Shared in My Family and I
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There are a lot of things we do, that can become habit. Movements... without thought. It is my aim, through this entry, to bring my heart back into remembrance in regard to why my family began practicing the ordinance of headship veiling. Not to argue the importance of a woman being covered. I've re-read the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 11:1-16 in particular, as well as other references to veiling), and have read my husband's old writings on the matter. I've read commentaries, and other works for and against the idea of a woman covering her hair. I've listened to sermons on the topic, and have read transcripts of sermons. I've been reminded of the Greek translations and even some Hebrew references. And I still wholly believe this is right and good. Best yet, my heart is deeply involved, again. Years ago, I'd never heard of such a thing as headship veiling. The only women I saw with a covering on their heads were nuns. Or, possibly, an Amish woman depicted on the front cover of a book or two at the local bookseller. I never gave it thought. Then, a stranger I met began talking about the Scripture she found in 1 Corinthians. She wondered aloud what it meant. Other women said it was the hair that Paul was referring to. Confused, I asked my husband. He shrugged his shoulders. The issue was dismissed. A year or two later, God wasn't through with me. He brought a few more women into my life who questioned the same Scripture references. One was practicing covering. The others were wondering about it. Now I was wondering about it, too. Was this something I should be thinking seriously about? More time passed. And, again, God brought this issue back up in my life through other Christian women. We were wearing dresses, exclusively, by this time. And I began to read everything I could on this topic. Both for and against the idea of covering. I began feeling as though I really ought to be wearing a covering on my head. So, I took the issue to my husband. "If it's something you feel God would have you to do, then you need to obey." he told me. The next day, I set to work at my sewing machine. I made my first veiling... just a triangular scarf. My oldest daughters asked what I was doing. I told them, and they asked me to get my Bible to read them the Scripture in 1 Corinthians. They asked me to make them scarves, too. Things were moving more quickly than was comfortable. I wasn't so sure about all of this. It was daunting to me how open and excited the girls were about this issue when I, myself, wasn't nearly so certain! Shortly after the first time the girls wore their coverings, they went across the street to the park to play for a short while. I remember being busy in the kitchen and looking out the window to check on them... and seeing them swinging in their dresses, their veilings flipping up with each downstroke... A myriad of emotions flew through me. I caught my own reflection, sometimes, in the mirror or in the microwave door... and couldn't get used to it. At first, my husband was supportive, but a little unsure. Like me, he was still getting used to the idea. One day, I sent him with a sermon tape by Denny Kenaston (Charity Gospel Fellowship) in his lunch box. I'd listened to it the afternoon prior, and enjoyed it tremendously. It had answered a great number of questions I still had, and further cemented things in my mind. It opened up other Scriptures that applied, and introduced still others I was yet unaware of. That evening, on the way home from work, my husband listened to that tape. And I would later find him on the sofa in the living room reading his Bible and other references, hungrily. The issue of a Christian woman's veiling became a great study for him. One day, we were going to head out for some shopping. I was tired of "looking different", and got into the van without my covering. My husband was still in the house, getting last-minute things together. When he joined us in the van, he took one look at me and said, "Where is your covering?" "In the house," I told him. "Well, then, go in there and put it on." Just when I was ready to give up and forget the whole affair, he pulled me up and encouraged me. We used the basic triangular "scarf" for some time. But then, I was disturbed by the fact that other worldly, absolutely ungodly people were wearing them, too. Men on motorcycles with oodles of profane tattoos and long, stringy hair... women in a skimpy state of undress, sporting tons of makeup and foul language... I wanted to be distinctly set apart from them. I was a Christian. I was not wearing a "bandanna" as a "fashion statement". We began wearing a traditional charity-style hanging veil. It was more "formal" and "distinct". The first sister in Christ I met in person who practiced veiling was my dear friend Deanna. Other than her, and my oldest daughters, I felt very odd and alone. Meeting and getting to know her was a blessing! It has been some years, now. Our practice of veiling has continued. It is not something we do because we feel we must. It is something we do because of the love Christ has first shown us. We read it in the Scripture and believe it is an ordinance: 1 Cor. 11:2 "Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you." There is a number of outworkings that have occurred in our life as a family. This is just one of them. I am happy to be set apart from unbelievers and "lukewarm" Christians (Revelation 3:16). People can tell, with just one glance, that I am a professing Christian. For interest's sake, I would like to share a "snippet" of what my husband wrote some time ago on the matter of a woman's veiling, with his permission. Again, my intention is not to "push" the issue of covering, but to possibly answer questions you may have about why we practice it. Also, I am sharing the words, below, for those who have been thinking, seriously, on the topic. My greatest advice would be to take this matter to your husband... and to the Lord. Pray! God will help you to know what is right to do. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (A very small portion from my husband's files:) "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation." God says that we are to interpret that we may edify or literally "to build" the church of God (1 Cor 14:26) and we can not build a unified church building in interpreting on our own. To know what God's will is concerning the covering, one needs to put aside what opinions he may hold while he seeks God's will, seeking to know His heart in matters "harder to understand"...
