[This article originally appeared on Dr. Mohler's blog .]

"Clothes are never a frivolity -- they always mean something." Thus spoke James Laver, a famous costume designer and interpreter of fashion. He is right, of course. Clothes always mean something, which is why The New York Times gave major attention to an issue facing many schools: "Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?"

The article, right on the front of the "Sunday Styles" section of the paper, announced, "When gender bends the dress code, high schools struggle to respond." The story reveals a confusion over gender that goes far beyond the dress code.

As Jan Hoffman reports, high schools generally have very specific rules about clothing these days. Boys are forbidden to wear muscle shirts and saggy pants, and girls cannot wear midriff-exposing tops or skirts that are too short. But what happens when a boy wants to wear a skirt?

"In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate — or confound — gender identity and sexual orientation," Hoffman reports. "Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans."

This is no longer an issue limited to isolated examples. Districts across the country have reported teens who have attempted to cross the gender line in dress. Many of these cases have captured media attention, with highly publicized controversies. In other cases, the challenges have been more quiet.

The cases are, to say the least, both interesting and troubling. Boys are making news for wearing skinny jeans, makeup, wigs, and skirts. Girls are bending gender in their own way by, for example, wearing a tuxedo for the school picture or to a school event.

Jan Hoffman does a good job of setting the issue in perspective:

Dress is always code, particularly for teenagers eager to telegraph evolving identities. Each year, schools hope to quell disruption by prohibiting the latest styles that signify a gang affiliation, a sexual act or drug use.

But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.

Well, that certainly presents a very complicated challenge. Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland psychologist cited in the article, states the obvious: "This generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with. . . . A lot of youths say they won't be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field."  She added that adults then "become the gender police through dress codes."

As Hoffman makes clear, these challenges to dress codes can quickly become legal skirmishes pitting students (and often their parents) against school administrators. Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute argues that this is one reason that so many schools have shifted to students wearing uniforms.

"It's hard enough to get students to concentrate on an algorithm," she reminds, "even without Jimmy sitting there in lipstick and fake eyelashes."

That sets the issue in a very clear instructional perspective. Schools are about teaching and learning, and both teachers and administrators face daunting challenges. The last thing they need is the added distraction of gender-bending teenagers on parade.

And the issues can be far more troubling than classroom distractions. Hoffman reports that some schools have faced boys wearing "pink frilly scarves" and makeup and girls trying to dress like male gang members. In Columbus, Ohio a boy wore girl's clothing but used the boys' bathroom. Jeff Grace, faculty advisor for the school's gay-straight alliance club told Hoffman, “One day I heard a student say, ‘Man, there was a girl in the guy’s restroom, standing up using the urinal! What’s up with that?’" Another student then quipped, “That wasn’t a girl. That’s just Jack."

These adolescents represent the younger face of a society that is giving itself over to a confusion about gender and dress that reveals a much deeper confusion about gender, sexuality, and the limits of self-expression. The controversy also reveals an even deeper cultural and moral divide over the same issues.

Should a boy who shows up at school dressed as a girl be celebrated for self-expression and transgressing the boundaries of gender roles, or should he be seen as signaling a need for help and adult-imposed rules? The widely divergent answers to that question reveal the great worldview divide in postmodern America. This controversy cannot be isolated from the movement to normalize homosexuality, and that movement cannot be separated from an effort to remove all notions of fixed gender roles and sexual identity.

The controversy over boys wearing skirts to school is a symptom of our loss of sexual sanity and the will to preserve any reasonable and healthy understanding of gender. These teenagers are telling us something important -- we are losing our sexual sanity.

For Christians, the issue is a matter of biblical concern. The Bible reveals a concern for respecting and honoring gender as God's gift. In the Old Testament, the Law taught respect for these distinctions and roles. In the New Testament, we find similar expectations. As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11: 7-15:

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.

While addressed to the specific concerns of a church setting, this text also generalizes the point by making a specific reference to what nature teaches concerning the recognition of the difference between males and females. The Creator is honored and glorified when men and boys dress and present themselves as males and when women and girls dress and present themselves as females. Culture by culture and generation by generation the specific form of this distinction may change, but the point remains.

