On Modesty...get ready, this is a long one fellas
On Modesty
I decided to spend a free afternoon in the Old City of Jerusalem. I used my time there to take snapshots of whatever placated my inspiration at the moment, all the while zoning out to Led Zepplin on my Ipod. After spending the earlier part of the day saturating myself in the pandemonium that is the Armenian Quarter, I decided to spend some time in the Jewish Quarter, so grabbed a shwarma in a small Arab restaurant just off of the Via Delarosa and began making my way over there. On the way I decided to avoid the perpetual nagging of shop vendors attempting to sell me wooden statues of Jesus imported from Indonesia, so I experimented with a couple of back alleyways in hopes of still reaching my destination in peace. I took a right turn onto a smaller corridor and began making my way up it when suddenly I was struck by a young Jewish girl approaching me from the opposite direction. What a radiant beauty she was to behold. A sight that stopped me so abruptly I almost squeezed the lamb and vegetable contents right out of my sandwich (I think if I was squeezing any harder the lamb would have shrieked out in pain). Like a young boy witnessing the Niagara Falls for the first time I just stood there, awestruck, too captivated to take another step. This young Israeli girl was fitted in an ivory cotton dress that reached from her neck right down to her ankles, the hem of which was ornamented with an elaborate gold pattern. Her hair was completely wrapped in a handkerchief with a lip that flipped out at the top of her forehead, just enough to shade her eyes from the unforgiving sun. She descended the corridor steps with elegance that only majestic royalty can ascribe, and upon reaching the bottom, lifted her head and raised her eyes to reveal two hurricanes of piercing blue intensity. I found myself lost at sea. Her attention was suddenly drawn my direction (no doubt by my stupefied gaze) and she shot a me a brief courtesy smile before “gliding” away, as if angels were carrying her by her very feet. There I stood, pita and bell pepper falling from of my dropped jaw, eyes unwilling to do so much as blink for fear of awakening from this euphoric trance. As I watched her walk away I had every inhibition to chase her down and capture a photo of this rare beauty, but I realized that no photo could ever capture what loveliness now burned in my retina.
As I sat there in the Jewish Quarter, finishing off what was left of my shwarma, my trance-like condition began gradually fading and I once again returned to the land of mortals. I relayed this moment over and over again in my head. This girl was completely shrouded from head to toe and yet I found her beauty to be captivating in a way that words can scarcely describe. True, I have seen many women before, that have had the ability of stopping me in my tracks or drawing my attention from whatever it may have been I was doing at the moment, but there was something different about this girl. She was as modest as modesty gets, but I wasn’t attracted to her modesty. I could never, in good conscience, admit to anyone that a woman who dresses more… “Liberally,” does not possess some intensely potent ability to attract the attention of men around her. However, I have only recently come to really understand the difference between being “attractive” and being a “sex-magnet.” A girl wearing such scant attire may find that she is indeed awarded the attention she so desires….or is it the attention she really desires?
As some of you many know, I never make it a habit of venturing into the modern American mall, but as social and holiday obligations would have it, I am occasionally called to making the pilgrimage through Mordor. The mall bothers me for a couple of reasons, first if I was ever given the option of “shopping” to “gouging my eye out with a rusty nail,” you could be relatively certain I will be requesting a walking cane for Christmas. Second, if I ever was forced into a mall you may as well gouge my eyes out and spare me the massive influx of sex and materialism, which has an effect on me, similar to adding a cup of granulated sugar to my frosted flakes (at least that tastes better going down). Anyway, as chance would have it I was shopping for a friend of mine and while traipsing from store to store I was struck by something I couldn’t believe. An advertisement plastered across the window of Abercrombie and Fitch (the very Eye of Mordor in case you were wondering) which consisted of a completely topless female and the word “desire” covering just enough of “her” to pass advertising regulations. Believe me when I say I was less enamored with the model than I was the message. We live in a culture that has inherently misinterpreted sexuality with attraction. Every woman, at the core of her essence wants to be attractive, to be captivating. What these false advertisers are claiming is the chance for a young lady to lay siege to the power of enticement, by utilizing their products as the means. Unfortunately what the youth of today either don’t realize, or don’t care to realize, is that there is a cavernous gap between being attractive and being sexually seductive. Neither are inherently evil, but each has an appropriate time and place. To some extent, what these advertisers are promising is true, if you promote yourself in the miniscule clothing they offer, you will find yourself the focal point of much attention. However, this is not the attention you really, truly desire, trust me. By doing this, you have taken a grand leap from endorsing yourself as an icon of beauty to an object of sexuality.
It would be easy for me to sanction some kind of straightforward conclusion to the question of modesty, and propose a “standard” of attire that would complement one’s beauty, while adhering to a framework of “Biblical” interpretation. I, however, have never prided myself as one who would choose a simple and, ultimately, unbiblical perspective on anything. I believe that modesty, as well as most other controversial topics in the scriptures, are far more complex than we are willing to admit.
I have been the victim (as well as I am sure many of you have) to the ongoing shallow approach the church has taken towards modesty. I have heard countless lectures in which the speaker essentially spends the better part of an hour brow-beating 1 Timothy 2:9, “I urge you women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety…” This doesn’t help us in the least, as it fails to entail how exactly we are to judge modesty. You can’t swim in a sermon this shallow. I think, to truly understand modesty, we need ask ourselves, not necessarily “what” it is, but “why?” This is an infinitely more important question to be answered.
