When we were first married, we had a dusty old vacuum cleaner—nothing like the modern HEPA filter vacuum cleaners you can get today.  With that cleaner, every time you vacuumed the house you’d find that you could hardly breathe.  And taking in that much dust—it can’t be good for you.

It reminds me a lot of the stuff that we permit to enter our minds and hearts on a daily basis.

As important as it is to keep our outsides pure and modest, it is important to make sure that we are clean all the way around. That means that we should be taking care to put in to our bodies as well as making sure that the things around us have a testimony that is pleasing to God and hospitable to others.

This year we’ve been attempting to focus more on what is coming into our lives and through that focus I’ve been thinking more about what we let into our bodies.  What is it that we spend time watching?  What are we passionate about researching?  Where does our spare money and time go?

It’s just like things we would find in our house or our kitchen.  Whether it’s air purifiers, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners or dehumidifiers, we want our air clean, pure and moist.  We want to filter out any allergens and make sure that we can breath.

When it comes to what we drink, we put in water filters, use juicers and blenders to make sure that we only get the best to drink.  (Crazy thing that just a few generations ago water had color!)

When it comes to our minds, however, we’re often much more lenient about what we put in, and we don’t always filter it.  I believe that a lot of the immodesty that we see today comes from feasting on immodesty in our entertainment.  It’s not a reason, but an excuse.

So how is your inside?

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Men used to have to pay money just to see knees and thighs.  Now, they can see just about whatever they want to – or don’t want to - every day all day long in the media and out in public, even at the grocery store.

Young women learn that showing a lot of skin is sexy- and that to be beautiful and popular, they have to dress to be as sexy as possible.  This is even affecting very young girls now in middle school and elementary school – which is absolutely terrifying to me as a mom and as a woman.

Many girls think they are just being fashionable or cute.  They are completely unaware of how guys think and what they do with what they see.  They do not understand that the more skin a girl shows and the more of her female form she reveals, the more guys and men will willingly or unwillingly imagine having sex with her.  Most girls would be SHOCKED if they knew the thoughts their clothing choices were causing men to have about them.

And then there is the opposite problem in our culture, too.  Married women – who by God’s beautiful design for sex inside marriage should be giving their husbands plenty of opportunities to see their beautiful feminine bodies – are largely dressing too modestly in their own bedrooms with their husbands.  Many married women wear sweats and flannel pjs – which is fine sometimes, but our husbands are visual and I want to see us embrace the way God designed them to be.  That is going to require that we give them plenty of times to see us scantily clad and yes, naked.  Otherwise we are sending our husbands out into a sexually over-saturated culture where they are continually bombarded by sensual images of other women with no ammo or backup from their marriages to help keep them pure.  We have a HUGE amount of power as wives in this area to either build up our husbands and help them in their battle or to leave them dangerously alone in a world of immense temptations without any assistance.

I want to see wives making sure that their husbands have plenty of sensual images of their wives to think about as men must struggle daily against the temptation of lust.  I want us to be sure we are ministering to our husbands sexually to give them the best situation possible when they must face the world each day alone and minimize perhaps their greatest vulnerability- sexual temptation.

I do understand that when it’s cold, it’s hard to get excited about wearing almost nothing.  But maybe turning up the thermostat for 30 minutes or so could be worth it to our husbands – or a nice hot bath or shower can be a great way to accomplish our goals without freezing to death!  I also greatly appreciate that moms do need to be careful to be modest around their children- especially their sons.  That’s what robes are for!  But husbands deserve and need (more than most wives can really appreicate) many opportunities to see their wives being sexy, beautiful, feminine and alluring just for them.  That means having a light on sometimes, even!

As Gary Thomas says in Sacred Influence – “sex is the glue that holds marriage together”.   The more I understand how God designed men, the more I see that God designed each one to savor looking at his wife’s body.  I would like to encourage married women to  be willing to give up the excuses of too much fat, too much cellulite, too many stretch marks, too many wrinkles and give their husbands the gift of seeing and savoring their wife’s body.

So before marriage and outside of marriage…

• Modesty is a gift to the men around us and keeps them from struggling with powerful visual sexual temptation.
• Modesty protects women from unwanted sexual advances and reveals a lot about her character from a man’s perspective.
• Modesty is a gorgeous neon sign to some really amazing, godly guys that a girl deeply values herself,  has great treasures in her soul and that she cherishes the riches of sexuality and femininity that God gave her.

