Letters To Young Women: Modesty

Dear Young Lady,

It has been a while since I’ve written to you. Quite a bit has been going on the past several months, not the least of which was the wedding of one of my daughters (which was marvelous). If you need a reminder of the subjects I’ve covered so far, or maybe you are new to reading these letters, the first letter dealt with the state of femininity. The second answered the question, What is a Woman? The third letter addressed the issues around singleness. The fourth covered the subject of a female’s sexual agency. There is no need to read all of those to understand this letter. Each of the letters can be read alone. However, it may be helpful to understand how all of the subjects interrelate. For instance, in this letter, I address the topic of feminine modesty. You can understand the principles of modesty apart from a deep dive into sexual agency, but understanding sexual agency will add a layer to your understanding of why modesty is important

Whenever the subject of modesty is broached, the reactions tend to toward the extremes of “you get ‘em!” to being overly defensive. The former group claims the high ground and wants to see all those floozies (if you’re older), or THOTs (if you’re younger) be shamed into putting on some clothes, maybe dressing like a prairie muffin. The latter group may react with sentiments of, “O, here we go again! Women are the problem of men’s lusts,” or “Men are sexual swine that shouldn’t be gawking at women.” If you are prone to one of these extremes, keep reading. You may be surprised.

The subject of modesty is inherently tricky. Many of the issues are applications of Scriptures’ principles that require humble wisdom. Wisdom only comes as people mature and go through experiences interpreted through the lenses of Scripture, having their sense exercised to discern good—what is righteous, well-ordered, beautiful, and appropriate–and evil–sinful, chaotic, ugly, destructive, and inappropriate (see Hebrews 5:14). Wisdom is the ability to understand how things ought to fit together to make them good, true, and beautiful. The Spirit of wisdom, for instance, is given to the artist who oversaw the construction of the Tabernacle, Bezalel (Ex 31:2-3). While he had many instructions about the construction, he had to figure out the details from the principles and patterns of the general instructions. Artists understand proper relationships of colors and dimensions to make a beautiful piece of art. So it is in all areas of wisdom, including modesty.

There is no chapter-and-verse for particular clothes, especially in the twenty-first century. You must be able to apply biblical principles. While there is latitude in those applications, you must also know that biblical principles carry biblical authority. Consequently, when those principles are violated, that is sin. Therefore, work out your own salvation in the area of modesty with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12).

Because we are dealing with wisdom in applying principles, there will be a tendency to respond with the extremes of either legalism or libertarianism.

Legalism is not “a strict adherence to the Scriptures.” Legalism is no friend of God’s Word. Legalism is making up rules contrary to Scripture, usually in the name of holiness. But the legalist’s holiness is fabricated from his own mind or culture, not Scripture. A legalist may look holy to people because he claims that any enjoyment of alcohol is wrong, sex in any context is evil, or abstinence from certain foods makes you more holy. Paul says he is teaching the doctrine of demons (1 Tim 4:1-4). Saying a woman is forbidden to wear pants or must wear dresses may make a person or a group seem holier, but these are extra-biblical standards.

Not all rules are legalism. There are some good, God-honoring rules that must be obeyed even though there is not a specific chapter-and-verse addressing that particular issue. When a parent tells his child to take out the trash or clean his room, nothing in Scripture says that a child must take out the trash or clean his room. “Children obey your parents in the Lord,” however covers this. Not taking out the trash or cleaning the room is, at that point, disobedience to God. The same is true about the application of biblical commands and principles to clothing. There are some good “rules” that aren’t legalism.

On the other extreme is the libertine, the person who claims to have freedom in Christ, who is under no obligation to anyone and, therefore, may do anything he wants. The libertine, ironically, only believes this until he has been treated unjustly, and then, all of the sudden, there is a need for the rules to be enforced.

Biblical liberty is the freedom to be all God created me to be. Liberty is not about “personal self-expression,” or an attitude of “who cares what others think of me.” Our liberty is not to be used as a cloak of any sort of maliciousness (1 Pt 2:16). We are to use our liberty to serve Christ, our brothers and sisters, and the world. True liberty enslaves our sinful passions to free us from their destruction.

Both legalism and libertarianism are to be avoided in applying the principles of modesty. But we must also avoid believing that some form of conservatism is the standard. Sometimes conservatism is mistaken for biblical standards. Many of the Pharisees were conservatives in Jesus’ day, holding on to the tradition of the fathers in ways that caused them to disobey the direct commands of Scripture (see Matt 15:1-9). People may assume that how people dressed in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries should be the standard by which all modesty is judged. They become LARPers of a sort, looking as if they stepped off the set of Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons. Dressing this way because you have a nostalgia for a bygone age that you have repristinated in your selective memory (which is what we do with many dead ages and people) doesn’t mean that you are modest. Indeed, you may be immodest. I’ll explain why this is a little later. Some dress may be emulated from those eras, but they are not right just because they are old. Don’t mistake “conservative” with “biblical.” You will have to think and maybe have others help you.