I mentioned (or at least alluded to) the fact that for me to give you some blueprint or rulebook for modest dress would be unbiblical. I mean exactly that. If I were to set before you a simple “code of conduct” by which you were to present yourself, I would not only be attacking the issue from a purely material perspective alone, but I would also be advocating a form of legalism which is as inherently unbiblical as it is superficial.
So here it is, I’ll just go ahead and say it. There is (in fact) NO set “Standard” of what “Biblical modesty” looks like (here is the modernist coming out in me). I believe modesty is actually a “culturally” determined standard which fluctuates almost as inconsistently as a culture itself. There it is. I said it. Ok, so let me explain because I know many of are busy picking up the pieces of your exploded cranium from the floor thinking, “you can’t possibly be suggesting the idea that ‘morality’ is determined by a’ society’ and not by the ‘Bible.” The answer, you’re right, I’m not. “Morality” is a standard set within the scriptures alone, but implementing morality in “Modesty” is a culturally and, in all reality, democratically instituted convention. Before you attempt to strangle me with your “culturally instituted” wool scarf, let me explain.
First I would like to mention that whenever I hear someone quote 1 Timothy 2:9, they always seem to stop halfway through the verse. That’s because the whole of this passage says this,
“(9)I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, (10) but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.”
Well this introduces quite the dilemma, if we take the stand in saying that scripture does in fact propose a standard of modesty, it is then very clear that we have not been abiding to it. I think you would be hard pressed to find any Christian claiming that “braids” and “jewelry” are inherently ungodly; however, I do wonder if many of them even know exactly why. The truth of this verse, like all verses in scripture, is to be understood in context. Paul was writing this passage to a particular people in a particular time and to truly understand it, we must come to understand both. Paul was speaking to the church of Ephesus which, at the time, suffered greatly from false doctrine, unqualified leaders, materialism and disorder of worship. These particular verses dealt with the issue of worship. The men in the church were having a difficult time keeping their attention and focus on God because of the distracting apparel of the women. Traditionally, in the first century A.D., women didn’t dress in these fashions unless they were specifically seeking the attention of other men. Today braided hair, pearls and the like, might not seem as such a distracting feature on a woman; however, in that time it would have been unusual and inherently intentional to dress this way.
Alas, times have indeed changed and these types of features are not the distraction that they would have been 2000 years ago. Paul was not advocating these precepts for modesty to all churches of all time but rather a very specific church, within a very specific time. On the backswing of this realization it would be easy (and utterly ridicules) to propose the idea that, on this basis, we can see that the Bible is no longer relevant to our “modern” times and therefore bears no credence to our sanctity. Stupid. The point of this passage is not that we are to dress in 1st century Greco-Roman fashion, but more importantly to search our hearts with the understanding that the way we dress affects not only us, but the people around us.
I would now like to take you back to the time from whence this dilemma of modesty first became an issue. It might come as no surprise to many of you that this would have me return to place of origin from which every quandary of human history arose, the Garden of Eden. It is my belief that the question of modesty stems as far back as any question of morality. To the original fall that had Adam and Eve plunge us into the darkest depths of depravity from whence only the work of Christ could reconcile. I believe it is within the very dictation of their downfall, in Genesis 3, that we might find the truth of nakedness, shame and modesty.
We have all heard the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent. We know that Eve was deceived by the cunning reptilian as was coerced into disobedience along with her all too willing husband. Like all great stories, however, it will never cease to bear enlightening fruit upon a more careful study and scrutinizing analysis.
Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, perfect in all their ways bearing a capacity to commune with the almighty on a direct and personal interactive means. They were free to romp and frolic about the entire Garden of Eden, having no limits as to their daily agendas provided they abide by the only prohibition of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That was it, one singular policy and the world with its many pleasures was theirs to enjoy. Now, as it is stated in the Bible, Adam and Eve were “both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”(Genisis2:25) This is probably the most important verse used to describe the condition of these two, in a pre-fall existence. So what does it mean, “{T}hey were naked?” Well I think it is safe to assume that this is as literal as literal gets. They didn’t wear clothes, no coverings. Not so much as the traditional fig leaf shrouding the ba-dunk-a-dunk and junk. They were all nude all the time! I think this is an easy enough interpretation, but what is interesting to note about this statement is not their physical condition that is described so much as the emotional and spiritual stasis of their being. They were, “not ashamed.” Glancing at this statement often provides one with a very common, I believe, misinterpretation of what being “ashamed” here implies.
Do you remember all of those nightmares you would wake from in a cold sweat? You know, the one where it’s your first day of junior high and there you are, sitting at your desk, hands sweating with anxiety. You sit there, nervous because you have a sinking feeling that you have forgotten something. Your spiral notebook sits on the left end of the desk while your no. 2 pencil rests on the other. Everything seems fine. Only then do you realize that you have forgotten one thing. Somehow, you have managed to forget to put your clothes on before you went to school that morning! There you are, stark naked in the midst of the most traumatizing and judgmental oppressors of your youth, your classmates. Your cheeks immediately flush with red as you do your best to utilize a pre-Algebra text book in place of a black “censored” box. You are in every sense of the word, “ashamed.”
