As more and more men have lost their careers through accusations of sexual harassment, molestation, or assault, I wanted to enter the danger, high voltage area of whether women bring it on or ask for it.  Before I do though, I should declare my standard on these matters, whether I’ve kept that standard perfectly or not through my life.  I see it as a scriptural standard, however, and it differs from what is expected of men.  What I’m saying is that the contemporary standard that women expect and that men violate is still below the scriptural standard for men.  Men should be fine at least keeping the standard they’ve been currently violating.  At the same time, I express that I understand why men seem confused as to the standard, which I’d also like to explore.

Men are required in scripture not even to look at a woman in a sexual way, unless they are married to that woman.  If men would not even look at women this way, I think they can keep the lower standard related to touching women.  The touching of women is also laid out in the Bible.  I’ll briefly deal with both.  In the teaching of Jesus in what is called the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus laid out God’s standard in Matthew 5:28:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

It seems like He may have been mirroring what you can read in Proverbs 6:25 in instructions to young men to stay morally, sexually pure:

I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?

In the realm of touching, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:1:

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.

I know that commentators have said that “touch” is a euphemism, but I take the position that touch is touch, which is why Paul says, “It is good for a man not to.”  He would prohibit what it is said to be euphemistic of, and he does prohibit it elsewhere.  Men might come into contact with a woman not his wife, but it would be good for him not to do that, not even to touch.

A couple of other good arguments can be made, first, from Colossians 3:5:

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

Paul says mortify, put to death, starting with the worst, fornication, but everything leading up to it too, starting with covetousness, which is idolatry.  The other is Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 6:18, “Flee fornication.”  Furthermore, outside of marriage, someone or many, God says, have been defrauded (cf. 1 Thess 4:6).

I don’t think I need to break down all of the above.  There’s enough there to say what needs to be said.  If men had obeyed those verses, they would not be in trouble right now.  I think the women screaming the most about the violations would be against what the Bible teaches in those verses.  They want a certain amount of violation of those verses.  They don’t want to be judged by the Bible in most cases and hate it.

Again, I start by saying the above scriptural teaching is my standard.  It’s what I believe in, so I think what almost all of these men have been accused of is wrong.  They have transgressed scripture and without repentance and faith in Christ, they are in trouble with God, which is their worst trouble, not their ruined careers.  However, I think we should go to the area of whether women have responsibility too, and also the fathers and brothers and husbands, who should be leading and protecting them.

Are women asking for it?  I think most people in the secular world would at least frown on, or worse than frown, any censure of Beyonce, the female pop singer, when she proclaims the following in her piece, called Check On It:

Ohh, boy you looking like you like what you see
Won’t you come over and check up on it
I’m gone let you work up on it
Ladies let em check up on it
Watch it while he check up on it…
If you got it, flaunt it, boy I know you want it
While I turn around you watch me check up on it
Ooh, you watchin’ me shake it, I see it in ya face
Ya can’t take it, it’s blazin, you watch me in amazement. 

I picked these lyrics because they were more tame compared to others.  There are numerous similar or worse lyrics from the most famous and respected female pop singers in the world.  These are the people, let alone women, with the most twitter and instagram followers on the planet.  They are “asking for it,” quite literally.  Do women invite the supposedly forbidden attention they receive.

Women want outstanding men.  I read that from them in certain places in complete contradiction to Beyonce’s lyrics.  They often bemoan the lack of good men.  However, in many cases they don’t act like it themselves.  We see in scripture numerous examples of women, who are bringing it on or asking for it.  I can take you through all the examples, that include Jezebel, the strange woman of Proverbs, and Delilah, among many others.  The idea here is that women can dress and act almost any way they want, and men are supposed to do nothing.  What’s the point of wearing what they do (or not wearing) and acting as they do, if they don’t want what they say they don’t?

I’ve explained to young ladies that the allurement is like fly paper.  They can attempt to lure or seduce the one they want, but it’s only going to attract all of the other flies with it.  You also keep what you’ve attracted just how you got it.  The ante will keep being upped until nothing can satisfy.  Whatever way you got the man is the kind of man he is.  We live in a society that rewards this in women, and women oblige the reward.  They don’t have to, but they do, and then they say, you can’t do that.  Almost everything about them says someone can do that, except for later, when they say they didn’t really want it.

What are men supposed to do?  Once they’ve seen it the first time, they aren’t supposed to look one more time. They are supposed to look away.  Don’t look at these women who want men to look at you.  Don’t reward them.  They are not good ladies.  They are not.  These women though are saying one of the following:  ‘look at me, but don’t lust,’ ‘look at me, lust away, but don’t touch,’ or ‘look, lust, touch, but not too much, just the amount of touching I want from you.’  This is where the confusion lies for men, who really don’t have a standard, very often until the deed is done.

The women today also say they are in a quandary.  They can’t get a man unless they seduce, but if they seduce, they usually don’t get a good man.  It’s a tough balancing act, when the culture has abandoned the Bible and God’s way.

“Seduce” comes from the Latin, seductio, which means to lead. The sexual appearance of women relates to seduction and to a modern form of feminism.  It might seem contradictory.  Men allow women to lead when they follow a woman’s seduction.  On the other hand, a woman wants a man then who isn’t leading.  She finds he is either not much of a man or not a man at all.

I wrote recently that men don’t know how to act.  If women are going to be the instructors, which there isn’t grounds for them to be that, then men should know what the standard is.  This, however, is where is the most major trouble on all this, as Al Gore once said, “There is no controlling legal authority.”  Or as Judges 17:6 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”  Or maybe like before God wiped out all of mankind except for eight people, in Genesis 6:5-7:

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.

We either have a standard or we don’t.  We judge and condemn on what we accept, not ex post facto on what we wish would have happened.  The rules need to be laid out and some kind of authoritative explanation needs to be made for them.  Can we do that in an age when there is no acceptable authority?  This is what happens when a nation turns away from God.