In my last podcast, I talked about kind of dressing and how a person should dress, or more so how Christians should view the way we dress, how we shouldn’t be too harsh on people, uh, depending on how they look, that our cultural standards should not be imported into our spiritual standards. During that time I mentioned modesty very quickly, and I said I wanted to make a podcast on that, and this is that podcast.

The concept of modesty has shaped or been, been shaped and has adapted throughout the centuries as Christianity has progressed from early Christianity to modern times. And the idea has gone up and down about how much we should focus on modesty and really what modesty is in general. So in preparation for this podcast, I looked up some Bible verses.

that kind of discuss the idea of modesty and really what we should do. And to be honest, the Bible isn’t really that, uh, There’s not a whole lot mentioned in the Bible about modesty, or at least rules for modesty. Modesty is something that is mentioned both for men and for women, so this pertains to our talk on godly masculinity throughout this series.

But it is not extremely focused on, and it is pretty vague about what modesty is or how we should remain modest. We have one Timothy two, nine through 10, which says likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness with good works.

So, what Paul is saying here is he’s not so much focusing on the outward apparel of what women should look like, but he’s trying to make the point that our attention should not be first on outward appearance, then on inward appearance, but it should be primarily on inward appearance. And then do your outward stuff.

So he’s saying they shouldn’t adorn themselves with pearls, with gold, with, when he says braided hair, he’s talking about the, uh, Roman styles of extravagant braids. We’re not talking about a, you know, simple little one braid down the back, you know, pigtails or a French braid or a Dutch braid or, you know, a million other types of out there.

He’s not talking about that. He’s talking about the overabundance of materialistic clothing that the Romans had, just like we have today. If this was written today, Paul would talk about the, uh, over extravagant nails that women can wear. They spend way too much money on getting these nails that aren’t really useful.

They’re only for, uh, showing that a person has a lot of money. Or we talk about, you know, expensive wigs, hair extensions, makeup. The amount of money women put in makeup is ridiculous. And I’m not saying that people shouldn’t wear makeup, but the Uh, ability to spend hundreds of dollars on makeup is very real.

On top of that, we have just haircuts and this is given to men. Men can spend just as much on haircuts now as women. Men care about their outward appearance just as much as the quote unquote stereotypical girl did. That, that’s where, you know, the comments about, you know, uh, how girls, you know, spend so much time on their looks that is no longer just a.

female stereotype. Men fall into that just as much. Men spend, spend way too much money on their extravagant clothes, their shoes. Shoes is a big one for men nowadays. They spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of shoes that they then don’t want to wear. Or when they do wear them, they have to wear them very carefully.

So that they don’t crease them, which I find absolutely ridiculous that they spend one to 300 if not more on a pair of shoes that aren’t meant for use. When I spend money on a pair of shoes, which I like work boots, not cowboy boots necessarily, um, but more work dress boots. And I’ve spent over 100 on a pair of shoes before.

But those shoes were meant to be worn and used and get that worked in look. I didn’t care that they had creases in them. I didn’t care that the, uh, tanning look was starting to fade partly cause you can just, you know, reapply coloring to them and wax them and you’re good to go. But the shoes were meant to be used.

And in my personal opinion, the more used they looked, the actual better they looked. So this idea that And what Paul was trying to get to, when he was talking to Timothy, was that we need to focus on our inward person, not the outward appearance. And all too often, Christians in today’s world focus just as much on the outward appearance in their criticism as they do on how they actually look.

You will see Christians talking about how, Oh, that person isn’t dressed modestly. That person looks like this. That person looks like that, you know, insert whatever, uh, insult you would like about them. And at the same time, they’re focusing just as much on their looks. As the other person. Now, my wife grew up in a world being in the South where the ultra conservative told women that basically the only thing that they could do was.

You know, become a wife and a mother. And the way they needed to do that was basically entice a man. It’s kind of what it sounded like that, you know, it didn’t matter if they went and got an education and didn’t matter if they had a good job because once they got married and they had kids and they were going to be a stay at home mom.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom. My mother was for the most of my life. If that’s what you want to do, then awesome. But if your preparation for marriage is not becoming a holy, godly individual and a better person in every area you can, intellectually, mentally in general, physically, stuff like that, then what you’re doing is only focusing on the physical.

And so they talked about things of how to put on makeup. They talked about how to basically change the way they look and only focus on the way they look so that a man will, you know, fall in love with them and marry them. And that is exactly what Paul is talking about not to do. So conservatives are just as guilty of falling into this materialistic trap as the secular world is, and that is what Paul was getting at.

He was telling Timothy, do not let your congregation, because he was a, what we would call a pastor now, do not let your congregation focus on the material. It doesn’t matter what your hair looks like if you have the newest Roman trends. You know, today would be the newest stuff coming out of New York, whatever the, the, this year’s fashion is.

That doesn’t matter if your spiritual or spirituality and your inside self. So your character, your morals, your spiritual growth is in shambles. If you are poor in spirit and not in the way Christ meant on the Sermon on the Mount. But if you are lacking in spirituality, but you are a 10 when it comes to physical attraction, you have a problem.

And that is what Paul was talking about. And on top of that, we have other verses like 1 Peter 3, 3 4, which talks about the exact same thing. He says, Do not let your adorning be external, the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry. Or, the clothing you wear, but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the impoverishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

Now, a lot of people try and focus only on women with this, but I think it can be applied just as much to men. And a lot of people get annoyed that it talks about women having a gentle spirit, except they forget that the exact same command was given to all Christians. earlier. So Paul, or Peter in this case, is just reminding the women that they’re supposed to be, you know, calm.

They’re supposed to be gentle, because so are men. Men are supposed to be calm. Men are supposed to be gentle. These are fruit of the spirit. Men are supposed to be joyful. Men are supposed to be peacemakers. We have a long list of things, and men and women are both supposed to be things. These are not. This is something that I’m talking about in my book that parallels this podcast.

The traits of Christianity are not gendered specific, they’re not gendered at all. Whatever command is given to women is given to men. Even at the beginning in Genesis, when God gives the command to men and women. He says to both of them to subdue the world and be fruitful. He does not tell men to go subdue the world and women to be fruitful.

No, God tells both. So that means women are supposed to be included in the subduing the world part and men are supposed to be included in the Uh, raising children part. These are not gendered roles. And this, again, goes into that modesty thing. When we focus on what we wear, or when we focus on what other people wear so that we can judge them, we are moving away from what Paul and Peter preached about 2, 000 years ago.

And if they talked about it then, It was obviously a problem, and clearly, it has not changed. I hear just as many people talk about what someone’s wearing. Talked about that in the last podcast, I’m talking about it again. We focus on things that do not matter if the spirit is still broken. Once the spirit is broken, then you can, or once the spirit is fixed and a person is pursuing the path of sanctification, then you can sit down and say, Hey.

You know, do you think what you’re wearing is appropriate for a daughter of God or a son of God? But even that conversation is still very subjective to your culture, because what we wear today is definitely not what they would have worn 2, 000 years ago. It would have been highly inappropriate, both on the men and women’s side.

So even when you have those conversations… still be very careful with how you approach them. Because again, your spiritual walk and the cultural world don’t always mix. So if your standard for a cultural outfit, your cultural ideas of what a person should wear may not match spiritually for what God truly cares about.

So modesty is a very deep well, and it focuses more on the spiritual than it does the physical. This is a very important thing to remember.