Time for me to do some clarifying :-)
I know that the temple prostitutes and the Nazirites are two different things. And I know that that idea has been thrown around that the reason that Paul spoke as he did about short hair versus long hair was because of the temple prostitutes. I am just not sure that the people who say that are entirely right.
Paul, for all that he was a Hellenized Jew, wasn't divorced from Hebraic tradition and so I think it depends on whether or not Jewish women had in Paul's time, or before Paul's time, shaved their heads and then covered them with a religious veil. He was still a Jew - there wasn't this great delineation between Jew and Christian at that time since the Christians were mostly Jewish, so I don't see why he would have, even with the example of the pagan temple prostitutes, necessarily associated their hair styles with what is or is not appropriate for Christian women to wear. His thinking would still have been of Jewish tradition and culture.
He draws his analogy to the natural world, not to temple prostitutes. And Paul is blunt and straight forward enough, that if he had meant that short hair and shaven heads reminded him of pagan temple prostitutes, I think he would have come right out and said that. But he instead draws on the natural world as an example, even though his example makes no sense.
I wasn't afraid you wanted to drag me off to church, haha. The reason I wrote that I didn't go to church was because it occurred to me as I was writing that if anyone is reading this, they wouldn't know that I don't go to church. I wanted to give an example of head covering from what I remember from when I did go to church. However, since I haven't gone to church for so many years, I don't want to be presumptuous and say 'this and this is what they do in Mennonite churches today' since I don't really know.
As to head covering, with the idea of us both wearing it for a day, I was thinking to myself that I will no doubt be home that day and no one would see me and while you are thinking that you don't want anyone to get any ideas that you are holier-than-thou, in a way, that is what the point is - that in the eyes of the world, you are showing yourself to be modest, in this world but not of it. In the privacy of your home, when it is just you, there is no point in showing your modesty, is there?
The very idea of a visible form of faith is to show your difference to the world when you are in the world. Sitting in my house by myself watching Dr. Phil with a head covering on - well, what would be the point of that? In other words, I don't think there is anything wrong at all with wearing a head covering and people looking or staring or noticing it.
Most Mennonites dress just like everyone else. When I was a little girl and I was in a store with my mother, I would actually look longingly at little girls, from other branches of Mennonites, who wore long dresses, had long hair, and sometimes, a small kerchief over their hair. They just looked so darned clean and holy to me. I admired that.
And then my next thought was that I see people all the time with head coverings - not just Muslims, but my own ethnic Mennonite people, so religious head coverings are not strange to me. It wouldn't feel strange or brave to wear one. It wouldn't feel holy to me either. I think part of what attracts you to head coverings, is that it is something different than what you were raised with, whereas while my branch of Mennonites did not wear head coverings on a daily basis, the idea of it isn't at all strange to me and I don't think that people would look at me any differently if I did. People are often attracted to something that is new and this isn't new to me nor do I feel any spiritual need to cover my head.
Well, today was not a particularly good day for me. I am feeling sickish. Maybe it is the flu.
Layla
