Tag: Naked

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Do You Trust The Bible?

Is going nude a sign of believing the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

At the start of this section, Frost says the following:

The controversy exists because most people who call themselves Christians are not familiar with the Bible except the parts read to them on Sunday mornings by preachers speaking from motivated confirmation bias. Christians typically assume many beliefs that are nowhere in the Bible, or they add teachings because they do not trust it to stand on its own.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 273). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Sadly, this is very true.

My family and I loved the show Home Improvement and we usually saw Tim Allen movies in the theater together. Recently, Allen has been sharing on social media how he has been going through the Bible for the first time and that there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Some people I saw were surprised saying they thought he was a Christian.

It seemed sad to have to see people say “Just because you’re a Christian, it doesn’t mean you have read the Bible.”

Whatever you might think about Bart Ehrman, he is certainly right when he says that he has students come in for their first class and he asks them if they think the Bible is the Word of God. So many hands go flying up. Then he asks “How many of you have read all of the Bible?” Far fewer hands go up. Ehrman is right to ask that if you think the Bible is from God, don’t you think you should want to know what it says?

But to get back to what Frost says, a problem I have had with the book is that we are expected to have chapter and verse. No. You don’t. There are many issues that we ask about today that aren’t discussed in the Bible because they weren’t around in Biblical times. Can a Christian see an R-rated movie? Can a Christian play a video game that has violence? Can a Christian listen to rock’n’roll? We can even consider topics like dating as we know them weren’t around back then. Most marriages were arranged.

This is why it’s a misnomer to think there has to be a chapter and verse that says “Thou shalt wear clothing in public!” or “Thou dost not hath to wear clothing in public!” For this, we go to the work of cultural scholarship with an interest in the Biblical culture. We can look at pagan cultures, but only in comparison to the Biblical culture.

One advantage of being at a seminary besides a library is that you have so many great minds right here. When the idea of archaeological evidence came up, I decided to go talk to our professor of archaeology and we have had a number of great conversations on the topic. Something fascinating he told me is that outside of pottery, the most common item dug up in Israel is loomweights.

This first conversation where he said this took place at the Post Office where I work. He showed me a book he had just got about the culture of the time and pointed out that even the idols of the pagan deities depicted them wearing clothing and told me that Jews would not do nude artwork, for instance, because that would be close to violating the second commandment for them.

Frost’s issue doesn’t come down to one side believes the Bible or not. Francis Beckwith said once that if they can’t trump you with logic, they will try to trump you with spirituality. It comes down to how we interpret the Bible. I try to look not just to chapter and verse, but also to the culture of the Bible and see what I can gleam from that and something disappointing about Frost’s book is he seems completely unaware of this important research.

Next time, we’ll wrap this book up.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Is Grace Sufficient?

Is grace enough to overcome? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the big problems with Frost’s book is that he is so antagonistic in it. He comes in with both barrels blasting too often and when he wants to comment on what the other side thinks, he paints them as denying most everything he can about Christianity. So it is that the same happens when we come to the topic of grace.

Frost says that for many Christians, grace can help them overcome the evils of pornography and dehumanization, but it doesn’t help them joyfully appreciate the human body. Perhaps this is so for some, but not for all. I cannot say that I have ever struggled with porn by the grace of God, but I can say as a man who was married I had a deep appreciation for my wife’s body and often said that if the only evidence I had for the existing of God was her body, that would be enough to settle the case for me. I knew of no other way to explain something that beautiful.

There is a problem with how we talk about grace. Consider Sam Allberry. He is a great speaker on issues of the church and sexuality, and yet he himself wrestles with same-sex attraction. There are some people who have become Christians and lost that attraction, but not all. There are plenty of people who have become Christians while in the clutches of alcoholism and escaped that, but that doesn’t mean that they have to go out and fully appreciate the fruit of the vine by going to a bar and drinking alcohol. That could even be foolish for them.

Sometimes God delivers us fully from wrong desires. Sometimes, He doesn’t. It doesn’t make any Christian a lesser Christian or a greater Christian. All Christians regardless will have struggles in this world until the day they die or until the day Christ returns.

Some people could be delivered from porn and yet never marry and get to enjoy the real presence of a beautiful member of the opposite sex in all their glory. Some might not. Some could have no desire for porn again. Some could have a daily struggle. There is no “One size fits all.”

