This week I did something that I have not done in at least 20 years and I’m not sure I am better off because I did it, but I certainly had my eyes opened in a new way. My choice of printed reading material usually includes Christian based magazines, food/cooking, and home decorating magazines. Very, very rarely will I pick up a fashion magazine or a celebrity gossip magazine. I simply have no interest in that type magazine.
While I was in the grocery store checkout line my eyes fell on the latest issue of Vogue magazine which had our new first lady on the cover. The headline read, ‘Michelle Obama—the first lady the world’s been waiting for’.
“Interesting headline,” I mused to myself, “let’s see what it says about Mrs. Obama that the world just can’t wait to hear.” That was about 5 days ago and I still haven’t gotten to the article about Michelle. Why, you might ask? Well I have been completely blown away at the content of Vogue.
When was the last time you picked up a Vogue or Glamour or Cosmopolatin magazine? I don’t know any other way to say it other than that Vogue is nothing more than legal pornography. When I opened the front cover, there was a picture of a very popular actress lying on a bed wearing very little. She was advertising lipstick. Lipstick, I say. Not lingerie, not bed linens, but lipstick. The pose and the look were extremely provocative. I thought, “Well maybe this is an isolated ad.”
As I flipped on through the magazine I found ads for clothing from various manufacturers. To be honest, one would never know the ads were for clothing because there was far more skin showing than there were clothes, but clothing was what was supposed to be being advertised. In truth, sex was being advertised and flaunted because of the lack of clothing, suggestive looks and positioning of the models. A couple of ads were particularly hideous. One showed a girl dressed in a bikini top with a denim jacket and very short denim shorts sitting with her legs spread apart leaving very little to the imagination. I am not certain what the other ad was selling but both women wore very short shorts and one of the women was sitting in the lap of the other with her legs spread open. The positioning of the models in several of the advertisements was suggestive of lesbianism.
Then as if all that were not enough, when I actually got to an ‘article’ that had words to read, I was still assaulted with pornographic pictures. One article detailed a clothing designer’s defining moments but the picture that was included with the article showed women in various states of undress. The other ‘article’ (I do use the term very loosely) was about ‘the marvelous and mysterious couturier of hair’. He was pictured with a completely naked model who wore only a ‘cloud headpiece’. It looked like she forgot to dress but remembered to put a mound of cotton candy on her head. Good grief!!
Ladies and perhaps gentlemen (I have no idea if I have male readers here at The Point but if I do, you need to hear this as well), we in the church of Jesus Christ need to disengage our heads out of the sand and WAKE UP!! We have stuck our heads in the sand, hoping this crap would go away or we wouldn’t have to deal with it. Let me tell you something. IT IS NOT GOING AWAY!! You may choose to ignore it but you can bet your bottom dollar that if you have a teen daughter or niece or granddaughter, she knows exactly what is advertised in these kinds of magazines. Folks, we are missing huge teachable moments with young women because we don’t want to believe or admit that this kind of stuff exists outside the red-light districts of the big city. It not only exists in the city but perhaps in your own home!!
This weekend, I spoke at a ladies event in the metro Atlanta area and the topic of my message was our legacy as Christian women. I took my Vogue with me and used it as an illustration while I was talking to the ladies about purposefully and deliberately making choices that would help us leave a godly legacy for the coming generations. There were about 90 ladies present of varying ages. I asked the group how many of them had purchased or looked at a Vogue magazine in the past few years. Only one raised her hand. Later when I asked her how old she was she told me she was nineteen.
Our teenagers are routinely looking at this filth. Please understand, I am NOT advocating that we all run out and subscribe to Vogue or Cosmo or Glamour. I AM NOT!! What I am saying is that we who desire to build a godly legacy need to understand what those who are coming behind us are dealing with and looking at and listening to. I wish I could say that Christian teens and young women, as a whole(this is not a blanket statement), looked and sounded and dressed differently than their peers who are not Christians, but I can’t. Why should they? They don’t see those of us who are older Christians looking and sounding and dressing differently than our peers who are not Christian.
I am reminded of a quote that I have heard time and again, yet never has the truth of it been brought home to me more than by my trip through Vogue magazine. It goes something like this—if God doesn’t judge America for her sins, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. It is time to wake up and fight this war against Satan and the forces of hell with informed determination.
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