So what is it that you are so ashamed of? Let’s return now to Genesis and where I believe the most important verse regarding the fallen condition of Adam and Eve can be found as contrasted to that of their pre-fall state. “…{S}he took of the fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” (Genisis3:6-7) I think this verse is infinitely more complex than many would like to admit and for that very reason I am going to propose an interpretation that may seem unorthodox to many. Let’s look at the verse. They ate the forbidden fruit and suddenly became aware of the fact that they were “naked” and immediately sought for something by which to cover themselves. Let’s think about this for a second, Adam and Eve were conceived naked. All they have ever known about each other was nakedness. There was no one else in the Garden beyond the Almighty Himself (so much as the scriptures imply). So why the heck did they feel the compulsion to cover their nudity from each other? Or was it from each other? It is my belief that the physical absence of clothing was not the only real dilemma which Adam and Eve were forced to reconcile. Let me explain.
When Adam and Eve were created, they were created in absolute perfection, in the very image of God. This is known as the Imago Dei. When most of us consider the repercussions of the fall, we tend to think about it in a very limited perspective. Consider the fact that the fall has had just as debilitating an effect upon your soul as it did your body, mind, emotions, desires ect. Why is that you ask? Because ALL of these parts make you, “you.” God created “you” with a body, soul and mind. He created “you” with reason, emotion and volition. You are not just one part of these, you are all of them. Something cannot happen to one without affecting the other and vice versa. Therefore, in a pre-fall state, man was perfect in every way possible. His body, spirit, mind, desires, reason, emotion were all pure and holy and innocent. With no inward principle of evil to work on, the seduction of sin had to come from without.
When we consider the effects of the fall, we tend not to think of it as a complete and total fall. The influence of Platonism has taught us to pick and choose some aspects of our being as fallen and others as not. This is not a Biblical truth. Ladies and Gentlemen, we should be a walking, shinning glory to behold. We were created in the image of God, in EVERY which way possible, and that is no small thing. When sin entered the world it corrupted EVERY aspect of our being in that now, what was once had been created by God for his perfect service, could now be used by man for disobedience. I know what you are thinking now, “Well we all might not be perfect mirrors for God like we were originally created to be, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still bear His image to some degree.” This is true. Despite the fact that we have corrupted a perfect creation we still bear a likeness of the Imago Dei. This is where common Grace comes in. Common Grace is the concept that God endows the world and everyone in it (saved or not) with a common or universal grace that undeservedly allows man to not immediately be condemned to an existence without Him (Matt. 5:45,Heb. 1:2-3; John 1:1-4, Rom. 13:6, Rom. 2:14-15, Gen. 9:6: 1 Cor. 11:7). Remember back in Genesis 2:17, that whole thing about how if you eat the fruit, “you will surely die.” To “die,” in this context, has a basic idea of separation. It means the spiritual, reasonable, emotional, volitional and ultimately eternal separation from God. However, God, in his good grace, allowed us a “common grace” by which our body entire could be sanctified. Man still bears the image of God, by grace, in his existence, such as his capacity to comprehend and understand, his ability to love and help others, ect ect… While an individual or nation may possess such admirable qualities, they are still fallen and tainted human beings and prone to misusing even these graces (Ecc 7:20). However, common grace still functions in way that is to the great (and undeserved I might add) benefit of everyone in the world.
O.K. now that that is cleared up, here is my proposal.
When we read in Genesis 3,
“6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;”
I think it is important to pay particular attention to the word “then” as it indicates a sense of immediacy of succession in terms of events. Once they ate of the fruit, their eyes were “immediately” opened and they realized they were naked. This sense of urgency suggests that whatever happened metaphysically in that moment, when they partook of the fruit, had a striking impact that both surprised and brought to shame, the both of them.
We know that the fruit was nothing special. It wasn’t laced with any kind of lethal chemical or poisonous drug. The significance of this the tree of the knowledge of good and evil resides alone in the fact that God told them not to eat of it. There was nothing wrong with looking at it. There was nothing wrong with touching it. God’s singular mandate for his perfect children was that they would not EAT of it. When Adam and Eve chose not to abide by this simple admonition, and ate of the fruit, sin entered the world, tainting everything in it. At the exact moment when Adam and Eve partook of this forbidden fruit, sin entered their very being of man and it was corrupted entirely. This means EVERY aspect of their being was immediately tarnished, including their bodies. The image of God which once shone brightly and perfectly was suddenly stagnant and monotonous. This is why when Adam and Even looked at each other; they saw the physically glory of God diminish before their eyes, and that is why they became ashamed.
