Blog
“Both/and Sins and Modesty”
Categories: Meditations
Several weeks ago, I stumbled across one of those online debates on modesty that have become drearily familiar since the advent of social media. On the one hand, you have the don’t-dress-like-a-hussy folks who claim that women who dress in revealing clothing make men lust after them. On the other hand, you have the I-can-dress-however-I-want people who retort that those nasty men need to keep their eyes and their thoughts to themselves. On and on it goes, with both sides talking at rather than talking to each other.
The problem is that the whole conversation reflects an ethical blind spot. For some reason, we want to pin the blame on either the scantily-clad woman or the lustful man without acknowledging that in that scenario, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
First of all, it’s undeniably true that women (and men, though all the New-Testament modesty passages are addressed specifically to women) need to dress modestly, in a way that draws attention to their virtues rather than their assets. This is true whether those assets are wealth (as is the case in 1 Timothy 2) or a healthy young body. Any woman of God who dresses (whether intentionally or unintentionally) in a way that attracts notice to her outside rather than her inside is doing wrong.
The same is true of the man who looks with lust on a woman (or anybody who looks with lust on anybody else). As per Matthew 5:28, that’s committing adultery in your heart. It’s black-letter sin.
Both of these things are true regardless of what anybody else does. A woman who dresses inappropriately has still done wrong even if all the men in her vicinity are godly and take up an examination of the ceiling tiles rather than her costume. On the other side of the coin, a man who chooses to lust after women who are modestly attired still has done wrong too.
Neither party becomes less culpable simply because someone else also is behaving badly. Yes, O immodestly dressed woman, that icky gross man needs to quit fantasizing about you, but you need to start taking your fashion cues from the Lord, not the world. Yes, O lustful man (or indignant female relative of lustful man), she shouldn’t be dressing like that, but even if every woman on the planet starts parading around stark naked, their choices do not justify your lust!
In short, when it comes to modesty and lust, all of us need to stop worrying so much about what others are doing and start worrying about what we ourselves are doing. The decisions of others may make it harder for us to be righteous, but they cannot make it less imperative. We need to make sure that our clothing reveals Christ instead of ourselves, and we also must make sure that He reigns in our hearts instead of sin. Looking to excuse our sin because of the sin of others will get us nowhere.