One reason I would not be out in the public nude is that I don’t want to risk doing anything that would cause my fellow man to stumble in any way. I have to show consideration for them. If I had no problem with alcohol, I would not drink alcohol in front of someone who struggles with it. (For those wondering, I made a lifelong vow early on that I would not drink alcohol so I would not risk doing anything to damage my reputation. I have no problem if someone can control their alcohol.)

Frankly, Frost’s book would be a lot better if he didn’t spend as much time demeaning the other side. Frost comes off as if he thinks he is the super Christian and everyone else is less than he is. His case would be better if he wrote more conversationally instead.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Master Deceiver

Is Satan behind it all? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There’s an argument that strikes me as strange coming from the naturist position whereby the devil is said to have been the ones to tell us to cover ourselves up. You would think then that if that was a wicked suggestion, God would not have gone along with it. Immediately after the pronouncement of exile is declared on Adam and Eve, God makes clothing for them Himself.

It would seem as if by this argument, that God and the devil both agree about how they view the human body, which is strange.

So Frost says at the start that many people cannot get past purdah because they cannot accept the incredible beauty of the human body.

That must explain why the pornography industry is so strong. People just can’t accept the beauty of the human body. That must be why guys dating women often wonder about what they look like under all those clothes. That must have been why when I was a married man it was always a joy to see my wife’s body naked.

He then says the devil jumps in and tells you it’s a sin to be enthralled by the beauty. No. Absolutely not. That’s the design of the system. Men and women were supposed to be enthralled with one another. The problem is what you do with that beauty. Are you looking at men and women that you have no right to look at? Are you treating them as just objects to satisfy your desire?

Frost then says:

An important step in overcoming the pornographic lusts of prudish modesty standards is agreeing with God that His creation is gloriously beautiful and worthy of admiration. Satan hates the creation of God and would rather feed our cultural revulsion for nakedness.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 264). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

He is absolutely right on the first part. The body is worthy of admiration, but pornography is not admiration. It is exploitation. It is treating the person on the other end of the screen as just a body. That dehumanizes them.

Naturism from what I see goes the other way. This is not saying anything about cultures where naturism is the main way of living. This is about our culture. They go and say “The body is not inherently sexual.” Both sides are living in denial. The body is sexual and in the proper context is meant to be sexually arousing. This is in our DNA.

This does not mean that different things can be arousing to different people and there are some things you shouldn’t be aroused by. If you are aroused by children, for instance, you need help. If I were to use a personal example, I am a huge fan of the series Smallville and my crush on the series was always the character of Chloe. Most guys went crazy over Lana and later Lois. Nah. Chloe all the way for me.

What drew me to her at the start? It wasn’t that she was a supermodel, but her character on the show was really smart, and I like girls with a good head on her shoulders. It was through that that the rest of her got more beautiful to me over time. The same happened when I was married. My wife became the standard of female beauty for me over time.

Yet with the second part of the above quote, does he think we have a cultural revulsion for nakedness? The porn industry is betting that we don’t, and so far they’re winning that bet. From when I was married, behind closed doors, I would have no objections to nudity in a private setting. Frost seems to have a fundamentalist mindset in mind that would be an extreme minority position.

I regularly wonder who Frost is responding to in this book and he seems to only think in extremes. It’s quite problematic going through. Unfortunately, nothing I saw in the book ever got better.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – The Source of Desire

Where does desire come from? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost begins this section again with the statement that we find XYZ desirable because we were conditioned to. Once again, I have to ask is this really the case? Could it be the female body was designed to be desirable by men by God and vice-versa? We might like different things at different times, but desire is always there.

Even in the West, while the sexual organs have been noticed quite often, there are other aspects of a woman found attractive, such as her legs, her smile, her hair, her eyes, etc. We can’t even explain often why it is that feature X on a woman is attractive. We men just know that it is. Not only that, Scripture when it speaks about the female body in places like Proverbs 5:18-19, Song of Songs 4, and Song of Songs 7 seems to say the same thing.

Let’s also be clear on something. Believe it or not, not every man struggles with lust. There are few of us to be sure, but not everyone of us is going to our computers at night and saying “God help me avoid any pornography sites today.” I remember when I worked at a retail store after my divorce, my female co-workers were stunned when they found out I didn’t watch porn. It’s a shame that that’s the case.

