This week a church member complained to me about the ripped jeans my youth director was wearing in church. Immediately I bit my tongue so as not to launch verbal missiles at their poorly constructed religious framework whereby they would be crushed under the debris of their own criticism. I said that we would talk about it over coffee sometime. Apparently the 21st Century and its styles have somewhat escaped their attention. Ripped jeans? Come on! People pay good money for those.
Having had a few days to think about it I thought that this was why I started this church. Church people who have their minds stuck in 1970's church customs have a hard time at my nine year old church that is the perpetual church plant that still meets in a school and is controlled chaos much of the time (that's the way I like it). We have a good sized contingent of new Christians and our church is very unreligious.
The problem is that we cannot judge someone by how they dress. I was told by some Christians to not go see the movie Soul Surfer because there were revealing bathing suits in it. Duh. It's a surfing movie. God looks at someone's heart. And a youth director who is wearing ripped jeans is a youth director who is doing her job. I don't care if it fits into the Church Dress Code of yesteryear. My complaning church goer would not have enjoyed listening to John the Baptist in his camel hair Speedo either.
I also remembered something CS Lewis wrote once:
"A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally 'modest', proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste)."
Clothing, or lack of it according to a long time church goer's standards are not necessarily God's standards. A girl in the pacific sitting in church in the hut with her grass skirt and nothing else on is perfectly decent in the eyes of the Lord who is just glad that she is at church hearing about how much He loves her. People in the European church were ticked off at Hudson Taylor because he grew out his hair to be able to put it in a braid and dress like the men in China he was trying to reach.
God never looks at the outside first. He looks at the inside. He knows when someone is just dressing the way they dress or that they dress that way to establish common ground with teenagers. (I saw Louis Giglio in skinny jeans once and it didn't bother me although I thought he looked uncomfortable). If I didn't have a wife that motivated me otherwise I would probably wear the same hoodie, jeans and tee shirt every Sunday. I hate dressing up. But I was made to go to Christian school with a uniform when I was a kid and dressing up every day for your high school experience kinda turns you off dressing up.
My point. Don't be a pharisee. God looks on the heart not the ripped jeans. By the way I cancelled the coffee. Not worth the energy.
'Nuff Said.
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