Episode 243: Modesty vs. Vanity: Maybe We Need to Shift the Conversation!

The evangelical church spends a lot of time giving modesty messages to girls. But we hardly ever talk about vanity--even though the Bible condemns it. Could it be that in all our talk about modesty, we're inadvertently promoting vanity? And perhaps we can't call out vanity, because our messages to boys essentially enable vanity. Join Rebecca and Sheila as we hash this one out!

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Things Mentioned in the Podcast:

Our book She Deserves Better
The Instagram channel HerCherch with all the cartoons
Our Orgasm Course and Libido Course
Our podcast looking at the long-term effects of the modesty message
Why is Dannah Gresh calling 8-year-old bellies intoxicating?
Our one-sheet on Lies Young Women Believe
The reel from Our Savior's Church
The side-by-side plagiarized apology from Josh Howerton

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Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. I'm joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.

Rebecca: Hello, hello.

Sheila: And you are the coauthor of The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better, one of the coauthors. The other is of course is the amazing Joanna Sawatsky. Today we're actually going to talk about something that you and I have been talking about because you've raised the issue.

Rebecca: Yes.

Sheila: And that is?

Rebecca: What if the reason that we talk about modesty so much in the evangelical church is that we can't talk about vanity?

Sheila: Yes, and you said this on our Patron group, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, we need to talk about that."

Rebecca: Well, what you actually did was you were like, "Oh my gosh, I need to tag Becca in this so she sees it," and then she realized that I was the one who posted it.

Sheila: Yes, exactly. And our patron group is a wonderful place, and so before we jump into this very important conversation, we want to say thank you to our patrons. I've actually met with a couple of them this summer. It's been fun -- as they’ve been driving through. Yeah, we just -- we feel like friends, and so you can join our Patron group for as little as $5 a month and be part of our Facebook group. It just helps us pay the bills and do what we're doing and keep on doing it and expanding so we really appreciate that community. Then, of course, if you want to give a tax deductible donation within the United States, you can do so at the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation. So we are part of that. We are that. We are the Good Fruit Faith Initiative. Bosko Foundation really appreciated what we were doing and wanted to come onboard and help us. So that money goes to fund our research, getting stuff in peer reviewed journals, and so many other important things. Just a way that you can help us spread the word here at Bare Marriage because we really do believe in changing the conversation. That's what we're going to do today. So, Becca, why don't you read what you put in our Patron group?

Rebecca: Sure. Okay, so here's what I said. What if the reason we talk about modesty is because we stopped talking about vanity? Seriously if the whole "role" of women is to be gorgeous, sexy, smoking hot distractions for their husbands, how are we supposed to talk about vanity? If our role as women is to be alluring and beautiful, isn't vanity practically a Christian principle? When I think about what I "should" and "should not" wear as a Christian, I've come to realize that my views now are mostly about warding off vanity, not about adhering to modesty rules. How much skin is showing doesn't matter. It's about how much space attractiveness/looks/etc. is taking up in my head. There are certain styles or bathing suits that I like that I don't wear because I don’t want to spend the entire time worrying about what my body looks like because that's vain, but vanity can't be an enemy in a culture that's so, so focused on sex because we need people to be focused on staying sexy. So I think that the focus on modesty instead of vanity because frankly they want women to be vain. They want women to be ridiculously hot and covered up. I'm wondering if more of an emphasis on vanity is the natural next step in recovering from modesty since vanity is a seriously toxic self-destructive force that encourages comparison and jealousy among women but doesn't demonize the body in the same way. Plus the damages of vanity are only getting worse and worse and more costly with the normalization of plastic surgery even among really, really young girls. Thoughts? Now I do want to say before we get into this conversation, I know that in many denominations vanity is the modesty. Like vanity is what women are clobbered over the head with, and they do literally anything and they're called vain, and then that's a weaponized thing. But in specifically a lot of evangelical circles, I've seen that vanity is not talked about properly or nearly as much as modesty is. So if you're in one of the Christian circles where modesty wasn't as much of the issue but vanity was, this is not about you.

Sheila: Yeah, like not allowed to wear jewelry, can't cut your hair, have to wear long denim skirts.

Rebecca: Yeah, like clearly vanity messages can also be weaponized against women. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying here is that there's weird dichotomy where women in certain sects of Christianity have been encouraged to engage in vanity and encouraged to maintain a personal aesthetic look and to focus on being hot. How many of the Christian books told women they had to stay sexy for their husbands?

Sheila: Yeah, men are so visual. You need to give them something to look at. Yeah.

Rebecca: How can you give that message and then also tell women it's not good to be vain? You can't. You can't.

Sheila: Yeah, and if what women are for is basically to be that smoking hot trophy wife, if that is what she is designed for is to grow up, be on the pastor's arm, be smoking hot but covered up, then it really does put women in this weird space where you're actually encouraging vanity but you really just can't win.

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. It also I will say the weird intersection of modesty while having to be absolutely smoking hot and defining modesty very, very thinly like within a very certain subset which normally means certain styles too like are okay and others aren't, it means that you have to have a certain body type to be fully accepted in the church, and that certain body type tends to be the very, very -- the ectomorph white woman. So like the very skinny, thin, athletic looking who can wear the high-waisted jeans with the little turtleneck thing and look just like every other Instagram mom. There's a certain Christian mom aesthetic that is just accepted in these groups because you can't -- because there's no room for just different people dressing differently because then we wonder are they being immodest? I don't know. I just -- there's so many things that we've seen here, and one of the things that we were talking about though was that it really does come down to this idea of what if the role of women is what made it so we can't talk about vanity because if women's role is to be pretty then we can't whine against them being vain because then they literally have no spot in the church. But if women aren't supposed to be super focused on their looks and if they don't only exist to be hot, then they have to exist to do something else. What on earth could that be? It couldn't be to have a brain, could it? It couldn't possibly be.

