Man Buns: Were the Westminster divines a Bunch of Sissified Pansies?

The Gospel of Salvation and Divine Judgment

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

The Westminster Divines, Hair Length, and Gendered Clothing

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

On this episode of Iron Sharpening Iron, we will be answering the question, Were the Westminster Divines a bunch of Sisyphide pansies? Now, this is a question that's coming to us from an anonymous source who we will withhold to protect the guilty.

However, I think it's a serious question that's being asked, and it's a question that we need to give a thoughtful response to. Now, one of the things that we've been trying to say as it relates to our discussion on hair length between men and women and type of clothes between men and women, one of the things that we've tried to say is that the Bible in no uncertain terms communicates in 1 Corinthians 11 that it's shameful for men to have long hair, and it's shameful for women to have short hair.

This is a black and white kind of issue that really takes very little reading comprehension to look at and read the passage and come to that sort of conclusion. It should be obvious to everyone that Paul was saying that it's shameful for men to have long hair, it's shameful for women to have short hair, and he grounds this argument in nature.

He's not grounding this in some sort of subjective cultural preferences. He's grounding this argument in nature. Does not nature itself teach that? And one of the things that we tried to talk about in our podcast is the ways in which nature is teaching this very thing related to God's different design for men and women.

So everyone in this kind of discussion, if you're engaging in it honestly, you should be able to look at 1 Corinthians 11 and you should be able to come to the conclusion that God considers long hair in men shameful and short hair in women shameful.

That seems to be a fixed pillar of this discussion that you can't move. Now, along with that, one of the things that you might realize is that as it relates to the passage in Deuteronomy, God is saying that it's an abomination for a man to wear a woman's garment and it's an abomination for a woman to wear a man's garment.

So God is saying in Deuteronomy that He will drive out the inhabitants of the land who commit these kinds of abomination, who mix gender, dress, codes. And so God has a design for men and women that's fundamentally different.

These are things that everyone should agree with in this discussion. God has a design for men and women. Men and women are different. God has different designs for them. And these designs are going to show up in things that you might not expect like hair length and clothing type.

Yes and amen to all that. We should all be able to agree on all that. Anyone who wants to obey the scriptures should be able to agree with all that. Now, where we may have some sort of serious discussion is the kind of discussion as it relates to application.

Where do we draw the lines beyond that? It's one thing to say God wants men and women to dress differently and to have different hairstyles. Where is the line? Now, a thoughtful observer of history might look at many of the pictures of the Puritans in particular.

I mean you can just look up pictures of Jonathan Edwards and you'll see him wearing a wig. Many of the Westminster divines were wearing wigs or long hair. There are things that would be considered long hair in our society.

So what do we do with that? Do we basically in some simplistic way just wave our hand over them all and say they're a bunch of sissified pansies? What do we do? And I would just say, I would say if you look into the history of it, one of the things that you'll realize is that there was a significant debate going on at the time over that very thing.

And so there's plenty of Puritans who are looking at individuals like Jonathan Edwards wearing a wig and basically making that exact argument, probably in more colorful terms than that. So there are plenty of people.

That was a live debate at the time. This is an unhelpful fashion that's being imported from France. What in the world are we doing? The Bible condemns long hair in men. These are a bunch of peacocks and everything else.

Those were serious arguments that were being made at that time. And so by serious people trying to do serious exegesis. And so I wouldn't just dismiss that as a possibility. That it might be that many of those men were men of their time who were caught up with the fashions of their day and blurring gender lines in exactly the way that we've described.

So I don't think that that's some sort of obscene kind of conclusion to come to. And it's the kind of conclusion, though, that you have to interact with. There's been plenty of cultures throughout history, for example, Native American culture, Japanese culture, that has praised long hair in men.

And we have to realize that that actually exists. Now, one of the things that you want to do in this kind of discussion is you want to try to hold two kind of thoughts together in your mind simultaneously.

So what I need you to do is I need you to hold on to these two thoughts. And part of the temptation that many people have is to absolutize one line of thinking over and against the other line of thinking.

But what I'm going to ask you to do is to try to hold two different lines of thought in your mind and make a good faith effort to try to harmonize two different lines of thinking as it relates to this subject.

So one of the things you want to say is that there are fixed absolutes that God gives us in the scriptures that we have to hold on to. So whatever we say about the subjectivity related to cultural fashions, we still want to say that God has given some kind of guardrails or boundaries that we can't go beyond.

One of those boundaries is that God has designed men and women different. He wants them to wear different clothes, different types of clothes. And when men wear types of clothes that are more appropriate to women, that's an abomination.

