Please pardon my inconvenient candor, but let’s be honest: living in our culture and our society is like living in a moral slime pit. Rivers of disgusting goop slop across the airwaves. Television promotes gratuitous sex and violence. You can tune in to programs that tell all the latest about whom the celebrities are “living with” and how a new breakup is on the horizon. Most of the movies are no better. Song after song on the radio celebrates moral filth. Madison Avenue marketing incites the deadly sins of greed, envy, and lust. Glossy, full-color magazines leave nothing to the imagination. We’re living in the middle of a pig sty!

Yes, it’s a hog wallow—and it surely is easy to get sucked into the mire, to go with the icky flow, and to become content with the world’s way of doing things, especially in the realm of fashion and style. Fashion and style trends call to Christian women as well as others. All of us confront the temptation to go with the flow and conform to the world around us. But Christians are different, and we can demonstrate that difference by the way we dress.

Dress modestly

There’s a reason the apostle Paul says, “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God” (1 Timothy 2:9,10). The reason is simply that Christian women understand they are different from the world. Modesty, decency, and propriety are appropriate goals for Christian women. Think of the opposites: arrogance for modesty, excess for decency, and lack of restraint for propriety.

Sometimes it seems that contemporary trends in clothing are deliberately designed to stimulate lust and sexual temptation: tight-fitting clothing, low-cut waistlines, plunging necklines, daring décolletage. Sex sells. But a provocative image is not something women of Christ want to project. How do we want others to consider us? Even businesses have adopted dress codes so that potential customers or clients will not be put off by what someone wears.

Jesus warned us how easily sinful thoughts can enter our minds: “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:28,29). This is serious business!