DRESS MATTERS

Take a look at “Dress Like a Grown up” posted below.

Downgrade, decline, disrespect, disparage, disgusting, disedify. Look these words up. They all apply to what the United States Senate’s new dress rules have to say about the state of our nation and where it is headed. The U. S. Senate, historically considered the most prestigious, dignified and august body of American lawmakers, is, consistent with its being dumbed down for decades, now dressing down. It’s now considered appropriate for Senators to substitute sweatshirts and tie- dyed jeans for suits and ties as they go about their senatorial business. How sad and sickening.

Here is one rare instance where the modern church (I use the word “church’ here in its most general and generic sense) has not followed suit (pardon the pun) with the world, but has actually gotten the jump on the world in the area of worldliness and lack of God-conscioousness. I refer of course to the downgrading, disrespectful, disparaging, disedifying, detrimental and disgusting way that pastors dress for the pulpit and as they go about the Lord’s business during the week.

A book was once written for Christian women entitled, You Clothes Say it For You. There’s a lot of truth embodied in this title. Whether you are a man or a woman or whatever your position may be in life, how you dress says a lot either for or against you. How you dress certainly says a lot about you. This is true, whether we like it or not, whether the message conveyed by the way we dress is accurate or inaccurate, etc. Someone will object, “Well, it shouldn’t be this way.” Answer: Too bad. As a matter of fact it is this way. It is this way whether or not inappropriate attire is worn ignorantly or intentionally.

By observing how we dress, the clothes we were and how we wear them, people form their impressions and oftentimes their lasting impression and their beliefs about us – what we must think of ourselves, of those we are around, of the company or cause we represent, of God, etc. When a U. S. Senator makes the opportunity or seizes the opportunity to “dress down” it says volumes about how they think (or don’t think) about who and what they represent, the impression they are making, the influence they are having and the overall impact involved in how they dress. The same is true where pastors and other ministers of the Gospel are concerned, but the significance is immeasurably greater.

There are profoundly good reasons – biblical, sensible reasons – why preachers should resist accommodating the trends and preferences of the world towards casualness in dress and their own fleshly inclinations regarding personal comfort and being seen as “with it” and “up to speed” with “What’s happening now.” And, make no mistake about it, there are profoundly good reasons for Christians to pay attention to how their pastors and other professed men of God are dressing.