But inside marriage…

• A woman’s modesty needs to give way to a celebration of God’s design for the one flesh relationship and a selfless giving of herself to the delight of her husband.
• Intimacy in marriage is the only place there can be a fulfilling, holy, beautiful sexual relationship with zero guilt and zero remorse.
• God designed the sexual relationship in marriage to be exhilarating, beautiful, passionate, safe, wholesome,  and better than anything the world could ever offer!

I’d love to see us turn the tables back to modesty in public and before marriage and sexiness in marriage.  We could avoid so much pain and misery and experience so much joy, peace and blessings of God if we would get these two areas straightened out.

I pray for each of you to find the amazing life God has planned for you and all of the blessings that come from doing things by His design and in His timing.

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One of the highest forms of pride is the idea that I need only be concerned about myself and that I need not worry about those around me or how my actions will affect them.  We see this in young children all the time—they want what they want when they want it, and if they don’t get it they make sure that they are heard.

When women are confronted with the idea that how they dress affects a man, the common response is, “Well, he should control himself!”  broken_pieces shares on her blog, it’s important that when we act, we take into account how our actions will impact others:

I had all the good intentions when dressing, to please myself and God. I never had intentions to provoke men. But does that really matter?

Pastor Al Martins once said, the purity of  your motive does not negate the effects of your actions. That means, that inasmuch as I was dressing with pure motives, the fact that I was a stumbling block to many men cannot go unnoticed, rather ignored by God. Heb 10:24 tells us to provoke one another unto love and good works. But what do we do when we dress scantily or less modest? We are putting our brothers in a compromising situation and even though they have a personal responsibility to be pure we are not helping them in any way. We are provoking them to lust, to covet that which is not theirs and to probably fall into the sin of adultery or fornication because of that small mini or LBD.  Christ said if you look at a woman lustfully, you have already committed adultery with her. Then again, adultery is not one way, it is two way. The person who lusted and the person who caused the lust are both on the wrong.  Christ said woe unto the man whose hand causes sin. So like Robbert G. Spinney, I will ask, ‘are you an accessory to adultery?’  Do you participate in the breaking up of other people’s homes by the way you dress?

[Modesty – Woman’s Thorn  via Christian Femininity]

While I totally believe that the man is responsible for allowing himself to succumb to temptation, I ask the female readers, is it right to exercise your liberty and become that temptation to the men around you?  Is this something that helps to build up and edify, or is this an exercise of pride?

We must make sure that our heart attitude toward modesty is correct, before we can actually see that purity reflected in our lives!

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Purity, I fear, has gotten mixed up in people’s minds with the caricature of Puritanism, which, in the popular imagination, is a dour, brittle revolt against all the pleasures of the flesh.

Puritans were in fact very earthy people, robust in their affirmation of life, not by any means ‘Victorian’ (another word grossly misunderstood today in being made a synonym for all that is negative). Neither the concept of purity nor the doctrines of the Puritans deny life. Rather they refer back to the very Giver of Life Himself.

Purity means freedom from contamination, from anything that would spoil the taste or the pleasure, reduce the power, or in any way adulterate what the thing was meant to be. It means cleanness, dearness—no additives, nothing artificial—in other words, ‘all natural,’ in the sense in which the Original Designer designed it to be.

- Elisabeth Elliott  [God’s Women on Modesty]

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We spend so much time on this site talking about clothing that I think that it’s important to remember that modesty is more than just clothing.  It’s an external expression of an internal state.  It’s a desire to show who we are instead of what we are—and who we are should be something pure!

I was reminded of this when reading a post, Modesty: From the Heart, at Stay-At-Home Daughter as she starts a spring series on Modesty:

I think a women can be completely modest in regards to being covered properly but still have the attitude of immodesty. I think we often forget that modesty is not just about a list of rules on what not to wear (though rules surly aren’t all bad) but rather it is a life style and state of heart that should overflow into many areas of life. A woman can dress discreetly but her speech and body movements can still be seductive and vulgar. Rarely is a women’s movements and speech accidentally alluring. No, in most cases when we act this way it is because we have a heart problem, because deep down inside we are dwelling on the wrong thoughts and because we let those wrong thoughts turn into wrong desires and wrong desires into wrong actions.

I think that she’s right—and the same can go for men.  If what we dress like on the outside is not reflected on the inside, we’re a hypocrite.  We show one thing and are another.  We need to be men and women that want to live a pure life, and that want to be reserved because of it.