Sheila: Well, it's like -- and we will put this on the screen, but one of our wonderful patrons actually also is an artist and pretty much daily she posts a new cartoon in the patron group, but she also posts it on her own website and her own channel which is Her Church. We're actually looking at getting some of her merch in our store because we like her designs so much, but she had one recently that I just loved where this woman is in a T-shirt and jeans. The t-shirt says, "I'm an Esther 1:12 woman," sort of making fun of the I'm a Proverbs 31 woman. Well, I'm an Esther 1:12 woman, and for those of you who don't know, Esther 1:12 comes from the story of Vashti where Vashti is asked to parade around --

Rebecca: Be the smoking hot trophy wife.

Sheila: Be the smoking hot trophy wife, and some -- her husband the king had been hosting this big party. There were tons and tons of drunk nobles there. They'd been drinking for a week. It was bad, and then the king asks her to come and dance wearing her crown. In some -- some Hebrew scholars are thinking that the translation of that is wearing only her crown. Wearing very little other than her crown. In Esther 1:12, she says no.

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: Which is why Vashti is also one of my heroes -- biblical heroes, and she is on our be a biblical woman mug. Set boundaries like Vashti. Vashti was of course then kicked out because the nobles were afraid that the story would get out and then the women of the land would feel free to disrespect their husbands. Interestingly Emerson Eggerichs quotes that verse positively in his book Love and Respect even though this is said by the bad guy.

Rebecca: Yeah, Emerson Eggerichs quoted it as like, "Yeah, you should be careful not to -- these men were correct to be worried about this." Not like positively in terms of like -- yeah, and Vashti was positive. No, he's anti-Vashti. We are anti women being -- we are anti women saying no to in essence being sex trafficked by their husbands. That's the stance that was taken in Love and Respect. I'm hoping that Eggerichs just didn't think about it.

Sheila: Well, I think he just Googled every time the word respect showed up.

Rebecca: Yeah, there wasn't any critical thought. I think a lot of his book just wasn't critical thought because I think that's a very generous reading of Love and Respect is that he just didn't think. Anyway that's a different --

Sheila: Different story, but the fact is -- so Vashti is let go. The king then collects all of his young virgins from the land into a harem including Esther, and he then tries them out one a night until he goes through them all and then chooses Esther as his queen. So it's not a love story.

Rebecca: No, truly a horrible situation.

Sheila: Truly, truly a horrible story, and yet -- and that's why the name God does not appear in the book of Esther. Yet God was with Esther and used her position to save the Jews. So important story, but what's so cool about that is -- I think that we often miss that Vashti was a hero because she's like, "Yeah, I am not -- I am not going to be looked at like that." It wasn't a case of I don't -- you can say well that was just a case of her being modest. But no, this wasn't who she was.

Rebecca: Yeah, and I think that what I have been pontificating as we've been talking about the whole modesty versus vanity discussions is again why -- okay, first of all let's back up and say how do we talk about vanity in these particular circles? Because these circles that I grew up in, these ones that I read everything, and we did talk about -- like vanity was discussed, and it was discussed in really funny ways. Because my one that I remember all the time is like don't compare yourselves to each other, like vanity is not okay. You're all so beautiful. Everyone is just as beautiful as everyone else. You're the most gorgeous princess of God who is beautiful and perfect and wonderful, and you're so beautiful, and look at your appearance. You're awesome and really focus on how pretty God made you, but you -- and that's why you shouldn't be vain. That is not a vanity message. The message of don't be vain because you're hot enough is like that's not the message that I think they meant to get across, but the other thing that vanity was discussed about what I often saw is it's only ever discussed as a female issue for one. It was often to kind of put girls in their place, and again, these are very, very few and far between examples that I could find where it's like girls spending too much time on their hair and makeup. That's just being vain even though sometimes it just takes longer. It took me longer to do my makeup than it took my friend who didn't have acne in high school. It's okay to have to actually put on foundation. It takes -- it took -- when I had long, curly hair because I used to have actually super curly hair before my hormones destroyed it at 18, I had like really curly hair. It took me like two hours to do my hair without it looking frizzy and without it being just all mousse and anyone from 2006 with curly hair knows exactly what I'm talking about. There's certain things that just take longer, and it's not a vanity issue necessarily. It's just a -- this is just higher maintenance. That’s an issue. So there's that where it's kind of warning girls against just even having kind of hygiene routines. There was this ideal of again like the naturally no acne, naturally thin, naturally straight hair, like naturally effortlessly pretty Christian girl who could just brush her hair, put it in a ponytail, and go to church. She had to be beautiful. You can't look slovenly, but you are not allowed to put time into your appearance.

Sheila: Because you reflect the Savior.

Rebecca: Exactly, but you're not allowed to put time into your appearance so that was a weird vanity message that we did get every now and then, those double standards. But another one was yeah this weird one where it's telling girls to make sure they stay in their place, like that bizarre section from Brio magazine that I think I've read on the podcast before. It may have just been for the patrons, but I think we read it on the podcast where there's this whole section on cute summer outfits. It was genuinely fine. It was a cute little summer outfit look from 2002. I'm sure that the Gen Alphas are going to be wearing it in five years. It's weird. No, but it was a cute little summer look from early 2002 about layering your tank tops over top of your T-shirt so you can look like Ashley Tisdale. At the very end, it had this weird section. It goes, "And remember don't get too proud if you put together cute outfits because your creativity comes from the Lord so make sure to give him glory and not yourself." I'm like was that necessary? So that's what was called vanity was thinking, "I put together a cute outfit today." You're a vain sinner. That's bizarre.