Frost does say rules will not bring about freedom. It only comes about from the grace of God. There is some truth here, but every society has rules for behavior and even the church has rules for behavior. Paul also spoke often about how we were to observe rules not just in our individual lives, but also in the day-to-day with other people.

If we lived in these cultures that Frost spoke about that don’t have as much clothing, it wouldn’t be an issue, but those cultures are not ours and those cultures are also vastly different from ours. In our culture, the Christian influence is dying out, though I do suspect a resurgence could be just around the corner, and we are much more individualistic. Not only that, but we are highly ignorant of sexual matters.

That might sound odd to think about in a culture that is all about sex constantly, but as Peter Kreeft has said, it’s when everyone’s pipes are leaking that people buy books on plumbing. When we live in a world where people don’t know what a woman is, how many sexes there are, why it is that same-sex erotic relationships are not good for society, and why it is that we think we can redefine marriage, then we see where this has gone.

That’s why naturism could be a noble dream perhaps some time off in the future when we’ve recovered from the sexual revolution and our culture has been thoroughly Christianized and reformed, but now, no. We would be causing too much stumbling for our fellow man. “But what about the privacy of our own homes?” For those, do what you want (Though you might want to make sure the windows are closed) and enjoy it. I have spoken about the private/public distinction here and it still applies.

Note my position then. It is not that nudity is sinful. It isn’t, or else we wouldn’t be here. It’s that in our culture, it should be reserved for private situations due to the overly sexualizing of our culture and the ignorance of too many.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Dealing With Lust

How do you deal with lust? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost in this section is talking about the problem of lust and lack of sexual control. Frost tells us that usually the antidote given to lust is more rules meant to contain it. I agree that this in itself is not the answer. However, it can be part of the answer. An alcoholic could need to take an alternate route home from work instead of one that goes by the neighborhood bar. An obese person might need to have someone else do the grocery shopping.

What we can all agree on is that this is a heart issue and the problem lies in the heart. This is a worldview problem. You can take steps to deal with the problem externally, but you also need to deal with the problem internally. This is why some people talking about weight loss will actually say diets don’t work. Diets are temporary. You need a whole change in view.

It could also be some struggles you will always have. Sam Allberry comes regularly and speaks at our Defend conferences here in New Orleans and as far as I know, he still struggles with same-sex attraction, but chooses a celibate lifestyle. I went to Celebrate Recovery in the past and there were several alcoholics there. They still made it a point to avoid alcohol. One glass of it after years of sobriety can ruin someone.

Now I know a couple of people who have said naturism helped them overcome their porn addiction and while I will not question the experience, I wonder how that really healed the heart. It often seems that there is a disjunction going on, and something I plan to talk with the counseling department about here at my seminary in doing research on this. I am not a psychologist after all so I cannot understand as well what is going on in the mind.

The problem with porn is that it sees the opposite sex as only sexual beings. They are there merely for your sexual pleasure. The opposite end is to deny that they are sexual beings at all. It is to deny that the body is sexual. It is. That is the reason it can perform sexually all things being equal. There are aspects of both sexes meant to be sexually appealing to the other. For us in the West, it is normally the sexual organs, at least when talking about what is seen as attractive in women.

Frost goes on to say that because our culture has put up a bunch of rules such as clothing instead of going with grace, we have become more perverted.

Sorry, but this is just an unbelievably false statement to make.

Christian cultures have had clothing for thousands of years. Did we see this going on rampantly in the Middle Ages like we do today? Did we see this going on in the early church? Did we see this going on in Puritan culture? Could it be that what really changed our culture was the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and a false view of sex?

This is the problem in that we don’t have a worldview that explains how sex fits in. This is why so many people look at same-sex relationships and say “I don’t see the problem here.” Many Christians don’t have a reason for being opposed other than “Well, the Bible says so.” This leads the world to think they’re crazy. It’s as if God is being arbitrary here. Sexuality has been reduced to just a form of pleasure and marriage means little.

