{"id":3562,"date":"2016-08-21T21:06:24","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T04:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=3562"},"modified":"2016-08-21T21:06:24","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T04:06:24","slug":"the-christian-bares-of-trillium-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2016\/the-christian-bares-of-trillium-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christian Bares of Trillium Lake?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we had a family outing to Trillium Lake. (It was a birthday thing.)<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3564\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3564\" style=\"width: 390px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon-400x300.jpg\" alt=\"Summer Bare Country\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3564\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-content\/trillium-lake-mount-hood-oregon.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3564\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Summer Bare Country<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This morning early I thought back on the other vistas of God&#8217;s creation which awaited us there. And I wondered&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top:-1.2em\">\n<li>How many of those nude legs belong to women worship team members?<\/li>\n<li>How many of those barely covered breasts have the heart of a female Sunday School teacher beating behind them?<\/li>\n<li>How many Christian male eyeballs tracked back for one more discreet look?<\/li>\n<li>How many Christian men wrestled with wistful wishes, treacheous thoughts, and deadly desires?<\/li>\n<li>How much ache in the Creator&#8217;s heart?<\/li>\n<li>Will His heart have any revulsion in church services today?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You could read that as me looking down my nose on fellow Christians or fellow fallen humans. You could accuse me of being a Puritanical prude. You could charge me with contemptuous condemnation. You could slam me for sanctimonious something-or-other. And you&#8217;d be wrong.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not blind to the beauty of forbidden fruit, OK? But in my other-world moments I look beyond eyeball-grabbing displays and feel compassion. <!--more--> Compassion for the women (Christian or otherwise) who&#8217;ve been trained to believe that exposing their &#8220;superficial assets&#8221; is acceptable and even praise-worthy. I feel sadness that they should play along so willingly with such demeaning objectification.<\/p>\n<p>As I mused this morning, I remembered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2012\/idku\/\">Tiff<\/a> (please read that post and the other posts I link to there!). And I remembered a long-ago <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anabaptists.org\/writings\/songsol.html\">&#8220;she&#8217;s got legs&#8221;<\/a> observation.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s this from another post on this same general subject:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019m simply appealing to Christian women to consider whether or not the decadent culture in which we live has caused you to inadvertently lower the decency bar too far.<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that Christian purity requires modesty in dress. Actually, purity also produces such modesty.<\/p>\n<p>So allow me a play on words in closing:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Heavenly minded \u2014 how much does it cover?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"alignrightsmall\">Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2009\/heavenly-minded\/\">Heavenly Minded<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How do I end this post? Abruptly. Time to get ready to go to the evening service. Where I hope we can all treasure the outward glow of inner beauty to such an extent that we reject the natural urge to &#8220;feature&#8221; our external attractiveness.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laid bare: a lake, a mountain, and other handiwork of the Creator<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[72,880,416,672,595],"class_list":["post-3562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-101","category-lessons-for-living","tag-christianity","tag-life-lessons","tag-morality","tag-nature","tag-purity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-Vs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}