A BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY:
What’s up with modesty?
By Heather Thieneman
Christian Focus. 107 pages. £12.99
ISBN 978 1 527 105 263
I once heard the very wise Glynn Harrison say that if we do not give our children the Biblical narrative of positive body image and good sex, we leave the door wide open for them to build their worldview via the playground and social media.
This book has been written as a conversation starter for parents to read and discuss with their pre-teen daughters. It’s subtitle is about modesty, but it attempts to cover far more: true beauty in God’s eyes, nakedness, appropriate touch, modesty in dress, flirting, adultery, promiscuity, and being clothed in Christ’s righteousness.
The book has lots of pictures and pages to make notes on, but that belies the very difficult analogies, metaphors and theological concepts it tries to cover, some more successfully than others. This book may give struggling parents some ideas of ways to approach tricky topics with their daughters.
However, a word of caution: it is filled with many cringe-worthy, home-school American-isms, therefore a UK cultural mismatch. There are also some unhelpful assumptions. For example: that all girls will marry, with no mention of singleness. Life aspirations are couched only in terms of wanting to be a wife, mother or missionary.
Would I use it verbatim with a pre-teen girl? Probably not. However, credit to the author, who raises some difficult issues which must be discussed, hard though that is, with children of both genders as part of day-to-day life, in our current highly sexualised culture.
