Our Everyday Modesty Standards ~ Part 1

First of all, I want to thank each of you that has left your sweet comments concerning our upcoming move.  We now have about two weeks before move time.  I appreciate all your payers and thoughts for us during this time.  We are doing a partial move ourselves and then we will have packers/movers coming to finish the job.  I look forward to hopefully getting back to blogging more regularly after the move and visiting once again the lovely blogs of friends.  But, I did want to at least continue my posts on modesty, as I have gotten some questions from several of you that wish to know our family's standards on this issue.  Once again, I want to make this clear that this in OUR family's standard and I am in no way saying that ours must be yours.  You must determine that after prayer and discussion with your spouse.  Having said that, there are things I do feel are inappropriate for any Christian.  So, our family began our modesty standards with what we felt were positively inappropriate.  From there, we expanded it to include areas we felt would be most glorifying to the Lord and would not be something that would cause a brother to stumble.

We do not feel it is appropriate for a woman to show any part of her body that should remain private.  Therefore, shirts or dresses that show cleavage of any kind are not allowed.  We personally do not allow any tank tops, spaghetti straps, halter tops, or anything similar.  We have found that clothes that do not have much fabric on top, often show parts of a woman's body even when she doesn't realize it.  To remain modest at all times one must think about particular types of clothes as one moves.  If you are wearing these types of tops and you raise your arms, or you bend over, it is easy to show the breast area along with your undergarments.  We do not think it is ever appropriate for a young lady to show any of her undergarments, even the straps, so our shirt standards reflect this.  We do not wear sleeveless tops either.  Not because we think it is a sin to do so, but we have found that if a sleeveless top does not fit snugly around the arm, it would be easy to expose oneself.  To check these shirts for modesty, have your daughters put them on and then stoop down, reach up, over, etc. to see if they pass your modesty test.  We also have decided to wear shirts that fit closely to the neck.  Once again, we have found scoop neck shirts, even though they may not show cleavage, tend to fit looser and a woman could easily become immodest by simply reaching over and picking up a child.  Now, you could always reach down and hold your shirt while bending over, but we were concerned about that one time we may forget.  And young girls may even have a harder time remembering in their play time.  If a shirt shows the outline of your undergarments, then that should be a good indication that it is too tight.  So, this is basically our standard for shirts and tops of dresses.  

So this doesn't get too long, I will post a part 2 later.  One thing I wish to stress.  Don't forget the goal of modesty.  1)  To bring honor to Christ.  2)  To not be a stumbling block for a brother.  Therefore, I would rather err on the side of too much caution than not enough.  I have heard people say that since we have liberty in Christ, we can dress any way we wish.  Our liberty is in our freedom from sin, not in our freedom to sin, and causing our brothers to stumble God causes sin.  I hope this has helped with some of your questions.  Once again, this is our standard, you must do what you feel God is leading you to do.  May we seek to glorify Him and give Him honor in every area of our lives, even in our dress.  God bless you!