"I Have a Mom Theme"
EPISODE 195
Adorn Yourself with Modesty
How should a Christian dress? After several weeks off, we’re back with a special guest to talk about modest apparel. Ryan’s wife, Adrienne, joins the show to help answer a question submitted to us by a young woman who listens to the show. We take a Closer Look at two key passages and the Bible words used there. Then we get into some practical questions every disciple faces when choosing what to wear.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Our first guiding principle when choosing clothing is to glorify God — just like every other part of our lives.
This Week's Challenge: Start a conversation about this topic with someone who might be able to give you a slightly different perspective.
Episode Transcription
- It's 'cause you have a dad theme, just like I have a mom theme, jeans, a t-shirt, and a blue sweatshirt. - Dad clothes, yeah, sadly, yes. That's where we are. I own it, I own my theme. (upbeat music) - Well, hello everyone, and welcome to Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 195, I'm Bryan Schiele. - I'm Ryan Joy. - And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. As you may have noticed, it has been a few weeks since our last episode. Thanks everybody for sticking with us. We have a very good reason for that though. Today's episode is gonna be unlike almost every episode we've ever had before. Although, oddly enough, it'll be very similar to episode 21, way back in the back catalog, and Ryan is gonna have a conversation with somebody he loves very dearly, who is not named Bryan. (laughing) - Yeah, so we recruited my wife, Adrienne, to help us answer one of the questions that was submitted to us for an Ask The Geeks. It's a question from a young Christian lady who had some questions about modesty, and we thought that it would be most appropriate to bring in someone who has thought about those issues from kind of a similar angle, bring in one of the ladies to help us answer that question. - So you'll probably understand why I wasn't a part of this conversation here very quickly as Adrienne steps in. To tackle the question along with Ryan that we received from a listener, I'm asking the Lord for clarity on modesty, hair coverings, et cetera, right now, and I was wondering if you could do an episode on that for girls at some point. Yes, absolutely we can, and we're gonna do that right now here on the episode. This is an Ask The Geeks section, and I guess Adrienne can be an honorary geek for this episode, so without further ado, here's the conversation that Ryan and his lovely wife had about modesty. - Okay. (imitates music) - So today on the podcast, I'm joined by my lovely wife, Adrienne. - Thanks for having me. - Thanks for being here. - Well, I live here. (both laughing) - Oh boy, that could be on the outtakes. We wanted to invite one of our wives to help answer this question that a Christian young lady asked about modesty and choosing our clothing. Titus too says the older women should teach the younger women. I thought it was fitting to have a godly woman who I know has wrestled with these questions come on and share your insights. So I'm looking forward to asking some questions and hearing your thoughts, and together we'll think through these issues. - That sounds good, except for that classifies me as an older woman, but I will take it. That means getting to spend more time with you. - Okay. Well, you know, not a teenager anymore, right? - No, definitely not. - Okay. Well, we wanna, as if we're not already kind of getting lighthearted, but we wanna start this off with an icebreaker question that kind of eases us into the conversation. And here's the question for you. It's one that Bryan and I asked each other a while back. It's this question, what embarrassing clothes did you wear in your youth? I've seen some pictures, but you know, going back to when you were a teenager, what did you have on? - Well, it was actually when I was in sixth grade, I decided I'm just gonna make this really easy on myself. So I made my mom buy me sets, like a top and a bottom of sweats in multi-colors. So I had a purple one and a green one and a blue one and a gray one. And that is what I wore for a huge chunk of my sixth grade year, was just sweats. - That makes me think of the friend we used to have that would say, I wouldn't wear sweatsuits to go and get the mail. She was always dressed to the nines. - Embarrass myself with her, yeah. (both laughing) - Yeah, I definitely just had the, I mean, whenever I was most ridiculous, when it was whenever I was most in fashion for the time, you know, whatever I had my neon, as they called them, Bermuda shorts and all the crazy things that I would, or like getting into the grunge period where everything was super baggy and ridiculous. Yeah. - I thought you were gonna say when you were a superhero and you would wear your underwear outside your clothes. - Yes, well, that was, yeah. - That wasn't your teenage years. - As like a second grader, yes. Yeah, that was humiliating to say the least, to look back on. - You're welcome. - Okay, so let's get into our Jesus Said segment and you picked out a verse that you were gonna share with me. - Yes, John 8, 54, Jesus answered, "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me. Of whom you say, He is our God." So out