Look people, Adam and Eve were created in nakedness. All they ever new about each other was nakedness. They were husband and wife for Peat’s sake! It wouldn’t make sense if suddenly they looked at each other’s bareness alone, and were ashamed of it, unless there was really something else going on here. What I am suggesting is that when Adam and Eve looked at each other they realized that they had done something terribly wrong because that glory of God that was once shining through them was now gone. Their “perfect” bodies were now fallen. This is why they were so ashamed, guilt immediately set in, and they knew they had trespassed the Almighty. Knowing this, we can come to truly comprehend what was really taking place in the rest of this verse:
“7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
The first action they took in response to this “shame” was to make clothing out of foliage. We now understand what was really going through their minds at this point. Let me make my case by asking you a question. Remember when you were young and you did something terribly wrong and you knew if your parents found out you were going to be grounded for the rest of your life. I don’t know about you but this situation occurred many times with me. In one particular instance my mother had left the house to go grocery shopping and my brothers and I engaged in a game of dodge-ball….inside the house. We had about a solid 15 minutes of calamitous and raucous fun before someone missed his target, and instead blasted one of my mom’s porcelain bird statues to pieces. Shame and guilt overwhelmed us all and instead of admitting responsibility for playing a game inside the house, that we clearly knew our parents would have vetoed, we instead took the evidence and buried it, literally, in our backyard. Anyway, our mom eventually noticed she was one chickadee short of her artificial aviary and we were all sentenced to our much deserved chastisement. My point is this, when the guilt and shame of a wrong doing overwhelms a person, their first inclination is to hide or destroy the evidence. Consider not being grounded for the rest of your life, but all of eternity. This inhibition to hide sin is what we see when King David impregnated Bathsheba and killed Uriah; this is what we see when Achan plundered forbidden treasure and buried it under his tent; and this is what we see when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sewed fig leaves together for clothing. They assumed that they could cover up the mess they made. However, Adam and Eve’s mistake (like David’s) was in believing they could hide anything from God. They figured that if they could simply cover up their corrupted bodies, they could in fact conceal their iniquity. Here we can see how the fall affected their mind, in reason and judgment, as their perception and knowledge of God was already misconstrued. They no longer believed in their creator as an omniscient and omnipresent being.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
These next three verses are interesting; we are first given a depiction of God walking amongst the garden in some visible form. “Where are you?” The question was God’s way of bringing man to explain why he was hiding, rather than expressing ignorance about man’s location. God knew where they were and He knew what had happened. He called to them as a means of forcing confession. Once the truth comes out and judgment is sentenced upon all three (Adam, Eve and the serpent), we are told in verse 21 that God made “tunics of skin, and clothed them.” This verse is worth noting because it brings to light two very interesting aspects of this story that the scriptures are suggesting. The first is understood as a sacrifice having taken place. God made them clothing (literally covered up their shame) with animal skin. There is only one way you are going to get an animal to give up its skin and that is if you kill him to get it. Here we have the first substitutionary sacrifice as literally, covering up the shame and guilt of iniquity. Secondly we are shown that God Himself gave them these articles of clothing to wear. Clothing was no longer just a man devised by-product of guilt, but now, a God ordained means of protection. Man was forever corrupted, no longer bearing the perfect image and glory of God. As a result of the fall, clothing now bears three essential purposes. Because there was no longer that pure and holy physical body, Adam and Eve were given tunics by which to shield themselves from the dangerous elements of the world. Because of the corruption of our bodies, clothing gives us the ability to avoid judgment and scrutiny from others (even the most glamorous and picturesque movie stars and models have imperfections…trust me I would know, I work with them). And because of the corruption of our spirit and desires, we are given the ability to help protect ourselves, as well as others, from sexual perversions in seduction and enticement.
O.K. with all of this in mind, you may now understand why modesty is more complex than we like to think, because nakedness, in and of itself, is NOT sin. I repeat, it is NOT sin. WE ARE SINFUL. Coverings were created as a RESULT of sin and corruption. For those of you who would disagree, ask yourselves why it is wrong to watch a pornographic film but it is fine to read a National Geographic? Why is it condemnable to stare at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar and condonable to stare at the Sistine Chapel? In Kenya, women walk around topless, but in Saudi Arabia they are shrouded head to toe. Why? To find the answer to the problem we must first recognize that WE ARE THE PROBLEM. Look no further than yourself.
For anyone to truly answer the question of what modest is, they must first realize how others will interpret it. Granted no one can please or protect everyone else from their sin nature, but we don’t need to add fuel to the flame. We all have a fairly good idea of what message we are sending with the clothing we wear.
Now this all brings me back to that young woman I passed in the Old City of Jerusalem. She was covered from her head to her ankles. I wasn’t attracted to her modesty; I was attracted to her beauty. I think it would be better stated that I wasn’t “detracted” from her beauty because of “immodesty.” I think many are under the disillusion that being modest in and of itself is more “Godly” and therefore the only important thing. If this was true why go shopping for clothing at all? We should all just run around clad in potato sacks. You CAN be beautiful and modest without showcasing yourself as some kind of a nun with a makeup complex. You do NOT have to probe the line of decency to win attraction. What attracted me so much to this young Israeli woman was the fact that she was dressed in a manner which complemented her features. She didn’t just dress modestly but she dressed beautifully, and in such a manner that accentuated what beauty she already possessed. By far the most interesting aspect of the way this woman dressed was the fact that I hardly remember it at all. Let me explain. I have a general recollection of what she was wearing but I have a perfect recollection of her face. The pinnacle of a woman’s beauty is in her face, and everything this young lady adorned herself in only brought greater attention to it. Much like the use of triangles in the composition of classical art, this young woman’s dress acted as a guide to the focal point, the very pinnacle of her Imago Dei. Everything about her dress pointed me to her face and everything about her face pointed me to a wonderful artisan of a Creator. For that brief moment, when I stood there, jaw dropped, eyes popping out of my face, I wasn’t just awestruck by this woman’s beauty. I was marveling the very signature of God.