An exhaustive list of biblically acceptable and unacceptable clothes is not available. Watch yourself. Folly likes to take advantage of the lack of a list with every possible scenario spelled out. Folly will beat the wise over the head with the fact that he or she can’t “prove” this or that. Folly is overly defensive about her clothing and dares anyone to challenge her. The overly defensive woman reveals a deeper problem of rebellion, a stubbornness of heart that is the root of the problem. She is not willing to listen or submit to others.

Then there is the confronter who wants to take everything about modesty and confront everyone she doesn’t believe is living up to the standard. She wants to bludgeon other women into submission to her standard, the exact way she applies the principles. This person has some heart problems as well. The problem is pretty much the same as the defensive person but expresses itself in another way.

Before moving into the principles of modesty, you must self-evaluate, asking, “Is my heart receptive to hearing correction? Am I willing to think through these issues, looking through the lenses of the Scriptures’ principles, precepts, and commands? Am I willing to do what Scripture teaches?” I may not be exactly right about everything, but I will give you some things to think about.

What are clothes? That probably sounds like a stupid question. Everyone knows what clothes are: fabric cut and sewn together that covers your body. Channeling C. S. Lewis, that’s what clothes are made of but not what clothes are. Clothes are symbolic. In fact, clothes are primarily symbolic and only secondarily pragmatic (for example, to cover nakedness and protect you from the elements). You and I know this instinctively. We know when someone wants to say, “I don’t care,” or cares a great deal about fitting in with or standing out to others by how she dresses. Some clothes are understated (clothes are that are frumpy or homely), and some clothes say, “Look at me! I’m available.” Clothes speak. They can say more in a moment’s glance than you can explain in a five-thousand-word essay.

Clothing language begins with God himself. His glory is revealed in his creation (Ps 19) with which he clothes himself (Ps 104). Through God’s clothes, he speaks, and we learn who he is. Because we are made in the image of God, we are made to be clothed. Freshly created man and woman were naked, but God intended them to be clothed eventually. We know this because when Jesus was exalted, having fulfilled man’s mission, he was clothed with splendor and majesty (see Rev 1).

Our clothing, like God’s, reveals who we are and what we do. We understand this with uniforms. When we see a man in a specific color and style of shirt and pants with a badge on, we know he is an officer of the law. When we see someone in a black robe, we probably assume he or she is a judge. If we see a man with a funny-looking collar with a white tab on his throat, we know he is a Christian minister. Clothing speaks. And if someone wears certain types of clothes without being given the authority to wear those clothes, he can be condemned for lying. If, for example, a man is wearing a policeman’s uniform but is not a policeman, he can be in serious trouble.

The fact that clothes speak is an undeniable truth. So, whenever you step out of your house with clothes on (and I pray that you will always have clothes on when you step out of your house), you are wordlessly speaking to everyone you meet. Among other things, this means that your clothes are a public issue. You are responsible for what you are saying. Just as you shouldn’t be careless about the words that come out of your mouth, you should not be careless with your clothes. Because of this, whether you like it or not, you are accountable at some level to others for what you wear in the same way you are accountable for what you say verbally. You can’t express yourself in any way you want and then be aghast at the reactions you receive and/or blame everyone else for “not understanding,” being perverts, or being prudish.

If someone speaks to you about what you are wearing, that is not necessarily being nosy or inappropriately out of bounds. You can’t yell at everyone around you and be surprised if someone tells you, “Hey, can you tone it down, please.” You are talking, and people around you are being forced to listen. You need to be a polite conversationalist when it comes to the way you dress.

One function of speech is to make distinctions. If I say something is a mouse, it is not a car, a dog, a wrench, or a billion other things. Clothes-as-speech make distinctions, separating us into categories. The most fundamental distinction that clothes make is between men and women. Clothes declare and accentuate the fact that God created us to be different. Clothing should reflect and celebrate the differences between us.

When speaking of modesty, we shouldn’t be looking for androgynous, wraith-looking creatures going about in garments that make no visible distinctions between men and women. When God created the man and the woman with distinct features, he declared them good. When we dress to glorify those features, we are glorifying the most basic calling God has given us. God created you female. Dress like a female. Don’t strive to blur the distinctions.

