May 5, 2009: Cover Up

Summer approaches, when we all wear less clothing, so I thought this a good time to remind you (young people in particular) to be sure to wear enough clothing.

I'll set an example at church, as I do every summer. Though I shed my suit jacket around Memorial Day and don't put it on till September, I never go as far as to appear in the pulpit wearing shorts and a T shirt. That is because it would not be right of me to distract you with my finely sculpted calf muscles. And though I have 6-pack abs, I dutifully keep them covered at all times with a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. It is just one of those things that mature people do.

In the wake of the recent brouhaha about Miss California in the Miss USA pageant, I asked a couple friends if they would mind if their daughters participated in such a contest. One said "I'm not sure" and the other said "No way!" I said, "I'm just glad I don't have daughters." (It's the same thing I say at high school basketball half-time shows where the dancing squads not only wear inappropriate tights but gyrate suggestively in them, making me wonder why none of these girls have parents who say to them, "Young lady, you are not going out of this house dressed like that!")

Way back in 1996 I was teaching a Sunday School class to a group of about 20 senior citizens, and happened to ask if any of them had a problem with a Christian woman parading around onstage in a bikini so that spectators could ogle and grade her body in the swimsuit competition of a Miss America contest. None of them objected to that - they all thought I was prudish. Then, afterward, the oldest person in the class, a dear wizened widow who had never said a word, came up to me and quietly whispered, "I agree with you." So there it was, just me and a 93-year-old saint holding down the lonely fort of modesty in the face of a permissive onslaught within the church!

Another widow recently wrote to me saying, "The Bible says that women make themselves beautiful with a gentle and quiet spirit [1 Peter 3:4]. Is this something that is attractive to all men do you think?" I wrote back that it was certainly attractive to me! A gentle and quiet spirit is downright sexy - and sexy in the right way. An aggressive, public flaunting of flesh in tight or skimpy clothing only attracts the wrong kind of man - or attracts only the reptilian part of the brain of a good man.

Let the reptile have his rightful place in the marriage bed. Elsewhere, in public settings - especially church! - let your behavior be governed by modesty in spirit, speech, demeanor and dress.