How we treat Church...

Piggybacking off of my posts On Worship and On the Presence of God, Greg Koukl had a bit to say on his radio show of April 4th. He noticed how the concept of dressing for Church in our "Sunday best" has fallen by the wayside. Some of his comments:

But I've been troubled by these changes over the years and the fact that now nobody seems to care what they wear to church. I guess for me it depends on which church I'm going to but I tend to try to dress up a little bit... There doesn't seem to be hardly any sense of gravity anymore when people go to church. This is evidenced by the clothing they wear, by their attitude (sometimes) in church, by the kind of worship that we have... and I understand that there's a need to make religion meaningful, and the personal basis... and certain things get in the way, and there's a sense that religioius forms sometimes block out personal relationship. I'm certainly aware of that, I just think that isn't the problem anymore. ...people thought of church as a special event - and it wasn't just to dress up for other people - there was a certain kind of solemnity about it.

Unfortunately, when people hear talk like this, or read my posts on the subject, they tend to conclude that we are positing some type of legalism (just check some of the comments at Rev. Mike's post on this issue). But Greg, myself, Rev. Mike, and R. C. Sproul are not advocating legalism. In pointing out the fact that, to use one example, the dress code in the church today is so casual as to reflect a lack of respect to God, we are simply pointing out that which we deem to be the evidence of a problem. It isn't that the dress code is so wrong... it's that the sense of God's presence - the understanding of His being - is lacking.