Today I've mostly been thinking about my upcoming interview for a youthwork post. What amazed me was that I am most worried about what I'm going to wear! Not in a vain, shallow kind of way (although obviously I want to look my best!), but in terms of whether that neckline is too low, or whether I can wear that skirt.
Churches tend to suggest a certain type of dress, certain standards as acceptable in their midsts. And the reason usually given for not wearing a mini-skirt or a vest top is that it might distract men in the congregation. Having recently read Hayley DiMarco's "Sexy Girls" she concurs with this view, and seems to be suggesting that before turning up to church all girls should consider whether what they are wearing will make the pastor think about sex!
Now, I think we should be teaching young girls to have respect for themselves and their bodies, but I am concerned that in setting these guidelines on clothing we are encouraging girls to think of themselves as sex objects, and we are telling them that that's how everybody else sees them too.
Do we really want to send them that message? Do we really want to hamper healthy relationships between all ages and sexes in the church in this way? And do we really, as I believe DiMarco's book does, want to legitimize men of all ages feeling and acting that way towards women?

I was reading an interview with the actress Jessica Alba recently. She's a Christian, but she stopped going to church when one of her church elders came and told her that her body was leading men in the church into sin. Not that she was wearing clothes that were too revealing, but that the way she was made by God was considered to be sinful!
Maybe the answer to problems between women and men in both church and society is not to wear burka-like gear, but to encourage young men and women (and old men and women) to stop viewing each other as sexual objects. To encourage them to view each other as people, and brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe if Christian thinkers and leaders of churches stopped going on about how dressing in a certain way could lead your Christian brothers to sin, they should start thinking and talking about how we get away from sexual feelings and thoughts being in the forefront of how we see those around us.
Is it ok to think degrading sexual thoughts about a girl who is wearing clothes that cover up her body? Is it ok to think in that way of a girl who is wearing a mini-skirt? Is she asking for it? Is the onus on the girl to dress differently, or on the guy to develop a more healthy view of women?
Should girls and women have to be constantly worried whether they are 'too hot' for the men in the church to concentrate on the sermon? Should we also be focusing on encouraging the men in the church to see their fellow Christians in a different way?

I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there, but when people talk about dress codes and looking too sexy I hear an awful lot of negative thoughts toward the other sex in general.

I really don't think clothes are the real issue.

seems to be blogging day today!
Mark and I were talking the other day about how lots of Christians seem to get hooked on the emotional high that can sometimes come from a really good worship band or a festival. We were both a bit concerned that being a Christian isn't about that - its' about a relationship with God, an attempt to live your life the way it was meant to be lived, a constant learning experience, etc.
Believing that the only time you're close to God is when you 'feel his presence' through worship songs (not that that doesn't happen, I'd just argue that its more likely to be an emotional high), means that when the music somewhere isn't good you think God is far away.
Interestingly I was scrolling through the cartoons on ASBO Jesus and found this one. I thought it was pretty telling.

I've had quite a few conversations over the last few weeks about young people getting bad press. First there was the FYT report "Labels are for jars not people", concluding that adults overestimate, amongst other things, the amount of crime committed by young people. And that their opinions of young people are formed by large not by direct contact with young people but by negative media coverage.
Then there has been the youth club I run for my placement churches. The young people who come along are rowdy, not from church backgrounds, noisy, and have put huge walls in place to protect them from hurt and disappointment. But the church congregations don't see this - they see the light that got broken by a football, or the locks that had to be taken off to stop the young people shutting themselves in the toilet block, or the mural that they planned and painted which was 'an eyesore'. All everyone hears is bad stuff, they don't seem to focus on the fact that these young people have made such leaps emotionally and socially that you'd barely recognize some of them by their behavior, they don't focus on the two who couldn't be in the same room as each other without fighting but last week offered to help set out the refreshments together.
And then there's Germaine Greer's comment today on the Guardian website about graffiti. She bemoans the zero tolerance policy that this government has towards graffiti, arguing that amongst the random and not very inspiring majority you can find not only real works of art but real emotion conveyed on the closest available blank canvas. Some of the comments to her article, however, are shocking in their narrow-mindedness and middle-England mentality - seeming to believe that young people are just trying to instill fear of crime or something.
What about the idea that young people are trying to find their identity in an increasingly unstable society, and that one way of doing this is through creativity and self-expression? Instead of spending thousands of pounds clearing up walls and houses, why not plough the same amount into programs that encourage creativity in young people, even through graffiti? Or develop graffiti walls and spaces in communities?
I don't have all the answers, but I do know that demonizing a large section of our society and their activities is not a constructive solution.

So, I didn't catch the ITV programme "Ann Wddecombe vs. the hoodies, but I read on the Guardian website today that the young people featured in it (from the Andover estate in London) have posted a response on youtube, protesting at the way in which they were portrayed. It's a brilliant video, full of young people calmly presenting their views and sticking up for themselves and their community. It's well worth watching.

I know this may win me few freinds, but this clip sort of sums up how I feel about the whole Harry Potter overexposure thing going on at the moment - Well, I thought it was funny!

The Vision by Pete Grieg

So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open up my mouth and the words come out like this…

The vision?
The vision is Jesus:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is of an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.

And they are free from materialism—
They laugh at nine-to-five little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind.
They belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting, dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimal integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, from every conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps—their Satan games.

This is an army that would lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day, its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great “well done” of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground, the whisper of history in the making, foundations shaking, revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground.

And the army is disciple(in)ed—
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.
Watching.
24-7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide,
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
Laughing at labels,
Fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive on the inside.
On the outside?
They hardly care!
They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell: a throne of an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as though it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses Jesus.
He breathes out.
They breathe in.
Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdoes!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes!
They walk tall and trees applaud.
Skyscrapers bow.
Mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven and evoke the dream of Eden.

And, this vision will be.
It will come to pass.
It will come easily.
It will come soon.

How do I know?
Because, this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.
My distant hope is His 3-D.
And, my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking, great “AMEN!” from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.

And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.