Sunday Slobs -- c'mon man
Look, I get it. You don't want to be there. Your wife is dragging you to church some Sundays (Lord knows you can't string three 'present' Sundays in a row) because the two of you have a few kids, and at some point you agreed they c/should be raised in the Church. Problem is, your wife is committed, and you now find yourself three years into a 20-year program, and you're decidedly not a fan. So you're doing The Things your fraternity does: only accompanying your family one or two Sundays a month; dropping them at the door and only managing to get yourself inside the building sometime during the readings; taking a bathroom break during communion; standing slowly, and in noticeably detached apathy during hymns and responses with arms folded or dug into your pockets... and then there are the pockets. Today your pockets are in a pair of slightly torn khaki cargo shorts you bought sometime during the Obama Administration. You have to wear them below your hips to accommodate your belly, which means your shirt doesn't always stay tucked in all the way around. There's no belt, and so I sit and ponder the physics the button of your shorts is well and truly defying to remain in place against what must be significant force. Your shirt, a hard-worn knit polo in some shade of pink between mauve and peach. And what choice of footwear did you make today? Ah yes, the "good" flip-flops -- of course. Who'd have thought the Tevas with white socks from a couple of weeks ago would be preferable. Your family is dressed well, including your three year-old son who's in a button-down oxford dress shirt with a little v-neck sweater vest. He's in blue jeans, but they're clean, fit him well, and break just above his little brown dress shoes. Your daughters and wife are all in dresses -- and your daughters' dresses match. Why you persist with your slovenly appearance is beyond me. Get it together, man. Grow up. And if you can't do that, at least dress decently. Crikey.
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So, it's quite likely my dad was often overdressed relative to the rest of the parishioners at an average Sunday mass. But he was probably also one of the least reverent people there, often tried to get to the golf course instead, and on one memorable occasion, took a napkin with a Peanuts cartoon out of his pocket and jocularly showed it to me during the Transubstantiation.
branded as the last refuge of the tatterdemalion...
Can we really imagine Jesus disembarking from his donkey on Palm Sunday and thinking "WTF, look at how some of these jerks are dressed!"
You identified it right at the start of your post. He doesn't want to be there. He'd rather be doing any number of other things on a weekend morning. Drinking coffee, eating cinnamon rolls, drinking beer, watching football, mowing the lawn, washing the car, sleeping in, whatever - things that he either enjoys or that have utility in his life. He is instead having to waste his time again and again, even if it isn't every week. He doesn't want to be there, and he's bored out of his skull. His mistake isn't how he dresses; it's the dishonesty he began when he agreed to raise the kids in the church and continues to this day by attending at all.
Because, as @Ruth has pointed out, he doesn’t want to be there.
Of course, you could always welcome him genuinely without taking the piss.
Not an excuse. There are plenty of places people don’t want to be but they still have to dress in clothes that fit and are in a good state. There are plenty of places I have been where I don’t want be and have to wear something prescribed. Wearing cloths that fit and are in a decent state is ground zero for wearing clothes. Not doing so doesn’t come across as protest but as either not being able to afford decent clothes, which happens but we know not from this description, or looking like you have no self care.
Shorts and a t-shirt are fine to wear as far as I’m concerned.
One of Our Lord's parables springs to mind .....
What's the parable?
I personally think that within reasonable grounds of decency what other people choose to wear to church is no-one else's business.
We're haemorrhaging numbers quite fast enough without getting up our own arses about clothing. Why do you even care? Why does anyone need an excuse not to meet up to the standards you impose on them without their asking you to?
So much grief and friction is caused by us making other peoples' business our own in this world.
For once: quite so.
Exactly what I was about to say.
Why? Who gets to decide on "appropriate"? How well fitted is "properly"?
Isn't life hard enough without all these additional rules to negotiate?
If someone came to my church in full drag I wouldn’t bother. It is the difference in attitude that I am aiming for.
Thinking about why I'd not default to ultra-scruffy (or, as I prefer to call it, comfortable) at a restaurant (as opposed to a pub where I actually do tend to) the question in my mind is does it bother the rest of his family?
It's really worth asking *why* we think it matters what someone is wearing. And not try to get inside other people's heads; my reasons for wearing particular things at particular events may not be the same as yours. Your equating of appearance with event importance for example may not be universally shared.
For some of us, importance of social occasion is not expressed in clothing. I - autistic, scruffy - generally look much the same on all occasions as I've found some clothes I can bear to wear and stick with them. This guy may be being a scruff purely to wind up church people - in which case poo to him and also poo to us for falling for it. Or he may be wearing what he feels comfortable in, in which case I'm sure he's welcome just as he is.
For the same reason that I don't like seeing people in supermarkets dressed in their pyjamas or one-sies.
Not that I am an exemplar of sartorial elegance. Plus, it's by their fruits not by their suits.
Our parish is pretty multicultural and many people turn up wearing what they can afford. Not very much in the case of recent migrants. No-one turns a hair.
But I agree with Hugal that if it is within our means we shouldn't go around wearing anything that draws attention to ourselves whether in an over-dressed and ostentatious way or in a 'dressed-down' or deliberately 'slumming it' way.
I used to wear a suit and tie or jacket and tie for work and when I was involved with my local and regional council. I only wear a suit for weddings and funerals these days. I wear a decent jacket and trousers when I run my poetry group, because I think that sends a message that I'm taking it seriously.
I don't wear what I slob around the house in to church, but neither do I go dressed up to the nines and flaunting my relative affluence to those who can only afford sports gear and cheap trainers.
In my experience it's generally middle-class and affluent people who 'dress down'.
Why? Why not?
