Is dressing up to go to church service for impressing other people or to glorify God? Do we dress up so we can make sure we look better than Cynthia (no offense if your name is Cynthia) or do we dress up with the only motivation being "I want to look my best out of reverence for my Lord and King"? Even if the true motivation is to glorify God, the secondary motivation of impressing people seems to be a close second. I guess when I stop and think about it someone could argue that since God is our Lord and King we should be finely dressed as if we were going before a Lord or King like back in the day. However this logic seems to break down with Jesus' acceptance message of saying come to me as you are. I have never experienced this but I always wondered what would happen if a homeless person who smelled terribly, and looked even worse came wandering into a church service to see what was going on. Would he in fact be welcomed by the congregation or even the leader? Honestly I don't know, it may be one of those situations where we hope we would do the right thing but most likely wouldn't in the heat of the moment.
Another thing is worshiping and attending service in a community setting is prime for comparison among the church goers. So then what is the purpose of community? We are social beings who seek somewhere to belong so that is part of it. As fellow believers we are called, more or less, to keep our brothers and sisters in check. More significant though is having older and wiser members in the community that can be a pillar of strength and advice giving. All though all of these things are positive reasons to be part of a community, at the end of the day our relationship with God is just that; OUR relationship with God. Our community will not read our Bible's for us and they cannot walk our walks of faith for us either. It is our responsibility to do the training and heavy lifting of our faith and when we need motivation or encouragement we have our community and God.
What is your motivation for dressing well to go to Church? If you don't dress up, why don't you?
No comments:
Post a Comment