In a world sinking in a malaise of consumerism, mass-production, digital fatigue and naturalistic materialism, there is a unique appeal to the ‘enchanted world’ that some people see so clearly, and have tried to share with the rest of us.

Admittedly, Sara Crewe and Anne Shirley did so thanks to the human authors who imagined them, but Crewe and Shirley are in good company with a very real human, G.K. Chesterton. These three share a light-footed, open-hearted and starry-eyed embrace of the unbelievable world that God created, and this author is persuaded that embracing it and loving it will bless your soul.

Let’s keep this brief, and hopefully sparkly! Sara Crewe is a young girl with outstanding manners who was raised carefree in India with her father Ralph Crewe. He sends her to England to boarding school, and her vivid imagination creates waves amongst the brow-beaten boarding school girls. It gets interesting when her father is alleged MIA, and she is treated not as a star pupil but as a poor beggar girl. It is at this point, when she has an absolute lack of physical wealth, that the quality of her character is tested, and the reliability of her imaginations and fancies are put to the test. Admittedly, it isn’t healthy to ignore or suppress the reality of something and comfort yourself with lies, but what makes Sara laudable and compelling is that she is not satisfied in mere things, or mere duties, or bare facts. She can’t be bought with money, she can’t be flattered with praise and she can’t be discouraged by scorn because her heart belongs to ‘another world’ (the name of one of the best songs from the musical adaptation of the book). This blesses the shy and teased girls around her with a good friend, and it frustrates the haughty students and cruel spinster headmistress because she can’t be moved with the conventional levers.

This kind of virtue does not ultimately belong to fiction, but ultimately it belongs to every single human being who has been given the immeasurable security of knowing that they are held in God’s hand. If you, dear reader, have peace with God through faith in Christ Jesus for your salvation, then you have every reason to be as self-assured, as joyful, as patient and as gracious as Sara.

Anne Shirley is an endearing mess. She is an orphaned young girl whose vigour and thirst for adventure and initiative often lands her in various scrapes and foils. At first, she’s a pain in the neck to her new carers, but not from any malice on her part. She can’t just go to school, she has to name each gravel track and each hedgeway and give it a fantastical name and think about magical characters that might live there. A lake can’t just be a lake, it has to be the ‘Lake of Shining Waters’. She can’t simply refer to the housekeeper as Rebecca or Becky, she would only use her full name (‘Rebecca Dew’) because it just sounds so delightful and quaint. It is just so fitting to her that it would be a crying shame not to use it. This author loved Shirley (and therefore the Anne of Green Gables book series from which she appears) from the first moment he encountered her, and it wasn’t until he finished the second or third book in the series that the similarity to Sara Crewe became obvious.

Some readers may say, ‘It is all well and good for you to enjoy the nostalgia of fanciful little fictional characters whose lives are entertaining to read about, but it isn’t appropriate for adults with responsibilities to get carried away in fairy-tales’. Well, O grinch, we beg to differ! After all, is it true or false that we live in a world in which water sometimes streaks down from the sky and everyone pretends that’s normal? Is it fact or fiction that we see green shoots spring out of the ground, and then without request or support or brush or paint produce multicoloured flowers, and then have those glorious flowers give off a delightful fragrance, and then see those flowers produce edible fruit? Yet you will tell us that the world we live in is not magical and gobsmacking?

Well, if you think that babies and infants are odd for having a permanent expression of wonder on for years, and you O adult are the normal one for being jaded at the chrysalis that produces a butterfly, then you are the fool, and the baby is the one responding correctly.

Finally, this author was greatly pleased to finally meet G.K. Chesterton in his own words when listening to Orthodoxy at work recently. There is this one paragraph from his book, and whilst you may have heard it before, since it is very widely quoted, we will not withhold it from that lucky reader who may not yet have heard it. So, here is Chesterton:

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

We’ll try to wrap this up. This author enjoys enjoying. There is such a richness to be found in simply recognising the unlikeliness and the fulness of the world that God made around you, friend. The sovereign God waves the tree branches as you walk past them, and he fluffs up the clouds like couch cushions when guests are coming over, and you can and should enjoy that and thank him for it. He loves your gratitude—but wait, he also loves your joy. So, hear it this way. All beauty in Heaven and on Earth belongs to Jesus. Therefore, go and make merriment in all places, seeing them and naming them with obstreperous adjectives, turning each one of them back to God in praise, and his Spirit of Joy will be with you, even to your old age. Amen.