My Hair is my Covering ... Lets look further back in verse 5 and 6 "But every women that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonereth her head : for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven let her be covered." Let's assume that the hair was the covering. That means that you have here a woman praying or prophesying with no hair or covering. How she can have no hair and then have her hair cut or head shaved? Common sense tells us that it must not be the hair Paul is talking about. Furthermore, the word covered in verse five is "Akatakaluptos" in Greek meaning unveiled, derived from the word "Kata" meaning to do something and "Kalupto" meaning to cover or to hide. So the two meanings together would mean to do something that would hide you. In verse 6 Paul writes "let her be covered" which the words "be covered" in Greek is "Katakalupto" which means a veil that fully covers, as oppossed to the word "covering"or "Peribolaion" in verse 15 means "something wrapped around" or "Vesture" Which by the dictionaries definition is related to a natural covering like grass, grain something growing like hair. So Paul did not pick his words here in this chapter as unwisely as some would think... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John Darby's Synopsis of the New Testament 1 Corinthians Chapter 11 Observe here the way in which the apostle grounded his replies with regard to details on the highest and fundamental principles. This is the manner of Christianity (compare Titus 2:10-14). He introduces God and charity, putting man in connection with God Himself. In that which follows we have also a striking example of this. The subject is a direction for women. They were not to pray without having their heads covered. To decide this question, simply of what was decent and becoming, the apostle lays open the relationship and the order of the relationship subsisting between the depositories of God's glory and Himself, and brings in the angels, to whom Christians, as a spectacle set before them, should present that of order according to the mind of God. The head of the woman is the man; that of man is Christ; of Christ, God. This is the order of power, ascending to Him who is supreme. And then, with respect to their relationship to each other, he adds, the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. And as to their relations with other creatures, intelligent and conscious of the order of the ways of God, they were to be covered because of the angels, who are spectators of the ways of God in the dispensation of redemption, and of the effect which this marvellous intervention was to produce. Elsewhere (see note below) it is added, in reference to the history of that which took place, the man was not deceived; but the woman, being deceived, transgressed first. Let us add-from the passage we are considering-that, as to creation, the man was not taken from the woman, but the woman from the man. Nevertheless the man is not without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord; but all things are of God;-and all this to regulate a question of modesty as to women, when in praying they were before the eyes of others. The result-in that which concerns the details-is that the man was to have his head uncovered, because he represented authority, and in this respect was invested (as to his position) with the glory of God, of whom he was the image. The woman was to have her head covered, as a token that she was subject to the man (her covering being a token of the power to which she was subject). Man however could not do without woman, nor woman without man. Finally the apostle appeals to the order of creation, according to which a woman's hair, her glory and ornament, shewed, in contrast with the hair of man, that she was not made to present herself with the boldness of man before all. Given as a veil, her hair shewed that modesty, submission-a covered head that hid itself, as it were, in that submission and in that modesty-was her true position, her distinctive glory. Moreover, if any one contested the point, it was a custom which neither the apostle nor the assemblies allowed. Observe also here that, however man may have fallen, divine order in creation never loses its value as the expression of the mind of God. Thus also in James, man is said to be created in the image of God. As to his moral condition, he needs (now that he has knowledge of good and of evil) to be born again, created in righteousness and in true holiness, that he may be the image of God as now revealed through Christ; but his position in the world, as the head and centre of all things-which no angel has been-is the idea of God Himself, as well as the position of the woman, the companion of his glory but subject to him; an idea which will be gloriously accomplished in Christ, and with respect to the woman in the assembly; but which is true in itself, being the constituted order of God, and always right as such: for the ordinance of God creates order, although, no doubt, His wisdom and His perfection are displayed in it.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory
CHAPTER 11
1 Corinthians 11:1-34 . CENSURE ON DISORDERS IN THEIR ASSEMBLIES: THEIR WOMEN NOT BEING VEILED, AND ABUSES AT THE LOVE-FEASTS. 1. Rather belonging to the end of the tenth chapter, than to this chapter.
