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I'm a Chrisitian, so it really hacks me off when "fundamentalists" rant on about how we should all glorify the scriptures' Christ by wearing our hair short. Okay, so they think that the Messiah is of the scriptures? Worship the God not the book, guys. If they're going to hold their interpretation of the Bible, they might want to read it properly.
Visit
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/5043/Shorthair.html
to see what I mean.
I did not make this site! If it offends you, don't give me abuse. If this is your site, and I've offended you... yay! My day is complete :¬) This site points out that the "older generation" never bothered that Jesus was traditionally portrayed with long hair until men started wearing theirs the same. And that the Bible mentions the attire of a harlot (but it doesn't say what that my be).
If you can't be bothered to look at this site, read this passage instead. Speaks for itself, methinks.
"Parents, start your son with haircuts and short hair when he is a baby. With discipline and, if needs be, punishment, see to it that as he grows up he uses his hair as a symbol of patriotism and Christianity,"
If you thought that was good advice... I might be tempted to point out to you that I am goth (see 'the Gothic look') as such you probably think I'm some kind of child-killing satanist. I might also remind you that it is God who accepts me as I am, in his image, even if you (in your bigotry) don't... But telling you all that would be too petty, and as such below me. It might even do psychological harm to you. Not that you have much of a mind, by the sounds of things.
Apologies to anyone who this doesn't apply to (ie all the geniune posters here), just had to vent some angst. Better now :¬)
>SNIP<
I know exactly what you mean. I am a Christian as well, *plus* I am a nudist. You can imagine what the Fundies would have to say about that!! If you're interested in how a Christian can be a nudist, check this out:
http://members.home.net/swbell3/Scott/unashamed_nudist.htm
In the meantime, keep it long! (with no tan lines)
Scott (of the long hair)
A nudist, huh? ("That's what I said.")
Easily resolved...
You hark back to a time when Mankind were unashamed to be made in the image of God. Personally, I don't believe in that part of the Genesis story. But the fundies claim to take EVERYTHING literally, hehe.
Nice site, by the way. Especially poigniant with the tan-lines. Not that I have any. Not that I have any tan...
I am interested in looking at documents, information that would refute this to any potential fundamentalists that may challenge me with those arguments presented in the link you provided.
I find that it is important, when approaching such an argument that you must be able to back the argument with Scripture and integrate it so that you may successfully refute what they are saying (in) the document.
The reason why I say this is if one can't refute it, then maybe that might be the right view?
Again I say that I am on your side with the longhair issue, but that particular document had some rather (valid appearing) points and issues.
I am sure that some research (if you have not already done it) and I shall too (and post them here) will provide the ability to refute that and determine whether or not it is indeed a false interpretation.
I believe the Scripture is very important in that it is a mechanism to reveal the God we worship and to help us to understand how we can live lives more to his desire and approval. But Scripture can be misinterpreted and I feel that this may be the case with the linked document. It is important that we find evidence that what is mentioned in that document is an incorrect interpretation and base our philosophy/decisions on that premise, and use that information to refute fundamentalists who lean on those interpretations.
(I know this is longwinded, but important) The other side of this is that we may find that interpretation is correct and maybe, just maybe God is trying to tell us something that desires for us. The important thing is to be open-minded to the things of God and respond to His conviction either way....
I am just interested in the right direction according to the Truth of God's Word as interpreted correctly by the Holy Spirit.
That's the point though, valid-LOOKING.
Yes, scripture is important. And it would be grrrrrt to silence those fundamentalists with the fact that the Bible doesn't say Jesus looked like...
Blond (who knows?) shoulder-length hair,
purple eyes.
Medium/athletic build
Well-endowed (c'mon! He IS the son of God!)
Oh yes, I'm open to the possibility of my hair being sinful, the attire of a harlot. But these people aren't open to such a possibility, so my bet is...
One cannot take the Bible alone without looking outside it for meaning of the words in it. For example, it may mention a "sheep" but it won't tell you what a sheep is. For that you have to look at secular sources. :-)
http://www.newadvent.org/faq/920201.htm
In the first century in the Middle East, the following can be said about hair:
Women often had hair to their waists.Ordinary men had hair down to the shoulder area.Only among Romans, their soldiers, and their slaves, did one find shorter hair to be common.
One could describe the above three items this way, respectively, concerning hair for men:
Long - To the waist, found on women.Ordinary - In the shoulder area, found on men.Short - Cut way up on the head, found on soldiers, slaves, and an ethnic group to which Jesus did not belong.
Paul does not mandate that your hair be short. He only condemns it being "long". There have been so many short haired people about us in recent years that the meaning of the word "long" has become distorted. But Bible truths remain unchanged. Paul was not condemning the hair length that Jesus and all his male friends had. You can bet your life he was not advocating that we abandon that look for the one of those who murdered Jesus.
