America has gone crazy casual. We need look no further than mode of dress for clear evidence. We are now free from such oppressive rituals as ironing our clothes, tucking in our shirttails, and wearing socks. We are finally allowed to wear our pajamas to Walmart, our shorts to concerts, our hats backwards, and our t-shirts to all but the most exclusive restaurants. 

Church certainly hasn’t escaped the effects of the casual invasion. Coffee started in the fellowship hall, traveled to the Sunday school classroom, and then, predictably, ended in the sanctuary. The crunching sound of the thin plastic Aquafina water bottle now competes for attention with the dinging and ringing of cell phones—all throughout the preaching. I suppose the modern human body’s need for water is more urgent now than it was during the caveman age of 20 years ago when homo sapiens had to wait until church was over to go to the water fountain. Indeed, a great paradox is that the modern bladder has less tolerance for pressure than its predecessors, unable to survive a 75-minute service without a trip to the restroom, while able to attend a two-hour movie without a single interruption. By the way, isn’t that the same movie theater that I’ve heard shames people into putting their cell phones away for the integrity of the movie, while the church tip-toes around mentioning it at all?

Almost all of us know that something is wrong. If you are a Christian or a pastor and you don’t see a problem, take a moment and Google it. A lot of concern exists out there because almost everyone is aware that casual is out of control and basically knows no boundaries. How did we get to this point? Who is responsible for letting it happen?

Most may dismiss my charge, but many independent Baptist churches, while not directly responsible, have given up any credibility to bringing some reasoning to the issue. They’ve joined ranks with the mega-churches in declaring that casual is not a problem to God. Many have fooled themselves into thinking they’re making an intellectual contribution by asking questions like, “Does the Bible say I have to wear a tie?” Brilliant! The man wearing a tank top with hairy armpits sitting in the next booth where I ate lunch said to tell you “thank you” for paving the way to his unscrupulous behavior. Independent Baptists are developing a nasty habit of arguing against a position in order to tear it down, but inadvertently creating a vacuum that is filled by a position that they didn’t think through long enough to anticipate.

The Gain/Loss Principle would be useful here by giving serious consideration to what we lose, not just what we gain. Classic liberalism is almost always arguing against something without really thinking about what it is arguing for as a replacement. Anything we argue against automatically comes with something we are arguing for, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Arguing carelessly against suits and ties and dresses is an argument for something else. The product we have is simply a result of the process we chose.

I don’t have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to church dress. I pastor a church consisting of many country folks and cowboys. Any man standing in the pulpit delivering our opening prayer on a Sunday morning may be in a suit and tie or just as likely in pressed blue jeans, boots, and a bolo tie. We have folks come straight from work on Wednesday nights unconcerned that anyone is judging them for being so casual. I’m also confident that our church members are mostly blind when it comes to how guests or new members dress. However, there is a ditch on both sides of this road, and arguing against the need to dress up will inevitably prove as harmful as arguing for the need to dress to the nines. Many thinking that they need to tear down the “legalism” and “hypocrisy” of church formalism have actually contributed to the opposite excess that will eventually do even greater damage.

It is not rocket science to see that casual dress leads to casual behavior. There seems to be plenty of evidence supporting this claim, which is simply restating what is common sense. This casual behavior becomes a problem at church with cell phones, drinks, snacks, movement, punctuality, etc. 

My concern for this is more that independent Baptist churches could use this dilemma as an opportunity to have a credible voice in the middle of all this madness and strike a perfect balance. We have an opportunity to say that our God is important enough that it’s worth the fight against being too casual in our attitude toward Him, that He deserves our undivided attention, that there is a time to focus on Him without the need for a snack or a water bottle, and that some places are sacred enough to keep coffee at bay. If libraries think their environment is too important for snacks and courtrooms think their spaces demand certain dress, what does it say about our God for churches to remain silent?

This is why I want to make a case for reverence. Religious and secular writers both recognize that reverence protects us from ourselves because it places an awe and recognition on someone greater than us, beyond us. It lifts someone else high enough that it demands we rearrange an environment in order to recognize His importance. It is not an argument that every service be formal, subdued, and quiet. It is that we promote the expectation that God still deserves those times. It is the realization that our manufactured excitement through music and programs is no substitute for a few times and places where He receives an environment designed to separate us from our stimulations and dwell exclusively on Him.

Reverence may not be the exact antonym for casual, but it is unlikely to thrive where the consumer is freed from any need to rearrange life for a few moments to highlight God’s preeminence. In the end, we should not be surprised if we remove reverence from the house of God and find that the worshippers have decided that attending church on the Internet in their living rooms is the natural extension of what the church itself taught them.