CHAPTER 10:
BUT HOW LONG IS “LONG” HAIR??
POCKETSERMONS.org
By Rick Cutter (contact)
Some Christians sincerely believe that because the Holy Spirit didn’t provide an exact measurement for “acceptably long hair,” therefore such a command would be impossible to obey. But is this true?
To help better understand this, perhaps instead we could ask: “How short is ‘short hair’ on a man?”
Remember, God provided no exact measurement to indicate “how short” a Christian man’s hair needed to be. Yet, no one seems to have a problem understanding how to obey this command. Nor does anyone seem to believe that man’s hair must be “as short as nature will allow”—presumably, just to be safe. Plainly, determining what is meant by both “short hair” and “long hair” is subjective. In other words, God has not given an exact definition of length for either case.
Expecting His people to make “common sense” decisions is nothing new by God in Scripture. For example, God has commanded that women be modest in their dress habits. We could ask: “How long must a woman’s dress be before it’s modest? Just how long is a ‘long dress?'” Does the fact that God did not specify the length and looseness required for a “modest dress” mean that He couldn’t have given such teachings in the first place? Or does it mean that women must have the “longest dresses possible”—just to be safe? Clearly, subjectivity is involved in understanding and obeying the modesty teachings.
And numerous other Biblical teachings are similar. Regarding gluttony, for example, how many 1 oz. bites can you consume before you’re a glutton? 10? 20? 30? How much should I give to the Church treasury out of my income before God is pleased? 5%? 10%? 11%? 15%?
Similarly, exactly how long is “long hair” for a woman? 18 inches? 24 inches? Or, as some (but not necessarily all) early Christians believed, “at least to the shoulders”? Regarding men, how short must “hair that is ‘not long’” be? Must men shave their heads bald just to make sure they are following God’s Word, just as some people demand that women not trim their hair to make sure it’s as “long as nature will allow?”
Common sense is often expected in our understanding of God’s requirements. It is not good for someone to bind from Scripture what God has not bound—any more than it is to loosen what God has not loosed.
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