Women Should Adorn Themselves Modestly and Sensibly

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2161

There is nothing you cannot say if in your heart you love your enemies. Why? If God says a man is good-looking, then he is good-looking. If He says he is a really cool fellow, he’s a really cool fellow. If He says that the man is brave and fierce, then he is brave and fierce. So if I think like that, I take it as an honor and I can take on the world in confidence.
When I get intoxicated like this and work alone, do you know what happens? Young people, young men and women, a family of all races, an entire people appears, a people that God can truly take joy in appears, and the dawning of God’s homeland becomes possible.
Because Jesus said we must love our enemies, we have to love even the worst person. Even if the most handsome man is matched with the ugliest woman, he has to love her even more than he loves his enemies. When it comes to loving the enemies in this world, that kind of person is a candidate for marching ahead and carrying the flag of the highest prince. Think just how noble that kind of person is. That kind of person can just leap over national and racial boundaries.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1191

Without love, you cannot subjugate Satan. Therefore even God has to stand in the position where He can say that He has loved the fallen archangel, so, in order to become a family who can enter the heavenly kingdom, you as the family of God’s sons and daughters, must also set the condition enabling you to say that you have loved Satan. So, go out and fight and subjugate the satanic world with love. You must stand upon the foundation made by such a condition. You must be able to claim, “I did not crush all my enemies, but instead I had them surrender with love and I restored the right of the eldest son.” (141-202, 1986.2.22)

Modesty

Scripture’s concerns about modest dress and minimal use of makeup are for promoting a chaste inner life. One’s outward appearance reflects one’s mind. A painted face and immodest dress are advertisements for a wanton mind, while simple apparel and a natural, unadorned face are characteristic of a gentle and pure spirit.
Beauty can be divine or a cause of temptation—it depends upon the motivation. In this regard, Father Moon asks some revealing questions: “For whom do you put on makeup, for your husbands or for other men?” and “Do you adorn yourself to attract others to love you or to spread your love to others?”

1. Modesty in Dress

Women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion.

1 Timothy 2.9-11

Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and be modest. That is purer for them. Lo! God is Aware of what they do.

And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers… or children who know naught of women’s nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And turn unto God together, O believers, in order that ye may succeed.

Qur’an 24.30-32

Let not yours be the outward adorning with braiding of hair, decoration of gold, and wearing of fine clothing, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable jewel of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.

1 Peter 3.3-5

Woman, before decking yourself, make yourself
acceptable to your Lord,
Lest He should visit not your couch, and your
makeup be gone to waste.
In the woman finding acceptance with her
Lord, lies beauty of her makeup.
Should her makeup be acceptable, shall she
have love of her Lord.
Let her deck herself in fear of the Lord, joy in
God her perfume,
Love her sustenance.
Dedicating body and mind to her Lord, let her
in love to Him be united.
Adi Granth, Var Suhi, M.3, p. 788 (Sikhism)

In The Book of Songs it is said,

Over her brocaded robe

She wore a plain and simple dress,

In that way showing her dislike of the loudness of its color and magnificence. Thus the ways of the moral man are unobtrusive and yet they grow more and more in power and evidence; whereas the ways of the vulgar person are ostentatious, but lose more and more in influence until they perish and disappear.

The life of the moral man is plain, and yet not unattractive; it is simple, and yet full of grace; it is easy, and yet methodical. He knows that accomplishment of great things consists in doing little things well. He knows that great effects are produced by small causes. He knows the evidence and reality of what cannot be perceived by the senses. Thus he is enabled to enter into the world of ideas and morals.

Doctrine of the Mean 33 (Confucianism)

The body is impure, bad-smelling, and replete with various kinds of stench which trickle here and there. If one, possessed of such a body, thinks highly of him or herself and despises others, that is due to nothing other than lack of insight.

Sutta Nipata 205-06 (Buddhism)

Modesty

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