Sheila: Yeah, or I remember in a lot of the stuff that Dannah Gresh wrote for girls it was if you spend too long doing your makeup and hair you should be spending just as much time in your devotions. So there's kind of like you owed God. Any amount of time that you spent on your hair you then owed God in your devotions.

Rebecca: Again it's this message that there's a natural state that you shouldn't have to do anything.

Sheila: But still -- but you're still supposed to look pretty.

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. And the reason that the vanity modesty message is so weird is because for me the vanity discussions seemed to be a response to how hard they'd gone about modesty. Like so what you'd get is this whole book that says, "Here's all the rules you're supposed to dress. Here's why you're supposed to dress these ways. Let's talk about your clothes. Let's talk about your fashion. Let's talk about all these different things." Oh, by the way, don't be vain. That often seemed to be kind of a like a corrective of, "Oh no, these girls are going to be too obsessed with clothes now."

Sheila: Yeah, because all of the emphasis on girls -- like the messages that we gave to girls was so focused on their appearance because the way that you loved God was you didn't show any skin and so we had to constantly talk to you about your appearance.

Rebecca: But at the same time, again, Christian girls are supposed to be pretty because you have to be winsome. It's just such a bizarre situation, but the other thing is that because it was typically from what I've seen and from our research in these books a response to the modesty message, you know who didn't get talked about being vain? Boys.

Sheila: Boys, mm-hmm.

Rebecca: And in these specific circles where you talked a lot about modesty. You talked a lot about women's roles as being kind of -- I mean they wouldn't outright say it, but when it boils down to it, a woman's role is to look pretty and serve in the nursery. That's in essence --

Sheila: Make funeral sandwiches.

Rebecca: Yeah, exactly. You do things -- home and kids. By the way, I am a stay-at-home mum a majority. I like being home with my kids. I spent three hours yesterday meal prepping for my family. I'm not against homemaking.

Sheila: We are all very grateful for people who serve in the nursery and who make funeral sandwiches.

Rebecca: My husband and I both serve in the nursery at our church. These are things that these are not bad things to do, but it’s the only things that are available to women. They're very much -- the roles for women are very much focused on being pretty, being likeable, being attractive, being hot enough that your husband doesn't look at other women, being someone who can boost your husband's --

Sheila: Status.

Rebecca: -- status. There's a reason all these weird pastors are like, "Yeah, look at my smoking hot wife over there. Bet you want her, but she's mine." Icky, icky, icky, icky. Icky, yucky, no. Bad boy, spray, spray, a little water gun. Bad. Cool it, buster. No, but the problem is these churches and these organizations all have something in common, and typically they tend to be very male focused in their leadership, and they tend to believe that women are supposed to submit to men. So what is vanity actually?

Sheila: Yes, and this is an important talk. So yes, what is the definition of vanity? Well, I looked it up, and here is the dictionary.

Rebecca: The Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Sheila: Here is the definition of vanity. Being too interested in your appearance or achievements, and it goes on to say being egocentric, being egoistic, being really self-focused. When I think of vanity, I think of it as determining your worth based on things which are fleeting and don't matter, and I think that's kind of what the other definition of vanity gets into because the King James Version of Ecclesiastes. Vanity, vanity, everything is vanity. We read that as meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.

Rebecca: Vanity has the same root word as vain, like to do things in vain.

Sheila: Right, where it doesn’t matter. It's not going to hold up. It's not lasting, and so when we determine our status based on something which ultimately doesn’t matter and which is meaningless, then yeah, that is vanity, and we're hurting ourselves.

Rebecca: And the other thing -- the way that I've -- when you look throughout Scripture too, you're warned against being vain and proud. They're often intertwined, like vanity and pride are pretty much two -- vanity is a subsection of pride.

Sheila: But vanity is not exactly the same thing as being immodest. It can be. They are related -- vanity and immodesty, but they're not exactly the same thing.

Rebecca: No, gosh, I knew -- I'm going to be really ho-- I'm going to throw people under the bus here. Okay, picture a woman who is always the epitome of modesty, but who's constantly wanting to tell you to be like her, who never shows up with a hair out of place, who always is totally on her mark, who is constantly -- who is very much likes being the prettiest person in the room, who knows that they're pretty and wants that attention, and obviously -- that's vain. She might show less skin than someone else who's like, "Well, I'm just here," but is wearing a low-cut top. But she's very vain versus the person who is kind of like, "Yeah, I'm here, and how can I help?" and doesn't need to be the center of attention all the time, who doesn't need to be the prettiest person in the room, who isn't in a competition with other girls, but on the other side, like with vanity being focusing on putting your time and efforts toward something that doesn't matter or I also think a lot of vanity is about putting up this false front and pretending like the false front is real, like think about those people who are not making very much money or who -- no, actually think about the people who make a lot of money but are pretty much bankrupt and who still roll around in a super expensive sports car and who always have the latest designer stuff. We see this on Instagram all the time. You get these really famous influencers who everyone realizes they're "house poor" because they have all this really expensive stuff, and they didn't save anything. They're actually going into debt every month just to maintain appearances, like that's vanity even -- it has nothing to do with how pretty they are. It has nothing to do with what they wear, but that's vanity as well. So when we look at this idea of just wanting people to think, "Wow, they're amazing," for something that is just kind of shallow or not real like you'd rather live in a lie than embrace reality where you might not be the main character. Like that's really, really vain.

Sheila: Vanity is finding a way to give yourself status over others I think too.

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely.