of context, what do you think about that verse? - I love that for this conversation, yes. So Jesus is thinking about His purpose and what He's here to do to glorify God and let God bring Him the glory. Of course, through submitting Himself to the cross and to obedience and to serving others, He is glorified. And that really ties in well with this idea to add like a higher plane, this higher level of thinking about what are we seeking? And I think we do wanna bring these questions to that level of consideration, not just thinking about hemlines and looking at our closet, but thinking about, okay, what are the bigger questions that we're trying to ask and think about? And modesty is about trying to bring glory on ourselves. So I think it's really a fitting thought. I would have never gone there. What were your thoughts on it? - I was thinking about how it says, it is my Father who glorifies me. And so the idea of whose glory are we seeking? And that for me, that's my goal is for God to be pleased in me and to lift me up and to bring me closer to Him saying, this is my child. And in this daughter, I am well pleased that she has done a good job. - That's awesome, I love that. Well, let's go from there into our closer look segment. This is a new segment we introduced, I think, for the first time a couple of weeks ago. And we wanted to now take a closer look at modesty. - Number one, perhaps you better take an away team down and have a closer look. - I said, Dr. Crusher, join me in transporter room three. - Okay, and getting into this subject. So I have a few questions to allow us to dive deeper into this issue of modesty. And the first one is, what passage, Adrienne, do you go to when considering the issues surrounding modesty and why? - Well, typically, the way I do research is I'll go and look up a word and I'll type it in to you version and just read all the passages that pull up that verse. So it made me think of 1 Peter 3, 4, and 1 Timothy 2, verses eight through 10, because those actually bring up the word modesty. - Okay, so going back to 1 Peter 3, verse three, and then reading through verse four, it 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 in the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." - So that idea of the ending of in God's sight, it's very precious. And going back to our verse that says, "Who am I trying to give glory to and get glory from?" And it's from God. - That's a great question to ask. Who am I trying to, who do I wanna impress here? Who am I thinking is going to show my worth and give me my identity? And then thinking about this other passage you brought up, 1 Timothy 2, we'll go back to verse eight, says, "I desire that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling, 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." - I wanted to go back to the men verse there, verse eight, because I think it's helpful to recognize both of these passages, the 1 Peter passage and this Timothy one are doing something different. 1 Peter three is talking about women and their relationships and in particular, 1 Peter three is about a woman who has a husband who's not a Christian and how she wins him over and the kind of character that'll require. And it's gonna be through her good works and the way she lives. And it's not about these other things, the braiding of hair, but the way that she has this different kind of spirit and lifestyle. And then here in 1 Timothy two, what he seems to be doing, it's all in the context of how someone should behave in the church, the pillar and foundation of the truth, the family of God, 1 Timothy 3.15 says. And then here we're in this longer conversation about worship starting back at the beginning of the chapter and how we should pray. But here he's really redefining gender norms, I think. That sounds way, that sounded way too woke compared to what Paul is actually talking about it here. He's saying, you might think that a man, like real masculinity is being all angry and fighting and that kind of thing. But the way that a godly man is, isn't about quarreling and anger, it's about lifting up holy hands and praying, being men of prayer and implicitly of self-control and of patience and a different kind of attitude than fighting. And then likewise redefining femininity of what makes for like a great woman, you might people in Ephesus that he's writing to think of it as those who have this fancy clothes or later on, are fighting for themselves and outspoken. But I want this kind of godly woman. He's saying God is seeking this kind of woman who adorns themselves in respectable apparel. He uses all these terms, respectable apparel, modesty, self-control, what is proper for women who profess godliness and with good works. So when you looked at these passages, you shared a few things about that passage in 1 Peter chapter three. Anything else that before we jump into some of these words and these ideas that you wanna share about these two passages? - Well, the first thing I noticed was the word adorn because that comes up more so than the word modesty does and as does the word put on. So we can look at a lot of other verses like Ephesians 4, 22 to 24 of what we should put off and the things that we should put on. And so I wanna look at those items more so because those come up more than just the word modesty. I wanna study