Fashion Sense

Today's Teens

Author Jennifer Anne Moses wrote a piece in The Wall Street Journal about rearing her adolescent daughter. She describes 12 and 13 year-olds “dressed in minidresses, perilously high heels and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade.” Having already abetted this for two years, she anticipates the fashions to come: “plunging necklines, built-in push-up bras, spangles, feathers, slits and peek-a-boos.”

She asks, “Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this – like prostitutes, if we’re being honest with ourselves – but pay for them to do it with our Amex cards?” Ms. Moses is a mom swept up in the popular culture. But she’s taken a step back from reflexive conformity to think about it.

She has a theory. “It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t have even slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?'"

“We were the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret… but that’s certainly the norm among my peers.” “I don’t know one of them who doesn’t have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past.”

“Now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don’t know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We’re embarrassed, and we don’t want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.”

Moses honestly changed her mind and she’s not pushing views she doesn’t hold, so she’s not a hypocrite. She’s just wiser, and passing on wisdom is laudable. She wonders if her peers will teach their children not to make the same mistakes. It’s not that there’s a lack of awareness: it’s an absence of will. When people learn from their mistakes they usually share the knowledge with those they care for. Why not this?

Her generation acted as though the birth control pill changed human nature. With a self-centeredness that deliberately ignored faith, it’s hardly surprising hurt would result.

Quick pleasures don’t last, but regrets do. The friend who discovered “sex is the most powerful thing there is” could have saved herself some hard knocks if she hadn’t jettisoned lessons from the Bible. It’s replete with teachings about the wonders and dangers of sex.

Jennifer’s daughter may well see her mom’s new position as an ethical quick-change that justifies the hypocrisy charge. If Moses needs support from an authoritative, objective source to trump the skepticism about her newfound scruples, she can still find it in the Bible.



Photo Credit:  The Wall Street Journal

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Surly Skeptic



Leonard Pitts Jr.



Leonard Pitts is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald. He wrote about a vicious attack on a reporter in Egypt and commented that the victim was “deserving of our compassion, our empathy and our prayers.”

The “prayers” part elicited a vehement response from an atheist reader. Elements of her criticism included “Please stop the superstitious nonsense,” don't “keep the public naïve and stupid,” and “An atheist is absent of belief and willing to change their position when evidence is presented. When you mention prayer, you are acting as an evangelist promoting an irrational act.”

Strong words for someone who’s wrong on all counts.

Atheists rely on the scientific method for knowledge, which requires evidence that’s quantifiable and repeatable. It’s limited to natural phenomena and can’t prove whether God exists or not. Because it can’t, our rude friend should understand that she depends on faith in “no God” at least as much as believers do “in God.” Unlike skeptics, Christians have additional sources of knowledge that support their faith.

Spirituality lets us experience things that are out of the reach of science. Here’s an example: Christians know there’s a “God-sized hole in their hearts” that needs to be filled. It’s real, but can science determine its configuration, measure its size or describe the essence that fills it? Of course not. But because it can’t, the concept is beyond the grasp of skeptics.

This self-restricted “thinking” deprives them of answers. Let’s say the Big Bang Theory is correct. For skeptics the question of why it occurred resists sensible answers. Albert Einstein believed God is the creator while today’s skeptics say it “just happened.” But order doesn’t just happen:  destructive accidents do.  Skyscrapers, space shuttles and universes need planning.

There are two views. One is open-minded and sees God filling in the missing blanks left by science. The other closed-mindedly confines itself to a scientific paradigm that can’t answer the big questions. Skeptics need God’s answers but their stunted worldview requires them to ignore Him.

It’s as though atheists denied the existence of radio waves and then tried to figure out how a radio worked. It would be unexplainable – because they rejected the essential element up front – and they’d be left with implausible theories.  If someone suggested invisible waves were necessary, they'd  condescendingly be called “stupid,” “superstitious,” “naïve,” and “irrational.”

Atheists like to think they’re open-minded and sophisticated. But it’s not open-minded to ignore answers that work, and sophistication loses its value when it prevents you from using common sense. Maybe this narrowness is why they turn to insult, the last defense in a losing argument.

Pitts’s critic claims a willingness “to change (her) position when evidence is presented”- as long as it fits her preconceived notions. Skeptics may alter views within their limited framework, but their spiritual blinders consign them to an incomplete – and incorrect - view of reality.

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