How about you—how is your inner life?

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Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Proverbs 4:23

I don’t think we realize just how important  it is to guard our hearts. I believe it is so important to understand this at as young an age as possible. Guarding our hearts protects us from heartache, regret, and future trust problems.

How do we guard our hearts?

One of the surest ways to guard our hearts is to not give it away until we’re married.
Our hearts need to be saved for our future husband or wife. This includes:

• our secrets
• our affections
• our fears
• our total trust
• our insecurities
• our intimacy, all aspects

Why do we guard our hearts?

Guarding our hearts protects us and saves the most intimate parts of ourselves for our future spouse.  When we give personal pieces of ourselves out to someone we  like, or even believe we love, and down the road it doesn’t work out, they take that piece of us with them. They will always have it; something that should have been saved only for our future spouse. When we date several people, we give out our heart again and again, believing they are safe each time. But unfortunately, 99% of the time this just isn’t so, since we will only marry one person out of all the people we date.

I am not talking only about physical intimacy. Obviously this is a very important part of guarding our hearts and keeping ourselves pure before God and our future spouse. Guarding our hearts is much more than physical intimacy alone. Our very conversations with other people need to be guarded and kept pure, whether we believe we are going to be with that person or not. Nothing is final until we’re married.

What consequences might we face when we fail to guard our hearts?

This can go very deep. It depends on how much we give and how many times we give it. In a marriage, this can cause trust issues, insecurities, loss of “spark”, depression, regret, and other unforeseen things. The more we give to others, the more we take away from our future spouse.

We take something important and sacred away from that one we’re going to marry by giving it to someone else. Keep in mind, we’re not just talking about physical intimacy here. Marriage is supposed to be the place to share yourself with the one we share our life with. Who wants to think of their spouse being with someone else from the past, and at one time sharing with this someone “else” things that only you should know?

Take steps now to ensure a secure and blissful marriage later. Guard your heart. Do not just let everyone in; and don’t send out it with everyone either. You run the risk of allowing that person important pieces of yourself if they leave. Guarding your heart also helps to resist the temptation of falling into the trap of physical intimacy before marriage. Your heart is sacred. Don’t underestimate that.

Final Thought

In addition to waiting to give your heart out to your future spouse, be careful and mindful who and what you’re allowing in.

Christin can be found at Journey to a Gracious Woman

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After a man marries a woman, he no longer struggles with immodesty.  He delights in his wife, and can see all he needs to at any time.  She fulfils his every desire and need, and he needs no other.

I wish, very hard, to say this was true, but it is not, and this is something that we must realize and take into account—especially with all that’s going on in our culture today.

Living Together, Shacking Up, Living In Sin—You get the idea

Part of the problem with today’s culture is that marriage has been extremely devalued—to the point where women are compared to cars that you should test drive and make sure you get the latest model—or one with the least amount of miles on her.

With that has come the whole concept of comparison.  What I mean by that is that whereas in years gone by a man and a woman would only ever have one sexual partner their entire life, now they have multiples—and that’s seen as ok.

This directly relates to modesty, because now every woman is an object, something new and different to find out.

The Wedding

As far as modesty goes, what a strange time a wedding is.  It’s that time where every rule is turned on its head.  The woman intentionally goes out to find something to wear that will entice her husband sexually.  They see each other without clothing—and that’s as far as this family friendly blog writer will go.

They can’t get enough of each other during that week, and for a long time thereafter.

But he’s now seen “everything”—so is he cured?  Probably not.

After The Wedding and Into the Marriage

I will say that it’s not the same after being married as before, and I think there’s a good reason.  I believe that there is a physical reaction to seeing a pretty face/body—it’s a hit, or like a drug, where it feels good.

And because you’re not together all the time, a guy can look toward another girl and see something and feel something.

That’s made ten times worse by marketing and advertisements.  Men are now bombarded with images of girls using facial expressions that indicate a favorable reaction, whereas if they were to meet in person the girl would not give them the time of day.

Bodies are airbrushed to the point that the girl in the picture looks nothing like a real girl—and that just makes his comparisons worse.

If he needed to be careful not to look before marriage, he needs to be careful to only look at her after.  Ladies, here’s where you can help—you were all concerned about what he’d see on your wedding night (you may have tanned, gotten your hair done and lost weight), what is he seeing now?  Yes, be modest outside the house, but inside, draw him in like only you can.

