We are human beings. Being so, we all have natural hormonal appetites, to one degree or another, whether to eat or to mate. Lots of folks like to glibly toss around the phrase about things being normal or not normal. However, what is normal at one end of the appetite spectrum is not normal at the other end. Irrespective of whether we are toward the ends of the normal curve or in the middle, each of us is similar to many people and also very different from many others, in our appetites. What we must learn to admit and to properly judge in ourselves is that, if we allow our hearts and hormones to have their own way ruling our lives, then we are going to have to live with the consequences of our appetites. Though our appetites, our lusts, may have their short term payoff in what we perceive as our favor, in the long run, living our lives in subjection to our urges, lusts, or appetites keeps us from maturing and overcoming the feelings of being driven by our lusts and our lack of personal governance and self-control also shall cost us many missed opportunities to rise to higher aspirations and higher accomplishments.
One of the most noticeable things about living in subjection to short term lusts is that the immediate satisfaction is exactly that. Short. There is never any long term sense of accomplishment when we continually indulge in short term lustful pursuits, AND we begin to addict ourselves to seeking increasingly more stimulating variations of that same lustful theme, whether a bouncier piece of music, a fancier preparation of our favorite food, a different sex partner, another spouse, different shoes, clothing, handbags, cars, and the list goes on as long as human lust itself, for we all lust after many many things. What or whomever was once the object of our lust is now our trash or tag sale item or our divorcee. We treat people and things with the same idolatrous passions, both to attain and posses them, and then to dispose of them, often with disdain or disgust, once our lust is spent upon them. We welcome and allow our fickle lust to delude us and lead us wherever it wants... UNLESS we exercise godly self-control.
In our modern culture in these United States of America, we are almost totally obsessed with sex. Sexual obsession is the holes in the 'swiss cheese' of our culture, for there is only the contrast of appearances and no substance to the lust for sexual gratification, in and of itself. Yet, we see it in the way most people dress, whether at the beach or on the news anchor desk, whether at the movies or in the movies. Today, most men are far more modestly dressed than most women and girls in our society, but even the men often display themselves in unholy ways to pad their egos or show off their 'stuff'. I've been as guilty of these things, too, so I'm not saying that I'm any less of a sinner than anyone else. What provokes me and most men in our day is the 'fashion' trends that women so ignorantly or willfully pursue, thinking or claiming that "it's just fashion".
Let me illustrate. In the 1960s I was stationed with the US Army in Alabama. While there, the miniskirt hit the streets of the USA and crept into the Bible Belt. While some will think the following is amusing, others will understand the gravity of what I'm saying. I was driving my car along the main road on the base and following a string of cars approaching a traffic light. All was well until I noticed an attractive young woman walking in the same direction as the car was travelling. Her dress modestly covered her top, but from the belt down there were only a few inches more of fabric than the belt width. That fringe of fabric barely covering 'you know what'. Riveted by the sight and excited by it, as were my passengers, I bumped the taxi cab in front of me as he stopped for the traffic light. Thank God that my foot was already on the brake and that no one was hurt, but the problem was evident. The shock of seeing a woman bare herself publically, in that manner, caused a me to run my car into another vehicle, something I had never done as a driver. That sort of sexual immodesty is prevalent to a far greater degree today.
Today, we have thong 'bathing suits', in which men and women expose themselves sexually at the beach, pools, and other venues. Many of them would, rightly, be embarrassed to walk out of their houses in those revealing things or in their underwear, but, when water or sunbathing are the focus, those same people excuse their immodesty and nakedness by any means they can.
Innumerable times, I've seen women or girls in short skirts, belly tops, skin tight jeans, open blouses, scant 'bathing suits', breast revealing tops, or genital revealing yoga/sports pants, all too frequently they are desperately adjusting the scant clothing to try to minimize their bodily exposure, or they gasp when 'something' pops out or is uncovered, suddenly being fully exposed. Who are those girls and women kidding? They bought the clothes, knowing how they fit. They put on those clothes, knowing how they fit. They wore the clothes out in public, knowing how they fit. Now either those women and girls are totally ignorant, or they are deceiving themselves, or else they deliberately are trying to provoke a sexual interest or response from someone out in public. Obviously, fashion trends of skimpy or sexually revealing clothing are NOT the friend of a girl's or woman's sense of privacy, security, or modesty, and definitely contrary to godly living. Lust is the way of the world, and so is fashion chasing.
Men are 'wired', by God, to look at women, in order to find a life mate. Whether peekaboo style, skimpy attire, or through clingy fabric, when girls and women expose their intimate parts, they provoke men and boys to look at their intimate parts. Period. That is the truth, whether anyone wants to hear it or not.
The question is NOT why men and boys look. The question is why girls and women get upset when boys and men look or say something about the way the girls and women are dressing, or when the boys or men want to act on the open visual presentation and public invitation that the girls and women are presenting of their intimate parts. Why would any girl or woman want to be known and observed publically for the appearance of her intimate body parts instead of for her modesty and moral character, or her productive and social accomplishments, or her dedication and fidelity, or her love of God and His Word? In this lost and dying world, we are sliding rapidly past the violence and lusts of Sodom and Gomorrah, into the world of utter depravity that pervaded the world before the Great Flood in which God only saved Noah and his family of eight. People may do what they choose behind closed doors, or they can argue all they want about the merits or lack thereof of publically exposing one's intimate parts. But, God says there's a payday for our lustful lack of modesty. Flaunting one's private parts in public is either an open invitation for sexual encounters or an attempt to exert sexual power over others in order to manipulate others. There is only one way out of sin and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Repent, before it's too late. Repent.
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