We've had two threads on here that confirm the ideas Paul had. One is in the discussion that women may have longer terminal lengths. The other is one a few months back where we talked about how men with hair below mid-back got mistaken for female a lot more. Both of these point to a gender-bending concern that crops up below the mid-back level. It was gender-bending that Paul was addressing - he was discussing men and women in the same breath.
These threads also tell us these lengths are coded into our genetics and our human psyches to some degree, items timeless as the Bible. They are not about current fashion. In our own discussions, we can ourselves see where humans feel the line is crossed - in the region we call "mid back".
I'm certainly not saying I agree with condemning gender-bending, guys with waist-length manes, or some other things that pushed Paul's buttons. But I myself can put to rest the notion that Paul was condemning longhairs who have manes in the length most guys with long hair go for - hair above the middle of the back.
Now go hug Jesus. His hair length is O-KAY.
Only among Romans, their soldiers, and their slaves, did one find shorter hair to be common.
Short - Cut way up on the head, found on soldiers, slaves, and an ethnic group to which Jesus did not belong.
Why do you keep posting these links, A. MICHELSON, It proves no point, other than it's extremely annoying. I mean, does anybody body on this board, care other than you?? Get a life!!! These prisoners made a choice to commit crimes against mostly innocent civilians. I bet you think they should just get away with it!
You got that right!! There seems to be so much apathy these days that nobody cares what goes on Long Hair HyperBoard!
It's quite true that everyone is clamoring for more law-and-order. This is because criminals are considered public enemies, and to many people, giving aid-and-comfort to the enemy is considered treason! HOWEVER, everyone should be given the right to free speech, and the rights of minorities should be considered, no matter how unpopular these groups are!
quite true... though i think my attitude could be better described as antipathy as it seems that much of the activity here has been ceded to flame posters. if disagreements were expressed more civilly that would be one thing... but it seems that many are incapable of voicing disagreements with any respect for anyone else. this is supposed to be a support board, but reading through the posts is likely to create quite another impression.
i find that i can't agree with you 100% on the prisoner issue, but am hesitant to jump on the justice bandwagon as it appears court verdicts are as much a result of skillful 'lawyering' as of dissemination of facts. besides, the big law and order movement has as much to do with crafting 'tough-on-crime' images of politicians as it does with jailing the truly guilty. it seems that time and time again a story hits of someone convicted of a capital felony being exonerated because exculpatory evidence forcibly suppressed by the state is brought to light many years later. therefore i can't in good conscience advocate forcibly shearing someone because 12 ordinary people were swayed by an adept prosecutor.
John and all,
Well, this would depend on what you consider flaming. Calling someone names and such just because you disagree with them is one thing, being colorful in expressing your disagreement with someone else's points, analysis or conclusions is something else and again. I don't consider being colorful necessarily flaming I do however, consider name calling to definitely be so - especially if there is no other content in the message.
I live in San Diego, California and this is a town blessedly free of high violent crimes rates. Our crime rate doesn't hold a candle to LA's or New York's or even to DC's. However, things are different there. For one thing, LA and NY are far bigger than San Diego so that gets factored into things. So, my perspective is not as jaundiced as someone living in the war zones that parts of those bigger cities have become. In those parts of the country, the call for "law and order" is even more vehement than out in the whitebread suburbs. Just look at the black community's lack of support for the whole "Mummia Madness."
By and large, the vast majority of prisoners in jail deserve to be there. Yes, the system may be biased against minorities, and yes, the system might prosecute them more vigorously, and yes, the system may judge them more harshly than white folks. However, the overwhelming majority of people in jail did commit the crimes for which they are convicted. Perhaps had they been white or wealthy they would have been able to weasel out of their jail time. They aren't so they didn't. Too bad. If you can't do the time, then don't do the crime.
As to the capital punishment convictions being overturned on late arriving exculpatory evidence, that just shows me the absurdity and fundamental injustice of capital punishment in general. I am opposed to the state having the right to take the lives of its own citizens on a number of grounds. However, all of that has little to do with the original point at hand.
Yes, an adept prosecutor can sway things. However, that in no way reduces the justification for fairly applied grooming policies in prisons. Prisons are supposed to be harsh and unpleasant places. So long as the haircutting policy is administered fairly then I have no problem with it. Prisons are in prison because the have been convicted of deliberately violating their social contract with the rest of society. They are a proven threat to the rest of us and we, as a society, have decreed that such threats be punished. Being forcibly required to be in a shaved and shorn state is but one part of that punishment. As I have stated in a previous post on this subject. If it helps convince the prisoners serving their time that being in jail is an undesirable thing, then perhaps they will be better behaved once released. We can only hope.