Frost concludes this saying many cultures that were prudish (though not explaining in what way) exploded with promiscuity after Christians came bearing clothes. We are not told who these cultures are. The data is absent. I am not surprised at this.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Hypersexuality

What do we do in a sex-crazed society? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So at the start, Frost immediately begins with this:

For the many Christians who struggle with sexual control, we have hastily presumed that the first line of defense against such carnality is the strict application of increasingly restrictive coverage that treats the creation of God as if it were to blame. Disabused of our cultural narrow-mindedness, we can clearly see that the placebo of clothing only masks the symptoms but drastically intensifies the real root problems. As a result, our culture is well-known for extremes of sex-scandals, rape, molestation, and promiscuity that is far worse than the many unclothed cultures which often maintain marital fidelity and have little concept of immoral lust or pornography as we know it in our supposedly “Christian” culture.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (p. 253). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Okay. The problem is if you’re going to say the problem is clothing, then you need to show the hard data. We can go back a few centuries and find that our country wasn’t like this. If anything changed our world, it was the sexual revolution. The idea of having sex without consequences and the destruction of the family unit caused the most damage.

Now could there be societies with very little clothing where fidelity and the body are honored? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that those societies are one-to-one parallels with ours. You have to look at what is the same and what is different. Those societies could be highly community-focused and thus there are rules and understanding set in that keep people from stepping out of line.

Consider the world some of us heard our parents and grandparents grew up in if we live in America. If you went out away from your parents house and you were misbehaving, your parents knew it by the time you got home. The neighbors would call and let them know what you had done. Your doom awaited when you got home.

If we live in a culture that doesn’t honor marriage and family and is very individualistic and everyone just minds their own business, then no, nudism will not work here.

Meanwhile, there could be societies where there is no or little clothing and there is chaos of some kind over sexual matters. Perhaps there might be fidelity, but one person who has power will murder another to get a woman for his own. Perhaps these societies have some form of polygamy as well. Would these societies be changed by bringing them clothing? No. In both cases, this is a heart issue.

Frost will say that God’s creation cannot be to blame, but this is a problematic statement. After all, Eve fell in the garden because of the fruit and the serpent both, both of which were God’s creation, but also because of her own free-will. God’s creation is good, but evil uses good things to bring about evil. It has to. There are no things that are purely evil. That’s an impossibility. Temptation takes something good and seeks to use it in an evil way.

Can a woman also knowingly tempt a man with her body for something evil? Yes. Happens regularly. That is the good creation of God being used in a wrong way. Frost has this strange idea that if something is the creation of God, then it’s automatically exempt.It’s not. All we see is a creation of God and yet we live in a world of sin still.

Frost would need to list these cultures and show what makes them different from us and what makes them the same. We need hard data. I have not seen it yet.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Why Wear Clothing?

Why does Frost think we wear clothes? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this section, Frost is going to say why he thinks we wear clothes. At the start, he says it is a result of our inner sin nature rebelling against God’s beautiful creation. Well, that’s a lovely start. That means everyone you know who is wearing clothing regularly is apparently living in sin.

It’s statements like these that are so extreme that it’s hard to take Frost seriously.

But at any rate, let’s look at his big three.

The first one he says is a legalistic ego trip. This might be for some people, but it’s not that they wear clothes and others don’t. It’s more like they think they dress better than others do and they want to wear the latest fashion and trends just to wear them. This is not to say everyone who dresses nice is trying to do this, but no doubt, some are. We know that there can be a pecking order in some social areas that if you don’t wear the right clothes, you are out.

This is not to say there are not times one should avoid dressing their best. If you are on a date or a job interview, you will naturally want to have a good appearance. I won’t claim to know someone’s heart, but too often, it looks like Frost thinks he does.

The second reason Frost gives is to avoid responsibility. Frost does rightly say that it’s easy to blame someone else for our lusts, and this is so, but there is some truth in that some people do dress in order to tempt. That doesn’t justify what someone does with the temptation, but we should be aware of how our behavior does affect other people.

For instance, Paul warns about this with eating meat offered to idols. He wants to enjoy his freedom, but if it means he could entice his brother to sin, then he won’t eat the meat. The weaker brother is ultimately responsible, but Paul doesn’t want to be a contributing factor.

So if a guy sees a beautiful girl and goes home and watches porn as a result, he can’t blame the girl for that. It was his own choice. At the same time, all of us who are Christians should watch what we do and say around others in case we meet people who are susceptible. If I know someone has a history of being an alcoholic, I would not meet them in a bar, for instance.

The final reason is insecurity about our own bodies. Now this is true that we can all have insecurities, and while I know I have some, I also know when I was married, I never struggled with that insecurity around my ex-wife. If anything, our Instagram age has been particularly unkind to women in this area.

