Our Public Undressing by America
by: Deji Yesufu
As I took my morning jog today, I came across a young woman who was naked. This young woman was in her right senses and was even trying to take public transport but she was completely nude. Oh, to use the language of our day, she would be classified as “half-dressed” or “skimpily dressed”, but in biblical terms, as I would soon show you, she was without clothes on. She wore a tight-fitting blouse and trousers, that revealed all the contours of her body and there was very little left to the imagination as to what she might be covering. My mind went immediately to a little booklet I read recently titled “Christian Modesty: The Public Undressing of America” by Jeff Pollard, and I owe it to that booklet for increasing my own sense of probity to regard this girl as walking naked; because, before I read that book, I also would have just casually said that the young woman was half-dressed, and would not have realized the inappropriateness of what she wore. Here is a thought on how outrageous dressing has become in our day.
It all comes from the television – the cross-fertilization of ideas that the Western world brings to ours, through the screens. From Hollywood movies to television adverts and music videos, our young girls are increasingly becoming flirtatious in their dressing. When many women dress today, all you see around them is sex, sex, and sex. In recent times, it has become something of an epidemic and what has brought this to be is the Big Brother Naija shows. Prior to BBN, Nigerian girls dressed outrageously. BBN has however increased the tenor by a scale of 1,000. When I was in school, an older lady, while speaking about why women should be permitted freedom to wear whatever they want to wear, said this: “…if she’s got it; she should flaunt it…” This is the principle: the moment you begin to develop a breast and the buttocks begin to protrude out, tell the world about it through your dressing. BBN took the counsel further by not just getting housemates, male and female, to dress outrageously, but they even rewarded their inappropriate clothing with cash rewards and endless hours of romance and sex – as housemates sit around a house for two months, doing nothing but argue and eat. Big Brother is the fruit of America’s progressivism. Jeff Pollard tells us how it all began even for America.
The rise in provocative dressing in America and Europe can be connected to the invention of swim-suits and visits to beaches. In the late 19th century when the phenomenon became increasingly acceptable in both American and European countries, the swim-suits that were designed were actually clothing that covered most of the body. But even at that, it was not acceptable for men and women to go to the same beaches at the same time to swim together. So, the first acceptable mode for beach visits was to limit certain days to men and other days to women. With time, however, men and women began to visit the beaches together. Besides, the swimsuits also became increasingly revealing. The men going completely bare-chested and their trunks becoming increasingly tighter until all that is left is a piece of clothing holding the genitals. For the women, it was worse: the women’s swimsuits initially covered a great deal of the body and then increasingly began to bare the knees, the thighs, etc. All that many women wear today on beaches is just a piece of clothing covering the private and their breasts. Pollard explains that the whole inappropriateness of these dressing can be shown by this example: most people will not wear what they wear on beaches to the front lawns of their homes. If you cannot step out of your own house with a swimsuit, why wear it in public all because you are on a beach? The public still remains public.
The more harrowing aspect of Pollard’s book was proving from the scripture that what we call “half-naked”, the Bible calls plane nakedness. Here: John 21:7, when Jesus appears to the disciples and Peter discovers that it was the Lord speaking to them, the Bible refers to Peter as “naked”, but in actual fact, he had some garments on him. He, however, needed to remove those clothes to do his fishing; but the moment he saw the Lord, he put on his outer garment and swam to Jesus. In other words, his half dressing, which was suitable for fishing, was not presentable; and he was better regarded as “naked”, even with half clothing on. He understood better than presenting himself to his Master naked. The more mind-blowing point Pollard made was when he explained that there is a strong connection between demonic possession and undressing. He showed us that the moment Saul became raving mad, and possessed of a demonic spirit, he removed his clothes and was naked. But the moment God encountered the fallen Adam and Eve, he did not leave them in the leaves they had sown for themselves; God clothed them with animal skin. While the Holy Spirit will offer us more options to cover our nakedness, demonic spirits will lead men and women to become increasingly less clad in public. In Western cities today, there are people who walk around fully naked – and these people are not mad. They are in their full senses – but, in the name of liberty of dressing, they walk around naked; either bearing all their skin or walking with all their breasts in public. There is no greater proof of demonic possession.
In the 1970/80s, Pastor W. F. Kumuyi used to refer to the television as the devil’s box. Everyone knows the legalistic extreme many Deeper Life members took these to. However, in a sermon sometime in 2000, Tunde Bakare said that he remains thankful to that man for instilling in him a basic discipline with regard to viewing things on television. All that many movies from the West show is nudities, sex and human genitals. It has blunted our sense of judgement with regards to appropriate dressing, and has led to a sexual revolution this world has never before known. With the ease and availability of abortion-inducing drugs, young men and women have thrown off all limits and we have an epidemic of abortion in our hands. It all starts with the dressing: when young ladies, in the name of “if you have it, flaunt it”, dress like prostitutes, and are in no short supply of customers.
America has succeeded in undressing all of us: male and female. It is the duty of the church to remind people that having clothes on is appropriate and responsible. Sex is not the center of human living; it is an aspect of life that should be reserved for a married man and his wife. Sex outside marriage is still a sin and one step to curbing the sexual revolution of our time is to encourage our young ladies to dress appropriately. No one should dictate to an adult how they should dress; however, we all should have a sense of what is right and wrong. The lady I saw today was not half-dressed; she was completely naked – walking the street. This is wrong.
Thank you for this.
Thank you, sir