SAINTHUD:
. The question of whether a Christian woman
can wear jewellery or make-up arises from
two scriptures – one written by Paul, the
other by Peter. They are 1 Timothy 2:9-10 and
1 Peter 3:3-5.
1 Timothy 2:9-10: “In like manner also, that
women adorn themselves in modest apparel,
with shame facedness and sobriety; not with
braided hair, or gold, or pearls or costly array;
but which becometh women professing
godliness with good works.”
1 Peter 3:3-5: “Whose adorning let it not be
that outward adorning of plaiting of the hair,
and of wearing of gold, or of putting on
apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the
heart, in that which is not corruptible, even
the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,
which is in the sight of God of great price. For
after this manner in the old time the holy
women also, who trusted in God, adorned
themselves, being in subjection to their own
husbands.”
Since the two passages were written by two
different authors to two different audiences,
we need to examine them separately. Though
it’s obvious make-up was not even mentioned
in either of the two passages. One then
wonders how it became an issue. That can
only be attributed to cultural parochialism.
1 Timothy 2 is ACTUALLY about prayer, not
fashion concerns. The chapter starts with
admonition on prayer – “The first thing I want
you to do is pray.” And it continues with
admonition on prayer. As at the time Paul
wrote that letter, Christianity had not become
a global phenomenon, and the principal
message of salvation was not well known –
that Jesus gave his life to purchase freedom
from sin for everyone. “Eventually the news
was going to get out,” Paul wrote. In fact, he
says he was specially appointed to get the
message to the rest of the world. That’s
because God wants EVERYONE saved. (1
Timothy 2:6) But to get the job done will
require prayer. “Since prayer is at the bottom
of all this, what I want mostly is for men to
pray…” (1 Timothy 2:8-10 MSG)
But there was one problem hindering PRAYER
effectiveness in the church at Ephesus and
that was PRIDE. The men were prideful. They
had serious anger management issues. They
were temperamental. And the women were
vain. That is why Paul wrote as follows: “Since
prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want
is for men to pray – not shaking angry fists at
enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I
want women to get in there with the men IN
HUMILITY before God, not pimping before a
mirror or chasing latest fashions but doing
something beautiful for God and becoming
beautiful doing it.” (1 Timothy 2:8-10 MSG) So
the issue wasn’t fashion or jewellery AT ALL! It
was pride – prideful anger, prideful vanity. It’s
amazing how we can ignore the main subject
of an epistle to focus on pedantry. All Paul
was doing was telling the women to set their
priorities straight, telling them not to chase
fashion trends, but to do something beautiful
for God. That’s what the passage is about.
Text without context creates red herrings.
Always read the context of Bible passages.
Scriptures are not textual orphans. Paul wrote
a letter. You can’t just pick a phrase in a letter
and quote it out of context. You won’t like
someone taking a phrase in your letter out of
context. Don’t do it to Paul.
—–
Let’s look at the second passage, the one
written by Peter – 1 Peter 3:3-5.
Again, this passage is about Christian duties,
not fashion. 1 Peter 3:1 begins with this
phrase: “Likewise, ye wives…” That already
tells us to go back to see what gave rise to
that statement. Nobody begins a statement
with “Likewise…” “Likewise” suggests that
something had been said before. And so we
need to back off into the preceding chapter, 1
Peter 2 to see what had been said before. The
thought stream actually began in 1 Peter 2:18.
From that verse Peter begins to teach about
duties and responsibilities for various classes
of Christians. He talks to Christian slaves first.
(Historic relativism comes into play here.
Modern history abhors slavery but slavery
was an economic system of the 1 century).
Peter told the Christian slaves to be good
servants to their masters, be they good or
bad masters. Then, he continues his discourse
in Chapter 3, telling wives they also ought to
be good wives to their husbands. Some of the
Christian women were married to blokes who
didn’t like going to church and didn’t care
much about God’s word. Peter tells these
women the way to woo their husbands to
Christ is through “holy beauty.”
