Though I have addressed many of these points before (and I placed links to previous posts on these issues at the bottom), I offer one more basic summary of why evangelical modesty teachings are absolutely the products of nothing but ignorance, fallacies, assumptions, and contra-Biblical principles.
On the Christian worldview, bikinis are not sinful because:
1) God did not make males more visual and sexual beings than females.
Proponents of modesty teachings aim their beliefs almost exclusively at women, as they usually believe that for some absurd reason God decided to make men hypersexuals, but women asexuals (having a lack of sexual feelings) or demisexuals (with emotional intimacy triggering sexual attraction). Therefore, according to these sexist teachings, in an effort to protect males from their own depraved natures, women must dress a certain way. If they don't, they may even allegedly cause males to sin.
It's all bullshit: the Bible acknowledges that women are visual and sexual beings [1], with no indication that God created either gender to generally be more visual than the other. Imagine the great stupidity of doing something like that! However, none of this prevents people from having the ability to enjoy nonsexual physical admiration of male and female bodies, nor does it mean that men and women cannot engage in deep relational intimacy without the relationships having any romantic or sexual dimensions. The idea that men and women have universal differences in how they perceive the beauty of the opposite gender only represents one of many flawed, unbiblical concepts appealed to by those who support modesty.
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| Evangelical hypocrisy can be strong. Although logic and the Bible contradict their modesty teachings and the insistence that women cover their bodies, many supporters of modesty have drifted into outright sexism. |
2) Attraction is not lust.
Matthew 5:28 says not to lust after other people, not to never look at them or appreciate their appearances. Many Christians seem to mistake attraction or recognition of beauty for lust or objectification, knowing the Bible condemns lust, and then erroneously try to suppress any attraction they experience towards the opposite gender. Mistaking attraction for objectification and admiration for a desire to commit actions the Bible classifies as sexual immorality will only lead to false guilt, distortion of Biblical teachings, and great confusion.
The Biblical word lust refers to coveting something or someone that does not belong to you (compare the Greek word in Matthew 5:28 with the Hebrew word for covet in the Decalogue). With this definition understood, it becomes clear that not only, for instance, can two single people not lust after each other, but God never condemned finding someone attractive or sexy. Judging a married person attractive or sexy is not synonymous with having a desire to take him or her from his or her spouse or to commit acts of sexual immorality. I also need to define sexual objectification. Objectification is reducing someone to only one aspect of their personhood, meaning that it has nothing to do with clothing or beauty or attraction. Someone objectifies another person when he/she ignores the other dimensions to that person's humanity. One could do this with regards to someone's intelligence, possessions, influence, sexuality, athleticism, beauty, emotionality, or any other aspect of their personhood. Objectification is evil, but not what the Bible means by the word lust.
The Bible records that certain men and women in ancient times were very physically beautiful [2]; it does not tell people to not notice or admire the beauty of the human body. There can be nothing immoral about recognizing and appreciating God's ultimate creation, however uncomfortable it might make legalists!
Also, bikinis are not sexual in any way. Some people may subjectively, arbitrarily associate certain kinds of clothing with sexual expression, but there is no logical connection between bikinis and sexuality, just as there is no logical connection between male shirtlessness and sexuality. That some men might find some bikinis sexually attractive and that some women might find some male bodies to be sexually attractive doesn't mean that those things themselves are sexual. They are not sexual, despite whatever cultural conditioning people might be taught.
3) There is no standard of modesty found in logic or in the Bible.
By modesty I mean the idea that men or women should cover a certain amount of their bodies. Anyone who proposes a standard for modesty (by this definition) will have to commit a variety of logical fallacies--including appeals to emotion, appeals to the stone, appeals to ignorance, slippery slopes, circular reasoning, and instances of begging the question. From a Biblical perspective, no command exists which a pro-modesty person can appeal to as proof that the Bible calls shirtless males or women in bikinis immodest. This means that since God said not to add to his moral commands (Deuteronomy 4:2) and Jesus condemned people for ignoring revealed commands and inventing extra-Biblical ones (Matthew 15:3-9) if Christianity is true, there is no such thing as a universal objective obligation to cover one's body. But what of 1 Timothy 2:9-11? I have stated elsewhere:
"--1 Timothy 2:9-11--"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
Let's inspect the ONE brief passage that people who tell women to cover themselves endlessly appeal to. Christians can be quite fond of claiming that the sight of an attractive person can cause someone else to lust after them, and the danger only increases with lesser amounts of clothing. Does this passage have anything at all to do with instructing women not to wear bikinis when swimming or not to wear whatever the culture considers 'appropriate'? It has nothing to do with that. First of all, the text clearly defines the modesty it refers to as having to do with not wearing 'expensive clothes' or 'gold', not with how much skin is exposed. Do expensive clothes or inexpensive ones cover less of the body? Clearly the inexpensive ones. Yet this is exactly what Paul is commanding people to wear. His instructions here have nothing to do with condemning attraction or teaching shame about the human body. The modesty he describes has to do with the expense of clothing, not its size [3]."