Again, extremes should be avoided. Some want to obliterate the distinctives, and others want to overly accentuate the distinctives. The first group says that if clothes show curves in a woman, it is immodest. She must be trying to seduce everyone if you can see that she has breasts or hips. This is the Islamic-acting crowd who thinks women ought to go around in burqas or the Christians who want women to dress in non-descript potato-sack-looking clothes. There is a difference between wearing something that expresses your feminine features and that which is provocative accentuation. The first is correct. The latter is wrong. (More on this a little later.)

As men and women, we are called to different tasks, and our clothes reflect those callings. God makes this clear. God does not allow our callings to be blurred by the clothes that we wear in certain circumstances. Deuteronomy 22:5 says, “A woman shall not put on the gear of a warrior, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to Yahweh your God.” This verse is not talking about cross-dressing, being a transvestite, or being a transsexual (though it can certainly apply to all of those areas). The verse is not about women wearing pants (a popular interpretation in some Christian circles). The phrasing specifically deals with taking up a man’s military gear. It is a man’s vocation to fight for and protect women in war. Women are not supposed to be on the front lines of combat. God reveals this by telling us what clothes we should and should not wear.

Our callings as men and women are accepted, submitted to, and declared to the world around us by what we wear. At this point, it is appropriate to ask, “Who are you?” Digging a little deeper, “Who defines you and, therefore, how you dress?” Galatians 3:27 says that as many as have been baptized into Christ and put on Christ. That is a clothing metaphor. If you have been baptized into Christ, you are clothed with him; therefore, your clothes should reflect your baptismal garments. You are renewed as the image of God in Christ and must always ask whether or not your clothes are speaking the truth of this to the world.

Your clothes also reflect cultures and subcultures. It used to be a thing (and maybe still is) to dress Goth. When you dress this way, you are saying something. These clothes identify you with a certain culture with its ideas about God, relationships, and the world. You like the style. Okay. But you have a responsibility to be a faithful witness of Christ. Are those clothes speaking faithfully about Christ? Apply this to any and every subculture you want. The standard is still the same.

One passage of Scripture that exhorts Christian women to modesty in dress is 1 Timothy 2:9-10. Speaking to women in the context of how they present themselves in worship, Paul says, “Likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.” While Paul points out some specifics about how women ought not to adorn themselves–braided hair, gold or pearls, or costly attire–he doesn’t tell them exactly what to wear. That is to be left up to their prudence or self-control concerning what is “proper for women who profess godliness.” There are certain ways to dress that you know are appropriate and other ways you know are inappropriate. The “respectable apparel” means something like “well-ordered.” This, you might say, is a wisdom word. You know what is appropriate for you and for the occasion.

The word translated “modesty” speaks of a sense of shame. Modesty is an appropriate sense of shame that refuses to seek inappropriate attention. Shame is not only that feeling you get when you do something wrong and feel guilty but also a sense of self-respect and dignity. Someone who has this proper sense of shame has the ability to blush when something is inappropriate. A modest person has appropriate sensibilities. It has been typical (at least in the past) to speak of someone who is doing something crass or rude as “having no shame.” We know people are supposed to be acting in certain ways in specific contexts.

Shame is a matter of the heart, what you understand as appropriate before God in the world. As we read in 1 Timothy 2, modesty is not relegated to being sexually provocative. Being a “show-off” is immodest. Ladies in worship are not to be ostentatious, showing off their wealth, trying to put others to shame by standing out and having people gawk at them.

Modesty is a heart issue. Out of the abundance of the heart, the clothes speak. What you wear reveals what is going on in your heart. When picking out your wardrobe for an occasion, you need to ask yourself, “What am I saying? Why do I want to say that? Is what I am saying pleasing to God?”

The apostle Peter deals directly with this when instructing wives, he says, “Do not let your adorning be external–the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear–but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1Pe 3:3-4). The heart being meek or gentle means it is not obnoxious, overbearing, or rough. The meek and gentle heart uses privileges and authority to serve others rather than flaunt. The quiet heart is, obviously, not loud, desiring to draw undue attention to oneself. The quiet heart reflected in speech, spoken or clothes, is the opposite of Harlot Folly in Proverbs 7, who is loud and “dresses like a whore” (Pr 7:10-11). She flaunts the power and privilege of her sexual agency–her body, her physical attractiveness, and the way she accentuates those things with her clothes–to tempt men. She is the opposite of the quiet heart, and that is revealed, in part, by what she wears.

Modesty is a heart issue, and how you know that you have a modest heart is that you are eager for instruction and concerned about how those around you are interpreting your clothes-language. The “I don’t care what others think,” or “They can just deal with it” attitude reveals a lack of proper shame. There needs to be an appropriate sense of fitting in so as not to stand out.