The most important day in the Christian calendar is this day, Easter Sunday. Though Christmas displayed the miracle of the glorious son of the transcendent God emptying himself by taking on the nature of a human and veiling his glory, Christianity would be utterly worthless if there was no Easter Sunday. Indeed, the only reason that Good Friday is Good is because it is followed by Resurrection Sunday.

This day is like the rays of spring sunshine creeping through a permafrost forest in the soft hours of the morning. This day is a messenger on the horizon, running to a starved and besieged encampment of warriors to tell them that their King has won, the enemy has surrendered, and all the known world is theirs for the taking. It is a hot shower, clean clothes and a warm bowl of soup in the winter. Easter is the final and glorious cadence of an unpredictable symphony, one that had just spent three movements in a mysterious Fugue.

Easter is the counter-cultural elevation of the role of women in first-century society, and the dangerous news that a troupe of Roman guards would be sentenced to execution for not keeping a certain tomb shut. However, one couldn’t blame the guards who were ordered to guard Jesus’ tomb. The very Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, the Prince of Peace himself, the one who wrought all of creation with his majestic power, cannot be stopped by a heavy rock, or a wooden cross.

Brothers and sisters, let our faces light up at the mention of Easter. Let our first reaction be “He is Risen!”, “Risen indeed!”, and not “Well actually, some aspects of the Western tradition of Easter celebration allegedly have their roots in certain pagan deities and practices…”

Let us encourage you to love Easter, and to be proud to be messengers of the greatest news. The news presenters who proclaimed the end of World War 2 brought a weighty and glorious news bulletin that day, but in comparison to Easter, it is utterly insignificant! We proclaim that all the spiritual powers, all the earthly tyrants, all the sting of the curse and sin, all the wiles of the Adversary and all the temptations of the flesh have been decisively conquered, and now all that remains for human history is our clean up mission of rounding up God’s lost sheep and our conquering of his embittered enemies.

This author proclaims this news to the non-Christian as to the Christian: there is a new King, and his throne will never be usurped. You will bow to him one day. He offers for you to come to him now in faith, and to be received as a precious Son or Daughter. We know this is true, because there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem. He is risen. Risen, indeed.

The first thing to say is that love is not good, and hate is not bad. Love can be a wicked thing, and hatred can be the perfect expression of righteousness. It is always worthwhile to keep in mind that love and hate are either good or bad depending on their subject and object.

For example, Christians are commanded to not love the world, nor the things in it, because if anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in them (1 John 2:15). On the other hand Christians are commanded to love their neighbours (Lev 19:18). This is so very important to remember when phrases like “love wins” are thrown around. Not only is homosexual practice not truly love, because it is intrinsically narcissistic, but even if it were, the slogan is compelling because we assume that love is good, and where that campaign is concerned, it most certainly isn’t.

In a similar way, we must keep all of the strength of the word ‘hate’ and not dilute it, but nevertheless acknowledge that the Bible explicitly speaks of faithful worshippers of God appropriately hating evil, arrogant pride, evil conduct and perverse speech (Prov 8:13) and the practises that go along with false teaching (Rev 2:6). That may not surprise you, but what about this? We also see the Bible positively presenting the hatred of those who hate God and rise up against him (Ps 139:21-22) and those who cling to and worship worthless idols (Psalm 31:6). This author is ready to take on correction if he is missing something obvious here, but it seems that there must be a category for righteous anger in Christians, since it is Paul (citing Psalm 4:4) who commands us to be angry and not sin (Eph 4:26). However, this author does realise that whilst there may be a category and precedent for this, it is a wildly hard thing to execute, and we imagine that this is what the Lord’s brother had in mind when he wrote that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20).

Finally, a word on blasphemy laws, and the inescapable reality of ‘whether, not which’. The foundation we must start with is the ‘myth of neutrality’, which you could also call the ‘lie of secularism’. That is that there is no fact, no community, no text, no medium, no person, no idea and no practice that stands before the true and living God on neutral ground. All things, absolutely all things, are for him or against him. Secularism is the political name or manifestation of polytheism. Secularism is the idea that a society can exist with all of its various cultures, gods, customs and laws existing side by side, and respecting each other group’s right to do the same. It might also be posited as the idea that anyone can believe whatever they like, but they should keep it to their home/faith community, whereas in the public square everyone is expected to forego their beliefs and speak and act like neutral western materialists. It is a fantasy, a myth and a joke, but it is also the air we breathe, and the waters in which we swim.