more the words that pop up about what we are to wear, what we're to put on, what we're to take off and see if those give us an insight as to what we're supposed to look like. - Well, that is perfect for where we wanna go next 'cause my next question for you is what heavy words, as we sometimes call them here, do we need to understand? What words are going to help us to grasp these principles the Bible's trying to teach us about what we should wear? We just highlighted a few of them without really defining them from 1 Timothy and then you brought up some other ones like putting on and putting off, which is Paul, as we just studied through this book of Ephesians, using this metaphor of clothing to describe something more profound than just our jeans and our t-shirt. What should we put on, what should we put off? So you wanna dive into some of those words that you brought up and the ones that really help you understand how to think through and discern what to wear? - Sure, a while back, the ladies and I in our church here, we did a study on the priesthood and we looked at what the priests were told to wear in the Old Testament and there are so many verses that you can go to that talk about us as priests. And so then we started looking up, what are we supposed to be putting on as priests of God? And the biggest thing is putting on Christ, that we wanna look and act the way that he did. We wanna be a temple like him, we wanna be a sacrifice like him, we wanna be shepherds like him and that is what's guiding what we are doing and what we are wearing and how we are acting in the words that we say. So for example, some of the things that every kid knows from songs that they've done is we should have the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith. We should have the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness and faith and love. Those are all mentioned at different times. So this armor, this warrior's mentality of we are out here to do a purpose and we're gonna need some defenses to protect us along the way. But we also have other things that we're supposed to have on like how our hearts are supposed to be changed. Once we become a new creation, we put off the old self and put on a new self, a self that has a different kind of heart, a heart of compassion and kindness and humility, meekness and patience. How we are supposed to be having love bind everything together. That is like the piece that the theme, if you're gonna wear an outfit, the theme of our outfit is love. And that as a husband, you are supposed to wash me with the water of the word and bring me to you, holy and blameless, without a spot, I should have purity as part of my wardrobe. So those are the kind of the things that I think of. I know it's not like a hemline list, but what is changing me and transforming me are these things of how do I look like a priest of God today? - And these things are going to then determine kind of the practical nuts and bolts of what we, or the whatever the practical decisions about what to wear and what not to wear. And I will just say that I don't think any of my outfits have ever had a theme. I didn't know they were supposed to have a theme, but I love the idea of love being our theme as we put clothes on. - It's 'cause you have a dad theme, just like I have a mom theme, jeans, a t-shirt, and a blue sweatshirt. - Dad clothes, yeah. - That's my theme. - Sadly, yes. That's where we are. (laughing) I own it, I own my theme. Okay, well, let's get into some of these words and ideas, and we've kind of moved on in some ways to this idea of a deeper principle. I was gonna ask this question, what attitudes and deeper principles should we consider when talking about this issue? And I think we're there already with some of these ideas, like love. Love, what does that mean for love to guide our clothing choices? And we're gonna talk a little bit more practically as we go on, but what do you think of whenever you start piecing these principles together and try to make good decisions? - I often go back to what is my purpose. A lot of other creation stories will talk about why man was created, and sometimes they call us cockroaches that are just here to serve a higher power and be their slaves or their servants. - Talking about ancient myths that were non-biblical ancient myths. - Non-biblical ancient myths, and what we see with God when he created us was he wanted to create with us, and he wanted to be with us, and he wants me to become a ruler and a creator like he is. We see that in Genesis as he gives them their purpose. And so if my work is to serve and work with God, then I need to have that be the focus of everything that I do. So am I fulfilling my purpose is one of the principles I address. And the other one is what does it mean to be that type of person for God? How is it gonna change what I say? How is it gonna change what I do? And as we're talking about today, how is it gonna change my wardrobe choices so that I can best represent him? Because even though what I wear isn't the only thing that shows myself to the world, it is something that can really affect my message of communicating with others to teach them about Jesus. If I look like somebody who doesn't have my act together and I'm disheveled and I'm downtrodden looking or something, that is gonna affect my message. This