I am generally very conservative in my dress.  A white shirt and tie are normally part of my  attire whenever I preach on Sunday.  I don’t wear them as part of a uniform, but because they seem appropriate to me in such a situation.

    With such a conservative, or traditional, approach to the way I dress, I am sometimes very uncomfortable with contemporary dress practices.  I have seen many men wearing clothing that seemed mismatched to my eye.  Things like Scotch plaid shirts and polka dot ties.  I don’t think such attire is wrong, just strange.  I am comfortable with the way I have always dressed.  No plaids and polka dots for me.

    Now I think it would be wrong if I equated a man’s spirituality with his manner of dress.  To say that someone who wears plaids and polka dots is less spiritual than I am would be a grave sin on my part.  The reverse is also true.  For someone who does wear plaids and polka dots to decide I am not spiritual  would be wrong also.  We must look beneath the externals to the man.

    Things would really get difficult if the white shirt people or the plaid shirt people were to decide their manner of attire is the only way to dress, and mount a campaign to get the others to switch.  Any number of tactics might be tried to change the other group so we would all be exactly alike.  But if they succeed, we will have lost something important, because we are not all alike.  God made us different, even in our choice of clothing.  We need to respect that difference.

    This same argument might be used concerning the differences in the way we worship.  Some folks are white shirt people.  Some are plaids and polka dots.  Some folks like to be very informal and spontaneous in their worship, while others like to be more formal, with a set pattern and more sedate expressions of their feelings.  For one to say the other is not Christian or not spiritual is to judge where we have been forbidden to judge.  For one to try to get the other to adopt a different form of worship is a sin against the God who made us different.

    With the passage of time, I have become more comfortable with plaids and polka dots.  And, while I don’t think I will ever be comfortable wearing them, I am more tolerant of those who do.

    Jesus said we are to love one another.  So white shirts and plaid shirts must learn to draw the circle of love big enough to include each other.  We may be different, but we are one in Him.