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| Beth and me in at Bethel's Trunk or Treat. Also our costumes for the Wicked 10k |
Children love to play
dress-up—and there’s no better time for dress-up than right now. Halloween stores have opened where
storefronts have stood vacant the rest of the year. Other stores have stocked costume items,
accessories, and other things to make your dress-up holiday more fun. Even those who don’t celebrate Halloween per se
often dress up as Bible characters or some other non-scary persona. According to US economy expert Kimberly
Amadeo, the average American spent $77.52 on Halloween this year.[i] And, of course, dress-up isn’t just for
kids. Adults make up a huge percentage
of those who will go costumed this year, either on October 31 or some other
day. Whether it’s Trunk-or-Treat or the
Wicked 10k fun run in Virginia Beach that we ran in October, I love to
play dress-up as much as the next full-grown adult.
Of
course, dress-up doesn’t end with Halloween.
This is just the beginning of the dress-up season. We deck the halls for Halloween,
Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Plates and
cutlery aren’t enough for our Thanksgiving tables anymore—now they must be
decorated and dressed to impress. Kids
put on plays, dressed as pilgrims and Indians.
We put on living nativity scenes and costumed Christmas pageants. And don’t forget how fun it is to get a coat
and tie on your six-year-old boy, and ruffles on your three-year-old girl, for
the obligatory holiday pictures in front of the fake hearth at the
photographer’s studio!
Yes,
we love our dress-up—mostly because we enjoy pretending we’re somebody that
we’re not. If you’re a meek
underachiever, you can put on a mask and cape and become a superhero for the
day. Or, if you’re the underling who
constantly gets kicked around, you can put on a zombie outfit and become
somebody’s worst nightmare. There’s a
societal reason why people love to play dress-up. There’s a lot of emotional fun and relief
when we get to act like we’re someone we’re not.
I
knew a family that struggled financially on a long-term basis. Most of their clothes were shabby, yet whenever
they loaded up the car to visit the grandparents the kids dressed up as if they
were going to church. Why? Because the parents wanted to impress the
grandparents, and convince them that they were doing better than they really
were. They were playing dress-up for the
same reason we do at Halloween—it’s often more fun to pretend you somebody
you’re not than it is to just be who you are.
Holidays,
events, and other fun reasons for dress-up are great ways to put on a show,
blow off a little steam, engage in harmless fantasy, and just have a lot of
fun. But when our dress-up becomes a way
of deceiving ourselves and others, perhaps we need to rediscover who we really
are.
Sunday
mornings are one particularly popular time for dress-up. This is fine for those people who were always
raised to show respect for God by wearing their best. Yet there can be a lot of opportunity for
deception in our church attire. For
example, we might convince ourselves that we’re good Christians just because we
look like Christians. We say
the right words, wear the right clothes, know all the right catch phrases, and
refrain from all the wrong behaviors—and by this masquerade we convince
ourselves that we’re okay with God and He’s okay with us. Yet, if we look beneath the mask of our
religion, many of us would be afraid to find that there’s not a lot of reality
there. Christians who play dress-up
might have everybody else convinced that they’re fine, upstanding pillars of the
community, or even that they possess some sort of spiritual depth. However, while we may deceive ourselves some
of the time and fool others all of the time, we can’t trick God any of the
time.
The Bible
says, “People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1
Sam 16.7 NLT).” God knows who you truly
are, inside and out—no matter what you wear.
He knows that everybody’s clothes are only a costume, a put-on to
convince people of what you want them to believe about you. Whether you wear jeans or a three-piece suit
to church, whether your shoes match your dress or not, what matters is that
you’re genuine with God, who sees you as you truly are. So come to church as you are, or as you
aspire to be at your genuine best. But
come to church honestly. Take off the
mask. Be who you are.
[i]
Amadeo, Kimberly. “What Are the Trends
for Halloween Retail Spending?” http://useconomy.about.com/od/demand/f/Halloween-Retail-Spending-Trends.htm. October 17, 2014.
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