“Train up a child in the way he should go,
Even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
I don’t expect Hollywood to be remotely God-fearing. When the Oscars came around again this year, I expected the awards show to be accompanied by yet another parade of scantily clad famous women baring their most PG-13 looks on the red carpet in the hopes of making the pages (digital or print) of celebrity gossip magazines. It was.
Interestingly enough, there were a couple of men in dresses at the show, too. One of them was former Olympic decathlete, Bruce Jenner, one of the best athletes the United States has ever produced, who is now living out his old age as a transgender reality star. He posed for pictures on the red carpet beside his 23-year-old daughter Kendall, a beautiful and successful model. Frankly, I’ve seen hookers on the streets of Paris and Atlanta who were dressed more conservatively than she. There before the cameras of the paparazzi stood a young woman who desperately needed her father to tell her to cover herself up and put on more modest attire. Tragically, her father was standing beside her wearing more conservative ladies’ evening wear himself.
Again, I don’t expect Hollywood to be remotely God-fearing…but the Jenners would tell you that they are Christians. According to Kendall, she identifies “100 percent” as a Christian. Her father, a man who dresses like a woman and calls himself “Caitlyn”, according to an article published in the Washington Post, rarely misses church. In other words, the Jenners aren’t just American’s who nominally call themselves “Christians” because of culture, they actually regularly attend church services. In fact, Bruce and his ex-wife Chris actually helped found a church near their home, a home in which the church youth group met on Wednesday nights.
In Kendall Jenner, that church youth group did not produce a woman who displays Christian virtue in the way she covers herself. There’s a good chance that the youth group at your church doesn’t produce modest young women either. To state the matter bluntly, I’ve seen young women at church services within the last year (and I don’t go to Hillsong) dressed downright proactively. This is not the fault of the church youth group or the church youth pastor. It is the fault of fathers and mothers, who I have often times seen walking right beside their scantily child daughters at church as if nothing was amiss.
Fathers, you likely aren’t strutting around Hollywood in a dress and calling yourself “Caitlyn,” but if your daughter is walking around in immodest dress (in the church or in the world), you are failing to train your child up in the way she should go just as miserably as Bruce Jenner, who is quite obviously lost. It’s easy to look at pagan Hollywood Culture and seeker-sensitive Hillsong nominal Christianity and swell with pride that your hometown and church don’t display such perversion and compromise. It’s easy to look a man like Bruce Jenner, beat your chest and say, “Thank you God that I am not like him”. It’s easy to look at the Kendall Jenner walking down the street and sneer at her like she was Hester Prynne, but do you have the spiritual resolve to challenge the culture of your own church or look into the clothes closet of your own child and throw out what needs to go?
If you are reading this and you are not a Christian, remember that is from the inside of a person, from the heart, where sin comes. Jesus Christ died on the cross for that sin and you can be washed clean inside and out by His cleansing blood if you’ll only repent and trust in Him as your Lord and Savior. If you have questions on how to be forgiven and made clean, please contact us on our contact page.
*Please note that the preceding is my personal opinion. It is not necessarily the opinion of any entity by which I am employed, any church at which I am a member, any church which I attend, or the educational institution at which I am enrolled. Any copyrighted material displayed or referenced is done under the doctrine of fair use.