We have this idea, thanks to the myth of neutrality, that blasphemy laws are a wicked thing, and that you should not be penalised for insulting someone’s god. However, all that statement reveals is that ‘someone’s god’ is not the god of the secular system. If you had insulted the god of the secular worldview, then you would be punished for it. It is not whether there will be blasphemy laws, only which god. If you find this idea hard to swallow, consider some of the most supreme gods of our increasingly neo-pagan society. At the time this is written, it is blasphemy to make any of the following statements:

1. Marriage only exists between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others for life.
2. Homosexual practice is an abomination.
3. Men cannot become women, and women cannot become men.
4. The COVID vaccines were utterly ineffective.
5. The COVID lockdowns were both wicked and counter-productive.
6. The environmentalist movement is dominated by the idolatry of Gaia.
7. Truth is absolute, and does not vary between people or cultures.
8. It is right and just that some people have more wealth than others, and that some people make more money than others.

Dear reader, we imagine that you now see the point. Did not one of those statements make you bristle? Were you not nearly tempted to silence and defame this author with a term equivalent to ‘blasphemer!’, whether it be ‘homophobe’ or ‘transphobe’ or ‘climate denier’ or ‘science denier’ or ‘capitalist pig’?

Dear reader, if you want to find the god of the system, here is your diagnostic question: What is the court of appeals past which no appeal can be made? When you find the answer, you have found the god of the system. That is why the statement attributed to Francis Schaeffer is true and should be well remembered that if there is no god above the state, the state is god.
The good news about freedom in Christ is that this author doesn’t care about the false gods, because at the cross, Jesus made a public spectacle of them, and he will continue to triumph over them all until the world is won over by the gospel, and then he will return. Because Christ is Lord of the Dictionary, this author simply must speak truth and not lie, because to lie and play the secular game is unfaithfulness to God. We will not fear, though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea. God will be exalted among the nations. Be still, know that he is God, and love him.

Over 2022, a new podcast came onto our radar called ‘New Heart Theology’. This author knew of the men who ran it, and started weighing their claims. This reflection is a summary and an endorsement of what they had to say. To hear their claims from their own platforms, click here.

This is the question they answer: does a Christian’s disobedience flow from their heart, or from somewhere else? Can a Christian truthfully say that their heart is wicked, or is it actually good?

Before we go any further, it is worth acknowledging that different Christians will appeal to slightly different categories to constitute the human person. Some will suggest a human person consists of mind, body and soul. Some will say mind, body, soul, spirit. Others might say only body and spirit, or replace those terms with material and immaterial. For this article, ‘material and immaterial’ should be seen as terms used for distinguishing between all of the physical and material aspects of a human person on one hand, and all of the spiritual and immaterial aspects of a human person on the other. This way we can encompass all the other sets of terms without making these statements meaningless to those systems. Additionally, where we use ‘flesh’, ‘heart’, and ‘spirit’, they should be seen in terms of the context of how they are used in Scripture: there is clear dichotomy in the Pauline corpus between the intentions and actions that are ‘according to the flesh’ and those that are ‘according to the spirit’ (Rom 8:5-11). In this sense, decisions made ‘according to the flesh’ are not merely those made with reference to the physical body, but to the sinful inclinations of man in his natural state. Conversely, decisions made according to the spirit refer to those new desires God-honouring impulses which are wrought in regenerate believers by the Spirit of God.

To those of you whose attention has not yet been torn away to something more instantly gratifying, we are much indebted. We will start by considering the effects of regeneration upon the heart and the flesh (again, when formulated in their biblical contexts, not anatomically).

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Jeremiah 31:33-34

Jeremiah 31 is probably the most significant OT text for this subject, because it points forward with amazing clarity to the purpose and nature of the New Covenant that we experience today. There are a few primary observations to make here. The New Covenant is not like the Old Covenant in the respect that all the members of the New Covenant are true believers that have been forgiven by God, and who have had their hard and stony heart removed and replaced with a believing heart that is capable of knowing and loving God. The reason that neighbour would not need to teach neighbour, saying, ‘know the Lord’, is because they would all already have a true and saving knowledge of Him in their hearts, as opposed to one imposed on them from outside, such as was the law of Moses (which could govern their actions, but did not change their hearts).

