I like getting dressed up for church, pantyhose and all. For the past six years I’ve been going to churches that would make me feel more appropriately dressed in jorts and a singlet than heels and hosiery. Is the change cultural? Someone probably not unlike Beth Moore told me that we should dress as if we’re going on a date with Jesus. Baha, that’s lame. But it would make a little bit of sense- datewear is jeans and a shirt nowadays… and probably a onesie romper for those women who so choose every Sunday…
So what other things have changed in the realm of reverence? I’ve heard people pray, “hey God,…” which I don’t love because it sounds stupid and generally makes everyone uncomfortable. Buddy Christ is the idea, I guess. And what started as a joke is pretty hot right now. Just like purple is the new pink (as my dad and brother like to mock me for once saying), and love is the new denim (dang it, lady gaga again), ‘Buddy Christ’ is the new ‘YHWH’. What would our Jewish ancestors think?
This website asks that if you make a print out of the site, please use respect because it contains the name of God. ”A Name [of God] should not be written, ” reads the top right corner of the website, “so it will not be discarded disrespectfully”
Even in my dad’s conservative Southern Baptist church they give you handouts at the door to take notes during the sermon… How many of us treat those with respect after filling in the blanks.
So we’ve gone from respecting every slip of paper with the name of Christ to mass printing tracts with terrible theology and screen printing youth group shirts that have hilarious (sic) puns on Ford, Reese’s and Facebook? I’m all for God being accessible and Christians not being uptight jerks, but a) your shirts aren’t funny and kind of suck and b) I don’t think God’s accessibility is as ‘in our [church committee's] hands’ as we act.
Yesterday’s sermon touched on this. An (attempted) quotation from someone smarter than me (Kris McDaniel):
In our effort to make Jesus accessible, we lose a lot of the implications of His transcendence and the appropriate reverence for who He really is.
We will only find peace to the degree that we submit to Jesus Christ.
Kris talked about the importance of acknowledging the supremacy of Christ described in Colossians 1:15-20 and letting that change the way we live. Letting God orient the church and ourselves, not the Hot/Not trends of the day. Demoting the Creator from head to figurehead in our minds strips Him of His earned preeminence. And not only that, but when we, as Christians, act for or without God, speak for or without God, make any kind of decision for or without God, we pretty much eff everything up.
P.S. I don’t know what submitting to Jesus Christ or letting God lead looks like or how to even begin.
