Scarlett O. said:
Yes, they are, but you don't call them dresses.
Just the word dress, all by itself, implies female.
The word pants does not imply male or female. It doesn't imply anything.
But yes, there are men who wear kilts, sarongs, lava-lavas, and other such garments which have no legs in them. All over the world at this very moment there are very masculine men who are very hetereosexual and have no desire to cross dress or experiment with homosexuality who are not wearing garments that they have to step into.
Haven't you ever seen Asian or African or Polynesian cultures where men wear long cotton garments wrapped around their waist with a man's shirt on top? Those garments are not called dresses. They are called lava-lavas. Those clothes have nothing to do with a display of sexuality.
Men wear robes in the choir loft, bathrobes around the house, hospital gowns, and long night shirts around the house.
Some good points Scarlett. It points to our bias based on ethnocentrism. "Our society is best simply because it is our society...And the whole world revolves around it." Almost every one in the world thinks that way.
The Romans in Christ's time wore togas. I almost choked on the cup of tea I was drinking imagining all the men on this board showing up in the morning service wearing a toga. Wouldn't that cause an uproar!
Dress is definitely tied to the society in which you live. And as much as people try to read into the Scripture their own preconceived ideas of "breeches" pertaining to blue jeans for men, and other such things, they are not rightly dividing the word of truth. The fact is that the Hebrews had a different dress in the Old Testament, and I would dare the men of this board to research carefully the topic and then show up on Sunday morning dressed like one of the OT Hebrew men, Moses perhaps--as he was dressed in the wilderness.
How about John the Baptist preaching a message of repentance? His clothing style was pretty interesting.
The phrase "gird up the loins of your mind" has been mentioned. It is an idiom. It refers to soldiers, farmers, and others who labor. When they had to work or run (like a soldier would), then they had to take the bottom part of their
robe (dress) and tie it above their knees so they could run with ease, not tripping over their own clothing. In this way they would be ready for battle, or for work, as the case may be. It signified being prepared for the battle.
Gird up the loins of your mind in like manner signifies being prepared for the spiritual battle that lies ahead. We are admonished to be prepared. However the allusion illustrates the dress of the men at the time--flowing robes, dresses if you will.
East Indians and Pakistanis from the province of the Punjab (which is a geographical area that extends across both nations) have a typical dress called a shalwar kameez. It is composed of baggy pants and loose fitting shirt-type dress. Both men and women wear them. The women's are more decorative than the men's. But there is a difference nevertheless. No one could ever call this type of dress immodest, though they have a "type" of "pants" with them. The waist--when stretched out--has a circumference of about six feet. That's how baggy they are. All that cloth is pulled around the waist by a draw string and tied. The top part usually comes down to the knees--on both men and women. On the men it looks more like a business shirt, except longer. On women it is very decorative, something a man would never wear. It is almost always accompanied with a scarf (for women) as well.
Clothing is different, in different societies. We can't force our presuppositions of what we wear into the Bible, just because it is in our society. Our society wasn't around in the time of Christ.
