immodesty + its effects on men, women, & the world (1/4)
dear friend,
introduction
Spring has officially sprung here in beautiful VA! The leaves are green, the tulips are blossoming, and the sun is bright… bringing in hotter temperatures and a way for women and men of all ages, Christian and not, to uncover a little more as the days get warmer. Since summer is quickly approaching, today I’d like to talk to you about a (somehow) controversial topic in the realm of Millennial/Gen-Z Christians: MODESTY.
As a Gen-Z’er, born in the good ole’ days of the year 2000, I come to you knowing what immodesty is at its core, how it affects men, how it affects women, and how it affects the world. I also want to touch on the truth of God’s heart concerning modesty, and how, since the beginning, it has never wavered, changed, or been unhinged from the core of the Gospel.
Why do we wear clothes anyway?
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering this, let’s look no further than the start of humanity. Jump into Genesis, chapters 2-3, with me, and let’s see what caused humans to have to wear clothes in the first place.
CONTEXT: God has already created the world in its entirety. In just six short days, God spoke everything into existence. Then, at last, as we read, God creates Adam. He gives him a job. And, he understands that Adam notices something: he doesn’t have someone who is like him. Read the following verses in Genesis 2:15-24:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Did you notice something funny there? After God created Eve, the two “…were both naked and were not ashamed.” Hmm, interesting. Let’s jump into Genesis 3:1-7 & 21 to see where everything, well, changes:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
…And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Do you understand what has happened here? At first, the man and the woman were completely naked, married before God, and not ashamed. Then, once they sinned against the Lord, they “sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” In other words, in a desperate attempt to cover themselves, “knowing good and evil,” God’s original design of man and woman was, to say the least, tainted with sin. They were ashamed of their nakedness, and since they knew of it, it revealed a deeper heart issue: they had sinned against the Lord.
Later, the Lord had to make “garments of skins” to clothe them. Of course, fig leaves aren’t just going to do the trick to cover someone’s nakedness. They needed a more permanent solution to their issue… and, even more, the Lord demanded a blood repayment for their sin. He killed an animal in the garden to cover their bodies and to have justice be done for the sin they committed against Him. Specifically, their sin was their inability to control themselves with the knowledge they’d received from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
To put it plainly, the clothes we wear are a result of our original sin. We cover ourselves because, well, we’d be shamed and ashamed without them. Typically, the only person we are to be undressed with is our spouse. Clothes, as God designed them, point to our heart issues more than anything else.
As we live in a culture that prefers to be more undressed than dressed, God covers us, and expects us to live covered up rather than being undressed for everyone to see.
In wearing clothing, we submit ourselves to God’s authority. As the culture takes one article of clothing off after another, so we realize we need to cover up because we are too weak (clearly) to be able to handle life unclothed. Taking clothing off is now a symbol of rebellion: the Lord demands modesty, so of course, the world will go in the complete opposite direction. Just like the first sin our first father committed, so we commit also as we demand to be rulers of our own lives in not only the way we dress, but also the way we think, act, and more.
What is modesty, really?
Modesty is ultimately more than just the clothes we do or don’t wear. Ultimately, modesty has best been described as a “heart position.” This means that, as you are convicted by the Holy Spirit, so your style, attire, dress, and more will change. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!” From this verse, we can see that our “old self” is to be shown as DIFFERENT than our new self. Typically, this means that we are “bearing fruit,” showing that we are no longer our own, but Christ’s! Therefore, modesty is just one single aspect of this new heart, new mind change. It applies to both men and women in many ways, such as:
how we speak
how we dress
how we act
how we think
…and more!
Paul further expounds upon this idea of the old self versus the new self in Ephesians 4:17-24:
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Who are you to tell me how to dress?