is what I say to our son is if you look unbathed, it is going to really affect your mission for God. People are probably going to avoid you. If you look immodest, people are gonna come up with their own conclusions about who you are. And that can really hinder your message for God. - Completely different challenges raising an 11-year-old girl versus raising a 10-year-old boy. We do not have to remind her about grooming things. She's great. And she is very into fashion and it's more like reining in some of these choices. And one of the phrases that we use a lot, I mean, this word comes up when we talk about shows that they can watch or words to use, but it also comes up a lot in talking about clothing, is this word appropriate. Our kids use the word appropriate as much as we do because we've used it so much for them. And this is the word and the idea that we find here in 1 Timothy chapter two. So let's talk about a few of these words that flesh out this idea of appropriateness here in 1 Timothy two verses nine and 10. He says that women should adorn themselves, there's that word you were using, adorn themselves in respectable apparel. And that word respectable means, according to BDAG, being appropriate for winning approval or appropriate. Appropriate is the key idea. What fits the situation? And so like we said, we bring this up a lot. We're talking about what's fitting. And interestingly, this is the same word that's used a few verses later of overseers, not of overseers clothing, but of their character. The saying is trustworthy. Chapter three, verse one says, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, et cetera, et cetera. And so this idea of respectable is a part of the character of the kind of person that God wants to lead his churches. And likewise, it should define the kind of clothing that here a woman, but certainly also a man, should dress with. That which is appropriate, that which is respectable. And it gives this idea of having characteristics that evoke admiration or delight and expression of high regard for the person, respectable and honorable. That's the meaning that's really fleshed out in that second verse of chapter three of First Timothy. And I think that raises new questions for us to consider as we think about what to wear. Is it fitting? But there's like all kinds of questions that go with fitting. Is it fitting for who you are? Which is kind of what you were talking about. You're a priest of God. Is it fitting for a priest of God? Is it appropriate for a child of God to wear this? Is it appropriate for the situation that you're in? What's appropriate for hanging out at home is different from what's appropriate for Sunday morning services. What's appropriate for one thing is not always appropriate for everything else. Even there's a cultural element to appropriateness, right? Is it appropriate for this time, this place that we're in? I've told the story to you before about my dad who whenever we moved to Hawaii would show up at Sunday morning services always wearing a suit and tie. And he was the only one dressed that way. Everybody else was wearing nice slacks and a nice aloha shirt. And so eventually he realized, you know what, this isn't modest apparel. This isn't appropriate. This is drawing undue attention to myself. This is me being a focal point with my clothing rather than being appropriate to this time and this place. So he bought himself a nice aloha shirt and some nice slacks and he would wear that. It's just kind of the opposite of what we might sometimes think. Modesty, another word here, this term expresses the opposite of considering or treating something in a common or ordinary manner, a respect for convention. And it goes with this idea of appropriateness and modesty of what's proper, what's fitting, what's seemly or suitable. He says later on, I want them to dress in a way that's proper. And that has that idea of seemly or suitable. And it all has the same force. It's this idea of putting care and thoughtfulness about what we're communicating. So what do you think about when you think about this word, modesty, that we use often but don't always really take the time to define? - Well, I think about the story of Vashti and how she was brought before the king to be an object of desire. - This is the first wife in the story of Esther. - Yes, and that the idea of modesty, in today's culture, we kind of say, don't tell me how to dress or what to do. Don't restrict me. Don't tie me in. You are trying to just stifle who I am and what I'm like and my creativity or my body. Don't tell me how to use my body. And we know from experience in our reading and studying about who God is, that everything that God says for us to do is for our good. So the idea of modesty for a woman and the descriptions that it's giving is not to take anything away from who this woman is, but instead to protect her, to build her up, to give her a status and a respectability, a worth and a value that she might not have otherwise. And so Vashti is there to look at as an object and to not have value and worth as a person, but that is not what God wants for us. So he's saying, it's not about your braided hair. It's not about your gold. It's not about how you look to other people. It's another form of protection for this child or this daughter that he loves, that he created