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

Here the prophet Ezekiel speaks of the future day (which is in our past) in which God would not only deliver his people into material comfort and prosperity, but cause the change to happen inside them, so that obedience to God would become natural to them in their hearts. A new heart, and a new spirit. The stony heart, that could not honour God (Rom 8:7), is then removed from them, and a pure heart that seeks to honour God is given to them. Take note of the language: ‘I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes’. It is God’s unilateral action to change the desires and will of the human such that they would now desire and ‘be careful to obey’ his law. The change that takes a person from rebellion to repentance is something that God does, which the penitent person then responds to with contrition and faith.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Romans 8:18-23

Here, Paul shows that the regeneration which is the common possession of all Christians has not yet come to the creation as a whole, and nor has it come to our physical bodies. The creation still groans under its subjection to sin, just as our bodies still decay and corrupt. His argument indicates that in a future time, both the physical creation as well as our physical bodies will be renewed and freed from the subjection to sin and corruption. So, what conclusions can be drawn from all of this?

1. All Christian believers have had their hard, stony, unbelieving and wicked heart removed and replaced with a soft, fleshy (not meaning sinful, but simply a contrast to hard and stony), repentant, God-honouring heart.
2. The physical bodies of all people, believing and otherwise, are currently still experiencing the decay and subjection that results from sin in the world.
3. Christians will one day experience the full redemption of their physical bodies, at which point, everything about their person will be pure, regenerated, and sinless.
4. Creation itself will also be set free from bondage to sin and fully redeemed.

Here this author will seek to address the most common ‘but what about x’ questions that the Christian will likely ask.

Q: “Don’t the Scriptures say that our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately sick?

A: This author is willing to be corrected if he answers here in ignorance, but we are persuaded that this language (Jeremiah 17:9) in its context (especially v5-8) speaks with reference to the stony and unregenerate heart, not the heart given to a Christian. In this perspective, a Christian would be mistaken to apply that verse to the pure heart that God gave them in regeneration.

Q: “How do you explain the presence of sin in my life, that I still choose, even when I am a Christian?”

A: This is why we have been so careful to outline the teaching that the flesh is still corrupted, because it is our understanding that our flesh is what motivates us to sin, and not our heart, nor our spirit. You can truly say that you have chosen to sin, as Paul here does in Romans 7:17-20:

So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Paul does not shirk responsibility for his actions, pretending that is was someone else twisting his arm to cause him to sin. However, he does identify his true will (“I have the desire to do what is right”) with the righteousness that his regenerate heart produces, whereas he identifies the origin of his sin as not being him, but sin that dwells within him. We advocate for speaking in the same way as Paul. It is not this author’s desire to sin. Christ has taken this author’s evil heart away and given him a heart that honours him and seeks obedience. Whenever this author sins, it is due to the remaining influence of the sinful fleshly will.

Finally, we will end this reflection with some pastoral implications. To be honest, although this author is certainly not a pastor, we found this aspect to be one of the most compelling reasons to share NHT and not merely consider it an academic exercise in precise language.

If a fellow Christian comes to you, confessing a sin they have been succumbing to, which is weighing heavily upon their conscience, then it matters hugely whether or not you will tell them that their heart is desperately wicked, inclined to sin, etc. If a Christian knows that God has given them a new heart which is designed for and capable of obedience, it bolsters their efforts and faithfulness with the truth of knowing that holiness is possible with God’s help. They are not destined to always have sin triumph over their sanctification, but can expect Spirit-led victory over sin.

Additionally, consider what it is that you are saying to God if you blame your wicked heart for your sin. Christ died to ensure that your wickedness would be done away with and paid for. When the Spirit worked regeneration in you, he didn’t make any mistakes, or leave any black spots. His work was total and perfect. It is perhaps disrespectful to the perfection of God’s work in regeneration to say that he has left you with a half-evil heart.

In summary, this author advocates for recognising the biblical distinction between the heart and the flesh where the origin of sin is considered (in a regenerate Christian). It is faithful to the Scriptures, useful in sanctification, and honours the perfect work of God in regeneration. If you would like to learn more, please check out the resources we linked at the beginning of the article.