Sincerely,
Madoc Pope
Or they can become worse-behaved because of undesirable conditions. Remember the Santa Fe Prison riot in 1980? Prisoners became so stir-crazy that they were burning each other's heads with blow-torches! Now, that got rid of the hair!
Jonathan and all,
I think A. MICHELSON's posting links to other messages is reflective of a trend I first encountered in my high school public speaking class. This was way back in the 70's and the teacher was lamenting the growing trend of debaters simply firing off volumes of quotes from "established" sources. This as opposed to having to make compelling arguments based on their own analysis and words. Anyone can quote someone else. Doing that doesn't make for a very compelling argument or even for a real dialog on the points at hand. I think A. MICHELSON has fallen into this trap.
I do appreciate his diligence at keeping track of all the different things people post on this Board and then of being able to accurately compose his messages using those links. I just wish he would include more of his own thoughts so that we may have a better understanding of his conclusions. He hints at this but his hoping that the mere act of referencing someone else's post will do the job for him is an action bound to fail. It just leaves the rest of us a bit confused, and at times, annoyed.
Sincerely,
Madoc
i think your post is well reasoned and researched. i agree with you.
i think that paul's criticism of longhair on men is intended for a gender bending cult called the galli who wore their hair long and curled. they also practiced castration of their members.
the problem for me is that paul remains an offense even after his views are softened through careful analysis. i particularly reject his criticism of women. i still consider his letters to be extremely important to my faith, i just do not agree with everything he said.
t
at the end of your message?
Nova(John)
On a Mac, you hold down Option and hit the L key, like this: ¬.
-J ;¬D
in windows hold down alt and type 0172 on the number pad :¬)
¬ wow, that's cool. anything else you know u wanna share with me?
since it is off topic you may email me with any questions related to generating keyboard characters. make sure you delete 'nospam.' from the address before you send or the email will bounce.
It probably said that Jesus had a short moustache ;¬)
I've visited the site and find it is one sided against long hair on men since the 1960's but says nothing about long hair on men in the time of Isaac Newton who had long hair and who was also a Christian.
Then what about William Shakespear, Boyle, Pascal and all the scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries who all had long hair.
As for Jerry Rubin's reveloution with men showing their defiance of authority by growing their hair long, Jerry Rubin himself subsequently became a stockbroker in New York and I've read his advocacy of a kind of "caring capitalism" in a multi-level marketing magazine. So much for his "revolution."
Furthermore, I don't find anything "revolutionary" about most long hairs today, besides a certain opposition to authority and control.
Whether or not Jesus had long hair or not is hard to tell, since there are no known pictures or drawings of Jesus and the long haired Jesus we see is in most paintings of him is an arists impression.
Anyway, the very fact that Jesus overturned traders' tables in the temple, offended certain segments of the Jewish priesthood in his day and criticised the religious practices of that day show that he too went against prevailing authority which was why he ended up nailed to the cross.
If the Americans had not defied the authority of Britain in 1776, the United States would still be a colony of Britain or would still pay respects to the British Queen or King.
If the French had not defied the authority of the corrupt king, they would not have progressed to become a republic.
If the Russians had not defied the culture of the tyranical and parasitic monarchy and they would not have broken free and established a socialist republic.
A teaching that it's a sin to go against authority only serves one purpose -- ie to reinforce the rule of tyranny and as such serves as an opium of the masses -- making them forever subservient to authority, even when it is unjust and tyranical and I don't think that could be the teaching of a loving and compassionate god.
Charles
I agree. If Jesus were here today, I doubt He would call himself a christian. Too many of today's "Christians" are obsessed with controlling individual's hairstyles, damning people because of their sex life, making people shammed of their bodies, swinging their self-righteous sword at whoever they call a sinners, punishing those who are not fortunate enough to have a successful marriage, putting stumbling blocks in front of those who don't call themselves a Christian, etc. Jesus would probably call most of today's active Christians hypocrites who keep the outside "clean" yet leave what is inside neglected, who put their self-righteous beliefs above what a good God may have intended.
Gee, if it's true that short hair is a sign of patriotism and virtue and all that, then I guess by the Fundie standards, Timothy McVeigh was a very holy man. Meanwhile, I, who have shoulder length hair, have not been in any remotely physical altercations since age 9 (I'm 27 now), and have abstained from sexual intercourse for the past almost 4 years, must be the devil incarnate. But then again, being a Catholic, even if I shaved my head, I'd probably still be considered a devil by them.
Also a little historical note about the ancient hairstyles. There used to be a Roman sect who shaved their heads in honor of their pagan gods. Many Galilean men at that time would grow their hair out as an outward sign that they did not participate in those rituals.