not to be an object for Adam, but a strong help me in these battles against the world, against sin, against anything that would limit his work in the garden. - You know, it's interesting. I love that example of Vashti. And you also brought up there the idea of protection and of going back to Adam and the creation of woman and of man. And I think that's an important place to camp for a moment in the story of clothing as we think about it here, because that's the beginning of everything, right? The beginning of marriage, beginning also of clothing is you find there in chapter two, verse 25 of Genesis that the woman and the man were naked and unashamed. And there's this sense of openness and vulnerability without the need to protect ourselves or one another from shame or from temptation. And you think of elements of childhood there, you know, a baby isn't that, you know, worried about, they're not ashamed of being naked. - A baby, how about a five, six year old? - Yeah, sometimes in our house, you see somebody running around naked and unashamed. But as we get older, we talked about, you know, our older kids, they start to realize there is a need to cover up. And there's also, in addition to childhood though, I think the idea of marriage there in the garden, you know, that marriage at its best in places like Song of Solomon, the Bible uses garden language to describe the beauty of marriage where we can get back some of that simple openness and beauty sharing ourselves without shame. But right there at the very beginning, naked and shame are put together and the same thing happens in the fall, you know, and in the next chapter of three, verse seven, when they sin and fall, their eyes are open and they knew they were naked. And so they felt compelled to make that big leaf clothing, which is the first clothes, the first covering, because they're ashamed and they're alienated from one another and they are hiding in the bushes. And so then God does this act of provision as he does for us, as Jesus promised he'll do for us. He provides animal skins for them, which were better, more fitting clothes to protect them and cover them. And so I just wanted to bring up this idea of nakedness, which throughout the rest of the Old Testament carries the idea of defenselessness, of shame, of physical intimacy sometimes. Like when you get to Leviticus 18, there's all these laws about sexual ethics and you see this idiom used, uncovering nakedness. Don't uncover the nakedness of this person or that person. That's unlawful. And it's like a euphemism for sexuality. And I think all of this highlights the way that clothing and uncovering yourself relate to the beauty and holiness of marriage, but also the idea of when it's indecent and inappropriate outside of marriage. And you can also see the connection to Jesus' words in Matthew 5 about looking on a person to lust after them as adultery of the heart, which has to do with marriage. Adultery is breaking a marriage covenant. And so all of this connects, I think, together to see that whenever we show nakedness, we should be ashamed unless it's within the beauty of this garden environment that God has given us in marriage. - I agree with that. The idea of in our marriage, you don't look at me as an object, and that's my sole purpose of this relationship. Instead, there's so much more to it because we have become one. And that you are, as I said earlier, you are washing me with the word and presenting me to yourself the way you're caring for me and responsible for me. And providing for me, there is so much more there than just the idea of you are fulfilling a desire that I have. It is so much more beautiful, the desire that you actually have, which is to be one with me. And I've heard this before, I can't remember who said it, you could help me out, but there's a difference between a bird flying over your head that you can't do anything about, and you allowing a bird to make a nest in your hair. So I've heard that referred to as having to do with lust, that if I'm looking on something in lust, that is me making a provision for it. I'm building a nest and allowing those thoughts to keep going and to look and forget that you are a human being. And I don't think it's just men doing that to women anymore. I think even we've made a pendulum swing all the way to the other side where now women are saying, it's okay that I use this man and look at him as an object. And we're completely missing the point of how we're supposed to see each other. There's verses, and you can help me out with this one too, where it talks about we are supposed to look at each other like family. So yes, I'm an older woman teaching the younger women, and I'm viewing them like moms. And that men are viewing me like a daughter or a sister. - Well, it made me think of, I think this is what you're talking about. Just a few chapters later from our main text there, 1 Timothy, chapter five, Timothy is told how to look at men, older men as fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters. And then he puts a little extra note there, in all purity. So look at each other as somebody you love. You wanna protect your sister. You wanna think carefully about, how can I honor this person in all purity? I love that. And I'd never heard that quote about the bird's nest, but that's so true to what Jesus