Incarnation trumps abstraction. The things we do every day, the things we do all the time, matter to us far more than those things we might think (or say) are crucial elements in our worldview. This explains, among other things, why the worship wars go the way they do in church. Someone could attend our church for a year or two without hearing a series of sermons on postmillennialism, and they would not necessarily know that I was a postmillenialist. I know, it leaks out, even when that is not the subject. But still, someone could faithfully attend for some time, and not have any idea about certain theological issues that really are very important to me. But the same person could not attend for one Sunday without discovering that we sing (among other things) Genevan psalms, and no contemporary ditties. Incarnation trumps abstraction.
This is why issues that everyone would acknowledge are comparatively trivial can draw such a visceral response when you mess with them. But this response should be instructive. We say that such issues — such as what you wear to church — are “comparatively trivial,” but we are doing so on the basis of a particular assumed hierarchy of value. But what if such a systematic hierarchy is not the only hierarchy? Suppose that combing your hair for worship is in some senses more important than your rejection of foundationalism?
When teenagers fight their parents over dress (and very rarely over epistemology), perhaps this is less an indication that teenagers are trivial people than it is a demonstration of the fact that dress is far more important than all of us have been accustomed to think. One of the dogmas that parents and teens frequently share is the view that dress is unimportant in the cosmic scheme of things, and this is why the whole family has more or less a guilty conscience over getting into squabbles over a bunch of nothing. But perhaps, although the squabbles are still unseemly, the issues are really very important.
Jesus told us make fundamental judgments on the basis of the fruit. And fruit is usually found out on the edges of the branches. We need to recover an understanding of the centrality of peripherals.
Dressing right for church (and secondarily, for your mom) is a topic that invites a great deal of invigorated discussion. It does so for two reasons. First, it is far more important than just about everybody is willing to admit. And second, it is topic on which it is possible for the reductionist opponent of this thesis to be glibly (and effectively) sophomoric, e.g. “where in Leviticus are the necktie requirements?” And rather than argue, defending what appears to be a swamp, many of those who have an instinctive sympathy for the position simply cede the point.