?

Comment by Will

November 29, 2007 @ 4:59 pm

One more thought regarding this emptying and objectifying and its relationship to sexuality. Think about how easy it is in the prevailing culture today to obtain sex apart from another person (and even how encouraged one is to do so – sexual ‘fulfillment’ is considered a right). It seems that somehow we have even rendered the other person completely unnecessary to the sexual act!

And, this need not only apply to sexuality. It seems that our prevailing culture is very good at making people into ‘merely’ anything, whether it be a consumer, a marketing demographic, or otherwise. It is just that the body, and the sexualization connected to it, is a big one, persistently broadcasted.

I am starting to think that this objectification is not so much a matter of worshiping the body as it is stripping it of its relationship to the person, and the potential for communion with that person. Thoughts?

Comment by Liz

November 29, 2007 @ 8:36 pm

You are so right, Will, and what comes immediately to mind is the virtual world of cyber space where people can engage in all aspects of ‘life,’ including sexual liaisons, without really being there… How weird and how soul-destroying!

Comment by Mary

November 29, 2007 @ 10:34 pm

I like to study how the Scripture