says there. He doesn't say that lust is this. He says looking to lust. There's an intent looking. It's like that second look is the dangerous one. You see and you bounce your eyes away. And then if you come back, looking to lust with that purpose where you're lingering is really where we get ourselves into trouble. And I think it's appropriate that that idea of looking to lust shows up in a conversation about modesty because it's the other side of it. And it's the looker's responsibility 100%, no matter what someone else is wearing to guard their heart. And it's the dresser's responsibility and the person on the other side of it, 100% to just do what they can. You can't control what is happening in someone else's heart. But we can be an influence in positive ways if we're just trying to think carefully about how I can love others, how I can honor God with the things I'm wearing. - That going back to the idea of the priesthood, being a shepherd, that you are trying to protect your sheep like Christ does. So we are looking for what could cause someone to be in danger, to stumble and fall, or to not be protected the way that they need to be. So if I'm wearing something and I know it could be potentially harmful to you and your walk, that's unkind of me. That's not being loving, which we're supposed to bind ourselves in love. My actions are guided by the love that I have. So a loving thing to do would be to be thoughtful about it, to be considering each other above myself, above my wardrobe choices that this would look amazing on me. This would accent my eyes, this would do this, this would do that. Instead saying, well, how is it going to be perceived and is it going to cause someone to stumble? - So you talked about Vashti and her nakedness in Esther. What other examples do you see, both good or bad, for us to learn from in the Bible? - Well, I think about the story of David and Bathsheba. And this was actually an awakening for me because I hadn't really paid attention to it as much as I probably should have. When I was a kid, I remember thinking, why in the world was Bathsheba on the roof? If she didn't want anyone to see her naked and bathing, why did she go on the roof? This is ridiculous. And then I reread it, because you should, you should actually read the text. - Good idea. - And it said that David was on his roof, but all it said about her was that she was bathing and that her purpose for bathing was to become ceremonially clean, that it was after her female time and she was washing herself to be purified. So that right there tells you her motive. Her motive was not to be seen by others. It was to become cleansed and holy and pure. And that also leads to why she was able to have a child so quickly because of math, biology. - Yeah. - So with David, he could have looked away. He allowed that bird's nest to be planted on the top of his head and he acted upon it, but she was actually innocent. And I think that we often turn to this passage to condemn a lot of women for what they wear and what they do and say, you can cause someone to stumble like Bathsheba did to David, but that's actually an inappropriate and inaccurate conclusion. Again, it's you are responsible for what you are responsible for for each person. So David was responsible and we see that in Nathan's judgment and condemnation of him saying, you are the man, she was innocent like a lamb. And so even if you are wearing something that someone else might say, well, she was asking for it. She shouldn't have been wearing that. That does not put the blame on her for your actions that led to your sin or his actions that led to his sin or however you wanna say it. Each person is responsible for themselves and the choices that they make. Our job is to not be stumbling blocks. - Yeah, this is an area, I guess, where a lot of judgment can come because everybody's trying to handle things well, but the standards aren't outlined as clearly as we would like for them to be. Where the Bible is really fleshing out, okay, I'm gonna walk you through this department store and tell you which racks you can buy from. Doesn't really say that. And so this can be an area where there's a lot of hurtful things said, a lot of judgments that can come. And we wanna help one another, guide one another. We wanna make the best choices for ourselves, but we don't wanna make new rules where God didn't make one or say that, you know, absolutely this particular line is the exact line. That's just some place where we've tried to give some caution in the way that we have handled it through the years. - Well, as parents, you get to pick what your kid wears and you provide that for them. And the Bible says that God will actually provide our clothing too. So he's giving us the guidelines, he's giving us the provisions and what we have is from him. So we've gotta realize that in our choices. With our own kids, we say anything that you would want to cover up, give it like a couple more inches, like don't get even close to it. Don't have it too deep in the collar or too high above the knee, but there's not a line. And I was talking to the young ladies at church and the young men at church, I asked them for their opinions and I was so impressed. They seem so far advanced in their thinking from where I was at that age. And they said, "You just know." But these are young