Chastity And Modesty

Some time ago I wrote several posts covering lessons from Helen Andelin's famous book Fascinating Womanhood. They were quite a success judging by the amount of traffic they received and I was planning to write more but my attention became diverted by other things. So many subjects to blog about, so little time:)

Anyway, today I decided to return to the topic of good character and what qualities constitute it, as described at length in the Chapter 16 of the book The Worthy Character. You can find my previous posts about it if you click on the label Fascinating Womanhood on the right side of the blog.

So far I have written about self-control, moral courage and diligence. Today I'd like to talk about chastity. Chastity nowadays is a very politically incorrect subject, and one needs a lot of moral courage to discuss it in public:) Isn't it strange that certain sins have become so politicised that in some countries they are protected with a special set of laws? According to Mrs Andelin, chastity "...means to be sexually pure, to not have sexul relationships with anyone but the person to whom you are legally married, and not to have any impure thoughts or actions. " (FW., p. 220, Bantam Books 1992).

The author goes on to enumerate various sins against chastity and proceeds with a list of reasons why sexual immorality is harmful. She mentions such consequencies as broken relationships, emotional illness resulting from the rebellion against the spiritual laws and even downfall of the nations.

Since the majority of my readers are probably Christians and have heard about theTen Commandments, I don't think there is need to go into much detail on this topic, however, there is something which I'd like to point out. Nowadays we have a tendency to talk about things which are better left to the private sphere. When watching "I Love Lucy" I noticed many times that men would not discuss certain things in the presence of the women and vice versa.

In one episode Lucy pretends to be a man but is easily outed by Ricky because she won't listen to a dirty joke. Chastity is more than not commiting adultery or fornication, it's also refraining from watching porn or reading trashy novels with pornographic themes in them, or discussing bedroom preferences of your husband with others.

Chastity is closely connected with modesty as modesty is based on the same idea: not revealing things which should be private to the eyes of strangers. As Mrs Andelin puts it: "Higher types of civilisation have traditionally been modest." (FW., p. 250). Which reminds me: it's summer again!

The weather may be warm, but still it's better to resist the temptation of going out in the equivalent of underwear (actually, Victorian underwear used to cover more than what some people are wearing now), if only from the purely practical point of view. While we need some exposure to the sunlight for the vitamin D production, sun burns can lead to skin cancer, and it's a serious thing.

Summer modesty and summer fashions could be the topic of discussion on their own, so I'll quit here. Next time I'm planning to write about some home magazines, as requested. Stay tuned!