An Alternative To Modesty

Let me tell you a little story.

Just two days ago I visited a beach.  Guess what?  There were girls wearing bikinis there!  If I was a girl, guess what?  There were shirtless guys there [1]!  Now, what did I do?  Did I reduce any of these people to nothing but their bodies or sexuality, viewing them as if the only dimension to their personhood or existence was their beauty?  No, I did not.  Shocker.

Do you find yourself struggling to not mentally view perceived attractive members of the opposite gender as nothing but sex objects?  The problem is not in their behaviors or clothing, but in your mind and heart.

If you struggle with lust, you need to learn to see the human body as it is--a nonsexual thing by default--and to see physical and sexual attraction as they are--nonsinful, natural, God-given impulses that do not have to be abused or even acted upon at all.  However, if you are still working on these things and still want to place boundaries to ease your struggle, then do not demand that others live according to an extra-Biblical and nonexistent moral ideology.

Basically, if you think you can't handle seeing the bodies of men or women, don't go to a place where you expect to see them!  Don't resort to imposing legalistic [2] demands on others; you avoid any place like a beach where you fear you will struggle.  And while you're at it, don't extrapolate your own faults to other people around you.  Not everyone struggles with identical sins.  But don't act like other people are responsible for your sins and struggles at all.

Modesty teachings, if the phrase refers to the idea that people have a moral obligation to cover a certain amount of their bodies so as not to be inappropriate or objectify themselves (as if clothing has anything to do with objectification [3]), amount to nothing but arbitrary, fallacious, unbiblical, illogical, uneducated bullshit that actually ends up ideologically preserving an atmosphere of sexual objectification instead of destroying one.

The alternative to modesty?  Learn to see reality as logic and the Bible reveal.  The alternative boundary?  You don't go where you think you will struggle and leave the amoral, innocent behaviors of other people out of it.

Logic, people.  It is helpful.


[1].  Women are visual, Christians, and the Bible is pretty blatant about telling how some women have sexual desires.  Gasp!!  See:
http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/women-are-visual.html

[2].  In this case legalism refers to extra-Biblical rules, which the Bible itself condemns (Deuteronomy 4:2), as if God forgot to tell us what he wanted to communicate about morality to us!

[3].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/can-clothing-objectify.html