people who have grown up in the church and heard it for their whole life. And there's all these subtle things that affect how they have developed this thinking, how their hearts have been shaped and how their minds have been changed by little instances that helped them to make those good decisions. But what they said was that it is tricky for them at first, but then they had to realize, who am I hanging out with and how is that affecting my wardrobe choices? So some of them said, "I just stopped hanging out "with those people because it made me feel "like I had to compete with that "or I had to be different than I was." And so they just started hanging out with different people and they were okay with that. Although they would also say stuff like, when you're wearing a dress for the ladies, they would say when you sit down, it's not just is it above the knee or not, but how does it make you feel when you sit down? Does it come up too high? Do you feel uncomfortable? Do you feel like it is showing too much? - It's that sense of shame we were talking about. Like it's a good thing to be able, and throughout the Bible, one of the problems is when someone loses the ability to blush, loses the ability to have that sense of decency and propriety, there is something that it's educated. We educate our children in this, but, and what it looks like and that kind of thing, but it can be within us. That God put something in us to, as we mature, understand that I need to give some care to this. - It's the shaping of our hearts and the communication with the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us, not just in the word, but in our prayer life, in our connection and discernment, asking for wisdom over and over and over. Help me to know your ways, Lord. Help me to think the way that you want me to think. And if we're not asking that, it's because maybe we don't wanna know, but when we start doing that, He does make those answers clear to us, and it's not just about a hemline. - Yeah, well, and there's so many other ways to be immodest than to uncover too much of ourselves or to show things that we shouldn't. You think of the kind of messages that we wear on a T-shirt. You think of, am I drawing attention in a way that I shouldn't? Am I putting my focus on this area? And it was interesting to me in that one passage, we spent some time on 1 Timothy 2, because as you brought it up, it's the passage that uses the word modesty, but in that one passage, He talks about how it takes self-control with appropriateness, properness, choosing our respectable apparel and modesty with self-control. Why do you think it takes self-control to make good choices about our clothing? - Well, I remember being a teenager, and what you wear is who you are. It's your identity. I remember I went through a goth phase that lasted like a week, and I thought this is-- - I'd love to see goth Adrienne. - This is what I wanna be now. I wanna be tough and cool and edgy. Then my mom said, "Your teeth look really yellow "with that black lipstick," and that was the end for me. (laughing) That goes back to our beginning question, what did you do that was embarrassing in your wardrobe? You wanna have yourself represented. You wanna express yourself and be somebody and be noticed, and that takes a lot of restraint to say, "It's not about me, it is about God." How can I point to God if I'm making the focus about me and control that desire to be seen and to be known and to be wanted and have worth and value by what you look like? - Well, and hair was a part of those verses. That's interesting too, you know? - I went through my purple hair phase too. I wanted to be super cool and special. I've done it all, but it's not about that. - You know, you said you've done it all, and so I wanted to ask you as our closing, our reach out question here. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ - How has the issue of modesty affected your life? - I think it's affected me differently, maybe than guys are affected by modesty. There's been a lot of times where someone has said something very judgy and brought shame onto me, maybe where I felt like it wasn't deserved. I had someone write an anonymous letter and send it to me that attacked one of the dresses that I wore while I was nursing our kids, that it was immodest, it was causing young people to stumble, I was a bad example to the young ladies. - Oof, that's rough. - It was rough, I cried. And it wasn't that I didn't need to hear that maybe, that I could be even more cautious and that once it was brought to my attention, I changed that dress, but I felt unseen, I felt unloved, I felt very judged, I felt misunderstood. My purpose was to be able to nurse my children easily at church. It wasn't to cause someone to stumble. My motives were pure. - And it's hard when it's impersonal 'cause you can't sit down and talk through it with someone that's sharing it with you, but yeah, that's really hard. - It was their ideas of what modesty was that were being put on me. And I believe that that stunted my growth instead of helping it. It made me defensive and wanna defend my outfit instead of being tender hearted and go, "Oh, I would never want that to happen." So the idea is to always keep a soft heart and flexible-ness to yourself, to what you're wearing and what you're doing, so that God