Whenever you ask people why their particular standard of modesty is correct and others are not, they cannot have a legitimate reason for selecting the lines that they did. Everything about their judgments reeks of subjectivity, arbitrariness, and perhaps their own insecurities about the human body. But there is not even an objective but unidentifiable line dividing modesty from immodesty within Christian doctrine, because the Bible simply does not support the lunacy that modesty teachings do. If Christianity is true, there is no such thing as an objective amount of clothing someone should or shouldn't wear, and men and women can decide what they want to wear according to their own preferences and feelings.
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| Where is the line? Logic alone induces skepticism about this issue and the Bible tells us that there is no moral obligation to cover our bodies to a certain degree. |
People who believe in evangelical modesty teachings violate both the Bible and reason with their absurd position. As I explained in another post, "Legalism is when people take something God has revealed to be evil and either declare that anything that might lead to it is also sinful or that people need to abide by extra-Biblical moral rules in order to uphold what the Bible actually says. The Bible condemns drunkenness and alcoholism, and the legalistic response would be to call consumption of any alcohol sinful or dangerous. Of course, this position is nothing more than a massive slippery slope, and one that Scripture itself specifically refutes with its many positive examples and allowances of alcohol use [4]."
The positions many Christians hold about modesty are simply unbiblical, illogical, and inconsistent--because the ideas they propose amount to nothing more than illusions based upon misunderstanding of the Bible and a plethora of logical fallacies.
4) No one can cause other people to sin.
A significant component of modesty teachings is the heinous idea that one person can be responsible, directly or indirectly, for another person's sins. The Bible affirms moral responsibility of each individual repeatedly (for example, see Deuteronomy 24:16). No woman can make a man lust after her, and no man can make a woman lust after him. This kind of victim blaming, which is always an enormous injustice, argues that a woman who is raped can in some way be at fault for the actions of her rapist, when such a thing is impossible. Any idea about moral responsibility that involves victim blaming fully contradicts the most basic Biblical doctrines about sin. It does not require enormous intelligence to realize this.
5) The human body is not shameful, sinful, or inherently sexual, nor is it sinful to view nudity or be naked in public.
The Bible clearly teaches that God:
1. Created people naked (Genesis 2:25)
2. Called the human body very good (Genesis 1:31)
3. Allowed public nudity in Mosaic Law (Exodus 22:26-27)
4. Instructed Isaiah to be naked in public for three years (Isaiah 20:1-6)
5. Never once commanded people to always wear clothes in public
6. Told people to not add to his moral commands (Deuteronomy 4:2)
If nudity is not sinful, then how can wearing bikinis be sinful? Logic dictates that if the former is not immoral, then the latter cannot be. Christians in American churches seem to largely be unaware that the Bible actually supports public nudity. Points 2) and 3) from this post combined with point 5) prove that if the Bible is true then there is nothing morally wrong about people admiring the bodies, clothed or nude, of other people, regardless of the marital status of anyone involved [5]. This is not adulterous, degrading, sinful, or unbiblical; it is a Biblical fact.
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| The naked male and female body are not moral affronts to God or causes of sin. Likewise, neither are bikinis. |
Conclusion
This post does not address specific facets of the fallacies and errors inherent in modesty teachings with the same degree of depth as some of my other posts have, but let it remind people as summer nears that there is nothing sinful about bikinis, attraction, beauty, or the male or female body. Anyone who claims otherwise does not know what reason, the Bible, or Christian morality say about the issue. Do not fret over these things. Live in avoidance of incorrect reasoning. And remember that even if certain things offend your conscience, that does not in any way mean that other people have an objective moral obligation to act in accordance with your subjective preferences.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/women-are-visual.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html
[3]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html; see also http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-folly-of-modesty-part-2.html
[4]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/sexual-legalism.html
[5]. See here:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/bible-on-nudity-part-2-refutation-of.html
good advice dude.
ReplyDeleteThis is more about refuting fallacies than giving advice, but thanks!
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