Recently, this author was in a conversation with a fellow Christian who accidentally misquoted Ephesians 2:8 as saying ‘you have been saved by faith, through grace’. It was merely a slip of the tongue, and he knew that it was by grace through faith, but it got this author thinking about an important distinction.

The old hymn is timeless that says ‘this is all my hope and plea / nothing but the blood of Jesus’. After all, what do you trust in for your salvation? The answer ought not be ‘my faith in Christ’, but rather ‘that on the cross, Jesus bore the debt and punishment of my sin, and that as sure as he rose again, likewise I will have eternal life.’

In other words, you don’t trust in your faith, you trust in the cross.

This begins to make sense when you think of the Christian who loves God, but sometimes falls into pits of despair and feels themself faithless and distant from God. If their trust is in their faith, then when they appear faithless, or doubt the sincerity of their expression of faith in the past, their very assurance of salvation slips away before them like sand in the wind. However, if they trust in the steadfast love of their God, and trust that on the cross Jesus paid for their sins, then even in their pits of despair when they see their inadequacy, they can remember that God is faithful and will not abandon them. Even when you are faithless, he remains faithful.

So, faith is not the grounds of salvation, merely the instrument (some may say the instrumental cause). Faith is that gift that God gives, whereby the believer appropriates unto themselves the salvation that God has wrought for the believer. God saved you by himself, from himself and for himself.

This misunderstanding of faith can be seen in that tradition in some churches where new Christians are encouraged to write the day and hour that they trusted Christ into their Bibles, so that if they ever feel doubtful, they can look back to when they first trusted Christ. See the problem? They are being encouraged to trust their decision to trust Christ, not Christ’s work of saving them.

So, what is the grounds of your salvation? All of God, and none of you. It is that God planned in eternity past to set you apart and save you. It is that his Son went to the cross with you in mind, clearing your record and saving you. It is that the Spirit found you in your rebellion, dead and blind and dumb to the gospel truths, and caused you to be born again to a living hope to an unfading inheritance.

So when you confess sola gratia, sola fide, remember Christ. Trust the cross, not the faith.

There has been in recent years the popularisation of the term ‘micro-aggression’ as a shorthand for the subtle communication of aggression from one person to another. This sounds rather reasonable, and not at all something that needs to engender any controversy or discussion. Have we not all seen the rolling of eyes, or the turning of a shoulder, to indicate someone’s displeasure? So, aren’t these communications simply greatly softened acts of aggression? Perhaps, but it depends on what you mean by aggression.

In the day in which we live, there has been a wife-swap between the terms ‘speech’ and ‘violence’. The word ‘speech’ was once married to the act of opening one’s mouth and breathing out coherent words. Likewise, the word ‘violence’ was once married to the concept of physical acts of destruction; whether burglary, assault, vandalism, domestic abuse, etc. We won’t go into great detail about the terrifying consequences of this foolishness, except to say that if speech is violence, then physical violence can be used to counter speech, and that is also known as fascism, coercion, and in some cases, terrorism. Oh, and let this author not neglect to mention: this viewpoint is being taught at the Universities. He should know, he sat through it himself.

So, the concept of a ‘micro-aggression’, though carrying with it ideas which are bordering on treasonous, reveals something true that our society would in other places deny. That truth, which we shall henceforth consider, is that communication is not limited to the words that come out of one’s mouth.

In a way, we all know this. Does a picture not represent a thousand words? Likewise, do actions not speak louder than words? What is a hypocrite, but someone who speaks one thing with their mouth, and then speaks the antithesis with their actions?

Having established that human communication encompasses more than just words, and that sometimes our words contradict other things that we communicate, let us address the issue at hand.

Simply put, clothing is communication. There are lots of directions you can go with this observation. For one, this author finds value in reflection on the internal monologue (or self-communication) that is affected by one’s wardrobe. Let the following scenario serve as an elucidation.

A young man rises in the morning, and prepares to dress himself for the day. Lying on his floor is a pair of tracksuit pants that he has been wearing for at least the last week. They are not terribly smelly or dirty, but a wash would be in order. He certainly wouldn’t wear them on a date. He picks them up and puts them on, not because they are particularly suitable to any of the plans he might have for the day, nor necessarily suited to the weather, but simply because they are directly within his line of sight, and do not require further thought.

