Your experience when you dropped "dress standards"

[HopePreacher]

I didn't drop my standards and I never will. Jesus gave us the standard:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart"
"Love your neighbor as yourself"
"By this will men know that you are my disciple, that you love one another"

What about dress standards? I have contended for many years that to a great extent society dictates our dress standards. Let me explain; When I was a young person in the church my pastor taught that a girls dress should cover her knees at all times. In fact, that was the standard for most of the girls in my school. That was in the 1960's - however, if those girls who lived the standard of that day attended a church from the 1860's they would not be allowed in the church with that much flesh showing.

In the early days of pentecost it was considered a "shame" for a woman to wear a red dress - she would be thought of as being a harlot. When I got married in 1968 my fiance almost called off the wedding because I wouldn't let her bridesmaids wear red dresses (it was a Christmas week wedding). Today wearing red is a common thing.

As societal mores change, so does the church. Now, with that being said, there are "standards" that do not change. The standard is modesty, sobriety and humility. If we loose those it doesn't make any difference what legal standard is set there will be no holiness.

An unfortunate reality of strict "standards" is that those standards become the standard by which we judge others - once we start judging others by our standards we are on that slippery slope that Jesus warned us not to get on. If we are willing we can learn a lot from the pharisees, and we can learn even more from the response that Jesus made to their accusations of violating their traditions.