In the comment section of a post about music, someone commented:
Is there any place in the Bible where God condemns Daisy Dukes? Being a dishwasher at a strip club?
But until we can agree that God’s Word is sufficient to give us the tools to evaluate all aspects of human behavior using the discernment that Paul prayed for on our behalf – even if not specifically addressed in Scripture – there is no point of pursuing this further. If God provided us specific instruction in the Scriptures regarding every little detail of life, what would be the purpose of having discernment?
Daisy Dukes – not sure – but I think that’s tiny pants. The Bible does condemn indecent exposure. It speaks of women who come “dressed as a prostitute.” Now, it doesn’t address how tiny pants have to be to be indecent. But it does teach a category of illicit dress, even if today we don’t know what exactly was illicit about it. And Jesus taught that looking with the purpose of lust is sin.
Later, the author of the first comment above
responded:
So I assume by your response then that you care nothing about discernment, that the only things you don’t do are those things specifically spelled out in the Bible? I can’t see how a Christian could possibly live in that manner.
Regarding Daisy Dukes, you’ve got the (Leviticus 18, the prophets) question of exactly how much nakedness one can uncover before one is being seen as “available for a Biblically unlawful relationship”, to put an idiom around it. Regarding “being a dishwasher at a strip club”, that’s pretty straightforward as well; you’re enabling the degradation of the women “performing” there, not to mention destroying the minds and morals of the men who watch.
These are fundamentalists or at least at a professing fundamentalist site in part discussing modesty or nakedness in the context of another conversation. What you read is an inability or at least unwillingness to decide or say what immodesty or nakedness are. This is new in Christian history. It hasn’t been a problem in the past, not just for fundamentalism or practitioners of personal separation in the church, but for all of professing Christianity. The morality of “Daisy Dukes” wouldn’t have needed discussion — they would be universally condemned by all Christians. Relativism has invaded and captivated Christianity, including fundamentalism. Men won’t judge what is nakedness anymore. They either don’t know, they’re lying, or they’re afraid.
Can we judge without ambiguity what nakedness or nudity is? In the past everyone could. Even the world knew. After the world rejected objective modesty, Christians hung on, and now they have capitulated. Modesty itself as a concept is taught by some, but unambiguous modesty, that can be practiced or even enforced if needs be, has been abdicated. Can it be judged?
First, there is such a thing as nakedness. The word and the varied related words are used 114 times (naked–47, nakedness–57). Something is happening that someone is supposed to know. And it’s bad. It starts right at the beginning of the Bible, when Adam and Eve know they are naked and that it’s bad (Genesis 3:7). When they make clothes out of fig leaves, the most rudimentary understanding of scripture knows that God finds what they made insufficient, so He made something more and better (Genesis 3:21). Something less than what God made is unacceptable.
When Thomas Jefferson argued for a Declaration of Independence, he mentioned “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” and “truths to be self-evident.” Are there self-evident truths revealed by the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God? The founding fathers believed so and argued to people they thought would respect that as an argument, men with a similar culture, what could be called a premodern one.
The Apostle Paul makes reference to the same legitimate authority in 1 Corinthians 11:14: “Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” Self-evident truths are taught by nature, even as also seen from Paul in Romans 2:14, “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.” God reveals His will through scripture, but also through nature, making Gentiles guilty before God for breaking God’s law. They couldn’t be guilty if these things couldn’t be known. They can be known. They are self-evident. Even nature teaches certain things.
Is the standard for modesty, an objective, unambiguous one taught by nature? I believe there is evidence to say that it is, like a lot of other beliefs and practices. Christians, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, for millennia agreed that certain body parts must be covered for everyone in even more so for women. Only recently has there been a repudiation of that idea, and by going only along with the world system, conforming to the spirit of the age. This unanimity itself is self-evident.
Scripture speaks about modesty and the antithetical nakedness in objective, unambiguous terms. I’m going to speak of one standard in particular that relate to the “Daisy Dukes” that started this post. Isaiah 47:1-3 read:
1 Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. 2 Take the millstones, and grind meal: uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. 3 Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.
“Uncover[ing] the thigh” equals “thy nakedness shall be uncovered” and “shame shall be seen.” Nakedness is a shame as seen in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. These female prisoners being forcibly marched into captivity are shamed by the exposure of their thighs, when crossing a river.
The only controversy language-wise is whether the Hebrew word for thigh is the upper leg or the whole leg. It’s at least the upper leg. That’s what thigh means, and that starts with the knee. “Daisy Dukes” show the thigh. Any showing of the woman’s thigh is nakedness. Scripture says it.
A reason why Christian women are showing their thighs is that church leaders aren’t providing an unambiguous standard or definition of nakedness. A second is the lack of shame. This relates to the word “shamefacedness” in 1 Timothy 2:9, which is the concept of modesty in the New Testament. A Christian is to dress in a way that she will not be ashamed, which is to be modest or not naked. A third reason is wordliness, conforming to the world and fashioning one’s self according to the former lust (Rom 12:2, 1 Pet 1:14). Especially young professing Christian women don’t want to stick out in a world that is bereft of modesty. This is fear of man that is a snare.
When Christian women show their thighs, they are inviting lust from men. They are causing a temptation to sin. The fathers and brothers are leaving these young women unprotected and objects of male desire. This isn’t safe. It’s also defrauding a future husband. It’s for his eyes only, but she is exhibiting herself for anyone who wants to look. Much more could be said, but this is not Christian behavior, not conduct becoming the gospel of Christ. For someone, who professes light, it is walking as a child of darkness. Stop it. Please stop it.
One more thing. As the definition relates to religious movements, a cult is a social group with deviant or novel beliefs and practices. A novel belief or practice is new, something that hasn’t been practiced before. In cult-like fashion, people have been convinced that a cult must be very, very devoted, so it would be “strict,” adding that to their own personalized definition. World-loving people like to throw the “cult” word around, but in fact, the people using the word “cult” are cult-like, because they have tossed out biblical belief and practice for something novel. Yes, the new thing is alluring to the flesh, but it is not biblical. It’s also got devotion, because it’s devotion to self and the flesh, that is cult-like. In the end, it’s not going to be who called someone a cult that’s the problem, but who left behind biblical belief and practice for something novel to have the temporal thing coveted in the world.
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