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clothing, marriage, purity, Relationships, The Male Mind, wedding

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As boys and girls become teens and then young ladies and men, there are subtle changes in the way they react to each other.  The physical attraction is still there, and the pressure is still very real, but the relationships that a person goes through and their life experiences can help discipline them or cause them to get on a crash course to certain doom.

Well, perhaps that’s a little melodramatic, but I think you’ll understand what I’m saying in a minute.

A Healthy Desire

God made men and women to desire companionship—and that companionship is on many levels, one of them being physical.

The physical desire is strong in men—and it starts with sight and works its way throughout his being.  He needs female companionship to complete him in all sorts of ways.  He craves it—and that’s part of what feeds his curiosity and his longings to the point of lust.

The desire is healthy, and it’s supposed to reach it’s fulfillment in marriage, but it’s often easy for it to degenerate into lust.

We Weren’t Wired to Wait

Seriously, I know it’s a topic for another time, but the more I read, ponder, and look at marriage historically, the more I’m under the impression that men and women were never meant to wait until their twenties or thirties to marry.  I mean, Adam and Eve were married when they were two days old!

The problem is that there is a lot of pent up sexual desire and no morally acceptable outlet but marriage.  So, the young man struggles with the war going on inside him: wanting, desiring, feels like needing, to have a woman to love—emotionally and physically.

They say that girls can be guilted into sexual relations—I believe that guys can be manipulated as well by the same tactic.  It all depends on who has more discipline in this area.

Discipline

That’s right, self discipline is the key.  The guy exercises it by not being alone with a girl, by making sure to keep his eyes away from things he might be tempted to lust after, and by watching his viewing habits.  He needs to keep his mind focused on other things, or he will find a way to feed that desire and his curiosity.

The godly/modest woman helps him here by not making it easy for him to stumble when looking at her.  It helps him focus on who she is instead of what she is.

Logic would say that all women are equipped pretty much the same as far as having certain body parts.  Except this isn’t logical—men see differences, they compare, and they contrast.

The Gradual Increase of Lust

Lust has a way of growing, it gets fed by an action that requires more.  As a guy sees a part of a girl, it no longer satisfies him—no longer feeds his curiosity or his craving to see that any more.  He must see more.

A guy can lust looking through a J.C. Penny magazine.  He can fill his mind with sex by reading books around the house.

But the modest girl isn’t giving him anything to look at.  She’s not feeding his desire to see more—whereas he might see more with someone else.

So, discipline is key—the guy at this age is looking for a life-long mate, and yet has to be restrained.  Take this with you in your relationships.  If you better understand what he’s thinking and going through you’ll better be able to anticipate where he might have difficulty.

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Kids and Teens, marriage, purity, Relationships, Sexual intercourse, Sexuality, The Male Mind

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I bet that surprised some of you.

Physical changes occur in both boys and girls—I believe girls start to change first—and it is about this time that boys will start to recognize that girls are different and they will react differently to that realization.

It’s also at this time that a boy will start to notice the physical characteristics of girls in general.

As we’ve seen, up until now there hasn’t been that much a boy will notice about a girl—as far as differences, but now he’s starting to see (and focus) on different areas of her body and he’s starting to think about them as more of a companion than competition or a playmate.

His Two Reactions

There are two typical reactions to this change in perception.

The Player/Romancer

This boy realizes that there are differences, and he starts to try to form relationships with the opposite sex.  It is these guys that are the ones that you want your girl to stay away from, for both sexes are trying to figure out the change, and this “young man” has basically one thing on his mind.

The Withdrawer

This was me.  I withdrew—even going so far as to tell people “I don’t like girls.”  I didn’t date a girl until my Senior year of high school—though I was close friends with more than a few.

Both of these reactions are an attempt to deal with feelings and thoughts that he’s now having that he’s never had before.

Inside His Mind

The mind of a pre-teen and teenage boy is a weird place indeed.  Along with trying to figure out why there are zits on your face and how to manage different classes in school, your body is going through changes you don’t fully comprehend, and things that never really stuck in your mind are hard not to think about.

Before this stage, a girl was pretty or cute, but you didn’t really care.  You may have even thought you’d marry someone, but that was probably based on how fun they were to be with.  During this phase of development, though, most guys start to notice the distinctly feminine features.

