My parents are Christians, so I grew up going to
church. Most of the time I dressed up a
little bit. I didn’t always wear a tie,
but I didn’t ever wear jeans on Sunday morning.
My father believes that you ought to dress up for church and my mother
believed that it wasn’t as important and should be an individual choice, and
since I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where we discussed these
kinds of issues, I got to hear both sides of the argument.
Traditionally, it has been expected that when you
attend worship service, you dress up.
That starting to change in our culture.
The belief that you ought to dress up for worship services is now being associated
only with older Christians, and not the with the younger generation. This shift is one worth looking into, because
my generation has got a lot of things wrong.
There are many people in my generation would rather be entertained than
worship God and would rather be comfortable than hear a challenging
lesson. Unfortunately, that has
motivated many churches to make their services and their activities more about
entertainment because they are afraid of losing the younger generation. That pushes them farther and farther until
many churches now are so unrecognizable, I have little doubt that Jesus would
do a few cleansings of churches were He still on the earth. I don’t want to contribute to the
problem. So I ask the question: should
we dress up for church?
Given the fact that so many people older and wiser
than me think that you ought to dress up for church, I would think that there
is some scriptural basis for it. Here’s
the honest truth: there isn’t. The only
passages I can find on dress one way or the other is like what Paul says in 1
Timothy 2:9: “likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable
apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or
pearls or costly attire.”
The point of 1 Timothy 2:9 in context is that women
ought not to dress up in order to draw attention to themselves. When you read 1 Timothy, you get the
impression that the Ephesians (Timothy was at Ephesus) had a big problem with
pride, and 1 Timothy 2:9 addresses that.
It gives us an interesting concept, though. If the Bible says anything about how we ought
to dress, it tells us not to dress
up!
The argument that I often hear is that it is a
matter of respect. That you dress up for
a funeral, so you ought to dress up for God.
This is a fool’s smokescreen. We
all know that our lives as Christians are to be lived 24/7, not just during
services. So if it really is about
respect, why don’t we walk around in suits all of the time? If we really believe that it is a matter of
respect, then doesn’t that mean we are living a double standard? One measure of respect outside of the
building and a greater one inside of the building (where everyone can see
us)?
It is not about respect. It is about cultural acceptance. It is not culturally acceptable (generally
speaking) to come to a funeral in jeans and a hoodie. It didn’t used to be culturally acceptable to
come to church in jeans and a hoodie either.
Where we have erred is in going to the scripture seeking a way to make a
cultural thing that we practice binding on other people. Is this really any different than the
Pharisees, who condemned Jesus’s disciples for breaking the traditions of the
elders in Matthew 15? It is no
different.
I am not condemning people who dress up. If you want to, that’s great. You should do as your conscience
dictates. I will, however, say this:
people often equate dressing casually for church with taking it lightly, as
though it is just another part of their life.
I see another interpretation. After
all, if we truly can treat worship service as another part of our lives in that
we are serving God so much that worshipping God on Sunday is normal for us
since we are serving Him all of the time, is that really such a bad thing?
Well said, Logan.
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