Sarah-
1. I will ignore the implication in your first point as to who has the Holy Ghost and who doesn't.
2. She is talking to church women who presumbaly are not wearing mini skirts, halters, low cut outfits, etc.
3. She is talking about men in to pornography. I would like to see the statistic that shows that a covered up woman would solve his problems. Isn't is likely that his next complaint (and continued failure to take responsibility for himself) would be that the women at church are too pretty or their hair catches his attention, or their shoes, etc.
4. They say that there is no such thing as an ugly woman on a ship with men. I would guess that guy with the pornography problem can't handle any young, pretty woman ministering on the platform no matter how she is dressed. Shall we put the men up front and the women in the back to solve this man's problems?
5. Why do we do we this to the women at church? How is it fair to suggest to them that they must dress in a way that brings the least attention because of the porn guy? Why are we surprised then when the young men are attracted to other women and husbands wish their wives were more attractive?
Why are we surprised when women who have been taught to hide their bodies do so behind fat?
6. Why did the Ten Commandments tell us not to covet the other guy's stuff but didn't tell him to hide it?
7. For the record; I don't believe in immodesty. But I don't think Apostolic women with the Holy Ghost who are already dressed vastly different from what you find on the street and at your local supermarket need to be told that they need to take it down another notch because of some guy on porn.
8. I think young women should be told that how they dress will either attract or repel God fearing young men to them or from them. It can bring them good attention or bad attention. But it is ok to be attractive!
I think it WRONG to make women responsible for men who got into sin and now must work to overcome what they themselves created.
9. I believe dressing in a way that converys sexuality and one's willingness to engage in sex is lasciviousness, a work of the flesh (and still somewhat culturally dependent since there was a time when a woman's ankle would have been hot stuff!) Not sure that I have seen an Apostolic woman that could be mistaken for a prostitute though.
10. Jesus never suggested that the man ALONE wasn't responsible for his thoughts. He never talked to the women about how they dressed.
11. Peter and Paul spoke about modesty in an economic sense rather than how the church mostly looks at modesty today. They wanted to make sure that women understood their worth came from within, not without.
12. In fact, no where in the NT do we find a woman's dress as a cause for men's temptation (used as
crutch for one's own sin). James wrote "But every man is tempted ,
when he is drawn away of his on lust, and enticed" (
James 1:14).
We need to move way beyond the shallow teaching of rules and get to the core issues of the heart.