If God created man in his image and chose to make man soul and body, then there must be a way in which our bodies, as well as our souls, reflect the image and glory of God. We live in a fallen world and we are blind people, corrupted by sin. Therefore, our ideas of what true beauty is often seem broken and in need of serious repair. We have indulged our minds and hearts with the images that the world says is beauty, and we have lost our ability to recognize true beauty in people. For some of us, locating beauty in others will be something we have to practice doing. To see it in ourselves, we will have to pray that God will give us eyes to see what he sees.

Throughout culture, we are provided images of beauty and are subconsciously told that we need to change our own bodies to reflect these images in order to obtain beauty. I do believe that the body is to be a platform for pursuing beauty and that Christians—both men and women—should be in pursuit of this God-given quality. My real disagreement with the world lies not in the pursuit of beauty but in the image of beauty that it tells us to pursue. As Christians, we are called to pursue an image, although the image we pursue is not a stone statue (or in our culture, a picture of some woman in a magazine or on TV), but the flesh and blood image of the living God, Jesus Christ.

In August of 1986, I was about to learn a lot more about sex than I ever wanted to know. I was quite content with being a girl and not ready to think about being a young woman, but apparently I had reached the time of life when one might hear about “the birds and the bees.” I was eleven years old. I heard horror stories from some of my older friends about the sixth grade health class that every student must take. Some students were as scared as me, while others viewed it as a rite of passage. Students laughed as they described the “funny” and “gross” things that we would learn in the class full of both boys and girls.

Every sixth grade student had to complete Health Class since it wasn’t an elective. It all began when my physical education teacher passed around our class syllabus. Each student’s eyes darted around looking for the heading “Sex Education.” There it was, almost as if it was in BOLD print, scheduled for our Health Class meeting numbers seven, eight, and nine. I cannot, for the life of me, tell you what she taught the first six meetings of class because I was too consumed with what we would learn in the classes centered on sex education. There was an endless amount of joking and laughing in the days leading up to it. I have no doubt that my joking and laughing were out of sheer fear, embarrassment, and curiosity. The sex education was enlightening to say the least. We learned about “the birds and the bees” (she actually used those words), sexually-transmitted diseases (with a graphic video showing pictures), how to put on a condom (a fishbowl full of condoms was at the front of the class, and we were told: “Grab as many as you need; we don’t want any babies running around this school!”), and HIV/AIDS. Absolutely nothing was taught in those three days about abstinence.

Today, modesty has gotten a bad wrap. It seems that only prudes, the self-righteous, or the fearful are those who care about modesty. Modesty is one of those virtues that our culture has written off as uptight and outdated; it is only about rules, restriction and repression. But that is the wrong idea entirely! You may think that modesty only applies to how low-cut your shirt may be, but I want you to see that modesty is not about rules, it about our hearts.

“Guys lust and girls long to be lusted after!” You may have heard this statement, but I think a more truthful saying is, “Guys lust, girls long to be lusted after—and girls lust!” Many Christian women, young and old alike, are struggling to live holy lives with regard to issues of sexuality.

Sexual sin among women often goes unconfessed and therefore un-repented because we do not have an open forum in which to discuss these very real struggles. Addressing the issue of sexual sin among women has become as difficult as addressing the issue of eating disorders among men. The idea of women lusting has been too remote on the Christian’s radar screen for far too long. Girls that I have talked to feel like they are walking around with fourteen eyes and three heads! They feel like a “fish out of water,” and are unable to broach the subject of lust and sexual sin because it is taboo.