I decided to spend a free afternoon in the Old City of Jerusalem. I used my time there to take snapshots of whatever placated my inspiration at the moment, all the while zoning out to Led Zepplin on my Ipod. After spending the earlier part of the day saturating myself in the pandemonium that is the Armenian Quarter, I decided to spend some time in the Jewish Quarter, so grabbed a shwarma in a small Arab restaurant just off of the Via Delarosa and began making my way over there. On the way I decided to avoid the perpetual nagging of shop vendors attempting to sell me wooden statues of Jesus imported from Indonesia, so I experimented with a couple of back alleyways in hopes of still reaching my destination in peace. I took a right turn onto a smaller corridor and began making my way up it when suddenly I was struck by a young Jewish girl approaching me from the opposite direction. What a radiant beauty she was to behold. A sight that stopped me so abruptly I almost squeezed the lamb and vegetable contents right out of my sandwich (I think if I was squeezing any harder the lamb would have shrieked out in pain). Like a young boy witnessing the Niagara Falls for the first time I just stood there, awestruck, too captivated to take another step. This young Israeli girl was fitted in an ivory cotton dress that reached from her neck right down to her ankles, the hem of which was ornamented with an elaborate gold pattern. Her hair was completely wrapped in a handkerchief with a lip that flipped out at the top of her forehead, just enough to shade her eyes from the unforgiving sun. She descended the corridor steps with elegance that only majestic royalty can ascribe, and upon reaching the bottom, lifted her head and raised her eyes to reveal two hurricanes of piercing blue intensity. I found myself lost at sea. Her attention was suddenly drawn my direction (no doubt by my stupefied gaze) and she shot a me a brief courtesy smile before “gliding” away, as if angels were carrying her by her very feet. There I stood, pita and bell pepper falling from of my dropped jaw, eyes unwilling to do so much as blink for fear of awakening from this euphoric trance. As I watched her walk away I had every inhibition to chase her down and capture a photo of this rare beauty, but I realized that no photo could ever capture what loveliness now burned in my retina.
As I sat there in the Jewish Quarter, finishing off what was left of my shwarma, my trance-like condition began gradually fading and I once again returned to the land of mortals. I relayed this moment over and over again in my head. This girl was completely shrouded from head to toe and yet I found her beauty to be captivating in a way that words can scarcely describe. True, I have seen many women before, that have had the ability of stopping me in my tracks or drawing my attention from whatever it may have been I was doing at the moment, but there was something different about this girl. She was as modest as modesty gets, but I wasn’t attracted to her modesty. I could never, in good conscience, admit to anyone that a woman who dresses more… “Liberally,” does not possess some intensely potent ability to attract the attention of men around her. However, I have only recently come to really understand the difference between being “attractive” and being a “sex-magnet.” A girl wearing such scant attire may find that she is indeed awarded the attention she so desires….or is it the attention she really desires?
As some of you many know, I never make it a habit of venturing into the modern American mall, but as social and holiday obligations would have it, I am occasionally called to making the pilgrimage through Mordor. The mall bothers me for a couple of reasons, first if I was ever given the option of “shopping” to “gouging my eye out with a rusty nail,” you could be relatively certain I will be requesting a walking cane for Christmas. Second, if I ever was forced into a mall you may as well gouge my eyes out and spare me the massive influx of sex and materialism, which has an effect on me, similar to adding a cup of granulated sugar to my frosted flakes (at least that tastes better going down). Anyway, as chance would have it I was shopping for a friend of mine and while traipsing from store to store I was struck by something I couldn’t believe. An advertisement plastered across the window of Abercrombie and Fitch (the very Eye of Mordor in case you were wondering) which consisted of a completely topless female and the word “desire” covering just enough of “her” to pass advertising regulations. Believe me when I say I was less enamored with the model than I was the message. We live in a culture that has inherently misinterpreted sexuality with attraction. Every woman, at the core of her essence wants to be attractive, to be captivating. What these false advertisers are claiming is the chance for a young lady to lay siege to the power of enticement, by utilizing their products as the means. Unfortunately what the youth of today either don’t realize, or don’t care to realize, is that there is a cavernous gap between being attractive and being sexually seductive. Neither are inherently evil, but each has an appropriate time and place. To some extent, what these advertisers are promising is true, if you promote yourself in the miniscule clothing they offer, you will find yourself the focal point of much attention. However, this is not the attention you really, truly desire, trust me. By doing this, you have taken a grand leap from endorsing yourself as an icon of beauty to an object of sexuality.
It would be easy for me to sanction some kind of straightforward conclusion to the question of modesty, and propose a “standard” of attire that would complement one’s beauty, while adhering to a framework of “Biblical” interpretation. I, however, have never prided myself as one who would choose a simple and, ultimately, unbiblical perspective on anything. I believe that modesty, as well as most other controversial topics in the scriptures, are far more complex than we are willing to admit.
I have been the victim (as well as I am sure many of you have) to the ongoing shallow approach the church has taken towards modesty. I have heard countless lectures in which the speaker essentially spends the better part of an hour brow-beating 1 Timothy 2:9, “I urge you women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety…” This doesn’t help us in the least, as it fails to entail how exactly we are to judge modesty. You can’t swim in a sermon this shallow. I think, to truly understand modesty, we need ask ourselves, not necessarily “what” it is, but “why?” This is an infinitely more important question to be answered.