I can hear you saying it now, friend. And honestly, I’m not really someone who has any influence over what anyone REALLY commits their mind to do. We all will one day stand before God’s judgment seat; for me, I’m just doing my best to write what he has propositioned me to write, knowing that he will use this in the hearts and minds of anyone who reads this post. Take from this what He will have you take!
my journey toward modesty
When I was younger, I was not only bullied for my naturally low body weight (my ribcage stuck out through my shirts, my bony, bow-legged legs looked sharp enough to cut through anything, and my face looked hollow and thin, as though I was only one less meal away from a brush with death), but I was always having trouble finding clothes that fit.
Let me just say that when I got my first pair of skinny jeans, I ACTUALLY felt like I was floating! Something that finally fit me was a dream come true. Considering skinny jeans were the only tight pants I was allowed to wear (my dad banned leggings from being worn outside our house — this has since become something I admired him for doing), I wore holes through them like nobody’s business. I was also part of the generation that was OBSESSED with crop tops. They were pretty much all I wore once I reached high school — outside of school, that is. Other than that, my shorts were also always super short.
Everyone else wore these things, I didn’t know how to sew, and that’s all that the fast fashion stores and hand-me-downs seemed to offer — so wear I did, not understanding the full measure of what I was doing or why I did it. Even other Christians wore these things (ahem: the first “influential” Christian figure I’ve seen defend immodest clothing was Sadie Robertson; let the reader understand), so it was okay for me to wear them also… right? It seemed as though only “old church people” stood in the place of condemning such things.
One day, as I was watching YouTube videos where Christian guys would discuss what they liked in a woman, I stumbled across a channel that would soon be near and dear to my heart — GirlDefined. Kristen Clark and the Bethany Beal (now Bethany Baird) were my “red pill moment,” so to speak, into truly living as God has called us to live. For days on end after discovering their channel, I ate up their content; their video topics ranged from dating, singleness, and general living-against-the-grain encouragement, to MODESTY.
Like two wise older sisters, these faithful women of the Lord encouraged a totally different outlook on modesty that I had never considered. After watching several of these videos, I was seriously convicted; and, surprisingly, encouraged. How, you may be asking, was this possible? Well, to put it plainly, although I loved wearing crop tops because it felt fun and trendy, I also DEEPLY loathed it. Being as skinny as I was, I felt like jumping into a trash bag after going out in public in a crop top or bikini. I felt SUPER judged and looked down upon, and that people only thought I was starving myself for this body — or worse, that they were ENVIOUS of it, making them compare their own bodies to it at home or starving themselves to look the way I did. I brought skinny-girl-Tumblr culture to the streets by dressing the way I did, and it left a gap in my heart that the world told me could only be filled if I had loved myself enough to show off my body. Nonetheless, hearing this anti-cultural message of modesty and understanding it in a new, beautiful, non-oppressive, protective way, I dove into the deep end of it all.
Immediately, I dug into my wardrobe and pulled out all of my beloved crop tops, booty shorts, tight and short dresses, and bikinis, and threw them into a trash bag labeled TO GOODWILL. From then on, I’ve fumbled a few times in determining what is and isn’t modest, but overall, my commitment to the cause of Christ in such a way has not wavered one bit.
Thank the Lord for His forgiveness. Praise the Lord that he hasn’t disqualified me from belonging to Him, but has only grafted me in all the more, changing my heart bit by bit to be more like His. Praise be to Him for such!
wrap-up:
Now, this post was merely an introduction to this four-part series of mine on the topic of Modesty. I was originally planning on only having one post with four different essay-type body paragraphs, but as I continued to dig, the deeper I got into the rabbit hole that encompasses modesty and all its little segments. With that said, I hope you genuinely enjoyed this post, dear friend, and I pray you will stay tuned for the next parts in which we will cover the meat of the concept: how immodesty (and, alternatively, modesty) affects men, how it affects women, and how it affects the world at large. I have some fun aspects in them, including interviews, more deep dives into Scripture, and more, so don’t tune out yet!
PS: Here is a Scripture food-for-thought passage (a portion of what we will definitely be diving into here in one of these posts soon)!
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
— Paul (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, ESV)
much love & more,
