What Are We Showing?

A young man was telling me this morning about a conversation he had with a woman yesterday whom he had met hoping to have a Bible study with. She and her male friend had contacted him and agreed to meet for that purpose, but when he arrived at the meeting place they tried to sign him up in a multi-level marketing business (you know the one).

When this young man had first made contact with them several days ago at a nearby mall, she was dressed in the typical Puerto Rican dress of tight, short and lots of cleavage showing. Yesterday when he met with them and they were attempting to sell him on a new business, she was dressed very modestly in a sharp, clean suit.

The two assured my friend that they were on the "up and up" and that all they were presenting to him was real--nothing bogus about it. The young man boldly then addressed her appearance and asked her why she was dressed so differently. She queried him about what he meant and he told her that today she was dressed very modestly and the other day she was very immodest. He told her it seemed "phony" for her to dress one way one time and another way the other time and made him question whether the whole business was "phony". The interesting thing about the conversation is that he had to explain to her why her dress had been immodest. She told him that she had never thought about the way she was dressed.

I have never lived in a culture where so many women expose themselves on a daily basis in immodest apparel. I do not think of myself as a prude or someone coming out of the dark ages and yet I am daily shocked at what I see revealed everyday from the grocery store to the gas station, from the mall to Home Depot. And I am convinced that the vast majority of these women have never thought about the fact that they are immodest. They have just never thought!!!! They are simply wearing what everyone else around them is wearing. From the 60 year old woman to the 2 year old child. It is their fashion and part of their culture.

Do you think about what you are wearing and how you appear to others, especially to the opposite sex? Do you think about how you appear to God? Does God consider what you put on, or for that matter, don't put on as becoming of His child? It is way too easy to get caught up in being and looking like those around us. As Christians we are to be a peculiar people, a light among darkness, a city set upon a hill. What are you showing by the way you dress?

(Tomorrow I am going to post a letter written by a young Christian man to young ladies in the church about how they dress. It is interesting to see how we sometimes appear to someone else.)

Dana Burk