Frost never mentions positive reasons though. I wear clothing because for one thing, I am cold-natured and I like to stay warm. I also wear clothing because I don’t want to get arrested out in public. I often wear clothing that tends to reveal something about who I am and my interests. Many people at the seminary Post Office I work at notice my T-shirts about being sarcastic and it’s a good icebreaker when I wear my Smallville T-shirt. On Saturdays, I wear an NOBTS T-shirt in the hopes of meeting a lady who might want a seminary student for a husband.

It would be easier to be kind to Frost’s case if he didn’t go to such extremes in his argumentation. Unfortunately, he does. I hope he has just as much passion for reaching the lost as he does for getting people to not wear clothing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Christian Body – Immodesty and Lust

Should we keep things hidden? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Frost starts at this chapter with saying that Chinese men used to be captivated by the feet of women. Why was this so? Because they were kept hidden.

Question.

Many women today I know wear socks and on top of those socks they wear shoes. Since that is the case, why do we not go crazy over women’s feet as men?

Frost has at the start said that women’s feet were deemed attractive because they were kept hidden. No data has been given for this. Could it be they were kept hidden because they were deemed attractive? Without data, we can’t know either way. Frost could be right. I could be right. The problem is Frost starts off with the assumption that he is.

He then tells us the natural body should have remained neutral. Agreed. Unfortunately, this little event happened called the Fall of Man. From that point on, we have been using and abusing our fellow man. I tend to see the idea of Christian naturism as trying to get us back into the Garden without realizing that we are not in the Garden. In a way, it’s as if trying to force Utopia on Earth and well, Utopias like that never work out well in the long run.

Frost says lust is not caused by nudity in the Bible. The problem is he wants to see those exact words. I don’t think it ever says “Lust is caused by clothing” either, but Frost has no problem saying that. By the way, what was Bathsheba wearing when David started to lust after her?

As I have said, Frost often reads the Bible from his own culture and he reads it like a fundamentalist would. “I need chapter and verse to make this explicit!” As I said also, he makes exceptions when it comes to what he wants the Bible to say.

Now does keeping something hidden lead to lust? Perhaps it does, but at the same time, if things are done proper, it will cause a man to work harder. This is a great article with a hilarious title on the topic and a follow-up can be found here.

To say that if we put everything out in the open, then the problem will disappear, would be like saying that if we put money out in public and not behind safes, then greed would disappear. We would still have problems because people are evil and until the return of Christ, we will always have that evil within us. Christian Naturists are right on one thing certainly. Lust is a problem that is within us that we have to control. The problem is I disagree with their solution and in some places, it would be impossible to do. If you’re a Christian who lives in a cold climate, do you have to struggle with lust because people have to wear clothes constantly in public to stay warm?

Consider also the book of Judges. At the start, Caleb will give his daughter in marriage to someone who will conquer the enemy and Othniel does it. Othniel is willing to go and fight to win a woman. In the end of the book, women are being kidnapped so people can have wives. You can measure the morality of a society by how the women are treated.

Easy sex has made women to not be prizes to win. They are more objects to conquer. For a man like myself, a woman is a treasure and her beauty is a gift from God and one only gets to see that beauty if they are deemed worthy by the woman. That beauty is only shared with someone she covenants with. I avoid seeing nude women now not because they are icky, but because I am not worthy of seeing one who I have not covenanted with.

In closing, I think the movement is right on a problem. However, I don’t think the solution is right. It might have short-term benefits, but I think in the long term, it would be problematic.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body — What Causes Lust?

Where does lust come from? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I still remember sitting with my former father-in-law at a restaurant at an ETS meeting in Atlanta. He and I were joined by another scholar older than my father-in-law is and were chatting about various matters. Music is playing with a country song of some sort being the song and there was a music video of it and while it wasn’t pornographic, it was pretty clear what was going to happen.

And I remember the older gentleman being asked something and he said “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at the video.”

Okay. Probably not the best thing, but it felt kind of good to think that even in one’s older age, that drive was still strong.

Frost in this chapter says that according to the Bible, nothing that he sees can cause lust. It only exposes what is wrong in the heart. There is some truth to that. We are not forced to ever sin by anything outside of us. All sin is chosen willingly.

So what is the relationship between us and lust? To begin with, if a woman takes off her shirt in front of me, I am not able to choose my immediate emotional and/or physical reaction. I can choose what I do with it. I know there have been times when watching a movie that I have turned away because I thought too much of a woman was about to be revealed.

