My dh is not a “typical” male in many respects.  For example, he is very introspective, and has no problems talking about feelings, either his or mine, and he prefers Disney movies and “chick flicks” to shoot-‘em-up-blow-‘em-up action films.  He also does dishes, vacuums and cleans the bathroom – AND regularly puts the seat down!  On the other hand, he IS “typical” male in other ways.  He is an avid football/baseball/basketball fan, following both pro and college teams, and can recite a great many statistics on players such as when they were drafted,  which round, and from which school, where they were traded from and who the sending team got in return, etc.  He is very familiar with cars and their innards, understanding the difference between differentials and alternators and cam shafts.  And he will wear a T-shirt or sweatshirt into a state of profound disrepute, then wear it in public without the slightest embarrassment.  (When we go out and he’s wearing one such, I am tempted to wear a button that says, “He dressed himself.  I’m not responsible.”)  “But it’s COMFORTABLE!” he protests.  VERY typical male, yes?

He has one T-shirt that he’s been working on for years. And years.  It has a drawing by the artist Kliban, showing his typical fat cat, this time dressed as a sumo wrestler.  (Yes, Rob is a sumo fan, too.  NOT typical American male.)  The front and back of the shirt have front and rear views of the kitty.  However, 11 years of wear left it with every edge frayed – collar, sleeves, hem – an assortment of other holes, and what wasn’t hole-y was so thin you could see through it.  For him, it was just getting comfortable; for me, it had long been an eyesore.

So, last Christmas, I got him a new one.  The first one was an Value Village accidental find, but this time I went on-line and found a brand new one.  I figured this one would last at least as long as the first one.  It certainly would have.  Maybe even longer – because he never wore it!  I mentioned it a few times, but no results.  I never saw that new shirt again.

So, a few weeks ago, I wrote him a song and put the note with his clean laundry.  With apologies to Hank Williams, here’s how it goes:  “Please release me, let me go/‘Cuz I don’t look good anymore./I’m tired and old and worn and thin/Release me, and put me in the bin!//You’ve got a brand new shirt to wear/Without a single hole or tear./It longs for life outside the drawer./Release me, and wear me nevermore!”  It did the trick.  With a chuckle, and a sigh, he agreed to let the ratty kitty go, and start working on getting the new one “broken in”.

In my women’s Bible study group, we’ve been going through a study on Colossians for some months now.  As he also does in Ephesians 4, in Colossians 3 Paul speaks of our “putting away” one set of “clothes” and “putting on” another.  We are to put away the “old man” with its anger, rage, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, and so on, putting on the “new man” of compassion, kindness, meekness, patience, forbearance, tender-heartedness, forgiveness, and love.

Now, it’s not that our outward actions or our attitudes are what make us the “new man”.  Scripture makes exceedingly clear that only in Christ do we become the “new man”, by dying to Sin, and being raised with Him into newness of life.  Paul says that if any man is in Christ, he IS a new creation.  The old is out, the new is in.  This is all Christ’s doing, from beginning to end, not a matter of our outward actions or our attitudes. As in other aspects of life, clothes do NOT make the man!

However, once we have been made that “new man” in Christ, we are responsible for clothing that “new man”, as God gives grace.  Just as most guys might tend to keep wearing old, ratty, holey clothes, not caring how they look, so, too, all of us often would prefer to keep ‘wearing’ the “clothes” of the “old man”.  After all, it’s much easier, and feels more natural, to be angry, to gossip, to criticize, to be selfish, to indulge sensuality, and so on, doesn’t it?  But, as Katherine Hepburn puts it in one of my favorite lines from The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Olnutt, is what we are put in this life to rise above.”  Being improperly dressed doesn’t mean there isn’t a “new man” underneath.  We all have occasions when we have done our buttons wrong, put our shirt on inside out, or, ahem, need to XYZ, but as followers of Christ, those things should grow increasingly less and less comfortable for us.  We need to be discarding the ratty, degraded things of the “old man”, and be putting on the perfectly-fitting new actions and attitudes that God has prepared for us as suitable for the children of the King.  Eventually, those new clothes will feel as comfortable as a microfiber fleece sweater, and the old ones will be as uncomfortable as a burlap shirt.  Best of all, no matter how comfortable the new clothes get, they never get worn out, but get stronger and lovelier with the wearing.

Off with the holey and on with the holy!