Sobering Issues - Modesty

 
Dear Debi,
I have truly enjoyed your book Created to Be His Help Meet. It has been a blessing to me and many of my friends. I have given it to many ladies, and some have questions about the way you put things. Some ladies take exception to the story of the lady who wears the tight skirt and the man’s reaction. They say, “She makes it sound like Lydia (Bathsheba) is responsible for his actions. Why didn’t the young man go for counselling? I don’t believe a normal young man has a constant, day to day sexual struggle against visual temptation. They don’t have to regardless of how a girl is dressed. This sounds too much like “If you dress like that, you are just asking to be raped.”
My husband downloads your messages, and he and his boss listen to them at work. He loves his job.
Leslie
 

Response:
A woman who does not believe a young man struggles daily against visual temptation is simple. Go look up “simple” in a KJV Bible to see what God thinks of “simple” people. I’ll go ahead and explain from my perspective, of once being sunk in the mire of visual temptation. A man’s eyes are drawn to pleasing shapes: the curves of a Corvette (1971 Stingray, being my favorite), the flowing stream as it goes around a bend, or the hips revealed by a tight clothes, tight enough to reveal whether the “lines” are there or not.
As a saved family man, I must adhere to the Bible command to entreat or regard “the younger [women] as sisters, with all purity” (1 Timothy 5:2), even if those sisters are dressed in a way that catches my eye. If I give in to the temptations based on what I see, I am guilty of sinning. However, you women who think you are absolved from responsibility in this area are wrong. Why make it difficult for me and your brothers? Why not love me as a brother in Christ and dress in a way that does not make me conscious of what I used to do and be? Mike has commented in the past about alcoholics who get saved. He admonishes them to stay away from places like bars, because the flesh has been conditioned to enjoy alcohol’s powers. Likewise, as a former porn reader, porn movie viewer who liked self-gratification to satisfy his wild drive, I don’t want to see those curves. I keep my eyes up. My wife edits magazines we get (like Popular Mechanics) which have those kinds of pictures, before I or my sons get to look at them, and that’s the way I want it.
I tell my boys about the dangers of a woman who dresses like “Lydia.”  My son, 6 years old, sees women in public and observes how they dress. “Daddy, is that a ‘strange lady?” He’s referring to the “strange woman” of Proverbs 7. I answer, “I don’t know if she is, but she certainly dresses like one.” And we have seen them at “church.” Do you want my son to look at you and think of you as a “strange lady”? How about your daughter, would my sons think she is strange? My sons won’t marry a woman who doesn’t respect a man’s propensity to visual temptation. They’ll marry a woman who reveals herself to them and them only.
My daughters won’t dress like a strange woman either. Mine, at only 9 years old, knows that she should keep her body from a man’s eyes, reserving it for her future husband.  In the grocery store one day, when my daughter was wearing a skirt that flowed around her ankles, she heard another little girl (dressed in shorts) point to my daughter and comment to her own mother, “Look, Mom, she’s beautiful!” Why not dress beautifully rather than like a slut? You should get out of your ignorance before your dinner guest looks at you or your daughter then visits the bathroom. Well, that’s probably already happened.