Women are starting to develop, and the boys notice.  In fact, if I had to try to bring back memories of this kind from my past, I remember seeing that girls were developing breasts and that their legs attracted me in short skirts.

I knew when girls were dressing for attention, and there was plenty of talk around school when a specific girl had more the morals of an alley-cat than a lady.

Ignorance Can Be a Pain

Innocence can be a great thing.  It’s a whole lot easier to refuse something that you’ve never done—you don’t know what you’re missing.  However, ignorance also can feed curiosity.

If I had to use one word to describe boys at this stage, it’d be curious.

• That girl that they grew up with now has a pair of breasts.
• She makes my heart patter as she walks by.
• She attracts me in the clothes she wears.
• I wonder what she looks like in her underwear.
• I wonder what she looks like in less.

Regardless of whether they’ve seen their mom breastfeed or their sister—he still wonders.  And this feeds his desire to find out more.

So, his mind wanders, and so do his eyes.  They glance through the button-down shirt to see if they can catch a glimpse—and even a bra may turn them on.

Even if they know it’s wrong, they look at a girl’s body and wonder—and this is where modesty comes into play.

If your clothing does not attract a boy to your body, he will be looking at who you are.  To this day, I think that one of the most “attractive” outfits I saw on a girl in high school—that I thought was pretty—was a colored turtleneck with a button-down shirt overtop.  Modest, and yet cute.

I can also tell you about a few other memorable outfits that are memorable for the wrong reasons.  The question is, how do you want to be seen and remembered?

© MInTheGap for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clothing, High school, Kids and Teens, purity, The Male Mind

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At some stage of development—there’s no hard and fast rule—girls and boys begin to realize that there are, indeed, differences between them.  Boys want to play athletic activities and video games.  Girls play house and with dolls.  Battle lines are drawn, and at summer camps everywhere one sex starts to tease or mock the other about which one is better.

At this stage of the game, I believe that both sexes are finding that they actually might have some feelings for one another—something beyond the norm—and not know how to cope with these feelings, they decide to attempt to establish superiority.

Boys Rule, Girls Drool

It’s at this stage that the person you believed you understood totally because all that was different was hair length has evolved into someone you could never possibly understand.  She went from being your best friend to being someone that wants to play house with you—more.  She wants to kiss you, you notice that she’s softer than you are, and that she’s not always interested in the things you are.

You also notice that she wants to control you—already. :)

It’s at this stage that I don’t believe there’s a big problem with modesty in that these boys really don’t know enough about marital relations to look at girls as an object of lust—and yet at the same time they have emotions and mixed desires that they don’t fully know how to process.

This is also a time where you have to watch out for those children that “know more” than others—because they will love to express their knowledge of things that will ruin your child’s innocence, and really confuse them.

The other thing that can happen here is for children to want to “play doctor”, which may entail dropping of drawers to pretend to do an exam.  To me, this is something that should be avoided.

But for the most part, a boy is getting feelings at this stage, but is not—usually—looking at a girl much differently than at the previous stage:

• She’s different.
• She may be “pretty.”
• He may or may not believe he will marry his friend.
• He may avoid girls or say that he hates them if they express emotion at him.

Maintaining purity here means in keeping innocent.  It’s also advisable to encourage boys and girls at this age to not be so harsh to each other and realize what they have to contribute to one another—instead of fueling the fires of animosity toward one another.

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In order to try to better help better understand what goes on in the mind of a guy, I believe it will be instructive to look into what happens at the different stages of growth—because at these different stages different thoughts, feelings and impulses are in effect.  I believe that if you could unlock these things, then you’d better understand what your up against, and better understand what you have to do to remain pure and modest.

Everyone’s a He

It was hard.  My oldest son used the pronoun “he” for every person that he saw or referenced.  Sure, it wasn’t that difficult to get him to say that his mom was a she (if he wasn’t referring to her directly as “mom”), but how do you explain to someone that small that there are two different sexes with two different physical attributes and how to use the many different clues to determine whether the person to whom he was referring was a girl or a boy?

So we stuck to the most obvious: Girls have long hair.

Now, this has lead to some embarrassing moments—like the time that I was in Home Depot and the guy that was helping me find something had long hair and my sons told me that we should ask “her” to help us find something else.  There are women with short hair, also, but few with men’s hairstyles, so that hasn’t caused as much trouble.