Sheila: This can be in ways that aren't necessarily about appearance so --

Rebecca: Yeah, for women it's about appearance because we live in an patriarchal society where our power is tied to how we look.

Sheila: Tied to how we look, absolutely. But -- you know what is really freeing, and I don’t know if there's something about being in your forties that gets you there or not, I'm not sure. I think a lot of people get there when they're younger but just realizing you know what? There's a lot of people that look better than me, and I'm okay with that. I do not need to be the prettiest person in the room. I do not -- and not just that. The whole movement to say we're all beautiful just the way we are like I understand that the emphasis behind it and that we're over emphasizing beauty, and we need to own beauty, and anybody can be beautiful. But I'm actually okay with saying there's people that are more beautiful than others.

Rebecca: Oh gosh, yes. It's objectively true, like all of us.

Sheila: It is objectively true that I am not the most beautiful person in the room most of the time. Sure, there might be times. I don't know, but the point is --

Rebecca: It doesn't matter.

Sheila: -- it doesn't matter. I am perfectly okay with that now. So it's like I like looking good for me sometimes. It's okay to enjoy looking good, but that's not what I base my status on.

Rebecca: Well, I think -- so yeah, if we define vanity as the idea where you're trying -- you're using something fleeting to gain status over others because I think that's kind of how we are. We're also extroverts who are processing this while we're doing it.

Sheila: Yes, we are so you're getting into our conversation here.

Rebecca: This is a lot more like how the unfiltered podcasts tend to run for our patrons. We have an idea. Let's talk about it, and then we figure out what we believe halfway through. But yeah, if we are defining vanity when we look at just the general context of it where we see it happening, where we see it being destructive, this idea of using -- seeking something as a status in order to gain status over others, then what is vanity not that can often be seen as vanity? I would argue that engaging in your culture is not vanity. That means looking put together. That means --

Sheila: I have a story about this. This is the unfiltered podcast. I went through kind of like a stressful period a couple months ago where I just needed something else to think about because there were too many things that were just distressing, bringing me down. I found this app called Style Book --

Rebecca: Oh, yes, I remember this.

Sheila: -- where -- and I actually did this. Keith was away for a week. He flies up north to Northern Ontario to do some work in the indigenous communities in Ontario, and so I didn't have anything to do. So you take pictures of all your clothes and all your jewelry and everything, and then you make outfits out of them. I just had such a great time doing it because it was nice feeling put together a little bit more, and it made me realize I don't need to buy more clothes. I can actually just -- and also which clothes don't -- that I don't actually enjoy or they don’t work for me. So it was a way of not buying clothes but instead having fun seeing what's in my wardrobe, and it was just fun. It wasn't about vanity, but like you're allowed to have fun like that. You're allowed to enjoy things like that, but the difference is if I'm in a room with a bunch of people who do not have this app and do not look put together in the same way, I don't look down on them.

Rebecca: Well, I think -- and that's exactly it. Engaging in your culture -- and the reason I say that is the Duggars for example would call wearing anything trendy vain because you want -- no, that's not vain. That's just we live in our culture, and you do, and that's just how it is. You get to engage in that. If you are part of multiple cultures, you get to joyfully participate in that. Have fun. Human beings are really cool in that we have these cultures to engage in. Yeah, and just engaging and enjoying beauty isn't vain either. Like you were saying at the very beginning of the podcast, there's a lot of church denominations where it's like you can't wear makeup. You can't cut your hair. You can't do all these things because you don’t want to be vain, but the Bible says gluttony is bad. The Bible also says taste and see that the Lord is good. Enjoying the goodness and the sensual things of this world that God has given us -- and sensual doesn't always mean sexy, guys -- it also just means the senses.

Sheila: The senses so foods.

Rebecca: Foods, beauty, smells, sounds, all these things that are beautiful. Engaging in beauty and appreciating beauty and getting to enjoy that beauty is also a way of understanding the goodness of God. I'm not saying that putting your makeup on is devotions. Not what I'm saying, but I'm saying is that people who try to weaponize the idea that you shouldn't even enjoy just engaging in beauty because it's vanity is also not healthy. That would be like saying you can't ever have French fries because we're not supposed to be gluttons. It's like okay that's ridiculous. Taste and see that the Lord is good. French fries tell me God is good.

Sheila: McDonalds French fries -- I hate McDonalds, but oh my gosh, I think they put something like addictive in those things.

Rebecca: No, it's wild. It's wild. I think it's salt. I think that's what it is.

Sheila: I don't know. I don't know, but yeah.

Rebecca: But that's the thing, appreciating -- like just being engaged in your culture, appreciating beauty, and I'm also saying recognizing honestly your achievements and standing firm on who you are and what you've done is not vanity. Honesty is not vanity. We don't need to be fake humble. We don't need to be fake. Joanna gets to say that she did spearhead the largest statistical analysis of evangelicals -- women's beliefs and the effects on their sex lives that we can find. That's amazing. She doesn't have to be like, "Well, no, it was a little case study." No, she gets -- we all get to toot our own horns about that. That's not vain. That's not proud. That's just truth, but then you contrast that with people who need praise and accolades for stuff that they didn't even do. I know you had an example from this week on social media.

Sheila: I do. So this is from -- and I'm actually going to play it because there's no --

Rebecca: Yeah, we're going to play it.

Sheila: -- possible way that I could do this justice. But this is a sermon clip that this church actually put on social media. This isn't like they put their entire sermon on and someone saw this awful bit and clipped it and said, "Oh my gosh, look what this church is saying." The church themselves made this reel and put it up.

Rebecca: So let's watch it.

Sheila: Let's listen to it.