I mentioned (or at least alluded to) the fact that for me to give you some blueprint or rulebook for modest dress would be unbiblical. I mean exactly that. If I were to set before you a simple “code of conduct” by which you were to present yourself, I would not only be attacking the issue from a purely material perspective alone, but I would also be advocating a form of legalism which is as inherently unbiblical as it is superficial.
So here it is, I’ll just go ahead and say it. There is (in fact) NO set “Standard” of what “Biblical modesty” looks like (here is the modernist coming out in me). I believe modesty is actually a “culturally” determined standard which fluctuates almost as inconsistently as a culture itself. There it is. I said it. Ok, so let me explain because I know many of are busy picking up the pieces of your exploded cranium from the floor thinking, “you can’t possibly be suggesting the idea that ‘morality’ is determined by a’ society’ and not by the ‘Bible.” The answer, you’re right, I’m not. “Morality” is a standard set within the scriptures alone, but implementing morality in “Modesty” is a culturally and, in all reality, democratically instituted convention. Before you attempt to strangle me with your “culturally instituted” wool scarf, let me explain.
First I would like to mention that whenever I hear someone quote 1 Timothy 2:9, they always seem to stop halfway through the verse. That’s because the whole of this passage says this,
“(9)I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, (10) but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.”
Well this introduces quite the dilemma, if we take the stand in saying that scripture does in fact propose a standard of modesty, it is then very clear that we have not been abiding to it. I think you would be hard pressed to find any Christian claiming that “braids” and “jewelry” are inherently ungodly; however, I do wonder if many of them even know exactly why. The truth of this verse, like all verses in scripture, is to be understood in context. Paul was writing this passage to a particular people in a particular time and to truly understand it, we must come to understand both. Paul was speaking to the church of Ephesus which, at the time, suffered greatly from false doctrine, unqualified leaders, materialism and disorder of worship. These particular verses dealt with the issue of worship. The men in the church were having a difficult time keeping their attention and focus on God because of the distracting apparel of the women. Traditionally, in the first century A.D., women didn’t dress in these fashions unless they were specifically seeking the attention of other men. Today braided hair, pearls and the like, might not seem as such a distracting feature on a woman; however, in that time it would have been unusual and inherently intentional to dress this way.
Alas, times have indeed changed and these types of features are not the distraction that they would have been 2000 years ago. Paul was not advocating these precepts for modesty to all churches of all time but rather a very specific church, within a very specific time. On the backswing of this realization it would be easy (and utterly ridicules) to propose the idea that, on this basis, we can see that the Bible is no longer relevant to our “modern” times and therefore bears no credence to our sanctity. Stupid. The point of this passage is not that we are to dress in 1st century Greco-Roman fashion, but more importantly to search our hearts with the understanding that the way we dress affects not only us, but the people around us.
I would now like to take you back to the time from whence this dilemma of modesty first became an issue. It might come as no surprise to many of you that this would have me return to place of origin from which every quandary of human history arose, the Garden of Eden. It is my belief that the question of modesty stems as far back as any question of morality. To the original fall that had Adam and Eve plunge us into the darkest depths of depravity from whence only the work of Christ could reconcile. I believe it is within the very dictation of their downfall, in Genesis 3, that we might find the truth of nakedness, shame and modesty.
We have all heard the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent. We know that Eve was deceived by the cunning reptilian as was coerced into disobedience along with her all too willing husband. Like all great stories, however, it will never cease to bear enlightening fruit upon a more careful study and scrutinizing analysis.
Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, perfect in all their ways bearing a capacity to commune with the almighty on a direct and personal interactive means. They were free to romp and frolic about the entire Garden of Eden, having no limits as to their daily agendas provided they abide by the only prohibition of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That was it, one singular policy and the world with its many pleasures was theirs to enjoy. Now, as it is stated in the Bible, Adam and Eve were “both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”(Genisis2:25) This is probably the most important verse used to describe the condition of these two, in a pre-fall existence. So what does it mean, “{T}hey were naked?” Well I think it is safe to assume that this is as literal as literal gets. They didn’t wear clothes, no coverings. Not so much as the traditional fig leaf shrouding the ba-dunk-a-dunk and junk. They were all nude all the time! I think this is an easy enough interpretation, but what is interesting to note about this statement is not their physical condition that is described so much as the emotional and spiritual stasis of their being. They were, “not ashamed.” Glancing at this statement often provides one with a very common, I believe, misinterpretation of what being “ashamed” here implies.
Do you remember all of those nightmares you would wake from in a cold sweat? You know, the one where it’s your first day of junior high and there you are, sitting at your desk, hands sweating with anxiety. You sit there, nervous because you have a sinking feeling that you have forgotten something. Your spiral notebook sits on the left end of the desk while your no. 2 pencil rests on the other. Everything seems fine. Only then do you realize that you have forgotten one thing. Somehow, you have managed to forget to put your clothes on before you went to school that morning! There you are, stark naked in the midst of the most traumatizing and judgmental oppressors of your youth, your classmates. Your cheeks immediately flush with red as you do your best to utilize a pre-Algebra text book in place of a black “censored” box. You are in every sense of the word, “ashamed.”
