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Wearing the garments of the opposite gender?

Lovejoypeace_Lovejoypeace_
in Faith Issues
Ok, do we all know that wearing the garments of the opposite gender is a sin, but I guess my question is, what defines male clothing and what defines female clothing. Like in biblical times people basically wore different types of robes that were designed for males or females. 60 years ago, it was seen as out of the ordinary for women to wear pants. Now there are pants designed for women and pants designed for men, yet some (especially from the older generation--and very very few people at that) still say women should not wear pants. So I can't help but wonder, since the Bible doesn't actually give a definition of what garments apply to males or females, how do we judge this appropriately?

Comments

  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    I don't know if we can consider wearing the garments of the opposite gender a sin. Clothing is a convention that society uses to help distinguish male from female. I don't think the gospel makes any real reference to clothing style and convention. Some cultures are very strict about sticking to convention as you described, but this is not Christianity. This is cultural. There may actually be a spiritual reason to cross or violate cultural norms. The concept of transvestite female monks who dressed up as male monks is one example. The culture did not allow female monks (to various degrees), but the spiritual importance of the Gospel required special women to break cultural norms. It was not a sin and often hagiography tells us they usually informed their spiritual father first who hid the female monks gender from the other monks. So if dressing in the opposite sex is a sin, those who didn't dress in the opposite sex but knew about others who did would also be sinning. I do not recall a single story that condemned transvestitism. 

    On the other hand, causing offense is a sin that is documented in the gospels. If dressing in the opposite sex offends someone, than no one should do it so that weaker bystanders will not loose their salvation. Here there is a spiritual reason not to break cultural convention. 

    In the end, it doesn't matter how the Bible defines what garments apply. Even if it did, we are not sola scriptoria. We believe in what the God revealed, what the Church says, what the Scriptures reveal, what the patristic fathers said, what our current leaders say, what logic and reason dictates. This is our Tradition. Specific garments are "t"tradition. 
  • mnc_hnnmnc_hnn
    May be you mean cross dressing that is related to changing sexual orientation? I think it is about the intention. If you're just wearing something because it's comfortable or for non innocent reasons
  • JoshuaaJoshuaa
    1 Peter 3:3-4
    3 Do not let your adornment be merely outward - arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel -
    4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.

    Notice how it says spirit. It doesn't say soul. It is because spirit goes in and out of someone. If you inquire saying shall I conform to society? You are inviting a spirit in which you will perform and act accordingly to the conscience of that decision.
    The Holy Spirit is one that when it goes into your conscience, it not only guides you to what is good , it also brings to you the more important inner beauty which is purity.
    It is a purity of heart as when David prays: Psalm 51 10
    Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
    That he wants to be who he is in God and that wanting to be steadfast, he doesn't want his peers or the world to change what he is seeking.

    Look what is influencing you and see if you can be yourself, especially as a Christian and that our sin always involves someome else either directly or indirectly, and that to not get involved in it, you need to be the hidden person of the heart.
  • SJCSJC
    Long time has passed and now we cannot blame a woman for wearing
    trousers, for example, but if we take a look at the history of humanity since
    Renaissance, we're gonna see there is a (sorry for the exagerated expression
    with no intention to start conspiracy theory here) Great Sinister Movement
    making all the moves to turn women into men and men into women, as it is part
    of the preparation for the Antichrist age (which may take billions of aeons to
    come... not saying it is tomorrow), by separating people from the teachings of
    the Bible in their practical lives, and destroying the family, the essential
    social cell created by God where each one has their role, women being women and
    men being men.


     


    As women are women and men are men, changing that ends up not working,
    but we are convinced it works, because each one has their jobs now (money
    culture, you are what you $make$), they are 'equal' in a social way, and can
    compensate their emptiness, loneliness and anxiety shopping in malls or paying
    their smartphone accounts to stay online feeling important in some social
    network, and if it still doesn't help, the GSM has its pharmaceutical industry
    with its rivotrils, gardenals, prozacs, etc.


     


    Jesus taught us, since the begining, a SIMPLE way of life. The land
    gives us for free everything we need (I know that cause I haven't been always
    in the city, but in the countryside, where we didn't need to pay for
    eating many things we took from the land). We don't actually
    need cars, tourism, college, phd, video games and other devices with the excuse
    to have an easier or more comfortable life (which in the end is just materially
    easier and more comfortable and helps nothing emotionally, spiritually,
    socially, etc). But we ACCEPTED this way of life that led us to urge
    to pursue these devices to fulfill our emptiness or to desire them
    like something essential.


