Adverbs Matter

I promised a follow up post about my statement over here saying that "you're a Christian, so you know you shouldn't want to be attractive!" Well i just so happens that one of the best ways to explain my recent thoughts about this is to talk about something else I like. I like grammar. A lot. And it bothers me when people ignore words, even if it's just an adverb or an adjective. Because really, an adverb is never just an adverb and an adjective is never just an adjective. Every word in a grammatically correct sentence is important; it serves a purpose. Adverbs tell you how something is done. He ran quickly. The child was happy. See? Without these words the sentences are pretty boring. He ran. The child was. It just loses something, and those are just simple sentences.
This is a little more complex: Do not let your adornment be merely outward--arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. You all recognize this sentence right? It's from 1 Peter 3:3. Funny, you never hear people ignore the adjective in this sentence-fine. Let's explore what that would look like. "Do not let your adornment be merely outward--arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on apparel." Read that way, the Bible's instructing young women to not wear clothing, and we know that's not the case.
So why do we always ignore the adverb in this sentence-merely. We teach our youth to not let their adornment be outward. But that's not what it says! The Bible never says that we shouldn't dress or look attractive. It simply says we shouldn't let that be our only beauty. According to dictionary.com the word "merely" means "only as specified and nothing more." (Disclaimer: Just to be sure I wasn't some how completely off base I checked with my dad [who majored in classical studies in college, i.e. ancient Greek and Latin] and merely is not an English translation addition. It's there in the original too)
Why do we do this??? We teach our young women that they should be healthy, thin, and modest. But then we tell them that outward appearance doesn't matter. And I understand that man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart. But guess what? I hate to break it to you, but we're human. Women are designed by God to be physically attractive to men. Why do we teach our girls to fight that? And before you start thinking I've gone completely off track and I'm gonna starting telling all the teenage girls I know to go out and by trashy, immodest clothes and wear tons of makeup, that's not what I mean at all.
Women are everything men are not . . . we're feminine. We don't need to wear trashy clothes and tons of makeup to be attractive to men (that crosses the line from attractive to sexy*). We already are naturally, if we're healthy. And we shouldn't fight this. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be what we were made to be. The problem comes when it takes precedence over things which are more important like God.
So guess what? If you're a woman and you're a healthy body weight, you are attractive to men. And if you're a woman and not a healthy body weight, there's not reason to resist wanting to become one. Simple as that. Don't fight it, embrace it. Be who you were made to be.


*More about this later.