Oh! REALLY? Person of the Year? TIME Magazine & Plunging Necklines

While it is good to speak up and to work against evil, yet today's fevered pitch in society’s reactionary song is sorely off-key in some regards. Blame is being fixed where convenient or politically expedient, without looking at the true underlying issues about American sexuality, and the sinful mess that it has become. Populistic or legalistic responses to human sin will never cure humanity of sin, and, seldom has law made anyone, who is bent on sin, want to do better than their natural inclinations. That is why Jesus tells us that we all must be born again of the Word and Spirit of God. Without “repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ”, as demonstrated by our personal death, burial, and resurrection in Christ, there is no eternal direction nor eternal hope. And, when there is no sense of eternal accountability, hope, or direction, the flesh takes over in one way or another. When flesh rules the person, well… you can see the results in 2017 Time magazine's "The Silence Breakers" article, if you didn't follow it on the TV, cable news services, or in the newspaper.

While it is not a popular theme, today, national repentance is needed with respect to all of our sins, as individuals and collectively. Then and only then will there ever be a real or significant lessening of the unholy, lust-centered behaviors about which so many are clamoring at the moment throughout the media outlets in our nation. Our nation has an all out war going, a volatile love-hate relationship, with sex. We lust after it, but know, deep down in our souls, that we're guilty as all get out of abusing the daylights out of what we've been given by God.

The bitter irony to the TIME cover story and others like it, is that, in the modern media, godliness, fidelity, honesty, modesty, and morality are frequently if not regularly ignored, mocked, overlooked, or shunned (and by huge portions of our culture) in favor of the self-worship of our own fleshly feelings, yearnings, and lusts. And, too often we excuse the sins of others to try to hide our own sins.

Just for a moment, look up the cover of that magazine issue and see for yourself that there are several modestly dressed women on there. But, you shall also see that some of the women are also baring portions of their chests and breasts. Now, maybe I'm going to seem stupid to some or a bit of a hick to others, but I have to ask, WHY would a woman in her right mind complain about being sexually molested AND THEN go on a worldwide medium in a plunging neckline dress and most deliberately show off her partially bared breasts? I could rest my case here, but let's develop the real issue in truth. Let us not be swayed by the famous name of that magazine or by the woman's plunging neckline.

As with this magazine and its cover, the very same media that are decrying unwelcomed sexual advances made against women… those very same media also promote whorish attire, attitudes, behavior, and how to sell one’s self sexually, or promote how to gratify or entice others who are not our spouses, sexually. If they are not doing it in their articles, they are doing it in their ads, and they know why they're doing it... for the money. Sex saturated ads on TV are straight out of the playbook of, “How can I get someone to lust after me?”… or… “How can I get into that person’s pants?”, as are many shows for children and adults, these days.  That kind of hyper-sex marketing plays almost constantly from the supermarket ‘news’ racks, in tv shows and ads, all over the internet, direct from our ‘smart’ phones, and in daily conversations and comparisons of our attire, nails, muscles, hairdos, breast and leg exposure or accents, underwear and ‘bathing suit’ promos, at proverbial watercoolers and vending machines throughout the business, in the legal and collegiate worlds, as well as in small businesses across our nation.

Sex, sex appeal, and sexual prominence are lusted after, marketed, worshipped, sold and bought, instant by instant, throughout our society, despite all of God’s warnings about bowing to or behaving like that. Yet, there is not one modern secular caveat that even hints at the dangers of corrupting people’s hearts, minds, or spirits, as so many of us allow our lives to be soaked in lust-centered advertising that seeks to drown us daily. Secular “Be Safe” and “Safe Sex” programs, that try to ward off or stay the ravages of physical disease, as people flit from partner to partner, are nothing like godly or responsible administration and use of our sexual aspects or attributes. Secular programs care nothing for the soul and spirit of humanity, but, God tries to protect and guide our whole being.

Across our society, and for many decades, God and His Word have been relegated to dustier and dustier corners of our culture, with few adherents to His way of doing things. Now, in contrast to God’s ways, from the time one is a little girl throughout womanhood abusers and hucksters, alike, try to bamboozle females into thinking that being female is primarily about sex. Unlike God’s Word and righteous preachers that strive to encourage the strengths and complementarity of men and women, in order to strengthen the man-woman relationship and the family, admen and adwomen prey on feminine insecurities for the sake of flattery and money.