Reel: Don’t get frustrated with your husband because he forgot to take out the trash again. Just say things like this -- don’t nag him. Honor him. You can honor him into greatness. How do you do it, pastor? You don't come over to that trashcan and go, "Can't you see the trash?" You can do that, but if you are a wise woman, you'd say something like this, "Baby, this trash is so overflowing. It is so heavy. I don't think I could get it, but if I had me a big, strong man to walk over here." He's like, "Is there anything else heavy you need me to do?"

Sheila: Imagine, imagine living in Louisiana. I want people to imagine this. You're a family, and you just moved into a neighborhood. You've never really gone to church. You haven't really made friends yet, but your kids are playing with these kids down the street. They go to this church, and they invite you to VBS at this church. You think well maybe this is a way to meet friends, and so, that Sunday you go to church because you remember with fondness the church your grandma took you to when you were 13. You think maybe we need to get back to church, and that is what you hear.

Rebecca: Yeah, no, you're running. You're running the other direction.

Sheila: You're never stepping foot in a church again. Do these churches not realize that they are pushing people away with this insanity? But what is this advice saying? So he sets it up by saying first of all that she has repeatedly asked him so she's been nagging him. So this is a job taking out the trash which is supposed to be his job. This has been going on repeatedly. This isn't just once. This is repeatedly, and then notice how he makes that terrible voice with the woman. "Can't you see the trash?" or whatever. Not even acknowledging that she may have just been asking him and that if it's someone's job you shouldn't have to keep reminding them.

Rebecca: Well, and also, you don't have to always sound like you're keeping sweet. You can have a normal person's voice.

Sheila: But then the solution that he gives is I'm so weak I need a big, strong man to lift the trash bag. Is there a big, strong man who could do this for me? Okay, so that -- a couple weeks ago we were doing a photoshoot for our family, and your son, Alex, who is four, wouldn't sit --

Rebecca: He doesn't like getting his picture taken to be fair.

Sheila: He doesn't, which is fair, but we wanted to get some cute ones of him and his sister and his baby cousin.

Rebecca: And he also always loves looking at the pictures afterwards so he loves the after. His favorite activity is, "Mommy, can I look at pictures of me?" He's just full-on four-year-old narcissist phase. It's adorable.

Sheila: We could not get him to sit -- and so you said, "Okay, Alex, I know you don't want to take the picture, but Diana is just not big enough to sit on her own right now. So could you sit there and just let Diana -- hold Diana up and let her lean on you?" And then he just walked right over and went right down. So basically what this pastor is doing is saying use the same techniques on your husband that you use on your four-year-old.

Rebecca: Who's not able to logically reason yet and doesn't really understand theory of mind and is four years old.

Sheila: So we need to treat our husbands like they're toddlers, and we need to manipulate them into doing things that they should be doing themselves. The way that we do that is by stoking their egos and making them feel like they are the absolute best even when they are not doing the most basic things in the world.

Rebecca: How is that not vanity?

Sheila: Exactly.

Rebecca: How is that not encouraging vanity in men?

Sheila: And this is actually one of the bigger issues and points that we want to make is what if the reason the church can't talk about vanity is partly yes because women's -- because they base women's worth on their looks, but also partly because our entire theology of gender relations encourages vanity in men?

Rebecca: And actually necessitates it.

Sheila: And necessitates it, because all of the stuff about how you have to prop your husband up. You have to honor him into greatness --

Rebecca: To find a hero in your husband.

Sheila: Yeah, or as Josh Howerton says, "Give him a crown, and he'll become a king."

Rebecca: Well, we don't know that Josh Howerton said that because he plagiarizes so much.

Sheila: He plagiarizes so much. I did Google it to see if --

Rebecca: Did you check? That’s not me being snarky. That's a genuine question. Did you Google it? It's from Josh Howerton?

Sheila: Well, he did say it. I'm just not sure -- probably he heard it from someone else because most of his things he does, but yes. This is the problem is that when we have based our gender relations in the church on the idea that men deserve adulation for nothing simply because they are men so even if they're not taking out the trash we need to treat them like they're big, strong men. And I just can't do anything without you. Sorry, it's just so offensive.

Rebecca: It really is.

Sheila: And I am offended. I am offended on behalf of the woman who lives along the street in Louisiana who might be trying out this church and now will never set foot in a church again.

Rebecca: Yep.

Sheila: I am offended. I am offended because she has now been taught that this is how Jesus sees her, and I think that's awful. But yeah, when our gender relations are about how men need status based on nothing, then we can't talk against vanity.

Rebecca: Well, not only that. So much of evangelicalism's message is if you do all the right things, you'll succeed. You'll have more money. Look at how we talk about even like -- even look at how these people talk about how God has so clearly blessed our ministry because we brought in these dollars. There's all these things that are measuring how good you've done are very typical frankly worldly measures of success. You make more money. You have more power. You have more stuff like getting to get all the fancy smoke machines for your church. I know I make jokes about it, but it's serious. All of these things we've almost -- we've created this version of Christianity where we can know if we're doing the right thing by how good of a status we have, and what it does is -- and this has been widely discussed. This is not my idea. This is a very well-accepted hypothesis or not hypothesis but theory and observation about the evangelical church is that it does demonize in essence people who are poor, who are disabled, who have things going wrong with them because it's like oh if you had just done something better, you would do better. If you were a better Christian, you'd be doing better. If you would just do a better this, you would be doing better. We do kind of live in this weird prosperity gospel situation where because we are a vain church, that isn't -- I find it hard to argue against that when the -- not every individual church but the American evangelical church as a whole, as a larger institution, when they're so focused on just keeping male power and their messages to women are all about propping up men who aren't doing anything, and they won't even deal with the child molesters in their midst because well you can't -- the church has to save face and all these things. That is vanity. It's propping up something fake for the power of it and the status of it and the achievement that you feel from it even if there's nothing there. It's such a mess.

