Before His Eyes

She carefully bends every way in the mirror to make sure her chest isn’t showing at any angle. Going through her closet she finally finds one skirt that is long enough. Scrutinizing herself in the mirror she asks herself “Will this make him stumble?” 

She twirls in her new dress with a giddy clap of her hands, but stops half way through. She doesn’t want to mess up her makeup. Putting on her best earrings she asks herself “Will he notice me now?”

I’ve heard a lot about modesty. And from a young age I’ve found it confusing. Where is the line between modest and not modest actually drawn? There was a time in my life where I drew the line closer to myself. I wouldn’t wear a skirt above knee length and rejected almost every shirt I saw in the store as “not modest enough”. I drove my poor mother crazy when we went shopping because, in my mind, every outfit I saw could be a potential stumbling block. 

Later I started drawing the line a little further out, but focused my modesty efforts at my actions and behavior. I was deathly afraid that something I said or did might come off as flirting or cause a boy to think the wrong things so I basically stopped talking to boys altogether. It was easier than trying to monitor every word from my mouth, every glance, every smile. 

My earlier confusion about modesty led me to read a lot of articles on modesty - some that shame girls for wearing “skimpy” outfits and others that shame boys for looking. Many articles make the case that men need to be kept responsible for their actions and that women should be allowed to wear whatever they want. Other articles state the same old argument that men are are visual and women need to help protect their purity. And it’s interesting to me that both sides of the argument have completely missed the point of modesty. We have made modesty a debate on what people think of our dress when modesty should have nothing to do with what people think. 

One girl is terrified to wear a skirt above knee length and another girl wears bikini’s with pride. One girl experiments with makeup, while the other won’t braid her hair. One girl flirts shamelessly while the other is afraid to look a boy in the eye. Which girl is wrong? Both. The point of modesty isn’t, and never has been, to control what men think of you. The point has always been an attitude of the heart, and a concern with how God, not man, sees you. As long as we are looking to please others - either by our provocative or conservative dress - we are looking in the wrong place. When it comes to modesty our first thought should be, is my Heavenly Father pleased with the way I am acting? It should never be, will this make a boy look my way? 

For some, honoring God will look different than it does for others. For one girl it may mean wearing jeans to church so her friend doesn’t feel awkward surrounded by dresses. For another it may be obeying her parents by not wearing the shirt they find too low cut. But no matter what it looks like, modesty should stem from a desire for God to be pleased with how you behave, not for man.

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