Does God Care What We Wear at Church?
In Revelation 19:8, we are told that it is not our physical cloths that Jesus sees, but our righteous deeds. The righteous acts of the saints are the clothes of the Church. So with every motive of love that is exercised in choosing what to wear, whether casual or formal, we are putting on the true clothes of the church. This, remember, is what Jesus sees.[1]
I was born and grew up in Australia, saved in my teens, attending a church on university campus, a church planted by a pastor from the States. This last detail is important, because I would marry his daughter one day, explaining why we now live in America. But such details also help frame a cultural faux pas, a fun story, I would love to start with. “Flip flops” are called “thongs” in Australia—an important detail—because when a pastor and his wife visited from America and came for dinner, the question was asked by her: “How casual do college students dress for Sunday Night Church?” Someone fired back: “Casual! The guys wear thongs!” Judging from the look on her face, only one thing was on her mind: men in G-strings! We had some explaining to do.
Fortunately, I have never been part of a church where the dress code was that casual. But I have been in situations, and I have also heard of them too, where one might think a person has turned up in a G-string, given the reaction. What this seems to demonstrate is the importance of this topic. With a new wave of culture wars emerged in the U.S., we can ill afford to be fighting the wrong things as Christians. So what do we say? Is dress code a hill to die on? Here is a question we will now address.
Clearing the Air
First, let me clear the air a little (I hope), by noting one verse used to argue against casual dress: Exodus 19:10, where Israel was about to receive the ten commandments, and where they were told to wash their cloths in preparation. This was a holiness affair. The mountain could not to be touched, lest people die. And in conjunction, people needed to make sure they were physically clean. But what needs to be noted is how Hebrews 12 actually quotes this passage, but by way of contrast: “ “For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest… But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering.” The contrast here is between physical external elements of holiness, key to establish in the early days of God’s revelation of himself, at times when symbols were needed, compared with what the writer concludes of the current era, i.e. that it is an era where ultimate realities are unseen.
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Against Triumphalism: Augustinian Reflections on Political Enmity
The project of Christian political engagement…cannot be to prematurely sift the wheat from the chaff, but to work for earthly peace in humility, and to confess the city of God in love. Only in this way can our attempts to counteract the injustices of the earthly city be truly fruitful; only in this way can they bear witness to the limits of the earthly city’s political imagination.
Augustine’s message about the two cities in City of God has important implications for Christian political engagement today. By resisting a facile sorting of the good from the bad, he reminds his Christian readers that their own transformation is far from complete and so helps them work for earthly peace in a spirit of humility.
“Most glorious is the City of God: whether in this passing age, where she dwells by faith as pilgrims among the ungodly, or in the security of that eternal home which she now patiently awaits until ‘righteousness shall return into judgment’ . . .” It is with these words that Augustine famously begins the City of God. And yet what are we to make of them? What exactly is he glorifying, and why? And what political wisdom do they contain for us today?
Given Augustine’s reputation for polemics, it would be unsurprising if his readers interpreted these lines as a celebration of his city’s impending victory over its enemies, and in some ways, it is. Yet, not in the way that we would expect. Instead, Augustine’s opening lines subvert tribal triumphalism. To put this more plainly, Augustine glorifies the city of God as God’s city, and not as the Romans glory in theirs, which of course, is as theirs. Rather than glorying in a Rome that has conquered all, Augustine glories in the city of God as a gift offered to all, and extends the invitation as far as he can.
This message about the city of God, compacted as it is in the tome’s opening lines, also has important implications for Christian political engagement today. In brief, it shows us the ways we must be transformed in order to properly engage in politics. While the best way to make this case would be to embark on a thoroughgoing analysis of the entire City of God, as I try to do in Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God, perhaps it is sufficient to look at the aforementioned lines in light of the argument that unfolds in Book One.
Amor Dei and Humility
Doing so, we find that Augustine’s project in City of God is to show his readers that the distinction between self-love and love of God is a distinction with a difference. Thus, rather than another form of veiled self-praise, the book’s opening lines are meant as an exclamation of praise rooted in gratitude—a gratitude into which all readers are invited. As I argue more extensively in my book, Augustine presents this gratitude as the fruit of our participation in the very love of God that binds the city of God together.
Importantly, for Augustine, love of God is not simply our love for God—which is always imperfect—but God’s love for us, which we receive and return in (hopefully) ever greater degrees. By locating the glory of God’s city in this love, Augustine undercuts our ability to boast in ourselves, since this love is not originally ours, but God’s. We participate in it only insofar as it is given to us, despite our sinfulness. This to say, because Augustine presents love of God as something originating in God, he reveals the contradiction within all our efforts to present our membership in the city of God as something that we earned or as proof that we are already good. Worried that we easily forget this, Augustine repeatedly characterizes the city of God on pilgrimage as a mixed body—mixed not just in the sense of having good and bad members, but also in the sense of there being good and bad motives in each member’s heart. For Augustine, in other words, we must constantly be reminded that the pilgrim city is marked not by its moral perfection, but by its willingness to receive and return to God. Such a city leaves little room for triumphalism.
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Five Books to Help You Give Your Children God’s Word
Parents of young children feel the pressure of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he shall not depart from it.” This word of encouragement can easily be twisted to a word of guilt—as if my children’s belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and their love for his word and his saints is all up to me.
But there’s good news: you, dear parent, you are not alone! God has given you his word, and wherever God’s word is, there Jesus is! God is with you in his word.