Sheila: Well, it is, and this is why I think we need to have a larger conversation about vanity. We haven't been able to talk about vanity, and so we've talked about modesty instead as if that's the answer, but we actually do need to reclaim the idea that vanity is a sin.

Rebecca: Well, and I mean it's such an easy example, but when The Hunger Games first came out like in 2012 I think in theaters so much of the Capitol looked ridiculous, and now a lot of it is just kind of normal. Like not all of it obviously, but like a lot of it is you're going to see it in a lot of church people. I'm sorry. I'm not saying that anything is like a sin or wrong or anything, but have you ever looked up how much people pay for eyelash extensions in North America. Those are not necessary to reach beauty standards in North America, and this is -- I will admit this is a personal bias that I have. I have a really hard time with the idea of spending that much money on things that you don't even need to reach like a high beauty standard in North America. Fake eyelashes are much cheaper. Just get those. But the idea is we live in a country or in a -- North America pretty much and western society in general. We have so much money in general, not every individual. We know that. We know there's poverty, but for the most part, middle class in North America, you have -- the difference in living standards to places all around the world is baffling, and I know the church has done so much for poverty around the world. It genuinely does, and I think that people do a disservice when they try to act like especially conservative evangelicals don't do much.

Sheila: Yeah, because they actually do.

Rebecca: They do a lot, but the issue is that how much more could we do. The goal is not to just do better than other people.

Sheila: Yeah, we're not just here to beat the atheists. We're here to feed the hungry.

Rebecca: Well, that's exactly it. We're not trying to own them. It's hard when you see so many places that are so focused and spending so much money on maintaining appearances and keeping up with the Jonses, and that's considered a Christian thing.

Sheila: Well, okay when Josh Howerton did his apology for that terrible "joke" he said where he told women that on your husband's wedding night, you're supposed to stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, do what he tells you to do. Jay Stringer and I did a podcast on that. It went totally viral. All kinds of things happened, and then he plagiarized his own apology.

Rebecca: Which was hilarious I will say. Grade A comedy.

Sheila: He gave an apology that he plagiarized, and I will link to the side-by-side comparison of that so that people can see for themselves. But what was interesting is that in his apology he said that he didn't care what people thought outside the church so he doesn't care about anyone outside his church. He said they don't matter, and he said that people needed to realize how much God was blessing Lakepointe and how God's blessing was on them because they were getting all of these people in. It's again that focus on numbers and meanwhile there's just been so many stories in the media of people who volunteered at Lakepointe and worked at Lakepointe for years and years and years and who have left because of real hurt of how they're being treated and how the church is treating them. But the point is when churches get so focused on numbers over everything that's when abuse flourishes because now you can't call out the leadership because if you call out leadership and leadership has to step down or something we're now in danger because our church is dependent on all of these numbers because we've got all these super expensive buildings. We've got all these super expensive fog machines and sound systems and everything so we need people to come in the doors. So your message has to be palatable enough that it's getting people in the doors.

Rebecca: But you can't ever actually challenge them because then they might leave because against we've set up a vain system. We've set up a system that's based on being flashy and cool.

Sheila: And don't you want to go to the church where God is moving. And so all of these small churches empty out because people go to the mega church down the street. The mega church basically -- it's like the Walmart, and we've talked about this. When we talked about -- actually it was in the first podcast we were talking about Josh Howerton's plagiarism. We were talking about how this happens in mega churches where a Walmart comes in and it kills all the small clothing and hardware stores.

Rebecca: Yeah, it's like how many new converts are we actually getting versus how many other churches are we just leeching off of and being a parasite to.

Sheila: Right, and then when that church -- that big mega church that has cannibalized all these other churches, when it inevitably falls because of spiritual abuse or something, people have no other church to go to because it's cannibalized all the other ones. I'm not saying all mega churches are bad. I just have not seen very many healthy ones go through a transition to another pastor well.

Rebecca: Well, and also like you were saying, the problem is they're set up to be this incredibly -- it's just they suck in so much money, and the expense is so high. If we actually took it seriously -- because when I -- to get it back to the vanity and to kind of finish off the point here. When I think about what it means to be a Christian, it really to me and this is going to be slightly different to everyone -- I'm not saying this is theology or that you all have to believe the same way, but for when I look at what it actually means to be a Christian for me what that means is that I live my life in service to God. That's what it means. It means -- it does mean that I no longer live but Christ lives in me. That's one of the reasons why vanity is so damaging because it distracts us from what we're supposed to be doing. Does that mean that we don't matter? No, absolutely not. But it does mean that we have a greater purpose that we get to work towards. So you have all these churches that set up so much money on all these things which objectively if when the church just broke into multiple churches every time that it got to a certain size it wouldn't cannibalize the other churches around it, but also you'd be able to keep a really small budget, an exponentially smaller budget. These mega churches are not costing less per person than smaller churches are most of them. Like it's really expensive to run one of these things, and if we actually saw our goal as not to like become really successful or not to become really rich and famous like all these mega church pastors trying to have these online influences where they can be like world wide influencer personalities, and we really focus on how can we actually meet the needs of people who have needs that are not being met by the way because there's a lot of churches that do a really good job meeting the needs of people whose needs are kind of already met.

Sheila: Yeah, but when church becomes a country club, are you really meeting the needs of the community?

