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Old 03-30-2008, 04:02 PM
Connie
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Those who conclude Paul means hair is the covering are not rightly dividing the word of truth, and the vast majority of commentators recognize that much even if they disagree that we are to cover our heads today as Paul intended in his day (and that's a whole other mistake).

Paul may say some difficult things but he never says things in a purposely obscure way. If he meant hair he would not have gone on and on about a vague "covering." When he finally gets to hair it is merely to use the normal habit of women in wearing their hair long as an example for why they should cover it. Yes I understand there's something awkward about the way he uses it as an example but it's just absurd to think he wasted all those words just getting to the point of telling us to wear our hair long.

But the main reason he couldn't have meant hair is that WOMEN ALWAYS WORE THEIR HAIR LONG IN THOSE DAYS AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY until very recently. It was always a badge of shame or mourning for a woman to cut her hair. Clearly, Paul takes it for granted that women wear their hair long, and again, historically women always DID wear their hair long until the 20th century, so there's no way he was correcting a problem in the congregation of women cutting their hair when no woman in her right mind would have cut her hair in those days. The way Paul phrases it, clearly he expects people to recognize [in both verses 6 and 14] that a woman's hair by nature is worn long and that to cut it would be a disgrace, so obviously he had no reason to tell women to do what they were already doing. The best you can make of it is that since he says that "by nature" women's hair is long, then we should be wearing it long, but that is not the covering he is commanding.

The sad thing is that there are all these churches where women are doing exactly the opposite of what Paul is requiring of us, displaying their glory which is the glory of man when Paul is telling them to cover it so that Christ's glory will be seen in the assembly.

Doesn't even common sense tell you that long beautiful hair on a woman is SEXY? Wow, Hollywood sure knows that if Christians don't! Does Paul EVER recommend that Christian women present themselves in a sexy way? Aren't we called to present ourselves "modestly" as opposed to showing off one's feminine assets and attractiveness? (I asked some people at another board once how they read this passage and it brought up stories about how their mothers and grandmothers had long hair but kept it pinned up or covered and never let it down for anyone to see it but their husbands in private!)

I really find this way of misreading that scripture a terrific puzzle. It seems such a simple little thing but the devil sure has been working overtime over the last century leading people to misread it and disobey it.

Last edited by Connie; 03-30-2008 at 04:07 PM.