Wear a Shirt for Jesus

Over here from Dobson's site

http://www.trueu.org/dorms/womenshall/A000000221.cfm

comes a young woman with at sense of humor and wit, who seems bright enough and who can at least write, arguing that good Christian girls should, for God's sake (little pun there on my part), put a shirt on.

Jesus said that the two greatest commandments are to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37, NIV) and to "[l]ove your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39). Usually when I hear these verses, I think of being nice to my friends, or at least trying to avoid running bad drivers off the road... [But it] seems pretty obvious, but if you love your friend, you probably won't murder him. If you decide to love your classmate, you won't steal his new laptop. Simple, right?

Loving our neighbors relates to any kind of issue we come up against — including modesty. Notice that "love does no harm to its neighbor." If wearing a shirt that shows cleavage will cause some guys to sin, why should we purposely do it?

Her argument is more involved than this, and a bit too simple-minded -- she's assuming that the women she sees on television "choose" to be sex-objects (of course they must! Because all humans have free will! No one is ever exploited on this planet! And society is not complex! Nor is the psychology of psychosexual relationships! Heavens no!) -- and she also assumes, amusingly, that only men lust; but the main problem I have with her argument is, simply, her conclusion.

Put a shirt on for Jesus, she says, because we don't want our brothers to sin -- but, she hastily adds, "I'm not going to wrap myself in a burka."

Well, why not?

It's the logical conclusion of your argument, sister.

If our bodies are so lucious and tasty that the very sight of them leads men into the occasion of sin, and men are so swept away by their appetites that they cannot control these appetites, if that's what you believe, then yes, I think, for the good of your neighbor's soul, I think you ought to wrap yourself in a burka. Why haven't you done that? You evil whore?

Or better yet, I think you should remove yourself from society entirely. Because even in a burka, you know, men might catch a glimpse of your toe, or the wind might blow and reveal your foot -- or, well, even if it doesn't, just seeing you walking about might cause a man to think about what's under the burka. No, no. I think you should enter a convent. You and all the other right-minded woman in the world.

Here's the thing:

Women have bodies. Men have bodies. We have this thing we do with our bodies? It's called sex? About, oh, I don't know, seventy or eighty percent of our energy and our resources (I'm talking of normal folk here, now, not born-again Christian, who apparently have some sort of wiring problem, causing them to spend all their time thinking about whether they have sinned, and what exactly a sin is, and whether wearing jeans instead of culottes is a sin, and if they accidentally went two miles over the speed limit on their way home from church last Sunday, was that a sin?) is devoted toward sex -- getting sex, getting more sex, dealing with the consequences of having had sex, and then finding some more sex.

Dressing the way we do? It's one way we show that we're sexual beings. Looking at other folk, dressed the way they are? It's how we evaluate them as sexual beings. Even when we don't actually plan to have sex with the guy we evaluate as we're crossing the street on the way to the bookstore, which most of us don't, by the way, we are, in fact, usually noticing him as a sexual creature. And he's noticing us the same way.

That's not evil, or sinful, or perverted, or whatever words you're dredging up there from your home-schooled book of synonyms -- that's how we're made.

Some of us -- not all of us, but lots of us -- like to play with the energy this sexual wiring puts off: like to dress in ways that make those wires kick out sparks. This is also not evil, or sinful, or perverted. It's also just something humans do.

(The girl with the thong panties you were so scandalized by, btw? I would have been scandalized by her as well. But mostly because she was doing the sexy thing so badly. I also dislike the girls with the cleavage hanging everywhere, and the boys with the too-tight trousers and the vest over the bare chest look. We want some skill in teh sexy-dance, I say: we want some art here. But not everyone agrees with dr. delagar. Some folk really go for that low-rent thing, and who am I to disagree? I too went through my dress-like-a-slut years, years mr. delagar is forever bemoaning his missing of them.)(And no: I will not post pictures.)

Oh, where was I?

Ah, yes. Human like sex.

Humans really like sex. Even humans who have committed themselves to monogamy, such as dr. delagar, enjoy looking at other sexy humans. That's how we are. It does not make us evil or sinful, and -- really? -- it doesn't mean we want to have sex with the guy we see crossing the street on the way to the bookstore.

I mean not usually.

It's just how we're wired.

And unless you actually do plan to lock us up in separate enclaves, I don't see that there's much you can do about it.

That's how adult humans are.

Except for the ones wearing culottes, I guess.