     

    We were made to only take from the land what we
    needed and the time left we would use to go deeper and deeper in our spiritual
    practice to be able to be in full communion with God before we actually see Him
    afterlife, where the accountance won't be smooth... For those who ask about
    medicine college and the like ('How would we treat diseases?' and so on): people
    in ancient societies had a lot of knowledge, once God didn't leave Adam alone
    when he had to start over his life after the fall. What this GSM wants us
    believers with weak faith to think is that had we not accepted this skeptical
    materialistic so called 'developed' society, we would never have medicine,
    science, etc etc... Actually we WOULD, and even better, without deviated
    theories like 'evolution' or an internet, with 90% of its content devoted to
    weird stuff like p*rn*graphy or ped*philia............ (continues)


  • SJCSJC

    (continuing) but in our 80-year-old life span, we can believe any propaganda that
    without the society we have, we would be lost...... (lack of trust in our
    Creator, maybe?)

     

    Developing our relation with God, and everything coming after that,
    without worrying about GSM sponsored medicine, holidays in a touristic spot or
    grand theft auto and world of warcraft... It's what our Lord Jesus told us...
    seek the Kingdom and everything will come additionally... that's what monks
    actually do, or should do... Married couples should do that too, the message is
    for all of us, instead of gathering in family meetings to expose kids like what
    company they are working for, what have they succeeded at in the material
    world, and 'we're so beautifully perfect' and etc...

     

    Well... God made everything easy, and we, listening to the
    devil, complicated everything... So JESUS came, redeemed us with His
    precious blood, and WARNED us the prince of this world was coming... and what
    did the Christians do? Received the prince with arms wide open. Funny to see
    how people like St Athanasius (who was even excommunicated) or St John
    Chrysostom (who was upset at the love CHRISTIANS devoted to theatre - aka video
    game, mobile phone, tv, cinema, facebook - and horse riding - world cup,
    olympics, competitions in general, etc) were minority, and not even a
    'significant minority' (like 'muslims in the uk').

     

    Little by little the GSM articulated its move, led by the prince of this
    world, to tell us "hey, the world is cool, taste it a bit, you will become
    like gods, and if your Father told you you're gonna harm yourselves, don't
    listen to Him, enjoy this life', and we said 'ok, we're taking a long time to
    die, anyway'. (continues)

  • SJCSJC

    (continuing) So we started looking at this world as our home and forgetting the next
    once more, being the next one lip service, only, just like before the come
    of Lord Jesus, and created a lot of useless tools we consider so important
    nowadays. politics, schools with a bunch of manipulated lies we study not to
    develop our minds, but to, as typical slaves, carry this system ahead and boast
    about careers, salaries and opportunities we have in the world thanks to that,
    sports for sale, celebrity entertainment, tourism, diet, muscles, anorexia,
    religious temples with beautiful architechture outside, but that can offer
    almost nothing spiritually to desperate souls looking for rebirth in the
    inside, kinda like those white painted tombs our Lord has spoken... and,
    amongst all this, the teaching that we shouldn't be happy with the condition
    God gave us. Dissatisfaction... The key for an unbalanced society.

     

    Women should be unhappy for being women and men for being men...

     

    And what does it all have to do with men dressing like women and vice
    versa? It's part of this unfortunate scheme. Every detail taught by our
    Lord we leave behind considering it "neurosis', 'fundamentalism',
    or 'don't mind about that, the important is the inside', takes us little
    by littel away from God. If Jesus came to visit our houses today, look at our
    decoration, our living rooms, our rooms, the way we carry on our lives, our
    routine, our aspirations... would we be proud?

     

    It is never told that Christians should live lawless or should be loose
    in their practice and accept everything like modern-eccumenical ones. Actually,
    we should take the Word of God very seriously... whether others call us
    fundamentalists or not... the only difference between us and some other
    cultures/religions is that we are not going to invade their lands and say they
    will die if they don't practice what we practice, but it doesn't mean we are
    going to be tolerant with deviation in our own lives. The concept of mercy is
    being taken totally out of context, especially in the last 100 years, as well
    as the concept of "love".

     

    One minimum step we take out of God's commandments, thinking we are
    smart (and we never are, cause either we follow Him or we follow the devil,
    which is a very intelligent fallen angel who was for thousands of years
    worshipping Him and know exactly what is needed to lead us astray) is a chance
    to get into perdition forever and the worst is that the world became so
    interesting for us, and humanity has developed such a strange new religion of
    worshipping the self in the last century, that we get into perdition and don't
    feel it, or even worse, we even think we are doing what is right and we are
    doing our best...

     

    But if
    somebody says "men should not wear this or women should not wear
    that" many will think it is extreme, fundamentalist, and the like...If we
    gave importance to God's perfect taste and guidance instead of
    our own misguided lame taste, we would look for studying everything we can
    about this matter and see how wrongly we are dressing... behaving... wishing...
    living....dying... but if there's something wrong outside, it is because,
    at least in Christianity, we have to start the cleansing from the inside... how
    is our inside as a global community? ... is there anything left from
    Christianity, or, rather, the Church, (cause our Lord didn't come in the flesh
    to found Christianity, but His live Church), besides its name?

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