Modesty is concerned about context. When Paul instructed Timothy about women’s dress, he was speaking of the context of worship and not a wedding. It is appropriate for a bride to be all gussied up and the center of attention because it fits the occasion. Having very few or no clothes on at all is appropriate in private with your husband. Modesty discerns contexts and properly orders oneself and clothing for the occasion.

Context matters. We have cultural contexts in which we live day-to-day. If you are concerned about modesty (and you should be), you need to ask yourself what you clothes are saying within your culture’s context. Are you dressing angrily, shaving your hair, getting tattoos (a relatively permanent form of clothing), and piercing your body in ways to tell everyone around you that you are rebellious or angry? Are you telling everyone by dressing butch that you hate the fact that God made you a woman? Shaving your hair, for example, is a rejection of the glory God gave you. A woman’s hair is her glory and, in turn, glorifies her man (when she has one; 1 Cor 11:15). Unless you have a medical condition or are undergoing cancer treatments, why do you want to wear your hair so short or even shave it? What are you trying to say?

Your situation may be the opposite, but with the same heart issue. Are you dressing like you live on the prairie in the eighteenth or nineteenth century? That draws attention to yourself as much as the one who dresses angrily. It’s good that you are covered up, but why are you dressing in this style? Do you want people to notice just how different you are? There are appropriate contexts for this, for example, if you are part of the Amish community. Outside of that, you come across as being strange.

Since Paul deals with women’s “head apparel” in a worship context, I will say something here about head-coverings in worship. I have a definite opinion about what the Scriptures do and do not teach about this, but I’m not even going to approach that here. You are convicted that you ought to be wearing a head-covering in worship, but that is not the common practice of your church. The pastor and elders may not even mind that you wear one. But does it draw attention to you inappropriately so that you stand out among the worshipers? You stand out the same way as someone who sings the songs she wants to sing while the rest of the congregation sings what is in the order of worship. Your “modesty” and “submission to authority” might be immodesty and rebellion. Think about what you are saying. There are ways to deal with your convictions without insisting on standing out in worship.

Now we come to what everybody expects when dealing with modesty: sexually provocative clothes. Are you trying to be provocative and draw quick attention to yourself, showing yourself as the alpha female in the room (the most attractive) and/or drawing all the eyes of the men so that they will look at you and long for you? How Harlot Folly dresses reveals a cunning heart (Pr 7:10). She knows what she is doing. She has an agenda. You know what you are doing, even if you haven’t thought through it that much. You know what gets attention and what doesn’t. Playing dumb isn’t becoming.

Here is something to consider when examining what you are wearing. Consider line of sight issues. What are you drawing attention to on your body by the accentuation of your clothes? If you wear pants with writing across the rear end, don’t think people perverts if they look at your rear end and read it. That’s what you asked them to do. The same is true when you wear overly tight pants, whether jeans or yoga pants. The issue becomes even more pronounced when you wear high heels to “boost your butt.” The same thing applies to tops. If you wear a shirt with writing across the chest, expect people to look at your breasts, and don’t play the offended woman if they do. They are only obliging you in your request. The same applies to tight shirts and sports bras (at the gym or otherwise). When you scream, “Look at my breasts!” with your clothes, men will do it. A woman’s breasts are given, in part, for sexual pleasure according to Proverbs 5:19. Accentuating your breasts is sexually provocative. (But you knew that already. Just making sure everyone acknowledges the elephant in the room.)

Before you say that society in general or men, in particular, ought to look at you in this way, you need to ask yourself what you are saying with your clothes and why you are saying it. Are you starving for masculine attention? Why? It is easy to get men to notice you through sexually provocative dress, but what kind of men are you attracting? Are you attracting someone who has self-control and will make a good husband, or are you attracting a man who is controlled by his sexual impulses and will discard you for the next more provocatively dressed woman?

There aren’t strict modesty rules. Modesty is an art and art, as I said earlier, is a function of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how things fit together appropriately and having the skill to put these things in the proper relationship. That’s what an artist does. An artist has basic rules of colors, contrasts, and representations, but then she knows how to apply those fundamentals beyond a paint-by-numbers picture. She asks not only what she wants to say through her dress but also what will be heard or interpreted in the context. She examines if her heart aligns with her calling as a Christian woman in everything she puts on. She puts herself together well.

You need to be Lady Wisdom and think through the way you dress. If you have good men in your life, such as a father, brother, or husband, seek his counsel on how you are wearing will be understood. Encourage him to be honest and don’t go off on him when he is, for that will discourage him from being honest in the future.

Dress like Lady Wisdom.

Sincerely,
Pastor Smith