2. Here the chapter ought to begin.
3. The Corinthian women, on the ground of the abolition of distinction of sexes in Christ, claimed equality with the male sex, and, overstepping the bounds of propriety, came forward to pray and prophesy without the customary head-covering of females. The Gospel, doubtless, did raise women from the degradation in which they had been sunk, especially in the East. Yet, while on a level with males as to the offer of, and standing in grace (Galatians 3:28), their subjection in point of order, modesty, and seemliness, is to be maintained. Paul reproves here their unseemliness as to dress: in 1 Corinthians 14:34 , as to the retiring modesty in public which becomes them. He grounds his reproof here on the subjection of woman to man in the order of creation.
4. praying--in public (1 Corinthians 11:17 )
5. woman . . . prayeth . . . prophesieth--This instance of women speaking in public worship is an extraordinary case, and justified only by the miraculous gifts which such women possessed as their credentials; for instance, Anna the prophetess and Priscilla. The ordinary rule to them is: silence in public Mental receptivity and activity in family life are recognized in Christianity, as most accordant with the destiny of woman. This passage does not necessarily sanction women speaking in public. even though possessing miraculous gifts; but simply records what took place at Corinth, without expressing an opinion on it, reserving the censure of it till 1 Corinthians 14:34,35 Even those women endowed with prophecy were designed to exercise their gift, rather in other times and places, than the public congregation.
6. A woman would not like to be "shorn" or (what is worse) "shaven"; but if she chooses to be uncovered (unveiled) in front, let her be so also behind, that is, "shorn."
7-9. Argument, also, from man's more immediate relation to God, and the woman's to man.
8. is of . . . of--takes his being from ("out of") . . . from: referring to woman's original creation, "taken out of man". The woman was made by God mediately through the man, who was, as it were, a veil or medium placed between her and God, and therefore, should wear the veil or head-covering in public worship, in acknowledgement of this subordination to man in the order of creation. The man being made immediately by God as His glory, has no veil between himself and God [FABER STAPULENSIS in BENGEL].
9. Neither--rather, "For also"; Another argument: The immediate object of woman's creation. "The man was not created for the sake of the woman; but the woman for the sake of the man" (Genesis 2:18,21,22). Just as the Church, the bride, is made for Christ; and yet in both the natural and the spiritual creations, the bride, while made for the bridegroom, in fulfilling that end, attains her own true "glory," and brings "shame" and "dishonor" on herself by any departure from it (1 Corinthians 11:4,6 ).
10. power on her head--the kerchief: French couvre chef, head-covering, the emblem of "power on her head"; the sign of her being under man's power, and exercising delegated authority under him. Paul had before his mind the root-connection between the Hebrew terms for "veil" (radid), and "subjection" (radad).
11. Yet neither sex is insulated and independent of the other in the Christian life [ALFORD]. The one needs the other in the sexual relation; and in respect to Christ ("in the Lord"), the man and the woman together (for neither can be dispensed with) realize the ideal of redeemed humanity represented by the bride, the Church.
12. As the woman was formed out of (from) the man, even so is man born by means of woman; but all things (including both man and woman) are from God as their source They depend mutually each on the other, and both on him.
13. Appeal to their own sense of decorum.
14. The fact that nature has provided woman, and not man, with long hair, proves that man was designed to be uncovered, and woman covered. The Nazarite, however, wore long hair lawfully, as being part of a vow sanctioned by God.
15. her hair . . . for a covering--Not that she does not need additional covering. Nay, her long hair shows she ought to cover her head as much as possible. The will ought to accord with nature [BENGEL].
16. A summary close to the argument by appeal to the universal custom of the churches.
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