i read an article today on modesty

I read an article today on modesty and had some thoughts:

1. The first porn picture I ever saw. I was still in my single digits, I think, but it was Brigitte Bardot wearing an open blue jean jacket with a pair of jeans. I told my wife the other day that the look is one sometimes you can see at the mall now. The stuff at Victoria's Secret is more graphic than the Playboys of the 60's.

2. As to women having power, you do not see male nightgowns. Men’s stuff is usually humorous, while women’s is seductive. Women looking at men is a relatively new thing and brought about rather artificially by the Women’s Liberation Movement.

3. People letting go of modesty is kind of like a Christian holding evolution ideas – giving in to what you see as overwhelming and unstoppable. I saw an example of this in an AG church in Arkansas a couple of years ago. It was an old-fashioned, conservative church where the women wore skirts. A group came to perform and were told of their “custom” so the drummer – who was an attractive young woman – wore a skirt instead of her usual pants. Unfortunately, she wore a very short skirt with a slit. Technically, she was fine, but somebody needed to tell her what was good and no one had.

4. As to trying to be your child’s friend, our children do not need more friends, they need parents. And if we do not tell them, no one will.

5. When it comes to modesty, I believe it is inherent. Children learn otherwise from society. As Crosby, Stills and Nash said, you have to teach your children well. They have to learn to be unclothed. And they do it well with size 4T string bikinis and thong panties.

6. Of course, each generation has to deal with the changing of their own moral codes. I knew an old man back when I was a young man in the early 70’s (the first miniskirt years). He mentioned that when they were young, they would go to Chicago where the wind blows and watch the wind blow up the girls’ skirts, so you could see their ankles. It startled me, but I realized that we become somewhat callused and I fear it is not to be turned aside unless something major happens to our culture.

7. Men have begun to go shirtless in the past few years I read that Clark Gable, in one of his movies, took off his shirt and didn’t have on an undershirt. It was two things: one, it was scandalous and two: it, almost overnight, killed the undershirt industry. The same thing happened to hats when JFK didn’t wear a hat. Personally I wear a shirt at all times because I do not want to scare the children and small animals.

8. And last, women do not follow because men do not lead. Men have become convinced that it doesn’t matter. I think the Foursquare Church has a problem with that in its egalitarian approach. Men are the natural leaders in God’s world.

Modesty will not change until people find God. Otherwise, there is no reason to change. The world likes itself the way it is and wants to be more like it is, not less.

(hat-tip to Dr Terry Stair in Georgia)