My feeble Brain

1 Corinthians 11:4-16

As I read this, my first thoughts were men do not cover their heads when they preach or pray, and yet in our culture of little or no understanding of manners and respect that is not the case.  Today's world is much different, men give little or no thought to wearing a hat into a building of worship, and leaving it on through the service.  My second thought was if long hair is a covering for a woman, is having hair also a covering for a man and if so, should we all shave our heads?  Now this is not from the Spirit of Truth but from the foolishness of my poor feeble brain.

So turn from my foolishness and look at the teaching of 1 Corinthians 11:4-16,

“Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man of woman, for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.”

As I try to gain some reasoning on these verses, I broke a rule of mine and looked to what others were saying; One person came up with this thought; “This text has no applicability to us today.”  The Spirit of Truth answered that quick in my mind; “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)  So the opinion expressed above does not hold water, but this person who goes by Henry Rouse, I believe was on spot.

“I also wonder if we actually miss the main point of the passage, especially in my conservative (fundamentalist/literalist) tradition. We focus SO much on getting the cultural practice correct that we actually do things that go 'fundamentally' against the teaching of the text. Surely Paul's point is that the Corinthian believers were doing things that brought shame and dishonor to their "head". That is, the wives were dishonoring their husbands and the men were dishonoring Christ by what they were doing in their cultural setting, especially when it came to their participation in worship in the church. His instruction is that they should stop dishonoring their "heads" when they come to worship. The correct application for today would be to examine if we are doing things in our worship practices that culturally dishonor our husbands, wives or Christ. What I find interesting is that, in my tradition, seeking to apply this passage and 1 Corinthians 14 ultra-literally we have prohibited our wives (and all women) from participation in worship and forced them to wear culturally irrelevant and embarrassing head coverings. Have we, in fact, disobeyed the real point of the text and dishonored our wives in an attempt to force a culturally irrelevant literalistic application which is unwarranted and hermeneutically poor?”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice