Modesty Wars – the Conservatives vs. Those Who are Not

The main takeaway in my Too much skin, girl. Too much skin article was the following:

I exhort you to dress in such a way which does not capture the gaze of any person. It matters not if you’re male or female. Our Christian duty is to point people to Christ.

Paul said it this way: So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV)

To glorify God is to spread His fame to all the world by making His name great in your sphere of influence. He is the One we are to magnify because He is the only hope for this life and the life to come.

Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together! – Psalm 34:3 (ESV)

Paul taught us how everything we did should have a magnification of the LORD focus. This is an all-encompassing command from the apostle. Most certainly this means our thoughts on clothing falls under the rubric of spreading God’s fame.

What is your motive?

 

The starting place for all of our decisions begin with the motives of the heart. When you buy a clothing item, what is your motive? How do your motives influence what you wear?

Maybe you can ask the question in reverse: how do your clothing choices reflect your motives? What do your clothes say about you as a person? What do your clothes say about your relationship with God? These should be soul-stirring and heart-penetrating questions.

I think sometimes we forget we are missionaries. Where we live and how we present ourselves matter. Missionaries who live in foreign places are cognizant about how their life and message works in tandem to communicate the Gospel of Christ to their world.

Though we are not missionaries in the sense in which most of us understand the term, we are missionaries nonetheless. We are aliens who have been placed within the human community to share the Gospel to the perishing.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. – 1 Peter 2:11-12 (ESV)

We are either influencing or we’re being influenced. If you do not spend time thinking about your clothing choices with a motive to spread God’s fame by those choices, then you’re more than likely not influencing your culture for Christ, but are being influence by your culture.   Continue at Rick Thomas