So what is it that you are so ashamed of? Let’s return now to Genesis and where I believe the most important verse regarding the fallen condition of Adam and Eve can be found as contrasted to that of their pre-fall state. “…{S}he took of the fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” (Genisis3:6-7) I think this verse is infinitely more complex than many would like to admit and for that very reason I am going to propose an interpretation that may seem unorthodox to many. Let’s look at the verse. They ate the forbidden fruit and suddenly became aware of the fact that they were “naked” and immediately sought for something by which to cover themselves. Let’s think about this for a second, Adam and Eve were conceived naked. All they have ever known about each other was nakedness. There was no one else in the Garden beyond the Almighty Himself (so much as the scriptures imply). So why the heck did they feel the compulsion to cover their nudity from each other? Or was it from each other? It is my belief that the physical absence of clothing was not the only real dilemma which Adam and Eve were forced to reconcile. Let me explain.
When Adam and Eve were created, they were created in absolute perfection, in the very image of God. This is known as the Imago Dei. When most of us consider the repercussions of the fall, we tend to think about it in a very limited perspective. Consider the fact that the fall has had just as debilitating an effect upon your soul as it did your body, mind, emotions, desires ect. Why is that you ask? Because ALL of these parts make you, “you.” God created “you” with a body, soul and mind. He created “you” with reason, emotion and volition. You are not just one part of these, you are all of them. Something cannot happen to one without affecting the other and vice versa. Therefore, in a pre-fall state, man was perfect in every way possible. His body, spirit, mind, desires, reason, emotion were all pure and holy and innocent. With no inward principle of evil to work on, the seduction of sin had to come from without.
When we consider the effects of the fall, we tend not to think of it as a complete and total fall. The influence of Platonism has taught us to pick and choose some aspects of our being as fallen and others as not. This is not a Biblical truth. Ladies and Gentlemen, we should be a walking, shinning glory to behold. We were created in the image of God, in EVERY which way possible, and that is no small thing. When sin entered the world it corrupted EVERY aspect of our being in that now, what was once had been created by God for his perfect service, could now be used by man for disobedience. I know what you are thinking now, “Well we all might not be perfect mirrors for God like we were originally created to be, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still bear His image to some degree.” This is true. Despite the fact that we have corrupted a perfect creation we still bear a likeness of the Imago Dei. This is where common Grace comes in. Common Grace is the concept that God endows the world and everyone in it (saved or not) with a common or universal grace that undeservedly allows man to not immediately be condemned to an existence without Him (Matt. 5:45,Heb. 1:2-3; John 1:1-4, Rom. 13:6, Rom. 2:14-15, Gen. 9:6: 1 Cor. 11:7). Remember back in Genesis 2:17, that whole thing about how if you eat the fruit, “you will surely die.” To “die,” in this context, has a basic idea of separation. It means the spiritual, reasonable, emotional, volitional and ultimately eternal separation from God. However, God, in his good grace, allowed us a “common grace” by which our body entire could be sanctified. Man still bears the image of God, by grace, in his existence, such as his capacity to comprehend and understand, his ability to love and help others, ect ect… While an individual or nation may possess such admirable qualities, they are still fallen and tainted human beings and prone to misusing even these graces (Ecc 7:20). However, common grace still functions in way that is to the great (and undeserved I might add) benefit of everyone in the world.
O.K. now that that is cleared up, here is my proposal.
When we read in Genesis 3,
“6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;”
I think it is important to pay particular attention to the word “then” as it indicates a sense of immediacy of succession in terms of events. Once they ate of the fruit, their eyes were “immediately” opened and they realized they were naked. This sense of urgency suggests that whatever happened metaphysically in that moment, when they partook of the fruit, had a striking impact that both surprised and brought to shame, the both of them.
We know that the fruit was nothing special. It wasn’t laced with any kind of lethal chemical or poisonous drug. The significance of this the tree of the knowledge of good and evil resides alone in the fact that God told them not to eat of it. There was nothing wrong with looking at it. There was nothing wrong with touching it. God’s singular mandate for his perfect children was that they would not EAT of it. When Adam and Eve chose not to abide by this simple admonition, and ate of the fruit, sin entered the world, tainting everything in it. At the exact moment when Adam and Eve partook of this forbidden fruit, sin entered their very being of man and it was corrupted entirely. This means EVERY aspect of their being was immediately tarnished, including their bodies. The image of God which once shone brightly and perfectly was suddenly stagnant and monotonous. This is why when Adam and Even looked at each other; they saw the physically glory of God diminish before their eyes, and that is why they became ashamed.
