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Art world, Beauty, Christian Education, Christianity, Clothing, Culture, Design, Fashion, Glorifying God, God, Hollywood, Kingdom of Christ, Presuppositions, Scripture, Western World
I went to the mall with my mother and grandma yesterday. It is always culturally enlightening to walk through a mall….
I saw many things, but what particularly caught my attention yesterday was the racks and racks of ugly clothes. Scattered among these, it must be admitted, there were a few attractive garments. And because I like pretty jewelry and hats, I did not find everything in the department stores atrocious…and I willingly admit that the market grade stuff coming out of the Ralph Lauren, Ann Taylor, and Liz Claiborne design houses do put out some decent-looking things….
In a moment of pondering a curious blouse that would have only looked good on a skinny blonde teenage girl, I asked myself, “Why are the designers putting everyone under thirty-five in an image of perpetual adolescence? These clothes make everyone look like they are trying hard to not grow up. Don’t they know that these pricey garments are not only an offense to good taste in both style and quality, making people look not only undignified, but as if they were playing dress-up with a bunch of mis-matched items from the thrift store?”
What is their agenda? Why the ugliness? Do they really want us all to wear five layers of these clothes on the rack in order to have artfully widened hips? I thought designers were supposed to try to make people look more attractive, rather than wider? We know that wider is not the new fashion, since the poster girls up on the walls are as skinny as ever….
There are several things that I see here–judge for yourself whether my observations are sound.
It appears that the art world (such a pagan, pagan, pagan environment that it is), wants the general populace of the Western World to feel comfortable remaining in a state and appearance of rebellious adolescence.
It appears that they want us to continue to shirk growing up and taking up the responsibility and dignity that belongs to men and women in the real world. This is in direct opposition to the purpose and duty of men and women in the world. (“Adoescence” isn’t even a scriptural category–it’s a Modern humanistic one….)
It appears that they want to isolate us in a false world of grey and silver where melencholy people wear raggy-looking, mismatched clothing. If there is color and joy in the fashion world’s advertising, is it not merely their version of a reactionay facade of human will-power in a miserable world?
It appears that this is an effort to desensitize my generation and to utterly un-educate them in what real beauty is.
It appears that their relativism has expressed itself in such a way that ugly, unattractive, and utterly unflattering is now the new standard of beauty. In this, they have not even followed the rules developed throughout all of history in patterning what is beautiful and attractive. Surely this is a Christian culture gone wild! Ezekiel 5:7-8 says this: “Because you are more turbulant than the nations that are all around you, and have not walked in my statutes or obeyed my rules and have not even acted according to the rules of the nations that are all around you, therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.”
It appears that the only rules of the nations around them that the art world are following is that of sexual perversion. Why else is the widest part of a woman’s girth the center of focus in modern clothing design? Why else is the face and general appearance of attractiveness no longer a main purpose? Beauty no longer stands in the art world. It is fallen.
Not only is it fallen from biblical standards, beauty has even fallen from its idolatrous pedestal. Now, its archenemies of chaos, disorder, philosophical relativism, denial of truth, and rejection of excellence are upon the dias. And it by these that our culture is shaped and ruled. Truly, the “artists” of the fashion world have been playing God, transforming culture bit by bit into more and more outright rejection of principles as such. In doing this, they have worn down the Christianity that has been latent in our nation for so long.
The art world (including the fashion world) is so corrupt and self-consciously in love with death and spiritual darkness that the only way it can be changed is by being supplanted by an outside force. Just as Hollywood and the film industry is so overbloated with lies that there is no infiltration that will be effective to reform it in a Christian manner, so it is with the fashion world–for truly, the fashion industry, the film industry, the architectural industry, the home decorating industry, the music industry, et al–indeed, all the industry forces that shape our culture, are the art world. If they can be called designers or entertainers, they are “the art world”.
Let us be careful. Let us filter all things through Scripture. Let us neither deny beauty nor redefine beauty. Let us rather pursue a further refining of a true definition of beauty. Let us not, not, not, not try to “go back” to “back then” when “things were different”. Let us take up the Scriptures, remember our Christian heritage, and apply the old principles of the Creator and move forward. We cannot nor should not try to go back to a definition of beauty and dignity from another time–no, we must stand where we are and refine the traditional Christian definition of beauty to be even more in line with the revelation of our God. We must do the hard work of educating ourselves and pursuing the truth because it is God’s truth. We must not pursue the pretty or the appealing or the historical. We must pursue the truth and the beautiful and the virtuous (the strong)–for there is the future. Press on, good Christian, for the advancement (not the retreat into the past) of the kingdom of the Christ!
May we never shirk our duty to know and to enjoy God and his truth.