Dress Standards Matter: Case Study Bob Jones University

Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University, just announced changes in the dress standards especially for females, two in particular:  (1) permission to wear pants or slacks to class and (2) "shorts" for athletics that rise to two inches above the knee.  It didn't seem odd, but representative of BJU and the churches that send their students there.  This really is who they are and where we are today.  Most seem to celebrate this news.

A board member reported firsthand that BJU polled "Christian schools" with students there and over 50 percent took themselves something akin to the new standard.  Pettit implied that BJU would allow for students to take a higher standard of dress than required. Those young people would suffer, I would guess, ridicule on campus even worse than a state university.

I don't want to startle you, but the more Christians look like the world, the easier it is to get along with it.  The less they do, the harder it is.  Lowering standards makes it easier for kids especially to get along with the world.  Christians should be different.  The world doesn't dress the same as a Christian.  Its views, motives, goals, and philosophy are different.  Christians should turn the world upside down, not vice versa.  We shouldn't want it to be easier to be like the world or even get along with it.  We aren't friends with it.

DISCERNMENT

Some of what I've read from supporters of the new regime is that they are very happy because now young people can learn discernment by relaxing the standard. It doesn't work as an argument.  Discernment is judgment based on a standard.  If you can judge, then you have a basis for judgment.  If you can't judge, then it doesn't matter.  Part of the implementation of this change comes with implication that you can't judge by any objective standard.  Why two inches?  Why not three or four? Why no pants for class before?  Was there a biblical reason behind that?  What changed in thinking about those passages?  This is how discernment is developed, not be lowering the standard.

If standards harm young people's ability to make decisions for themselves, then you might drop all standards.  Any standard could be hindering discernment.  It is reductio ad absurdum.  Nudists walk across campus.  How could clothes be required?  It hinders discernment.  Someone is saying you can't judge things in the matters where the changes are occurring.

If something is right, then you stick with it.  You defend it.  You lose students to keep the standard, because it was right.  If it isn't right, then you explain how it was wrong.  That's how discernment is learned.  Some are using discernment and it is the leadership at Bob Jones University.  They discern that they will lose students if they keep the stricter standard.  They've studied that.  They don't believe the old standard themselves, so they won't keep enforcing it. Maybe they haven't believed it for awhile, but they did at one time believe that women should wear only dresses or skirts, and not pants nor anything above the knee.

There's a new standard for men on campus too that went unmentioned.  They are permitted now to look at women's thighs, at least two inches of them, except when a volleyball girl dives or stretches out for a ball and several more inches are exposed as the hem hikes up even further.  How much female thigh can a man be expected to see without lust?

THE STANDARD

When you look at history, it's easy to see that in dress Christians have moved with relativity to the world.  As the world changed, Christians stayed a few steps back, so that now Christian dress is more lax than the world not that long ago.  There are a few related good questions to ask.  Was the old standard a non-biblical standard?  Is the basis for the new standard the actual biblical one that overturns the old unbiblical one?  Or is this just a reaction to keep up enrollment?

The Bible is the standard, so something should be able to be proven from scripture.  It would seem that should happen either direction.  What is the objective standard?  When I watched Pettit in his presentation, he related change to the business world and asks what comes across in a professional manner.  This reads something modern and innovative into appropriateness.  The biblical concept of appropriateness relates to God and conforms to biblical living.

I believe it is true that the so-called cultural fundamentalists, which for the longest time was all fundamentalists, had not done well at instructing the biblical basis for the way they dressed.  Part of this was a widespread lack of expositional preaching.  Fundamentalists assumed rather than proved.  When dress became a major problem, it was tough to put this back in the bottle.  I don't remember my leadership in fundamentalism providing a basis for how we dressed, except for rule books.  Now fundamentalists treat dress standards like they did originate from a rule book, independent of scripture, which is false.

Two inches above the knee isn't explained from the Bible.  Whatever the reasons for skirts and dresses, there should be biblical reasons to go the other way, other than "scripture says nothing."  Scripture teaches coverage of the human body with detail about the female.  It also instructs about designed gender distinction, both Old and New Testament.  God wants His design approved by His people. It differentiates Christians from unbelievers.  Clashing with the historical teaching is also unbiblical.  Church tradition that proceeds from scripture shouldn't be overturned.  This is sola scriptura versus nuda scriptura.  Jesus was sanctified by the truth, and He expects that of saved people.

IMPORTANCE

Many others say the move by BJU puts the focus back on what's important.  It's true that anything you do takes your focus off of something else.  Adding competitive sports could do that.  I played them and they take a lot of time out of your day that could be used for learning a foreign language.  BJU, I noticed in its dress standards, spends some time prohibiting tattoos and piercings other than the ear.  I say this tongue in cheek, but while I read that, I felt my consideration of the gospel waning, yet forcing myself to snap back to attention.

You can think about more than one thing at a time.  I can hold a right view of the gospel and still think about how I should dress.  They even go together.

This gospel focus reads like Pharisaism.  "I want you all to know that I can't take the time to discuss this like you can, because I am just too focused on the gospel, unlike you."  If you are focused on the gospel, you don't have time to tell people you can't focus on dress.  You just focus on the gospel and let your focus speak for itself.  Stop announcing it to the world.  It's just a scare tactic against those who want to talk about dress, to embarrass them, a kind of spiritual correctness.  I've noticed today that unless someone is talking about lowering a standard, he can't be serious about the gospel.  It's another means of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.  People who believe the gospel want to live the gospel, so they talk about how to live holy.  Dress is part of that.

Something else new that I see with the changed standard at BJU is the lost sway it once held over its graduates and all of fundamentalism.  It's lost that.  Now the school takes its cues from its constituents and feels the danger that comes with taking a stronger stand.  Rather than applying pressure, it is receiving it, and folding.  I remember when it applied it in severe fashion.  The sting of institutional censure points at the stricter churches now.  BJU is cracking those eggs to make its new omelet.  Part of it is the competition.

BJU loses more students to state universities where there are virtually no dress standards.  It can compete with schools with stricter standards by attracting students with looser ones.  It seems to be looking for its own niche that is in line with a majority of its supporting churches. It isn't leading anymore.  That's something that some would say is good.  The churches should provide the leadership.  They have the authority.  The changes at BJU are a symptom of changes in the churches.  If supporting churches want a stricter school, they'll need to provide that leadership.

My three daughters will stick out on a state campus by wearing skirts and dresses below the knee.  They're different.  Good for them.  Too bad for the others.  It's not our job to capitulate.  We take the historical, biblical view on dress.  We want others to do the same.  It's part of living for God, being a light, which only reinforces a testimony, a witness, and evangelism.  It's often a conversation starter in a world that is ignorant about what the Bible teaches about almost everything.  Jesus calls us to be with Him outside the camp.

We're saved from something unto something else.  True salvation yields sanctification.  The from something is the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the unto something is the teaching of scripture, in precept and principle.  We know how we're supposed to dress. It isn't relative.  The objectives of it actually never change.  It does matter, because old things are passed away and all things are become new.  All things.