Hello friends,
I’m going off script a bit this next week. By that I mean, I’m doing a podcast this Monday that has little to do with Old Testament or ANE backgrounds, and more to do with current issues … and I want your feedback.
For those who know me, you know I’ve been in ministry of some form or another since I was nineteen. And during that time I experienced a ton of folk who seemed to think my body was available for public consumption, and were therefore quite forthcoming as to how I should dress that body of mine.
I’m well-past that chapter of my life now—that whole “post-menopausal” thing makes the world stop staring. And then there’s the fact that most the folk who would have leaned in, gazed at some part of my body, and offered free advice a decade or two ago, are now scared of me. Not a bad thing.
BUT now my emerging adult daughters, who are daring to involve themselves in ministry, are experiencing the same thing. So my dear friend Preston Sprinkle and I—and my young adult daughter who is a singer/songwriter and worship leader—are meeting up this coming Monday morning to hash it out on his podcast, Theology in the Raw.
YES modesty is a biblical expectation. YES modesty is bigger and wider than whether a young woman wears a one piece or a two piece. YES we want to show up in public as women who are citizens of another Kingdom. But why is it always women? Why do complete strangers feel they have the right to invade a woman’s personal boundaries by commenting on the most private parts of her body? Why does a 30-year-old youth pastor feel it is appropriate to pull a thirteen-year-old aside (a girl who likely does not yet see herself as a sexual being) and make her body the subject of grown men’s sexual attraction? Even dicier question: Might it be that our obsession with women’s bodies isn’t holiness, but perhaps yet another expression of our society’s constant sexualization of girls and women (hmmmm)?
So before we launch on Monday morning, I want to hear your stories. Your questions. Your comments. As always, my page is safe space—no yelling, no public crucifixions. But please, tell us your story! Comments are OPEN.
If you would like to submit a story privately, you can email me directly to srichter@westmont.edu. Please put “My Story” in the subject line so it doesn’t get lost.
My beautiful daughter is a nationally-ranked beach volleyball player. And those players always wear bikinis. She participated in a beach volleyball competition with her nondenominational church. One of the elders asked her to wear a shirt over her bikini, for the sake of modesty, so as not to lead men astray. She struggled with that request because she found it made her look like a hypocrite. Anyone could have seen her playing beach volleyball in a bikini in city tournaments and on televised matches.
I remember just a couple years ago sitting down with a highschool junior whose boyfriend had broken up with her because she “caused him to stumble.” To be clear, she was just beautiful. She didn’t “do” anything. In no uncertain terms I told her he needed to pluck out his own eyes (Gal 5:12 came to mind too but I refrained). It happened that we were reading Esther in my Biblical Literature class—and we had a very encouraging discussion about how Esther was, in the truest sense, downright sexy. And God used her attractiveness to save his people. She’s not even the only OT woman in this category! And while the application to Christian behavior today might require theological legwork (it is a rare circumstance that would justify seducing a man to nail his skull with a tent peg…) I found it healing for both of us to recognize that God is not against female attractiveness.