Look people, Adam and Eve were created in nakedness. All they ever new about each other was nakedness. They were husband and wife for Peat’s sake! It wouldn’t make sense if suddenly they looked at each other’s bareness alone, and were ashamed of it, unless there was really something else going on here. What I am suggesting is that when Adam and Eve looked at each other they realized that they had done something terribly wrong because that glory of God that was once shining through them was now gone. Their “perfect” bodies were now fallen. This is why they were so ashamed, guilt immediately set in, and they knew they had trespassed the Almighty. Knowing this, we can come to truly comprehend what was really taking place in the rest of this verse:
“7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”
The first action they took in response to this “shame” was to make clothing out of foliage. We now understand what was really going through their minds at this point. Let me make my case by asking you a question. Remember when you were young and you did something terribly wrong and you knew if your parents found out you were going to be grounded for the rest of your life. I don’t know about you but this situation occurred many times with me. In one particular instance my mother had left the house to go grocery shopping and my brothers and I engaged in a game of dodge-ball….inside the house. We had about a solid 15 minutes of calamitous and raucous fun before someone missed his target, and instead blasted one of my mom’s porcelain bird statues to pieces. Shame and guilt overwhelmed us all and instead of admitting responsibility for playing a game inside the house, that we clearly knew our parents would have vetoed, we instead took the evidence and buried it, literally, in our backyard. Anyway, our mom eventually noticed she was one chickadee short of her artificial aviary and we were all sentenced to our much deserved chastisement. My point is this, when the guilt and shame of a wrong doing overwhelms a person, their first inclination is to hide or destroy the evidence. Consider not being grounded for the rest of your life, but all of eternity. This inhibition to hide sin is what we see when King David impregnated Bathsheba and killed Uriah; this is what we see when Achan plundered forbidden treasure and buried it under his tent; and this is what we see when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sewed fig leaves together for clothing. They assumed that they could cover up the mess they made. However, Adam and Eve’s mistake (like David’s) was in believing they could hide anything from God. They figured that if they could simply cover up their corrupted bodies, they could in fact conceal their iniquity. Here we can see how the fall affected their mind, in reason and judgment, as their perception and knowledge of God was already misconstrued. They no longer believed in their creator as an omniscient and omnipresent being.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
These next three verses are interesting; we are first given a depiction of God walking amongst the garden in some visible form. “Where are you?” The question was God’s way of bringing man to explain why he was hiding, rather than expressing ignorance about man’s location. God knew where they were and He knew what had happened. He called to them as a means of forcing confession. Once the truth comes out and judgment is sentenced upon all three (Adam, Eve and the serpent), we are told in verse 21 that God made “tunics of skin, and clothed them.” This verse is worth noting because it brings to light two very interesting aspects of this story that the scriptures are suggesting. The first is understood as a sacrifice having taken place. God made them clothing (literally covered up their shame) with animal skin. There is only one way you are going to get an animal to give up its skin and that is if you kill him to get it. Here we have the first substitutionary sacrifice as literally, covering up the shame and guilt of iniquity. Secondly we are shown that God Himself gave them these articles of clothing to wear. Clothing was no longer just a man devised by-product of guilt, but now, a God ordained means of protection. Man was forever corrupted, no longer bearing the perfect image and glory of God. As a result of the fall, clothing now bears three essential purposes. Because there was no longer that pure and holy physical body, Adam and Eve were given tunics by which to shield themselves from the dangerous elements of the world. Because of the corruption of our bodies, clothing gives us the ability to avoid judgment and scrutiny from others (even the most glamorous and picturesque movie stars and models have imperfections…trust me I would know, I work with them). And because of the corruption of our spirit and desires, we are given the ability to help protect ourselves, as well as others, from sexual perversions in seduction and enticement.
O.K. with all of this in mind, you may now understand why modesty is more complex than we like to think, because nakedness, in and of itself, is NOT sin. I repeat, it is NOT sin. WE ARE SINFUL. Coverings were created as a RESULT of sin and corruption. For those of you who would disagree, ask yourselves why it is wrong to watch a pornographic film but it is fine to read a National Geographic? Why is it condemnable to stare at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar and condonable to stare at the Sistine Chapel? In Kenya, women walk around topless, but in Saudi Arabia they are shrouded head to toe. Why? To find the answer to the problem we must first recognize that WE ARE THE PROBLEM. Look no further than yourself.
For anyone to truly answer the question of what modest is, they must first realize how others will interpret it. Granted no one can please or protect everyone else from their sin nature, but we don’t need to add fuel to the flame. We all have a fairly good idea of what message we are sending with the clothing we wear.
Now this all brings me back to that young woman I passed in the Old City of Jerusalem. She was covered from her head to her ankles. I wasn’t attracted to her modesty; I was attracted to her beauty. I think it would be better stated that I wasn’t “detracted” from her beauty because of “immodesty.” I think many are under the disillusion that being modest in and of itself is more “Godly” and therefore the only important thing. If this was true why go shopping for clothing at all? We should all just run around clad in potato sacks. You CAN be beautiful and modest without showcasing yourself as some kind of a nun with a makeup complex. You do NOT have to probe the line of decency to win attraction. What attracted me so much to this young Israeli woman was the fact that she was dressed in a manner which complemented her features. She didn’t just dress modestly but she dressed beautifully, and in such a manner that accentuated what beauty she already possessed. By far the most interesting aspect of the way this woman dressed was the fact that I hardly remember it at all. Let me explain. I have a general recollection of what she was wearing but I have a perfect recollection of her face. The pinnacle of a woman’s beauty is in her face, and everything this young lady adorned herself in only brought greater attention to it. Much like the use of triangles in the composition of classical art, this young woman’s dress acted as a guide to the focal point, the very pinnacle of her Imago Dei. Everything about her dress pointed me to her face and everything about her face pointed me to a wonderful artisan of a Creator. For that brief moment, when I stood there, jaw dropped, eyes popping out of my face, I wasn’t just awestruck by this woman’s beauty. I was marveling the very signature of God.