The hucksters teach nothing about mutual respect or about the sexes bolstering one another for the good of family or society. Instead, the hucksters teach boldly that sex is all about supremacy of the appetites of the individual, that sex is the primary mode of social expression and operation, and how women are to focus and achieve status, respect, and advancement as they interact with men. That is NOT what God says, and the modern unholy teachings about sex make a mess of relationships, of the family, and of society. For a female, today, modernistic sexual self-marketing is all about making herself sexually appealing and available to men in general (and impurely in her mind, if not in reality, rather than dedicating herself to one man, as God intended. I'll let Romans chapters 1 through 3 speak to the issue of homosexuality, for those who want to be honest with themselves about God's view on that.) By allowing themselves to be drawn in by advertising, modern girls and women basically put and find themselves in the midst of a fashion and morality war where they are the players, the pawns, and the victims by their own participation in what they have allowed advertising to sell to them. With regard to sex, modern fashion and marketing puts each girl and woman, like a whore or slave, on the auction block of her own mind or the mind of someone else, for sexual consumption, whether visually, in fantasy, in the bedroom, in the back room, or in the boardroom. Unfettered sexual incitement and excitement, for the sake of monetary gain, is marketing’s chief aim at women, fostering their dependency on what the advertisers and/or the designers determine what they think women/girls should be sexually. The fashion and ad mongers try to push females (and the public) past any resistance in order to separate women and girls from their godliness, for without godliness anything sinful can be sold as fashion and sinful fashion makes lots of money.

Add, to the above observations, the fact that boys and men, also, see that same advertising probably about as frequently as girls and women see it. Furthermore, men have to live and work in this world with the girls and women who succumb to the wiles of the fashion and advertising industries. Given that, in general, males and females see the same ads and live within the impact zone of the same trends in society, let us honestly ask ourselves whether it is really all that amazing that, in our Christ-dishonoring, secularistic, evolution worshipping society, that boys and men are urged and provoked by the media to lustfully pursue women and girls and to treat women as sex objects? Instead of getting to know and respect girls and women in godly ways, is it any real surprise that men also follow the advertising media and their natural feelings, in the same manner as women are pushed and pulled to follow sex-centered advertising? Every day, men see women behaving exactly as media advertising says females ‘ought to be’ acting sexually, and how girls and women ‘ought to be’ provocatively dressing, putting their sexual wares out for public consumption. Are we really surprised, or so naïve, that we can then accuse and blame men for naturally wanting to try to partake of what God has said the girls and women should be keeping in private for their future or present spouse?

I'm certain that many of my comments and questions shall be taken out of their proper context in this article, but, I adamantly do NOT excuse any unholy behavior on the part of men… NOT in the least. I know that God’s Word assures us that He is holding every man, woman, boy, and girls among us personally responsible for our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, toward Him and toward one another. More precisely, we are all accountable for any and all stumbling blocks that we put in other people’s paths, and for all enticements by which we cause others to fall into sin.

I tire of hearing men, women, boys, and girls squirm and rant as they blame someone else for the trouble into which they have gotten themselves, whether they dove deliberately into some sin, or made a poor impetuous choice. As such, publically flaunting one's sexuality was never one of God’s commandments, and that practice is biblically spoken against, repeatedly. Such vain and prideful behavior always leads us and others into greater problems in our lives and in society. Rather, God has always called humanity to modesty and self-restraint. Yet, in this sin filled world, whether in high heels or sneakers, bar rooms or college campuses, court rooms or prisons, hovels or skyscrapers, in poverty or high finance, sex, sexual advertising, sexual provocation, allurement, incitement, and sexual advances have and shall continue to be played as a high stakes game, with many addicted players, despite the big media flap this year. As wrong as these things were in their day, Washington’s and Jefferson’s peccadillos are, now, old news; Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau is old news; Jimmy Swaggart is old news; Bill Cosby is almost old news; Bill Clinton is almost old news. The public, as a whole (and as a forgetful hole), is addicted to adrenalin and fake disgust about the sins of others. The public and public media are in lust with finding something that can titillate them while making their own sins seem insignificant, allowing them to remain protective and unrepentant about their own pet sins.

The Bible does NOT speak against sex, its attributes, or its benefits, WHEN sex is part of a proper husband-wife relationship. But, society has twisted sex and sexual pleasures out of God’s proper context. That TIME article and the current media frenzy that were brought to my attention show the tortured tip of the frantic immoral iceberg that is our society. The tormented modern fruit of humanity’s perversion of sex (that harkens back before the Flood of Noah, and later to Sodom and Gomorrah) belies the goodness of God’s gift to a husband and wife.