The message I'd get in your poetry group, if I noticed what you were wearing at all, would be 'this guy likes wearing a jacket and trousers". It wouldn't occur to me to conclude anything about your attitude to the event.
I doubt that Jesus would think WTF at any time.
I think that adults should make an effort. On the other hand my 7 year old grandson occasionally turns up dressed as a super hero.
Why should they "make an effort?"
Where does this "should" come from?
I've learned to avoid imagining what Jesus may have said about ___. He said plenty of stuff we're not holding to as it is, so the stuff he didn't say couldn't matter less.
It's my inference that he doesn't want to be there. He's making choices about how he appears and engages. I have the same reaction as I might to a piece of art I can't appreciate, or a song that's grating on the ears. I find this guy's aesthetics and behaviors off-putting. That, and the obvious strain between his wife and him. It's tragic and aggravating.
I'm pretty sure whatever else there may be in the church dress code, turning up dressed as a super hero when aged 7 is keenly encouraged. Or a dinosaur. Dinosaurs are always good.
If any other occasion requires 'dressing up' he's not going. Simple really.
I love to 'dress up' occasionally but don't mind what he wears so long as it's clean and decent.
Basically because clothing is a form of social communication - complicated by changing social norms.
Re “dressing up” - this communicates you think the occasion or setting is special: either in terms of joyous, or possibly in need of a demonstration of deference or respect.
What constitutes dressing up will depend on the social group and the setting. People dressing up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show are also doing so for a special celebration - but not in the way they typically would for a wedding, a court date or in church.
The judgement from you and the bullshit fakery from @Lamb Chopped are what a lot of people think they're going to get from church-goers, and I guess they're not wrong.
Now that’s something I’d love to see
For the record, I'm a church worker, not a member, not a goer, not even able to be doctrinally described as belonging there. This guy is a purposeful slob. I'm not hating the sinner, I'm hating his juvenile, transparent, passive-aggressive laziness, and his obvious, intentional silent tantrum. And I don't mind casting the first stone. I'd probably choose to be with this guy on some cheap public golf course on any given Sunday morning than working through three or four (if I sub for my assistant) liturgies. But I'm not. And he's not. And he could and should do better, if for no other reason, his own domestic tranquility, the lack of which is also fairly obvious on Sunday mornings.
That's exactly the presumption that I think is the problem here.
@Doublethink 's social communication idea only works if wearer and see-er speak the same clothing language. I don't think that's necessary the case - as evidenced by what @Gamma Gamaliel and I said about his poetry group.
Or to frame the question slightly differently, who am I to assess whether someone else has “made an effort”?
There is that as well.
It's evidently possible that this guy works in some customer facing job where he has to look a particular way in particular clothes. He may appreciate that church is a place where he can relax that and not be fired/shouted at/treated like shite.
But the presenting issue is, I think, that people have a habit of judging actions by "what it would mean or imply if I did that". That's a reasonable starting point, but it can only provide a tentative conclusion because we are not all the same.
You are a person who has, I would bet, made an effort on at least some occasions.
One can learn a lot by observation. I've already said I've made an inference. Happy to expand that to include a number of inferences. Does its help if I say my long-acquired guess is that his wife is unhappy about his choices and behaviors? Probably not.
Well, it helps that you admit it's just a guess. Guesses can be wrong. As can inferences, hunches and everything else where there's not a logical imperative to a conclusion.
What is it the Orthodox say? “Keep your eyes on your own plate”?
I think you've hit the bulls-eye here. The criterion is not dressing up/dressing down, but dressing close enough to the sartorial standards set for that occasion so as not to make yourself into an attention-pimp.
What is your opinion based on? Surely you have something that informs it.
I'll treat your answer to the second question with the contempt it deserves.
There's still a lot of cultural assumption here, and people who have tried to dress to a sartorial standard can get it wrong. It's weird how big a deal this seems to be. I've mentioned I'm autistic and in the workplace people are generally happy to make reasonable adjustments for me in many ways, but they still get itsy if I need to look (slightly) scruffier than they do for disability reasons. It's an odd hill that humanity seems determined to die on (whilst perfectly dressed for the occasion).
I figured there'd be a certain amount of backlash here. I was right about that, anyway.
Personally, as long as I'm not having to specifically wash and iron something that would otherwise sit in the laundry basket until I have a load to put on*, I don't find it any extra effort to wear something different. The effort it takes to put on a pair of jeans or a pair of trousers is the same, it takes no longer to tie up the laces on a pair of trainers than a pair of leather shoes, I almost always wear a shirt rather than T-shirt and adding a tie is no effort. When I come into church in black shoes, trousers and a shirt and tie am I actually making an effort compared to if I wore jeans, trainers and a shirt without a tie? It doesn't seem so to me. Though, when I'm preaching I do wear a suit which involves all the effort of putting on a jacket as well, yeah that really causes me to break out in a sweat. When it doesn't involve doing anything more than other options, what exactly does "make an effort" mean?
* I'd accept that if I was buying clothing only to wear for church this would be an effort in going to the shops to buy stuff, but the only items of clothing I have that are exclusively for particular activities are some hiking gear, a pair of swimming trunks and a black tie for funerals.
The guy is not his family. Almost certainly, the wife dresses the children, and the husband does his own thing. He wouldn't be the first person I've met who's clothing choices don't match his partner's. I'd be willing to bet that he's not intentionally trying to look like anything when he dresses on a Sunday morning - he's just getting up, showering, and grabbing some clothes.
Perhaps it's unfortunate that he ostentatiously doesn't want to be in church (all the slowly standing with arms folded business), but I'd rather he was in church that in the parking lot. He'll hear some prayers, some preaching, some Gospel - he might not pay any attention to it, but perhaps something will connect with him.