Rebecca: Exactly, or let's talk about okay how do we help our nation that has so much excess stop living in excess so that we can share that wealth with the rest of the world? Instead of just continuing to be consumeristic and just needing more and more and more. Like these are the conversations that are not being had because church is becoming about status, and it's a way to gain power and that's where I get concerned because the thing that the modesty message did was it allowed you to have a measuring tape, and you could say that girl is holy and that girl is not. Vanity is tricky because you can't use it as a measuring tape. Again I know that there are people who try, but it actually can't be in its true form. Modesty you actually can. You can decide indiscriminately when something is modest and when something is not. But vanity is a subjective experience. It's putting too much emphasis. If you're someone who is a makeup artist, your amounts of what is too much to focus on your skincare and your makeup and your looks and your esthetic is going to be very different than me who is a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, who does makeup once a week to do this podcast. That's going to be very different. So that's just -- that's something where it is a subjective experience, and because it encourages us to then not compare ourselves to each other the thing that I've seen in places where like the idea of vanity is handled well is that you genuinely can celebrate with each other so much more easily because there's not that comparison in the same way. It's like we actually can celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who mourn because hey them getting a really cool job that we wanted -- well, it's not about me. It doesn't mean that I don't exist. It doesn't mean that I don't matter, but it's not a rat race. That’s what I'm hoping that we can talk about more is this idea of not policing just girls about what they are wearing so that men can remain vain because also these men are saying I'm a good guy. It's that girl. It's that 11-year-old in her spaghetti straps that's making me a bad man. No, you're a bad man. If the 11-year-old in spaghetti straps is making you a bad man, you're a bad man.

Sheila: Speaking of that, let's share this other cartoon by Marsha from Her Church, and this one went viral on Facebook earlier this month. One of our friends -- I won't name her because I don't know if she wants to draw attention to this, but she's been on the podcast too. She shared it, and she actually got death threats, and she had to take it down.

Rebecca: But for those who are just listening the cartoon has two women, one of them has a little girl and one of them is with her husband.

Sheila: Yeah, and her husband looks really nerdy, and this woman is wearing a very, very long dress, and the woman turns to the other woman and says, "Your daughter's outfit is making my husband uncomfortable, making him stumble." The mother replies, "Thank you for telling me that your husband is not a safe person."

Rebecca: Yeah, but that’s the point. We do this whole modesty thing where we got to use a measuring stick against young girls so that men were protected from having their egos bruised. A message about being a Christian means that you cannot be vain is focused right now also towards the men who can't handle being told you're letting me down when you don't do any housework. You're not being a good parent if you don't know how to -- if you can't keep track of your kids' allergies, who can't be told reality. If the church in general had been taught about vanity properly about how it's an unhealthy and it's too much focus on things that are just status symbols instead of things that actually matter like God they would have noticed when the Christian marriage resources started telling women if you make more money than your husband, that's really going to hurt his ego so you need to be careful not to make -- not to rub it in that you make more money than your husband. Why? That's so vain. Why does it need to matter who makes more money. Why do you need that badge of honor, and why is it a badge of honor anyway? That's vanity. All these things. It would have been clear that these men bragging about how smoking hot their wives were were incredibly vain, that these mega church pastors who are wearing $5,000 watches and $1,000 sneakers are ridiculously vain.

Sheila: Yes, there's that Instagram channel. What is it? Preachers and sneakers.

Rebecca: Yeah, something like that. They take a -- they look at the livestreams from mega churches, and then they actually just price out the outfits.

Sheila: Like Steven Furtick wore a $1,000 sweater.

Rebecca: Something like that. It's ridiculous. It makes me nauseous. No, but if you have these -- yeah, finding the hero in your husband, and telling him -- you have to just make him -- you have to beef up his ego so that maybe he'll do a dish. That is vanity. Like having to be told you're the best person ever when you're not?

Sheila: Okay, so we want to reclaim vanity because it is something that Christians used to warn against that we no longer warn against. The other thing -- can I throw this in because we're getting ready to end?

Rebecca: Yeah, sure.

Sheila: Is the other thing that Christians used to warn against that we don't warn against anymore is hedonism. We do not warn against hedonism.

Rebecca: Hedonism is the philosophical idea that as long as it in essence feels good it is good.

Sheila: Right, and isn't that the message that we've been giving men about sex? Is you deserve to have all the sex in the world, the best sex in the world, the most exciting, spicy sex in the world, the sex that will beat the atheists.

Rebecca: Yes, you have to have hotter sex than the atheists.

Sheila: You have to have hotter sex than the atheists, and that is what you will get if you wait for marriage. Your wife is supposed to give that to you, and if she doesn't, then you are being deprived.

Rebecca: Yeah, and the number of people who we've heard in our focus groups who said they went to their pastors with specific sex acts their husbands wanted to do that they did not want to do, and the pastors was like, "Well, there's no biblical reason that you can't so I guess you should."

Sheila: We've abandoned hedonism. Now we're all for great sex. We have an orgasm course. We have a libido course. We have The Great Sex Rescue.

Rebecca: Absolutely cannot make eye contact while you talk about that stuff.

Sheila: Okay, we're all for great sex, but sex is not the end all and be all, and we were not created primarily for great sex. It's not something that you deserve.

Rebecca: No, no, no, to be fair, what we're not saying -- we're not saying that if you are having sex, you should be having orgasms. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that if you are not necessarily owed to have the kinkiest sex imaginable, at demand, whenever you want, however you want, regardless of how your partner is feeling, but that is what's advertised to Christian couples as the God-designed thing is you wait until you're married so that you don't have to wait anymore.

