Why My Girls Cover Their Heads
I rarely hear the question asked, but like the proverbial elephant in the room, it’s often obvious that people are wondering about the cloth on my wife’s and daughter’s heads. When we are asked, though, the questions bely just how old fashioned such coverings have become. “Are you Amish? Mennonite? Muslim?” (I do have a full beard that tends toward the scraggly side…) And my favorite: “Do you follow all the other Old Testament laws?” (This one is found in the New Testament, thank-you-very-much.) 
It came up a few times while we were in Sarasota (this being the first time we had been down there since we began practicing the tradition), and I realized it was probably high time to explain why our family does the whole “head covering thing.” Yet, as so often happens, before my thoughts gel enough to write a post, someone else comes along and sums up the whole matter in better words than I can. This time around, my wife Nicole pointed me to a recent broadcast on R.C. Sproul’s Renewing Your Mind radio program where he said this:
I’ve read countless commentaries on 1 Corinthians that say the reason why Paul tells women to cover their hair is because of the problem of prostitutes in Corinth. Now here’s a problem with that: I don’t doubt for a minute that there was a problem of prostitutes in Corinth, and I think that it’s very helpful to go and examine the cultural situation—the life setting in which that scripture comes—to try and gain clues for understanding the whys and wherefores of certain admonitions. I think that’s a very appropriate thing.
I think on the other hand it’s totally inappropriate to assign to Paul a reason for his saying something that is different from the one he himself gives. Paul does not leave us without a rationale or a defense of covering the head. And the thing that is most astonishing here is that he appeals to creation—not to Corinth—where he appeals to man and woman as man and woman and if anything, transcends local custom. It is those things rooted and ordered in creation.
That’s why I’m very frightened to be loose with this passage. Because the Apostle doesn’t say “keep your heads covered because you don’t want anyone to be thinking that you’re a prostitute,” but he appeals, again, to creation. And he says that a woman is given her hair as a covering as part of her glory.
And that’s really all there is to it for me: Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit appeals to the created order, and thus makes this a perpetual tradition for the Church to observe, not a culturally-specific tradition which can be tossed aside when it’s no longer convenient. Sproul goes on to point out that it wasn’t until our culture began to resist Biblical gender roles that this tradition went out the window in the Western Church. This tidbit is rather telling.
I don’t want to be a snob about it—if anything, it’s a bit embarrassing to stick out like a sore thumb, even in our congregation—but it is something that I am convinced Christians are required to observe. It’s not a matter of personal preference (like how often one ought to pray, or whether you use grape juice or wine for communion); rather, it’s a matter which is clearly laid out in the Scriptures but that many don’t particularly find appealing or convenient. Such ought not be the determining factor in our obedience to the Word of God.
And yet, I have many believing friends who do not observe this tradition. And they’re still my friends (well, at least before they read this). So at some point in the near future, I intend to follow up on this topic by sharing why I think Paul wanted this tradition observed by the Church. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on the issue? I’ll admit that there’s room for me to be wrong here; I would just need to be convinced first!