Opening his wardrobe, he takes a printed tee-shirt and puts it on. He puts no thought into the combination of those two pieces of clothing, whether they complement each other, or his day’s tasks, or the weather, or anything else.

If this young man were to go to a cafe, or to stand in line at a library, or to be sitting on the platform at the train station, as he sees himself in reflections and with his own eyes, the decisions he made in the morning might convey the following statements, from morning-self to afternoon-self:

“I am not prepared to make a good impression on a stranger today. I am not looking to interact with other people. I have not made a plan for my day, and I am unprepared for the conditions that the day might present. The level of thriving or productivity that I expect to come forth from today is equivalent to what might be achieved by sitting on autopilot. I am not someone that you will feel compelled to take a second look at, and I am not interesting.”

Granted, this review may be overly scathing. Dear reader, if you happen to be dressed as the young man in this illustration, do not hear our words as a personal attack directed at you. However, we do not know your life, and it may be that the shoe fits.

However, this illustration is only tangential to the main point we are slowly angling on. Having established that clothing can (and does) achieve internal communication, we will now grapple with the elephant in the room: what you wear tells the people around you a number of things, and just as you are responsible for the intention and presentation of your words, you are also responsible for the presentation of your body.

Firstly, your clothing communicates how you want others to formulate your identity. If you are always wearing merchandise from your favourite film/TV/game franchise, you are successfully communicating that you want others to interact with you as a fan of that franchise. If you are often wearing your sporting apparel, whether from the AFL team you follow, or the local sporting club you’re a part of, or some such other thing, you are telling people that you are sporty, that your club is important to you, and that you are potentially ready for some activity or exercise.

If you have disfigured your body with subdermally implanted horns, and such other grotesque things, you are communicating that you reject the vision for manhood or womanhood that God has prescribed for you, and that you would rather be created in the image of some beast than of the one true and living God.

Further, if you are a young lady who routinely comes to social events wearing inappropriately revealing clothes, you are communicating that you want others (particularly the young men) to see you as sexually available, at the very least, if not something more forthright than that.

That statement will stir up in the bosom of many in our generation accusations of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, pharisaical judgement and a host of other things. Well, the fact is that we could go further in our assessment. You might want to sit down for this one. This author doesn’t think that his generation is anywhere near ready for this discussion: since when did it become acceptable for Christian men and women to walk around in form-fitting clothing that leaves basically nothing to the imagination? Even Christian women of godly character will take umbrage at our raising this subject. They will say that they are not to be blamed for the lack of self-control shown by their Christian brothers. As with many murky subjects of discussion, they are partially correct. A man cannot blame anyone else for his sin. Adam tried it, not a good idea. Men are required by God to be themselves disciplined in their practise of holiness. Christian civilisation does not reach the conclusion adopted in some Islamic cultures, which is that the women must be covered up in sacks, lest a man see a curve and be forced by his instincts to take her to bed.

Be that as it may, if it were not for our unbelievably individualistic culture, we might see more clearly that we are all members of one body, we are all stones in one temple. There is blame on both sides, so we will put it plainly: men have a long way to go with not committing adultery in their hearts as they look at their Christian sisters. This author himself is guilty of that. Likewise, women ought to refrain from advertising, by their clothing, something that it would be sinful for their brothers in the faith to take them up on.

It would take pages of disclaimers and caveats to cover all the exceptions that are running through the minds of some readers right now, so we will make no effort to cover all of them. We make no apology for putting it to you straight.

This is a problem in the church, but it is also more broadly a problem in our societies. As a result, we have to negotiate the proper standards for clothing with people who do not honour God, and who care nothing for saving a fellow Christian from stumbling.

Additionally, we have to deal with the most revolting and disgusting sin of rape, which is related to this issue. If a young woman is raped after a night out in the city, which has happened enough times that this author trusts you will grant the scenario without need of reference, it is inappropriate to senselessly jump in with a quip like ‘she probably was asking for it’ or ‘that’s what you get for clubbing’. These statements are deeply judgemental in a way that is totally inappropriate, and cares nothing for proper standards of justice.

Deuteronomy 19:15 establishes that “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed.” Rather, a charge must be established on the basis of two or three independent witnesses. This same legal principle is seen all throughout the Scriptures (Matthew 18:16, John 8:17, 2 Corinthians 13:1, Deuteronomy 17:6, 1 Timothy 5:19, Numbers 35:30, Hebrews 10:28, and more).

