You can assess an ideology by the aesthetics of its disciples. Or, as Douglas Wilson puts it, your theology comes out your fingertips. Or, as the subtitle of this post puts it, how you dress shows what you believe. And, there aren’t really any exceptions. When I describe “dressing well,” I don’t use it as synonymous with “dressing expensively.” I usually mean neat, dignified, representing the polarity of the sexes, and not slovenly. This could apply to white collar and blue collar families in different forms, but both would be dignified. Dressing well dramatically affects your performance.
But in addition to affecting your own thoughts, how you dress is rightly – for other people. A husband is blessed to look across the room upon his wife and children and see them dressed charmingly and attractively when everyone sits about together doing hobbies and spending their evenings together. Seeing attractive people everyday of your life says something accurate about the Father’s world. There is an objective reality of beauty that must be taught to your children.
In a classroom setting, the data is dramatic showing children attain higher academic achievements when they have a pretty teacher. How much more is a child affected if they have a pretty mother!
Dressing well effects every person in the family to believe they are the nobility of the earth, their home is orderly and stable, and they are uncommon and can accomplish the uncommon.
Above I mentioned embracing the polarity of the sexes (this is essential), but polarity is important in many parts of the christian life. I will apply it a second way to dress. Current dress in America is the opposite of having polarity, it is a sludge in the middle. Most of what the population wears is not distinguishable from pajamas. There should be dichotomy between pajamas and what you wear the rest of the day.
When you dress with dignity, it is more delightful to enjoy putting on pajamas at the appropriate time to watch a cozy movie with your family. Athletic clothing is for doing athletic activity.
Distinctives, or, polarity is right, and feels right. What do I believe is beneath excessive casualness and the cultural acceptance of wearing pajamas and athleisure in public? The worship of the immature.
From O.W. Root, “We live in an aesthetic race to the bottom. Go the other way.”
Beauty doesn’t have to be expensive. There’s collared shirts and linen dresses at goodwill all the time.
Do you think a child who everyday wears a wrinkled neon green graphic t-shirt that says “DINO-MITE DAWGS” with a dinosaur and an anthropomorphic hot dog doing a toe kick on the back of a television will be spiritually affected that he lived his childhood in this clothing? Of course.
Wearing clothing of dignity will certainly shape a child. Dignified clothing can still have elements of youth and playfulness. But, increasingly most children’s clothing is aesthetically psychotic. Whether the child consciously wants a better shirt isn’t what makes it good for them. Children need their appetites shaped.
What a woman is wearing at home where only her children see her is important.
What a woman wears to pick her child up from his christian school is important.
What a woman dresses her children in is important.
What a woman is wearing when her husband gets home from work is important.
“…all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.”
Proverbs 31
You can assess an ideology by the aesthetics of its disciples. Or, as Douglas Wilson puts it, your theology comes out your fingertips. Or, as the subtitle of this post puts it, how you dress shows what you believe. And, there aren’t really any exceptions. When I describe “dressing well,” I don’t use it as synonymous with “dressing expensively.” I usually mean neat,