God made human beings to show His glory, and an essential part of that glory is the visible difference between males and females that is reflected even in the public presentation of dress. We should be able to tell the difference between a boy and a girl by the way they dress and present themselves in public.

As James Laver reminded, clothes always tell us something. This article from the "Sunday Styles" section of The New York Times tells us something as well -- something we need to hear.

Though I have never met him, Ted Kluck and I share several common bonds. Both of us love Christ and love sports (and presumably the first far more than the second!). Both of us played sports in abundant amounts when we were younger. And both of us made money as young adults by attending sports events and writing stories about them. Knowing all of that, it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to like his latest book, The Reason for Sports: A Christian Fanifesto (Moody). And I do. It is a compelling read for men who like sports and desire to think about them through the lens of a Christian worldview. I mean, you can’t really go wrong with a book that quotes J.C. Ryle and Pete Rose on consecutive pages.

Reason for Sports is a collection of writings by Kluck that reflect on sports in light of the Gospel. Kluck has been a sportswriter, is a contributor to ESPN.com and is the author of several books, including Facing Tyson, Paper Tiger and Game Time. He also co-wrote Why We’re Not Emergent and Why We Love the Church with Kevin DeYoung.

Kluck addresses a wide variety of sports-related topics in a style that is often tongue-in-cheek, but in a way that also gives Christian sports fans plenty of food for thought where Scripture intersects with our games. Topics range from steroids, jock apologies, sports and sexuality sports busts (“bust” meaning failure, not a chest-up sculpture suitable for display in the foyer) to personalities such as Tony Dungy, Mike Tyson, Tom Brady (and his public admission that even winning the SuperBowl hasn’t brought much meaning to his life) and legendary boxer Muhammad Ali.

In a chapter on steroids, he argues that it is far better for fathers to teach their sons to be godly losers than it is to push them to embrace a “whatever it takes” toward achieving extreme athletic prowess:

“But I want my son to know that if he is a godly loser I will respect him deeply. I pray that he won’t be as shortsighted as his father, and he won’t, even for a year or two, find his identity in games or bench presses or 40-yard dash times. And I want him to know that he is to work as unto the Lord and play to win, but if he loses, and loses with integrity, that it will be an honor to go into that alley, just to carry him out.”

On sports and humility, Kluck addresses the ultra-ostentatious world of professional sports where Sportscenter highlights often focus on the latest end zone dance by Chad Ochocinco (the football artist formerly known as Chad Johnson) as much as the scores and stats from the games themselves. Kluck suggests that perhaps Christian athletes should be, of all things, different than their peers:

“So maybe instead of thumping our chests and pointing at the sky to ‘be a light’ in the football community, the Christian athlete simply walks back to the huddle. Maybe instead of soaking up the adulation of an unbelievable dunk, he just goes back and sits on the bench afterward. Maybe instead of kneeling in the end zone for an elaborate show of prayer, he just flips the ball to the ref and thanks God on his own for life, health, and the ability to play a fun game for money. Perhaps he does so, praying that God will give him grace, and striving after true humility to echo Proverbs 3:34 (Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble, he gives favor.)”

Overall, Kluck’s book is probably a very different kind of read for the evangelical bibliophile, but it is an enjoyable and compelling one. It definitely provides some solid theological thinking about the games so many of us love.

[Editor's Note: This is the second part of our interview with Carolyn McCulley. You can read part 1 here.]

How has feminism effected the next generation of men and women?

By next, I assume you mean the rising generation. One of the most profound ways it has affected young adults is in the presentation of what is normative. Most of the young women I speak to have no idea about what happened in the feminist movement. They don't know there were three waves (the second wave was the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but that's not the only one), and because of that, they are unaware of the third wave that affects them now.

