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Bods

Mar 24, 2005 Print This Post

//MOOD: Hungry //SMELL: Chicken a la Noel

Interesting post on Brain Orme’s site. He says, in part:

The other night I caught part of an interview on Access Hollywood with Jessica Alba…Billy, the interviewer, asked Jessica about being ‘born again’. Her response was interesting…she said, “I used to be. When I was a kid, yeah.” She went on to talk about the reason that she chose not to be born-again, “Because a lot of people gave me grief for being a woman–and made me feel ashamed for having a body because it tempted men”…

The same type of rhetoric was used by Jessica Simpson’s father (a former Baptist pastor), he said that it was hard to get a Christian contract because of the way Jessica looked–Christian labels didn’t want to deal with it. I think it’s interesting–there is [some] validity in questioning the way the church views the body. How should we deal with these issues in the church? Should we ignore the body? Make people feel guilty? Or, should we somehow learn to deal with these issues regarding the body in a way that is freeing but still appropriate and modest? Is this really even an issue, today? I think it’s a needed conversation, if for no other reason than to clarify some misconceptions.

This is something I have thought about in the context of our local church situation. With such high numbers of young people coming around, and therefore a lot of trendy clothes (read: “scant clothes”), I have wondered how we should think about this.

I think Justin did a good job talking about this at the High School group at Riv last night. He talked about the need for women to take guy’s struggle with lust stuff into consideration when they make fashion choices. But he didn’t stop there, he laid equal responsibility on the guys to make sure they treat women with respect and not objectify them, no matter what they wear.

I liked John Eldredge’s perspective at a conference a few years ago. He talked about the difference between appreciating the beauty of a woman (including her attractive body) as a good thing. We are wired to notice, first of all. If we didn’t notice a woman’s beauty, we may never procreate… Secondly, they are created in God’s image, and that includes all of them. In balance, though, when we cross the line from appreciation to “lust in our heart,” we have gone too far. It is an incredibly hard line to walk, but we could easily fall off either side of this razor’s edge.