Women cutting their hair

The Apostle Paul was without a doubt chosen by the Lord to take the gospel message to the Gentiles. While delivering this message, he not only visited many cities and countries setting up churches, but he also wrote letters to several churches in order to instruct them in the way of the Lord, to chastise them because of wrongs they were committing, and to answer some questions they had written to him. Most of Paul’s letters were very straightforward and it was clear what he was explaining to the people. The major part of his writing was used to explain his ministry and his position on a number of subjects and to give specific instruction on church order and doctrine.

But in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul also re­sponded to some questions that the Corinthians had written to him about, as he stated in chapter 7, verse 1. “Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me.” As anyone would know, who has corresponded to others in a letter, there are times when you answer a question that you have received in a previous let­ter. If another person reads your letter, not knowing exactly what the question was, they may not quite understand what the answer means, or what it is referring to. There are also cases when the person answering the question might repeat all or part of the question before giving the answer, which would make it appear to a third party reading the letter, that what they were reading, was the receiving person’s position on the subject instead of it being a repeat of the question by the person who was going to answer it.

 

I firmly believe this is what has happened on a few occa­sions in the letters that Paul wrote and has caused some misleading doctrines to be formed in today’s churches. Too many times we have a tendency to take statements out of context and accept literally what is said, instead of trying to understand what message is being conveyed by the whole document or the com­plete passage.

 

It is important to remember that the Word of God is consis­tent from Genesis to Revelations. God does not change his mind about anything He says, for what He says the first time is per­fect and cannot be improved upon. So if we read something in His Word that we think contradicts something else we have read, we must keep in mind that we might not understand what we have read because there are no contradictions in God’s Word.

Keeping these things in mind let us examine some of the passages that I have been referring to and see if we can better understand the position Paul really took on certain issues.

 

The first passage to be examined is in First Corinthians chap­ter 11, verses 1 through 16. These verses deal with the subject of a person having their head covered while praying or prophesying in the church. Many modern day churches, using this passage for reference, teach their followers that women should not cut their hair, since their hair was given to them as a covering and if they do, it is dishonorable.

 

Let us start out by looking at the 5th and 6th verses. The 5th verse says that if a woman prays or prophesies with her head uncovered, she might as well have her head shaved. And the first part of the 6th says the same thing, and then adds if it is a shame for a woman to be shaven, let her be covered. It seems obvi­ous here that Paul was asked if women shouldn’t wear a head cov­ering or some kind of veil over her head in church, because the questioner believed it was not proper for her to be uncovered. He goes on to say that if she isn’t covered, she might as well have her head shaven. Now there is no way these two verses could be speaking of anything except a woman wearing a covering over her head in church and the person must have wrote Paul to see if he agreed with them.

Paul tells them, as is recorded in the 13th verse, “Judge in yourselves” or “You be the judge.” Then he asks them “is it come­ly (proper) that a woman prays unto God uncovered?” Then he as­sumes their answer will be “no it is not proper in our judgment.” Then Paul goes on to tell them, as is in verse 15, “a wo­man’s hair is given to her for a covering”. Saying, to them, I’m sure that it is not necessary for a woman to wear anything on her head, for her hair serves the purpose. I do not see anything here where Paul agrees with them that a woman should wear a covering on her head, but he tells them to decide for themselves, and if they decide she should, they should consider her hair to be the covering.

 

Paul continues in the 16th verse to tell them, if any man wants to be contentious or quarrelsome, there exists no such customs in the churches that he is associated with for a woman to wear a head covering.

 

Nowhere in these passages do I see Paul saying that it is wrong for a woman to cut her hair. He does say in the 15th verse that it is a glory for a woman to have long hair, but says nothing about it being wrong to cut it. I do not believe that all the words you read in this passage are those of Paul. The statements in verses 5 and 6 sound like the words of the questioner and not Paul, saying that if a woman’s head is not covered, she might as well be shaven.

 

Now does this sound reasonable? Does this sound like some­thing our Lord would require? If it is, then another scripture should back it up for “by two or three witnesses, every word should be established.” But there are no other scrip­tures in the Bible that say a woman should not cut her hair and this doc­trine is obviously a misunderstanding of the meaning of this passage in 1st Corinthians chapter 11.

 

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