The third wave began in the 1990s as a rejection of the victim ideology of the second wave, which did briefly align with evangelicals in the anti-pornography movement. The daughters of second-wavers rejected this mentality and instead embraced a "pro-porn, pro-sex" ideology that has created the hyper-aggressive female sexuality that we live amongst today. Because it's not a politically visible movement, many people are unaware of it, but not of its effects. Third-wave feminism has contributed to the pornographication of our culture, to the immodesty of women's fashions and behavior, to the celebration of women's immorality in shows like Sex and the City and Girls Gone Wild, and so on. It is also decidedly anti-family and pro-pansexuality.

This affects both young men and women in widespread ways, from the hook-up culture to gender identity confusion.

What do people training for ministry need to be aware of when they are helping people think biblically through manhood and womanhood?

I think it is helpful to know how we got to where we are in our culture and to be able to explain that to others. Of course, the Word of God is all that is necessary to convict and convert people. But for those who oppose the authority of Scripture on this topic, I believe it is quite illuminating for them to understand the motivations behind certain aspects of the feminist movement. To be able to explain, for example, Margaret Sanger's embrace of eugenics, her racism, her harsh attitude toward children, and her lethal philosophies that are part of Planned Parenthood's legacy as their founder can open someone's eyes to the motives behind this pro-abortion business. To be able to understand the deep impact of Social Darwinism and the Industrial Revolution on our concept of the home can be helpful to someone who accepts the 20^th century's sea change of the home once being a place of productivity and now being a place of consumption. To know that helps women, especially, to understand why the home-or the private sphere, as I like to refer to it-is so important in the biblical framework.

But I think the most important thing for people in ministry to understand is that the seeds of feminism lie in all of our hearts. Apart from the grace of God, we are each rebels before God's authority. Feminism is just another expression of that indwelling rebellion. Therefore, our enemies are not the flesh-and-blood feminists, but the enemies listed in Scripture - our sin, our worldly, flesh-driven lusts, and our spiritual adversary. We must condemn the ideas but be merciful to those in captivity to them. I am appalled by Margaret Sanger's ideas and life, but if the Lord had not revealed Himself to me, I would be walking in lock-step with her philosophies.

In this installment of Unchanging Truth, we are highlighting this article from Ligon Duncan and Terry Johnson on family worship. We hope it will be of service to parents, fathers in particular, as they seek to lead their families in worship.

There has been a recent miniboom of interest in the renewal of family religion and family worship in the evangelical community. Perhaps fueled by (a) the sense of cultural assault upon the family, (b) the strong current emphasis on parental involvement in childhood education, and (c) in some quarters a recapturing of a covenantal vision of church and family life, many are open to and desirous of learning what the family as a unit ought to be doing together in the way of daily worshiping of God in the reading, singing and praying of Scripture. And not only is there a new impetus, but many helpful resources are now available that were nonexistent just a few years ago.

None too soon. The family itself is an endangered species in our culture, and the Christian family is under the severest of strains: the pace of life, the worldliness and materialism of church and society, the self-destructive freedoms in which we love to indulge, the capacity for temptations to access us even in the safety of our own homes through satellite television and the internet, mens loss of the sense of responsibility to take up the duty for spiritual leadership as fathers in the home, the culture of divorce, the culture of day care, and more. Furthermore, there are those who so undervalue the traditional family that they are seeking to redefine it, while at the same time some suggest that a day will come when biotechnology, community, and government programs will pave the way for the obsolescence of the traditional family.

God has never underestimated the importance of the family. After all, like marriage, he invented it. The family is the original society from which every other society emerges. This is seen in creation itself as unfolded in the early chapters of Genesis. Redemptive history and the covenant of grace both indicate the essential role of family in Gods program. Founded by a divine directive and regulated by divine ordinances, it is the normal school in which faith in God and obedience to his law are taught. Its suitability for this function is seen in its unique features: (1) it is small and close: no bureaucratic barriers impede the recognition of need and the application of discipline, no administrative distance prevents the identification of patterns or allows for idealistic assessments and solutions; (2) authority is displayed, but its harshness is tempered with parental affection; (3) ideally two parents, two parties, complement one another and are vested with joint authority; (4) mutual accountability and divine, transcendent authority are illustrated in every relationship.

You can read the rest of this article here.