Sheila: Yeah, so that you can have this kinky sex, and we need to get back to the idea that hedonism is bad. We were not created so that we could have unadulterated pleasure our entire lives. We were created to serve God, and that means that in our marriages we're going to experience passion if we're truly emotionally, and spiritually intimate with one another. Of course, but we're created to serve God.

Rebecca: Yeah, if you have to hurt your spouse in order to get the sex that you want, you need to ask why that is the sex that you want.

Sheila: Right, and it's like we've forgotten a lot of these virtues that the church is -- gluttony. When is the last time anyone heard a sermon against gluttony? I'm not talking about weight, but there is a sense of God is saying, "Look we have all of these wonderful things in the world that God has blessed us with. Don't misuse them." Don't take so much that it becomes your identity, your pursuit, the thing that you revolve your life around.

Rebecca: I think that when I look at things like vanity, hedonism, gluttony, all these things, they used to be talked about a lot and they aren't anymore the thing that connects all of those to me is that they ignore eternity. It's all about what's happening now in the moment. Vanity is well, at least I got to feel powerful on earth. At least I didn't have to deal with the consequences for my own behavior because everyone propped up my ego enough that I could just get through. It's at least I had status. At least I was cool. At least people looked up to me. With hedonism, well, at least I had a good time. I got what I wanted. I fed those appetites, all those things. It ignores reality. It ignores the reality of eternity, and when you are really, really wealthy, and I'm not saying wealthy for USA or for Canada, I'm saying globally. When we're in a situation where we have so much free time compared to the average person on the world, and I know that not everyone in North America has the same experience but even like the worst off in America tend to be pretty well off compared to most people. We do have food banks that actually have food in them. Even that, like even me knowing that if everything falls apart, my kids are not going to starve, like that actually does hit me.

Sheila: Yeah, you have a hospital to go to.

Rebecca: We have a hospital. Yeah, and even Canada is better than the U.S. for that. There's so much -- I think that we got to this point where we couldn't talk about living sacrificially because we actually would have to sacrifice because that's what vanity comes down to. That's what rejecting hedonism comes down to. It's we have the capacity -- most of us in North America -- to choose a life that is not sacrificial, that's very comfortable where we have too much, not not enough. We have too much everything. We have too many options. We have too much clutter. We have too many extra curriculars that our kids are doing. We have too -- everything is in excess, and that’s really comfortable, and we don't want to challenge it so what do we do instead? We make the 12-year-old's shoulders the problem because it absolutely can't be the 84 suits that are in my closet. We make the 13-year-old's neckline the problem because it absolutely can't be the fact that I just got a new car and also stopped giving money somewhere. We make the woman who happens to be a little bit curvier -- well, she's just such a Jezebel, and she's just showing off her body, and she should just get more holy like me who has a 4,000 square foot house, and a perfectly manicured lawn, and spends all of my time making sure that I have a perfectly setup house so that I always look very impressive to my friends. We've lost the plot of what it means to follow Christ and as a result we've lost our ability to actually hold ourselves accountable to living a sacrificial life.

Sheila: And we've lost our ability to really impact our culture.

Rebecca: I think so, yeah.

Sheila: Yeah, and we've become sick, and we've become anemic because we have too much excess of the wrong thing, and we put our status in the wrong place. Yeah.

Rebecca: That's what we've been thinking about.

Sheila: Yeah, I thought that was a really great question, and it was funny when you put it on the Patron group, I put a comment on it, and I said, "Oh my gosh, I need to talk to Rebecca about this. I hope she's seen it because this would be a great podcast, and then I realized oh you're the one who wrote the post.

Rebecca: Yeah, so those are our thoughts. Again as we close we do want to note, I know a lot of denominations, a lot of places have really used vanity specifically against women in a very weaponized way. I do know that. I also think that it's been missing in a lot of really big places and especially missing in regarding men in power so let us know what you think. Have you experienced this weird dichotomy of being told make sure you don't care about your appearance too much but also make sure you're a smoking, hot trophy wife so that your husband doesn't want to look at other people's boobs because you have the boobiest boobs in all the boobs?

Sheila: Yes, the non-saggiest boobs even after breastfeeding three children. What's wrong with you? You're now a failure.

Rebecca: Exactly. Exactly. So we'd love to know what your experiences have been, and again, if you want to see these kinds of conversations while they're happening too not just when they end up on the podcast or all the conversations that never even end up on the podcast, please do check out Patreon.

Sheila: Because there are quite a few, and you and Joanna have recorded a whole bunch of Patreon unfiltered podcasts that are not going to end up on the main podcast.

Rebecca: Nope, they're not.

Sheila: But yeah, when we're just processing stuff because often we process stuff for a while before we decide what we really want to say. So come on over to our Patron. Thank you for listening to The Bare Marriage Podcast. Thank you for listening in this very hot summer at least here in North America where the modesty talks are of course really big, and we hope that we can add to those as the yearly Twitter calendar turns to bikinis.

Rebecca: I think that was back in June. I think June is the Twitter liturgical calendar as people freak out about bikinis because that’s the first beach trips.

Sheila: Okay, right, so maybe we've moved on.

Rebecca: I think we're about to go onto leggings because fall is coming in.

Sheila: Okay, so hopefully we have hit this at the right time. But thank you for joining us, and yes, we will see you again next week on The Bare Marriage Podcast and please, we just want to say thank you to our sponsor to Ryan George's book Hurt and Healed by the Church again. We will put the link to that in the podcast notes just a great book to help us understand how yes the church can be a place of deep hurt. For many of us it was, but it's okay to start questioning those things and deconstructing and often that’s when you find Jesus on the other side. That can be so healing too. Take a look at that book. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.

Bare Marriage

Episode 243: Modesty vs. Vanity: Maybe We Need to Shift the Conversation!

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