ESPN recently featured some of the embarrassing cousins within the church family. They ran a story about a tiny Pentecostal High School in Virginia who require their basketball teams to wear long pants on the court. No, not just during warm ups, but the whole game.
ESPN has a guy who keeps up to date with the various uniform trends within sports. The writings are typically interesting and funny. In this case, at least for me, not funny. Though I’m sure the rest of the audience enjoyed the feature displaying Christians as painfully weird.
The kicker in this story is in the interview. Watch the flow:
ESPN: A basketball team wearing long pants is new to me. What’s it all about?
Principal Wayne Elliott: We’re a small Christian school, about 52 kids, and it’s just a school dress code that we have, based on our Biblical beliefs and standards. It goes back to dressing in modest apparel — that’s the dress code we set, and the kids abide by it here at the school and at all school functions.
ESPN: And that code would be “no short pants.”
WE: Correct.
ESPN: Please forgive my ignorance on this point, but is there a specific verse of the Bible that addresses this?
WE: There is, but I’d have to look it up — I don’t have it handy, but it’s definitely in Scripture.
First of all, I love how the ESPN guy goes to the Bible for his authority. The principal should have done the same. He then fumbles the question and tosses up a half-court-prayer-shot, “There is, but I’d have to look it up — I don’t have it handy, but it’s definitely in Scripture”
Actually, Wayne, its not. There is not a Bible verse that tells men that they can’t wear shorts or that they have to wear matching short sleeve shirts under their tank tops. If you are a legalist you should at least have your out of context verses handy.
But it gets worse.
Principal Wayne then goes on, almost bragging, that the girls basketball team wears “skirts” and the cheerleaders wear “long skirts”.
I don’t know if Wayne has noticed this before but the ‘skirts’ that girls wear are actually shorter than most men’s basketball shorts. But they want the girls to look like girls (never mind showing off the skin that they so ardently oppose with the boys’ team).
We should just make things easier. The boys should wear snowsuits and mittens and the girls can wear burkhas. This will prevent any questions.
What is so sad is that this school is training their students and the watching world that godliness is gained by what you wear or do not wear.
As if this was all that it took.
What gets lost in this whole discussion is that God came in the flesh and earned a righteous standing before God for his people and he died to pay the death penalty that his people had earned from their sin. This is the basis for standing before God. This is the basis and the means for godliness.
If the good principal would survey the Bible for his phantom verses that tell kids to wear pants when they play hoops he may stumble across a major New Testament theme: Christ has delivered his people from the weak and worthless elementary things of this world! What you wear or do not wear is not you basis for standing or godliness before God but rather what Christ did or did not do. To turn aside to these things as a basis before God (demonstrated by their obligation here) is to turn away from Christ. Paul makes the point in Galatians 4.8-11 that to do this is to turn away from Jesus and turn to Paganism.
You look so pious and religious in your long pants. People are impressed. In the midst of a litany against such false thinking Paul writes:
“These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” (Col 2.23)
It is all show. It doesn’t work. It actually distracts from the gospel, veils Christ’s work, confuses the unbelieving world, and exalts your own ability to earn and keep God’s favor.
If Christians are to be laughed at for something (and we should be) let it be our view of the Bible, our understanding of God, our relentless trust in Christ, or our proclamation of the gospel! But don’t let it be these whacy hermenuitics that promote rocking the fundi-wear pants for boys and the hoop skirts for girls.
(props for Seth the legalist hunter for the ref)