Let’s look at the entire passage: “The same
goes for you wives: Be good wives to your
husbands, responsive to their needs. There
are husbands who, indifferent as they are to
any words about God, will be captivated by
your holy beauty. What matters is not your
outer appearance – the styling of your hair,
the jewellery you wear, the cut of your clothes
– but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner
beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God
delights in. The holy women of old were
beautiful before God that way, and were
good, loyal wives to their husbands. Sarah, for
instance taking care of Abraham, would
address him as, “My dear husband.” (1 Peter
3:1-6)
And then he goes on to talk to the men about
how to be good husbands. So the thrust of his
writing was RESPONSIBILITY – how to be a
good Christian: a good Christian slave, a good
Christian wife, a good Christian husband. The
focus of this passage is NOT make-up or
jewellery. Make-up is not even mentioned!
If at all, Peter acknowledged the Christian
women wore stylish hair, had fine jewellery
and a fantastic sense of fashion; which is why
he told them that in this business of winning
an unbelieving husband to Christ, designer
clothes are not the evangelism materials. It’s
“inner beauty” – character, loyalty, respect
and goodness. The Christian women
obviously had beautiful clothes, fine jewellery
and nice hairstyles. Or Peter wouldn’t have
specified those items: “What matters is not
your outer appearance – the styling of your
hair, the jewellery you wear, the cut of your
clothes…” The women had all these!
So how did we arrive at the fact that
Christianity bans jewellery and make-up? It’s
from our ideological disposition to the word
of God, as well as our penchant for taking
scriptures out of context.
You might also add quaint wrestling with the
17 century English called the King James
Bible. This is how the King James renders the
passage: “Whose adorning let it not be that
outward adorning of plaiting of hair, and of
wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel…”
And now you can see the source of the
trouble. One of the rules of interpretation of
scriptures is the rule of absurdity. For
example when Jesus says if your right hand
offends you, cut it off, the rule of absurdity
lets us know he wasn’t trying to create
righteous amputees. That it was a figure of
speech. So let’s apply the rule of absurdity to
this passage. If we insist that this passage
bans braids and jewellery, then we must also
insist that the passage bans the wearing of
clothes too! After all, the King James
rendering talks about “the adorning of plaiting
of hair, and of wearing of gold…OR PUTTING
ON OF APPRAEL.” We can’t pick plaiting of hair
and wearing of gold, and ignore adorning of
apparel. It’s always good to read a modern
translation of the Bible to AT LEAST get a
sense of what a passage is saying. What the
passage is simply saying is, don’t let these
things determine your beauty. Let character
do. This passage CANNOT in anyway be used
as the basis for the proscription of jewellery
or braids. That’s scriptural malpractice.
Of course there are ridiculous arguments
against the use of jewellery by Christians.
Spurious arguments like, “Because heaven is
paved with gold I will not wear tar,” can make
one wonder about faculty. Didn’t these
people spend currencies denominated by the
gold standard? Why didn’t they refuse to
spend monetary tar! Gold to God is nothing
but an item on the Periodic Table, a mere
chemical equation. Then there is the
argument Christians shouldn’t wear jewellery
and gold because the Israelites donated gold
towards the making of the golden calf idol at
Mount Sinai. Only they forgot to mention they
also gave gold towards the building of the
sanctuary for God to dwell in. And that God
specifically asked for offering of gold, silver
and bronze. (Exodus 25:1- It gets so
ridiculous some insist anytime gold is
mentioned in scriptures, there’s always a
problem! At which one needs to ask what the
problem with Solomon’s temple was. If at all
God descended mightily at the consecration
of the temple. (1 Kings 8:11)
Then there are admonitions against make-up
based on the fact that Jezebel “painted her
eyelids and fixed her hair,” and so no child of
God should “paint her eyes”. But that passage
(2 Kings 9:30) also says that Jezebel looked
out of the window. Should we then stop
looking out of windows because Jezebel did
so? If Jezebel wore perfume, which she most
likely did, should all Christians stop wearing
perfume? All these are ideological positions
looking for justification from scriptures and
they’re untenable.
Truth is, God never banned jewellery and
makeup for Christian women. Our legalistic
religiosity banned them. And to be honest,
these are not even issues for the 21 century
Church. There are more important stuff to
contemplate than suppositious pedantic
regulatory inanition. Please get out of religiousity and be a christian.
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