by Elder Johnny Kim
A while back, I was browsing through the Nike website and discovered that they offer a service through which one can customize shoes for purchase. Known as NikeID, anyone looking for a pair of basketball shoes for example, can customize their shoe by selecting from all sorts of materials, accents, and color combinations for various aspects of the shoe, from the laces down to glow-in-the-dark soles. Add in some customized writing on the shoe and several hundred dollars later, you end up with a shoe that uniquely represents you and your own personal style and tastes. Furthermore, I suppose you also get to avoid the embarrassment of being caught wearing the same generic factory shoes as someone else, which could happen even if you bought these $400 “non-custom” Nike shoes.
Clothes have become the ultimate expression of personal style and individuality. More than just functional garments to cover our bodies and shield us from the elements, clothes for us in this society are instruments used to represent our personality, our interests, our mood, and even our income level. And how we decide on what to wear is itself an intimate and personal decision. On any given day, I might choose what to wear based on what makes ME comfortable, what makes ME feel good, the style that best represents ME, and what is most convenient for ME. This approach to picking out our outfit might not matter much in most contexts, but in the context of church and corporate worship, we Christians ought to think differently.
Worship is first and foremost a spiritual affair and therefore our spiritual state is what matters most. Yet the outward appearance of worship, the structure, the setting, the order of worship, still matter as well. Wayne Grudem points out in Systematic Theology that all these things still serve to facilitate the atmosphere of worship which Jesus demonstrated He still cared about as He drove out the money-changers from the temple (Matthew 21:12-13). Our outward appearance and how we dress is just one more way we can help the church and her members to cultivate a more worshipful and reverent attitude in worship. While our own hearts and minds might be in the right place regardless of what we wear (even then, I challenge you to dress up for church and see if it doesn’t affect your attitude even in the slightest way), we need to consider the hearts and minds of those around us who we are worshiping with (1 Corinthians 12:12-26). If we truly desire to offer up the most God-honoring and God-glorifying worship as one body, then we ought to strive to take advantage of every opportunity available to us to help ourselves and those around us to that end, including the way we dress.
How we dress up for church can help those around us to cultivate a more worshipful and reverent attitude in worshiping God. How we dress up for Sunday worship can serve as a very visible reminder to those around us that we are there for a special event. An event special enough so that we wouldn’t dress like we normally would. How we dress up can serve to remind others that worshiping God is of utmost importance, so much so that we should want to use every means, even down to how we dress, to help us have the most worshipful heart attitude we can possibly have. How we dress up for Sunday worship can help the unbeliever attending church for the first time understand, even before the first word of the sermon is spoken, that we are gathered before someone or something, some being, who must be set apart in some way and deserving of reverence for some reason. How we dress for church matters because what we wear is not simply only about ourselves.
While there might not be a standard dress code for our church for Sunday service, there is a question we can ask others to help guide our dress. “Is how I’m dressed today helpful, harmful, or neutral in nudging you to have a more worshipful and reverent heart attitude during Sunday worship?” I challenge you to ask this question, and furthermore, without a hint of legalism, I challenge you to care enough about your fellow brothers and sisters to desire that they would always be able to answer, “Helpful”.