On the other hand, there are times when even such thinking would be completely inappropriate. If someone decides they want to watch Schindler’s List because there are a lot of naked women in it, and there are, they have a bigger problem. The thought of women being forced to be stripped nude in preparation for the gas chamber of death should not be a turn-on at all.

That being said, there is also the point of understanding one’s weakness. I used to attend a Lutheran Church that had an event called Bar Church. Now and then, they would have a church service in a bar. Now I never have drank alcohol, but I still attended. When announcing the event, they were also quite clear. If you struggle with alcoholism, do not come.

I am a man who has never struggled with pornography, but at the same time, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations either. I have a strong plan to never have a woman over to my apartment when it is just me and her and vice-versa with going to see a woman. (Family excepted of course.) I follow the Graham Rule because I know how easy it is to have your reputation damaged. How many men in ministry have fallen into sexual sin?

One sure sign I think you are about to fall into a sin is if you think you cannot fall into that sin. While Frost thinks nudity is the way to overcome pornography, I contend the way to overcome it is to have a healthy respect for women while at the same time honoring their bodies. A woman’s body is to be viewed as a treasure saved for the man she loves.

Also, we have to watch ourselves over what can cause someone else to sin. It’s not a one-to-one parallel, but when my former roommate and I back in Charlotte had Mormons over, we didn’t order sodas or tea or anything like that. We got Gatorade instead. We also had a pizza from Little Caesar’s every time, which I think is a great thing to do when wanting to reach Mormons. If we had something like tea, which I love, it would have damaged our witness to them.

I don’t agree with liberated Christianity as it’s called, but if you want to practice that, remember don’t practice it where you could put a stumbling block in front of another.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Christian Body — Why Be Modest?

What does Frost see as the reason for purdah? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter is really about the roots of modesty, but there isn’t much worth responding to. Instead, I want to focus on a long paragraph Frost has at the end of the chapter.

Even as a religious hoax, purdah is so deeply entrenched that many people will patently refuse to reconsider their views regardless of any facts. For such people it makes absolutely no difference whether I can establish a perfectly waterproof case from the Bible or demonstrate documented historical and cultural examples from around the world. For them, the evangelical standards of conservative modesty are a vital source of legalistic pride, so the evidence doesn’t matter. Their sense of holiness and self-worth is so deeply invested in this pet interpretation of modesty that no amount of research, Scripture, or sound reason will have any influence on what they are already determined to believe no matter what. They will continue to behave, believe, and belittle others without change regardless of anything they might learn to contradict their entrenched positions. Even if they are logically forced to admit that they have been wrong, they will continue to live without repentance, much less changing their standards or standing up resolutely for a truth that is unpopular, inconvenient or uncomfortable. They are so terrified of change that they would rather persist in a something familiar they know to be a lie, so long as it continues to provide anesthetic comfort and a false sense of security and an external show of piety.

Frost, Aaron. Christian Body: Modesty and the Bible (pp. 200-203). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.

Well, there’s no holding back here.

So first off, calling the idea of wearing clothing to protect modesty and uphold morality is a stretch. Frost seems to always think in extremes. It leaves me wondering if something else is really going on.

To be fair, many people will refuse to reconsider their views. This is true for almost everyone. None of us really like the idea of being wrong. This is why I always try to be reading at least one book that I disagree with. Frost needs to realize he can be prey to this as well.

Moving on, had Frost presented a waterproof case, I would have accepted it. Instead, I found speculation upon speculation with NO biblical scholars cited. Frost spent more time documenting other cultures than that of the Bible. What other cultures may or may not do could be interesting, but if we want to study if a view lines up with the Bible, that is the culture we should focus on.

After this, he points to pride as the reason. This is just poisoning the well. As a man, I would have enjoyed a good case that I could get to see naked women easily, but I don’t think it’s here. It looks like if a man wants to enjoy and treasure the beauty of a woman, he might still just have to work hard, be a man, and win a woman’s heart.

It is ironic that Frost goes on to talk about belittling others and about pride. The only case I see going on in this paragraph of pride and belittling is Frost himself. I have documented earlier in this book how Frost has pride in thinking that he has made an airtight case. If this is what liberated Christianity produces, then that will be a hard pass for me.

Would that Frost had spent some time studying biblical scholars. I do not consider that belittling because he did not cite ANY of them. If your case can withstand scholarly scrutiny, show it. Frost has not.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)