Here are five books that can help you give your children the word of God and the faith that comes through hearing the word of God (Rom. 10:17). Make a routine of reading books like these—or the very words of the Bible—with your children. You may not see it right away, but you’re planting the seeds of God’s word in your children’s heart (Mk. 4:26–32; Is. 55:10–11).
1. The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible
Age range: 2–5 years old (Click to View Product)
There’s no shortage of children’s storybook Bibles, but The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible stands out among the crowd. In short, friendly, and bright prose, Jared Kennedy recounts fifty-two Bible stories (twenty-six from the Old Testament and twenty-six from the New Testament). Every story ends by pointing to Jesus: how does this story show our Lord Jesus and the good news that he forgives our sins and gives us his life through his death and resurrection. Trish Mahoney’s vibrant illustrations provide children enough to look at and wonder while they listen.
Each story takes about two minutes to read, so it’s easy to read a whole story every day. (Although my own children like to interact with some of the stories and so sometimes it’s more like three or four minutes.) Jared’s words help draw out the reader in every parent—helping us to read with energy and excitement.
2. Jesus and the Lions’ Den: A True Story about How Daniel Points Us to Jesus
Age range: 3–6 years old (Click to View Product)
Each book in the The Good Book Company’s Tales That Tell the Truth series presents a simple and friendly biblical theology—sometimes by telling a specific Bible story (e.g. when Jesus calmed the storm), sometimes by presenting the full arc of the Bible (e.g. creation, fall, redemption), sometimes by focusing on a Christian practice (e.g. prayer). All of the books are filled with Catalina Echeverri’s vibrant colors and inviting imagery!
In Jesus and the Lion’s Den, Alison Mitchell shows children and their parents how to read the Bible as a book that gives us Jesus. Mitchell walks through the story of Daniel being sent to and delivered from the lions’ den. Throughout the story Escheverri has hidden a lion symbol that lets readers know a “Jesus moment” is present. The book ends by setting each Jesus moment in the story of Daniel next to a story from Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Now parents and their children can try finding the Jesus moments in the Bible on their own!
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The Heart of Family Reformation
When culture rushes down on your family and the professing church is trying to imitate the world itself, how will your family keep from being swept away in its path? Only through the Word of God! Family worship, on a daily basis, is your hope that they will stand like steel piers against the prevailing tide.
When our children were younger we began the day with the hymn we are currently memorizing. When Laura was five, she sang for all of us the second verse of “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord” by the Yale president of the late 1700s, Timothy Dwight. With a determined look, she sang out,
I love Thy church, O God.Her walls before Thee stand.Dear as the apple of Thine eye,And gravy on Thy hand.
My boys collapsed on the floor with laughter. The word is “graven!”
I value family worship, not only because it is sometimes humorous, but because it is glue that holds families together, stimulus for some of the family’s best discussions, and provides real strength for family member’s lives — it can become the heart, in fact, of family reformation.
The Puritans, long misunderstood, had an exceptional view of the family. We can learn from them even though we might not accept all they had to say. They often talked of the home as the “little church,” and the father as the pastor of his little flock. Lewis Bayly said, “What the preacher is in the pulpit, the same the Christian householder is in his house.” Family worship is the natural outcome of such a view. In homes without a believing father, the mother may fulfill this oversight role for children.
The practice of family worship (with or without children at home) is as forgotten to the church today as the dust in our attic, but this simple and effective method of restoring family spirituality is the most potent tool we have available to us—and every one of us can do it!
Why is Family Worship Critical?
First, family worship is critical because the placing of the Word of God in the hearts of our family members is indispensable to their conversion.
Paul reminded Timothy that, “From childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3: 15).
Peter said that we are “born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible through the Word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Pet. 1:23). This incorruptible seed of saving life (corresponding to the natural biological seed) is inseminated in the dead soul via the Word of God alone.
The Puritans believed this with a passion. This was the rationale for their long sermons, the catechizing of children, the morning messages in those cold church buildings prior to the work day, the daily meditating on the Word in private, and especially the practice of family worship. For the Puritan, family worship took place two times a day, as the “morning and evening sacrifice.” It was through this means that his children and wife, and any other guests or helpers in the home, might receive life!
Richard Baxter, one of the most famous of the Puritans, saw his village of Kidderminster, England transformed through this method. He stated:
I do verily believe that if parents did their duty as they ought, the Word publicly preached would not be the ordinary means of regeneration in the church, but only without the church, among practical heathens and infidels.
Second, it is critical because the Word alone enables your family to withstand the prevailing currents of an evil culture.
In the 2 Timothy 3 passage we find a torrent of base culture descending on young Timothy. “. . . In the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers… disobedient to parents…without self-control. . . headstrong . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (vss.1-4).
How will you be able to rescue your family from the effects of such a culture? Only through the Word of God, according to Paul. The Word makes Timothy as the “man of God,” “thoroughly equipped for every good work” necessary to strengthen the church. His toolbox is complete and “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (vs. 16) so that the people under his charge can withstand the flood of culture described in the previous verses.
In the same way, the shepherding father of the home (or the mother in homes without a father, which was Timothy’s situation) is made adequate to help his or her family. Paul tells Timothy, therefore, to “preach the Word! Be ready in season and out of season” (4:2).
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth… (4: 3-4).
When culture rushes down on your family and the professing church is trying to imitate the world itself, how will your family keep from being swept away in its path? Only through the Word of God! Family worship, on a daily basis, is your hope that they will stand like steel piers against the prevailing tide.
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