[Full Court]

A Conversation on Dress An Excerpt from Beautiful Girlhood By Margaret Hale

       "Mother, said Jennie Vane one day as the two sat together sewing. Why do you not want me to wear my necklines low?"

       "What do you call a low necked dress?" asked her mother.

       "You know how the girls mostly wear them low like this," said Jennie, with her finger making on her bosom a line that she called low. Mrs. Vane looked to God for wisdom to rightly answer, and to equip Jennie with enough Christian sense to dress modestly despite the popular trend and fashion.

       "I do not require you to make your dresses with close fitting necks, Jennie, but I have reasons which I am only too glad to explain to you why I do not approve such necklines as you've described."

       "I want to know just why Mother, for sometimes I feel a little odd that none of my dresses are made that way."

       "One of the first evidences of a real lady, is that she should be modest. By modesty we mean that she shall not say, do, nor wear anything that would cause her to appear gaudy, ill-bred, or unchaste. There should be nothing about her to attract unfavorable attention, nothing in her dress or manner that would give a man an excuse for vulgar comment. When we dress contrary to the rule of modesty we give excuse for unwholesome thoughts in the mind of those who look upon us, and every girl who oversteps these bounds makes herself liable to misunderstanding and insult, though she may be innocent of any such intention."

        "Shouldn't men learn to guard their thoughts?" asked Jennie.

        "There," replied her mother, "is the very question, put in a little different form, that Cain gave to God about his brother: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Yes, Jennie, to a great extent we are responsible to our brother's thoughts. But I would not have you think that all men are so weak. There are strong, true, pure-minded men and boys to whom these weaknesses of women are not a temptation. But there are the weaker also, and for them we are partly responsible. Let us suppose that upon the streetcorner there stands a group of men and boys among them being two boys whose minds are pure. You and another girl are dressed with very low necks, very thin blouses and your skirts are quite short. The scantiness of your dress attracts attention to your person. You may behave as perfect ladies, but as you pass the corner your appearance causes worldly minded to think and say vulgar things about you. The pure-minded boys hear, and their minds are defiled. You girls are as much to blame for what has happened as the impure man or boy who said the evil things."

http://www.momof9splace.com/conversation.html

[Full Court]

Homeschool ping

[PetroniusMaximus]

To all:

Look at the young people in your church.

Do they look worldly and aloof?

If so there is a serious and possibly fatal spiritual problem in your church.

[Liberal Bob]

There are many home schoolers out there that are not Christian. They home school for a number of reasons including that the local schools don't teach and they don't want to see their kids shot during lunch.

There are not a lot of home schooling associations out there for them to attend so they will probably jump at the opportunity to attend anything that can give them a few pointers.

It is a good chance to let Christ light shine. You never know who or how the Spirit will introduce Himself.

[wmfights]

I have two boys 15 & 13 and I used to get even more "cranked up" about their appearance when they were younger. I'm convinced that some of this is kids just trying to assert their independence and individuality. Also, like most kids they want to "fit in". We solved some of this by sending them to single gender schools that have dress codes.

Bottom line as long as they don't look like "thugs" I'm easier on them. My main concern is all the subliminal messages in the youth culture that are anti-GOD.

[LibertyGirl77]

I am all for modesty, but this guy is focused on all the wrong things. This article was a horrible Christian witness.

[M. Thatcher]

Both were outside my “box” of appropriate Christian attire.

ROFL.

[Taliesan]

Modesty is a legitimate Chrsitian virtue, and is most often insulted by young women. As for the rest of this writer's hand-wringing, I don't discern any clue in the New Testament that Paul of Tarsus would have dressed or groomed himself differently than the rest of the crowd in the Areopagus.

[Zuriel]

I met my wife in a bar almost 29 yrs ago (we were God-fearing to a degree, but were not born again Christians). I didn't have a clue about her personality. I just saw a very beautiful, very sexy young woman, wearing tight form-fitting apparral. Yes, I first saw her as a sexual object, but after talking with her, I was attacted to her even more than any female I had previously met. We began dating. She was a virgin, and determined to stay that way until married. I was fortunate to find such a lady in a very worldly setting. We haven't gone to a bar in 24 yrs, and don't miss them at all.

Looking back, I can say that if a single woman dresses modestly (one can still have a pretty good idea if she has a decent figure, if that is important), she can have a better chance of attacting males that are not 'one-dimensional'.

The obvious is: Live Godly in Christ Jesus, and things will 'fall into place'.

[Scothia]

I have more trouble with the idea that this guy appears to be spending an inordinate amount of time driving about looking at young people like that. "I'm just doing research for my article on modest dress." Um hmmmm.

There are an awful lot of people in The World dressed in suits and skirts committing horribly godless acts--just go to Washington, D.C. any day of the week, or the UN Building.

[ibheath]

bump for later read

[Eagle Eye]

The most important thing about a Christian witness is making sure that the outside of the cup in clean.

The Saducees and Pharisees know this to be true.

/sarcasm

[Sloth]

“She can really kick b_ _t.” I snapped my head around to see where that had come from. Another young lady, perhaps 15, was talking with some boys. I listened for a moment, enough to hear the slang term a few more times. She obviously liked using that word. Her mother stood nearby, either oblivious to the street slang or unconcerned.

Yeah, the word 'butt' is some pretty harsh 'street slang.' She must have picked that up at a 2 Live Crew concert, or maybe that South Park movie.

... Both were outside my “box” of appropriate Christian attire. I resisted the urge to pass judgment any further.

Clearly not, or we wouldn't be reading this.

When it becomes impossible on a city street to even guess which might be the lost sinner and which is probably the Christian teen, something has gone disastrously awry.

Is it seriously this guy's idea that in the first century, Christians could be distinguished from pagans just from how they looked walking down the street?