The reason I bring this up, however, is that part of being of a certain sex is looking like that sex.  For men, that means having a male hair cut, dressing in slacks, carrying oneself in a masculine manner, and hopefully knowing his way around some basic power tools.

For ladies, that means looking like a lady—in your hair length, the style of clothing you wear, etc.  I’d encourage all women that are pursuing modesty to be a woman that won’t confuse my boys as to what you are.

We’re Different, But That’s No Big Deal

The other place that young boys run into the opposite sex is when they have a sister.  Now, some have speculated that—for the most part—there is never any physical desire between brother and sister.  That may be true in most cases, but this has an interesting connection to something we’re going to say later on.

My point is, when you are a young boy, the fact that you and a girl have different parts is no big deal.  The fact that you both have legs, arms, knees, and a smile means that you’re a person that I can play with and have a good time with.  There’s no sexual tension, and though you may play mom and dad—and may even kiss just like they see mom and dad do—there’s nothing here (normally) that’s causing lust.

Oh to be that innocent the whole way through life!

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Post tags: long hair, purity, The Male Mind

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I saw them, front and center, in my local retail store last week; those small colorful pieces of material that masquerade as clothing. The articles of clothing that somehow cause even Christians to justify undressing with the rest of the world simply because they have sand under their feet. Yes, you know what I’m talking about: swimsuits!

I must admit I felt a little dread inside when I saw them out of the corner of my eye. Now, most Americans that find swimsuits distressing find them that way because they don’t like how they look in them. Me, I found myself feeling unsettled when I saw them because this year I have a different decision to make than past years. You see my journey to modesty began just 4 months ago. In the past couple years I loved swimsuit shopping and the only decision making involved was what one complimented my figure and drew the most attention to the assets I wanted to draw attention to. Well, much has changed in the past few months. God showed me how impure my thinking was and how much the motives behind my clothing choices had been corrupted by the thinking of the world. I now embrace a new, modest standard of dress that brings me to a new decision to make: Is there even reason for me to own or wear a swimsuit this year? Certainly none of them I have seen meet the standard of coverage God has put on my heart. I wonder do I even need one?

You would think swim suits would be for actually swimming in. But, I can’t say I actually swam in one much. So, why did I wear one? Why does anyone buy and wear a swimsuit when they don’t actually swim? Well, it seems we have digested some corrupted thinking; that because there is a sun overhead and sand under our feet our normal clothing needs to be shed! Summer sun seems to mean simply one thing: It’s time for us to spread out our beach blanket and display our flesh for the world to see. A beach in the summer is an exhibitionist’s delight! You definitely won’t find a beach named “Purity”. I just looked up the definition of “Exhibitionism”.

Exhibitionism is a tendency to call attention to oneself or show off, a tendency to expose parts of the body that are conventionally concealed, a public display.

I realize now how impure my reasons for wearing a swimsuit were. I realize, as much as I don’t want to admit it, that even I fit the definition of an exhibitionist when it came to the community pool or beach. I have truly grieved and repented for the way I ran about so unclothed. Satan has to be quite pleased that when it comes to the beach few Christians even draw a line in the sand in regards to modesty.

How will I respond this year? In trying to make this decision I’m reminded of the words of an old country song by Aaron Tippin: “You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. You’ve got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string. Never compromise what’s right. Uphold the family name! You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.”

I’m not sure if I’ll even go to the beach this summer. If I do, I don’t yet know exactly what I will wear but I know it won’t be what I wore in the past! As a child of God I am a part of the Lord’s family! Because the rest of the world gives into the sands of compromise and the waves of corruption this summer does not mean I will! This year I’m going embrace modest and purity. As a Christian I will uphold the family name!

© MommaJo for Is This Modest?, 2009. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clothing, purity, swimwear

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I’m sure all you girls will admit that you’ve thought that at least once. Maybe twice. Ok, maybe you think that all the time. You constantly hear them say “We’re trying to be pure! Honestly!” and yet there they go again, staring where they shouldn’t. What’s with them anyway? How can they really be trying to be pure, yet at the same time gawk at my (read: your – I’m not gay) body?

This question digs right down into the weird wirings of the guys mind. Of course, I won’t discuss at all the minds of the female species, otherwise, I’d be shot. But I can talk about how we think, because I think that will help out you girls (I say ‘you girls’ because I am guessing that the majority of readers are female).

