5. Adventures in Hair

Thus far:

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation
3. Adventures in Jewelry
4. Beginnings of Context

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1. I've mentioned questions about hair in our journey so far. In the circles of my childhood, women were to have long hair, and men were to have short hair. By the time I was born, most Wesleyan women did not have buns. But many still did in my corner of the Wesleyan world. I never heard terms like "Wesleyan wads" or "Methodist buns" until seminary, but those are playful descriptions I heard later.

My three oldest sisters sang in a "Schenck Trio." They were once canceled from singing in a service when it was discovered they had bangs -- with some hair cut around their ears. In the 1960s, some of them had shoulder-length hair. That was quite liberal for some of the holiness circles we swam in. 

When one of my aunts cut her hair short, I remember hearing the comment that she had "backed up on light." It was one thing not to know any better, the thought went. But it was really bad if you had once known what you were supposed to do and then violated the rules. It was seen as defiance against God -- a threat to one's eternal destiny.

2. So where did these hair standards come from? To be honest, I think the real driving forces were resistance to cultural change. Jonathan Haidt has suggested that, in a typical society, the majority is resistant to change. Their middle name is "friction," and they like to perpetuate the status quo ("We've always done things this way"). 

On the other hand, there is also a minority in society that is more innovative by nature. They like change. They like to try new things. So, the majority in a culture are often suspicious of change while others love to explore new possibilities. If you haven't seen the animated movie, The Croods, it's worth a watch.

Haidt's idea is that it helps a society survive if, while most people are wired for stability, a strategic few are wired to be explorers.

Hairstyles and women's dress started to change significantly in the mid-twentieth century. After World War II, women were increasingly empowered and entering the workplace. And a lot of men (and women) didn't like it. It's only natural that they would seek a divine basis to decry such changes. It's a predictable pattern. Use God to give a divine imprimatur to your resistance to societal change. God doesn't want you to change your hair. God doesn't want you to wear pants or slacks.

So, I suspect thus that the move against women having shorter hair or wearing pants had as much to do with resistance to social change as anything else. It's basic sociology. Nevertheless, there were passages in the Bible that were used to say that God opposed these changes, namely, 1 Corinthians 11.

3. I think for most Christians, 1 Corinthians 11 is a somewhat obscure passage in the Bible. Many Christians read it and think, "What is THAT all about?" It is beginning to get a little more play right now because husband headship in the family is becoming a more common discussion. But for most of my life -- except for my holiness circles -- this was one of those chapters that few "selected" in their paradigms as central for today.

Take 1 Corinthians 11:10: "A wife ought to have authority on her head because of the angels." Whaaat? I used to tell my students that if a verse seems crazy weird like this, they've probably hit a point of great cultural difference between our time and that time. Another example is when Jacob puts speckled rods in front of mating sheep when they are procreating so that they will have speckled offspring. Whaat?

Some will want me to note quickly that these are not always instances where an ancient perspective is in place. They could also be instances where our culture is blind to some value that we should pay attention to. In other words, we must keep in mind that a verse may seem strange because our culture is so off track. This possibility must certainly be kept in mind.

However, we need to understand the passage first clearly before we can evaluate any cultural difference. To do so, we must get our heads around the paradigms and worldviews of the biblical worlds. It means knowing the historical and cultural contexts of the Bible. 

The biblical text alone will only take us so far on that journey. Why? Because this sort of context is often not explicit in the text. Far more often, it is assumed. It was the water in which the biblical authors and audiences swam. 

They did not need to spell out the cultural context because it was thoroughly assumed. When my mother wrote me letters, she didn't have to explain to me that she had given me birth and that I had grown up with her. We both knew all that. In the same way, the most foundational assumptions of a letter like 1 Corinthians did not need to be spelled out because they knew them thoroughly. Indeed, they were likely unaware of their own cultural assumptions to a large extent.

I've told my students for years that what we get in Paul's letters is "clean up on isle six." The most core and central themes of Christianity (like the cross) were matters he would have covered in person when he founded churches. In his letters, we are getting instructions on the more peripheral issues that arose in his absence. When I teach 1 Corinthians, I always say how sorry I am for them for being so messed up. But I am delighted they had so many problems for our benefit. Think of all the things we wouldn't know about the earliest church if the Corinthians had not been so messed up!

Paul says in this passage, "Does not even nature itself teach you that if a husband has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?" (1 Cor. 11:14). I'm sure that most of his audience probably resonated with this statement. I frankly find it puzzling. Mind you, I grew up in holiness culture. I have an intuitively negative reaction to men with long hair. I just don't see how nature indicates that its dishonorable. The word nature here seems to mean something more like culture or custom.

Paul is clearly tapping into the worldview of his first-century culture here. I have never been able to figure out any natural argument for men having short hair or against long hair on men. His statement amounts to something like, "Everybody knows that it's dishonorable for a husband to have long hair."

4. So what was 1 Corinthians 11 really about? ...