What About The Tradition of Shaving Hair?

Micah 1:16
Shave your head in mourning
for the children in whom you delight;
make yourself as bald as the vulture,
for they will go from you into exile.

Does God prescribe how we should attend to our hair? Does God allow us some liberty on how to attend to our hair? There are traditions around us on how hair is handled, should we follow those traditions?

Some people prefer a world where the entire life in detail is scripted and we should not deviate at all. They do not believe in a God who can allow us to be creative and have some diverse approaches to anything. They believe we should all be uniform. Such people would get a Bible text that seems to address what they want, and without any reference to the context, they would claim that that is the Bible’s position on a matter.

Not any Bible text on hair issues is speaking to us on what to do with hair. To pick any Bible text on hair and then ignoring the times and circumstances of its writing, would create a misinterpretation of the Bible. Every Bible text can be applied to our times. What is normally applied is the principle and not always the detailed occurrences of that time.

Leviticus 19:27-28
“‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
(28) “‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.

The prohibition in Leviticus is related to idol worship. Caananite worshippers would express their allegiance to their idols by this particular hairstyle. Caananites no longer exist. The Canaanite gods no longer exist. This hairstyle no longer means allegiance to those extinct gods. The principle given here is that we should be keen on what our hairstyle or any other lifestyle associates us with. If the association is evil we have every right to avoid it. What would people associate your hairstyle with? That is a critical question when dealing with hairstyles and lifestyles.

Jeremiah 9:26 in some versions would refer to that same ancient lifestyle that was used in Caananite idol worship. To use this text to proscribe that hairstyle is to abuse the text and force it to say what you want. These texts must first be interpreted by establishing what it meant to the first readers and what the practice was at that time. Only after that should we now find meaning for our day. The concern that comes to our day is that we should not by hairstyle be associated with competing faiths and beliefs.

1 Corinthians 11:6
For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

1 Timothy 2:9
I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,

Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church to address various issues. At this point, he is addressing decency in worship. The corinthian non-Christian community used women in worship for it involved temple prostitution. In temple prostitution, the woman’s beauty had to be projected so as to attract sexual partners. When Corinthians were converted, Paul gives instructions that were to wean them off from temple prostitution and its related tendencies. First, women were not allowed to speak in worship, 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:12 (the same problem existed in Ephesus where Timothy was). Women should not lead in worship, because that is what they were doing in pagan worship.

Secondly, women were to cover their heads during worship. Covering hair meant modesty. Covering hair meant a complete change from what was happening in the Aphrodite temple in Corinth. In Ephesus, the goddess Artemis who was also a goddess of fertility was worshipped through sexual immoral acts that included significantly uncovered women. To these churches which had a background of women being significant in pagan worship, Paul discouraged women from leading out in worship.

Therefore the hairstyle recommended here of covered hair, is not because this is how God wants women of all ages to look like, it was a prescription to solve a problem. You do not use a prescription where no problem exists. The same passage tells us that it is a disgrace for a woman to cut her hair. Any hairstyle that is a disgrace to natural beauty should be avoided. It is not religious to look weird. You must look good if you are heaven-bound. We also learn that for the sake of distancing ourselves from the world and its evils, we must be willing to sacrifice our rights and appearances so that it is clear that we belong to God.

1 Peter 3:3
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.

In his epistle, Peter addresses excesses in hairstyle and other lifestyle issues. Peter does not condemn and prohibit but calls for moderation. Peter writes that emphasis should be on internal beauty. Internal beauty of developing the fruit of the Spirit. If our beauty is from within, it does not mean we neglect the outside, it means we put more effort and attention inside us and less outside.

We must deliberately deflect attention from our external beauty to our internal beauty. We should not be defined and identified by our external efforts but by our internal excellence. Our hairstyles and lifestyles should be those that do not shout and call attention to our hair.

Braiding of hair has been a long tradition of many years. There is braiding that calls attention to external beauty, and there is braiding that is modest. If we insist and wrongly so, that the Bible has rejected braiding of hair, then we would need another text to prohibit modern-day hairstyle of shaggy hair and other styles that the Bible doesn’t mention. There is no direct Bible text prohibiting Shaggy hair, yet it is a modern-day hairstyle. Since the shaggy hairstyle is new, it calls attention to external beauty. It may be unwise to rush into this hairstyle. Only a principle can help us in identifying the right hairstyle and not misusing texts to say what we want.

In our main text today, God speaks through Micah and He tells Israelites to shave their hair in mourning. It is a Middle Eastern tradition to shave hair when people are mourning. God tells them to mourn because of the disaster that is coming upon them as a result of their sins.

Immediately we note that God knows their traditions. This tradition has no relationship with idol worship and previously prohibited hairstyles. God allows them to use a hairstyle that is widely acceptable in their tradition. God is not insensitive to human traditions. God rejects human traditions that drive people away from Him. God accepts human traditions that do not drive people away from Him and are widely accepted. Wide acceptability means that hairstyle will not call attention to the person and distract others.

As we attend to our hair, we must be sensitive to traditions around us. We should steer clear of any hairstyle that will be part of the worship of other gods. We should avoid a hairstyle that calls attention to the external person and neglecting the internal. We must adopt hairstyles that are widely accepted since they do not distract us and others. May our hairstyles bring glory to God, in Jesus’ name, Amen!

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