I’m sure you’ve all heard the basics about our thoughts a thousand times, the whole “we’re one-track wired” spiel, right? That ground is already covered, so I’m not going there. But what about those Christian guys, the ones who say every day that they are trying their hardest to keep their minds pure, and yet they keep doing things that are unquestionable un-pure. How does this work?

As a Christian guy myself, I too have tried to stay pure. God has helped me throughout the last several months, and I have been improving; and yet, I am still male, a condition that plagues half of earth’s inhabitants. For the longest time, I tried to find a metaphor or an example that might provide girls with an idea as to how our ‘hoping-to-be-pure-yet-failing-miserably’ mind’s work. And then, a couple months ago, it hit me.

Thankfully, I stayed conscious. Usually, when things hit you in the head, you black out; I didn’t (Har Har – I know your laughing). By now, you’re asking yourself for the hundredth time: “Why is there a picture of Gollum on the front? What does he have to do with modesty? Don’t tell me you’re critiquing his modesty?” No, I’m not doing that. But I am using him as an example.

As many of you know, Gollum is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Christian author who had strong ties with C. S. Lewis. Gollum lives in Middle Earth, the fictional world of the Lord of the Rings books and movies. He is a unique character in the sense that he’s…well…schizophrenic. After possessing the Ring of Power for so long, he was driven insane – his mind being split into two halves. One half, “Smeagol”, is the pure human/hobbit half of his personality – what he was before the Ring affected (effected?) his life. This half of his consciousness wants to serve his Master wholeheartedly, without any deceit whatsoever.

The other half of his mind “Gollum”, serves only himself. He wants the Ring, and wants it bad. No action is out of the question, as long as he gets the Ring. These two halves fight each other desperately throughout the books and movies, each wanting to get the upper hand.

So what does he have to do with male purity? Well, Christian guys (or any guy who want to stay pure) are like Gollum and Smeagol. One half of of us wants to serve God wholeheartedly – wants to obey his every command and stay pure. The other half wants nothing to do with God. All they want to do is “see everything there is to see”, and act upon it.

Throughout every moment of a guy’s life, these two halves are at each other’s throats. The fight occurs moment by moment. Throughout every hour and every minute, skirmishes are won and lost. The half that serves God prays desperately for help and forgiveness, and yet, so often it feels as though we are alone in the battle. Yet we know that God will rescue us if we persevere.

The apostle Paul speaks of this struggle with sin in Romans 7:

^“15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.^[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. ²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.”

This is the battle that guys face every moment. It seems that no matter how hard we try to keep our eyes to ourselves, they wander where they shouldn’t. Many Christian guys (me) have gotten extremely depressed by this – it can seem like an incurable disease. Thankfully, Paul concludes the chapter with hope:

²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So the next time you see a guy who claims to be attaining purity, but is failing, think twice. There’s a chance that he actually is trying his hardest. Give him a slight break, ok? He might be schizophrenic. : )

Foy Lyndström

© Foy for Is This Modest?, 2008. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Inner, Paul, purity, Romans, The Male Mind, workings

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A lot of modesty, it turns out, is in how a piece of clothing can be interpreted.  A soft sweater, for instance, isn’t immodest in itself.  Instead, it’s the “Come, touch me” vibe it sends off that causes it to be a stumbling block.  Since I don’t understand how men think, I don’t understand what I need to be careful of.

On the flip side, men don’t understand how women think and what causes them to trip up.  For a man, it’s a simple task to be modest in covering up.  But modesty’s more than just not showing skin – it’s helping others keep from lusting after you.  And though I’ve rarely seen a man inappropriately dressed, I have seen many men who it’s difficult not to lust after.  The plaid shorts above are a good example.  They cover as much skin as any other pair of shorts, and yet these would cause me to stumble.  Why?  Simple: They look to me like boxars.  Any plaid linen or cotton shorts cause me to do a double-take.  Even though I know these are much too long to be boxars, the pattern and texture are the exact same.  So instead of wearing those, what shorts could men wear around me and I’d be fine?  Khaki cargo shorts, denim shorts, or solid colored shorts are all good.  Either the texture (denim) is different enough or the pattern doesn’t remind me of boxars.

What are some other wardrobe shifts men can make to help us ladies?

© Anna Grace for Is This Modest?, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boxars, burka, immodest, lust, men's fashion, mental purity, mind reading, modest, modest is hottest, modesty, plaid, purity, shorts, stumbling block, sweater, telekenesis, think

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