SEAGOON
Puritan Board Freshman
Hi All,
I wasn't sure where to put this, so I put in general, my apologies if this isn't the right place.
Sorry this is a bit of a ramble, but I'm having difficulty figuring out our declining society as usual...
Let me begin with a little background. I hate Summer, not only because here in Fayetteville it gets ridiculously hot (it was 104 on Sunday at 5:45 PM for instance, and that's been about the average for our August and September) but also because the heat brings out the most ridiculously inappropriate clothing. By the time it's July, I'm longing for January because I'm thoroughly tired of living in a world of over-exposed flesh (and ubiquitous tattoos - it seems like you find more Tattoos in the check-out line at Walmart than you used to find in a Naval Yard). That and the T-Shirt slogans. As I was walking out of the Supermarket a couple of days ago, a man was walking in wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned with the catchy slogan "F**K U 2" (sadly without the asterisks on his shirt - my apologies for the Federal Vision guys who want to read the real meaty, uncensored, profanities btw) and my six year old daughter immediately began using her new-found phonics skills to decipher the new word. This led to the inevitable "what does that mean" question. To which I angrily answered, "it means he's an unregenerate cad honey" and immediately felt convicted and followed it up with a discussion of how "that was the kind of bad word daddy used all the time before the Holy Spirit changed his heart" on the way home. But that kind of T-Shirt and others like the one on a very young boy with his parents, "You keep reading this shirt while I look at your b**bs" seem to be getting almost commonplace in this town.
Anyway, the following article discusses a woman who was almost kicked off an Southwest Airlines flight by a male flight attendant for wearing clothing that was too revealing and is suing for it, but I'm struggling with what I find more surreal, that the media is incensed about it (how dare anyone impose their standards of decency in clothing!) or that the airline actually took issue with it: Thrown off plane for too-skimpy outfit - TODAY: People - MSNBC.com
To tell the truth, I've flown on flights with women wearing far more inappropriate outfits, but that's not the point. At this point, it seems like attempting, societally, to define inappropriate is becoming an impossible if not laughable exercise. It seems to me that we are societally standing waste deep in a cesspool and claiming that one particular piece of filth is what is stinking the place up. We are rapidly approaching the point where any attempt to apply standards, as a culture - obviously not as the church of Jesus Christ - is becoming arbitrary and frankly ridiculous.
My fear though is that, as always, the attitudes of the culture are seeping into the church. I think that is one of the reasons why churchgoers increasingly dress inappropriately and we are having more and more problems with the "norming" of homosexuality in the church. It's not just the world that has no clue what the difference between right and wrong is these days.
"All the danger is when the world gets into the heart. The water is useful for the sailing of the ship; all the danger is when the water gets into the ship." - Thomas Watson
Your Servant in Christ,
Andy
I wasn't sure where to put this, so I put in general, my apologies if this isn't the right place.
Sorry this is a bit of a ramble, but I'm having difficulty figuring out our declining society as usual...
Let me begin with a little background. I hate Summer, not only because here in Fayetteville it gets ridiculously hot (it was 104 on Sunday at 5:45 PM for instance, and that's been about the average for our August and September) but also because the heat brings out the most ridiculously inappropriate clothing. By the time it's July, I'm longing for January because I'm thoroughly tired of living in a world of over-exposed flesh (and ubiquitous tattoos - it seems like you find more Tattoos in the check-out line at Walmart than you used to find in a Naval Yard). That and the T-Shirt slogans. As I was walking out of the Supermarket a couple of days ago, a man was walking in wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned with the catchy slogan "F**K U 2" (sadly without the asterisks on his shirt - my apologies for the Federal Vision guys who want to read the real meaty, uncensored, profanities btw) and my six year old daughter immediately began using her new-found phonics skills to decipher the new word. This led to the inevitable "what does that mean" question. To which I angrily answered, "it means he's an unregenerate cad honey" and immediately felt convicted and followed it up with a discussion of how "that was the kind of bad word daddy used all the time before the Holy Spirit changed his heart" on the way home. But that kind of T-Shirt and others like the one on a very young boy with his parents, "You keep reading this shirt while I look at your b**bs" seem to be getting almost commonplace in this town.
Anyway, the following article discusses a woman who was almost kicked off an Southwest Airlines flight by a male flight attendant for wearing clothing that was too revealing and is suing for it, but I'm struggling with what I find more surreal, that the media is incensed about it (how dare anyone impose their standards of decency in clothing!) or that the airline actually took issue with it: Thrown off plane for too-skimpy outfit - TODAY: People - MSNBC.com
To tell the truth, I've flown on flights with women wearing far more inappropriate outfits, but that's not the point. At this point, it seems like attempting, societally, to define inappropriate is becoming an impossible if not laughable exercise. It seems to me that we are societally standing waste deep in a cesspool and claiming that one particular piece of filth is what is stinking the place up. We are rapidly approaching the point where any attempt to apply standards, as a culture - obviously not as the church of Jesus Christ - is becoming arbitrary and frankly ridiculous.
My fear though is that, as always, the attitudes of the culture are seeping into the church. I think that is one of the reasons why churchgoers increasingly dress inappropriately and we are having more and more problems with the "norming" of homosexuality in the church. It's not just the world that has no clue what the difference between right and wrong is these days.
"All the danger is when the world gets into the heart. The water is useful for the sailing of the ship; all the danger is when the water gets into the ship." - Thomas Watson
Your Servant in Christ,
Andy