As a result, it is totally inappropriate for Christians to jump on an accusation they have just heard and reach a conclusion before multiple witnesses have been cross-examined (Prov 18:17). If you hear an accusation levelled against someone, especially for a crime that will bring a serious punishment, you mustn’t be quick to assume the guilt of the person accused. Rather, the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ must prevail. There is much that can be said about how media in our day subverts this process by creating an association of guilt with a person even before their hearing, but that is the subject for another time.

Let’s apply this for a second. If a minister is accused of adultery, you mustn’t say or entertain a thought that says ‘that sounds about right, that’s just what I thought he was like’. If a girl is accused of fornication (in the common term, ‘sleeping around’), we likewise shouldn’t let that accusation impugn her good name until it is proven. If you hear that a young man called Kyle Rittenhouse shoots and kills another man on the streets of Kenosha, it is sinful for you to go too far in either direction, assuming (a) that it is impossible that he has committed a crime or a sin, or that (b) it is a foregone conclusion that he is guilty of a crime or a sin. We must treat the accused as innocent until proven guilty, but we must not determine beforehand which outcome we will require of the examination.

This does mean that evil women and men will get away with murder. This does mean that criminals and traffickers and drug cartels will get away with their schemes. Why is that? It is because they don’t truly get away with anything. A man dies, then comes before God for judgement (Heb 9:27). No crime or sin, no matter how big or small, can escape the gavel of the Omniscient Judge, who is also the Omnipotent Executioner. It is for that reason that some crimes must go unpunished in this life.

The alternative would see twenty innocent women incarcerated or killed falsely on the basis of one false witness, just to ensure that the real criminal can also be caught on the basis of one true witness.

It is a greater evil for an innocent person to stand condemned than for a wicked person to go free, because no one really goes free.

So, let’s bring this back to clothing and communication. The sin and crime of rape is the stickiest and most heated element to the discussion of ‘appropriate’ clothing and where guilt should be assigned when some such evil occurs. This author is convinced that a biblical standard of justice would see a rapist who is condemned on the basis of three independent witnesses justly executed by the state. We will by no means make light or trivia of this gross perversion.

Hopefully the wise reader will have the honesty to at least acknowledge that a society in which sexual misconduct occured less would also be a society in which women and men communicated clearly by their words and their clothes that they are not willing or hoping to have casual sex with someone they have just met, and that intimacy only ever comes after commitment, and not before it.

For a final note, we will address the subject of Christian bodies. If God created you as a woman, he gave you the physical, mental and spiritual attributes of femininity. If God created you as a man, you were likewise given the physical, mental and spiritual attributes of masculinity. Not only are you to verbally communicate truthfully, and with language that submits to and honours the truth, you are to communicate your masculinity or femininity (for they are the only options) with your clothing according to the standards of God’s law and the standards of the culture around you. To take a classic example, the Scottish man would be honouring his Scottish masculinity before God when he wears his kilt, but if a Lebanese or Korean  Christian went into the town square to preach the good news in a kilt, that would be entirely inappropriate. God’s law doesn’t state that all men must wear a suit and tie, and that all women must wear a summer dress with a blouse over the top. The duty is given to the Christian man to see the clothing that says ‘I am a man’ in his culture, and to dress in that fashion (provided that this doesn’t contradict God’s law in another place). The same goes for women.

For both men and women, you honour God when your clothes communicate that you embrace the sexual identity God gave you at conception. It is ungrateful and rebellious (not to mention directly prohibited by Scripture) to dress according to the clothing of the opposite sex. If you are now wondering whether that means dress-ups in theatre are sinful, leave a comment, and we may consider a follow up article.

To summarise what has been a winding journey, we have work to do. Men: we need to make leaps and bounds in self-control, regardless of the fact that our society is presenting us with porn and easy women (whether real or digital) at every turn. Women: if you are able to rise above individualistic thinking and see yourself as a member of Christ’s body, you will realise that you have a part to play in dressing with modesty that communicates the same purity you profess and love in the other parts of your lives.

Brothers and sisters, let our voices not be found among the number that foolishly cry “she had it coming!” or “can’t she dress however she wants?”. Both things are folly, and belong only to the darkened hearts of the enslaved world around us, and not to our liberated hearts that have been set free to serve and honour Christ.