can mold you and shape you, not to feel condemned and judged and worthless and how could you? And so if that is how it's coming out to someone else, then we forgot to bind it all in love. If we feel the need to put our morality on somebody else, when it should be about their discernment of, "Okay, I'm not where I was when I was a teenager and what I wear are my choices." That took time and that took growth and it took a lot of people's patience with me as I figured those things out with their gentle guidance and not their harsh condemnation of my wardrobe that they could see me as more than my outfit until I could get to a place that was more closely tied to God and wanting to please him for myself and reshaping. And like you said, where you live does matter. Being married in Arizona and growing up in California, that's very different style choices for what is acceptable there at that congregation than maybe here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So it's not looking at how do other people view it, but how does God view it? - Yeah, so there's this journey and I've seen you, I remember the journey of just processing that letter for you and trying, like you said, to really listen for what God seeks for you in that and to try to deal with the hurt, but also try to find wisdom and learn and be shaped by things and a lot of different things that I have been affected, like you say, by modesty in different ways, but I have tried really hard to think carefully about what I wear through the years and how that communicates something, whether it's what I wear when I'm swimming versus what I'm going to wear to Wednesday night services and how I choose to adapt to different situations. You have to make it about more than what your preference is. - Yeah, when that happened, I went to a lot of the ladies 'cause I didn't know who it was from and I wanted to make sure that my relationship with everyone was good and that I didn't diminish my standing or my credibility with them. It was helpful to talk to other ladies about it and say, what do you think about this or how do you handle this? How do you wear appropriate clothing? What makes your decision? And just going to those ladies that you trust, their judgment and their discernment and get ideas from them. And that really helped me. It wasn't to say, I agree with everything they say or didn't agree, but having someone to talk to about it that you trust is also in the word, is also striving for the same things that you're striving for. - Yeah, we started this conversation, kind of set it up with that idea from Titus II about the older women speaking to the younger women, teaching them. And I think that there's a good way to do that. And it is good to have these conversations and to go alongside different people. I really want to honor and appreciate the young lady, whoever she is who shared this question with us 'cause it's brought a lot of good conversations for us as we've gone and talked to, like you said, you talked to young people. I talked to several different ladies. I talked to some of the men, talked to Bryan. And we thought through this a little bit and it's been a positive experience, I think, for all of us as a community, as a congregation and different brothers and sisters thinking through this issue. And I think that leads well into our challenge. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - This week's challenge is to start a conversation about this topic with someone who might be able to give you a slightly different perspective. And that's what we did here, bringing in Adrian. Thank you so much for being here, this was awesome. Adrian has a different outlook than I do. You might want to talk to someone from a different generation or a different gender, talk to your dad about it if you're a young lady, talk to a friend about it who maybe sees things a little differently and can give you another lens. I just think that having these conversations together as a people really helps us to wrestle through what does God want and how can we honor him best in all of the little and big decisions we make in our lives. - Well, I hope it did provide clarity because it is about the principle, not the exact thing that will change over time. So yeah, I appreciate someone being so thoughtful to even ask the question, it really shows her heart. - All right, so that was, I think you covered it there. You guys got all of the main points there that I was thinking about and yeah, definitely appreciate her stepping in and kind of tackling that from a lady's viewpoint, not something that I really am prepared to do myself very well, so. - Nor I. - Yeah, we wanna again thank Adrian for being part of that and again thank our listener for submitting that question. It's an important subject. - Absolutely and by the way everybody, if you wanna follow along with this episode or all of our episodes, you can find us @biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this one in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/195 and if you wanna share this episode or any episode with friends, please do that. We'd love it if you'd spread the word among your friends and family and community on Facebook or social media, threads even, who knows? And until next episode everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [music playing]