When women wear clothes that are appropriate to men, that's an abomination. So there's something there. So any thoughtful person who's engaged in the scripture has to come up with some example of how that could be violated.

You have to come up with some example. There has to be something, some way that we can violate that. And you can't just reduce it to subjective mess. And the same thing is the case with hair. So God's given guidelines.

God has basically said He's designed women to have long hair as a hair covering for them, as a head covering for them. And He's designed men to have short hair. And if a man has long hair, that's a disgrace to him.

And if a woman has short hair, that's a disgrace to her. So those are the guardrails. God wants men and women to have different lengths of hair. And then God wants men and women to have different styles of clothing.

So if you imagine the dystopian, egalitarian fantasy or whatever, you can think about movies that go along these lines where the end result of feminism and egalitarianism is finally realized where everyone basically wears the same outfit.

And so you see all the males and all the females are wearing the same shirt and the same pants and they're all the same color. And there's no difference because everyone has to be the same and everyone has to wear the same things because we're all the same.

And same, same, same, same, same. So in that kind of dystopian fantasy, and there's been plenty of movies that have been made along those lines that are following the logic of egalitarianism to its end conclusion, one of the things that you realize is that a society could form that's just like that.

So a society could form to where everyone is mandated to wear the same type of clothing. Now the problem with that from God's perspective is that that is reflecting a different kind of worldview than the scripture has given us.

Meaning that's reflecting an egalitarian worldview. So that is not the kind of society that Christians should be working to produce. We shouldn't be working to produce the kind of society where both male and female are wearing the same kind of clothes because men and women are created for different purposes and that should be reflected in their clothing and in their hair.

So that kind of thing is off limits. So to say that if that were to happen, then you look at the passage which say a man shouldn't wear a garment pertaining to a woman, a woman shouldn't wear a garment pertaining to a man.

One of the ways that you've circumvented that passage is to basically say well everyone has to wear the same things. So therefore there's no way to apply that. And that would be fundamentally doing violence to God's very design of men and women in a very substantial way.

And if you don't know how, if you can't figure out how that's happened, then what you need to do before you talk about application is figure out why that would be a problem. Because it's obviously a problem.

It's a problem if we end up in a society where everyone's wearing the same outfit. There's something happened that's a rejection of God's design at a fundamental level. And if you can't come up with any answers as to why that would be a problem, maybe you should consider the answers we've given in our podcast in that God's designed women for beauty in part and God's designed men for strength in part.

And so that's part of why that was one reason nature is teaching us why that kind of arrangement would be fundamentally problematic and that would be dishonoring to the way God made us. But you think about that kind of society and then you think about well what then should men and women wear?

Is there some sort of absolute standard for what men and women should wear? So we have abandoned the kind of society where men were expected to wear pants and women would wear dresses. We've abandoned that kind of society basically and now everyone wears pants.

And so we're in a different type of society now. And so it was that the dress was a symbol of cultural femininity. Now it is the case that you can have female pants and male pants. And then we're in a situation where the men start wearing the women's pants and at some point it becomes normalized such that everyone's wearing skinny jeans now as far as that goes and so things are complicated.

So one of the things you realize is that there are fixed things. Men shouldn't wear women's garments. Men shouldn't wear women's hairstyles. But then these hairstyles change over time. It used to be that everyone wore robes and there were women robes and there were men robes but everyone wore robes.

And so then at some point somewhere along the line men started wearing pants and everything else and things changed. And so we're in a different kind of society and these cultural symbols change over time.

And so one of the things that you don't want to do is you don't want to sanctify any particular expression of the difference between masculinity and femininity as it relates to dress and as it relates to hair.

So there might be things like fashions that come in and out of fashion. But then, so one of the things you want to realize is that there's some subjectivity in how these symbols are presented over time.

There is some subjectivity involved in that. But at the same time you need to realize that there are still absolutes and so what you're trying to do is you're trying to hold two competing truths in your mind at the same time.

There's some subjectivity in how these symbols are viewed over time meaning like the distinction between male and female dress might go through various changes throughout history to where there's always a feminine kind of dress and there's always a masculine kind of dress until you get to the egalitarian end point where it's all uniform.

So beyond that though you're going to have differences and those symbols might change over time and then you might want to understand the language of the culture that you're actually living in and operate under the understanding of what you're communicating at various points in history related to your dress and hair.

So you do want to pay attention to where you're at while at the same time holding on to there's absolutes. So long hair is beyond the pale for men. Short hair is beyond the pale for women unless you have cancer unfortunately in which case every woman who has cancer does feel like she's lost her femininity.

She's tempted to feel that way and she's tempted to feel that way because long hair on women has always been a universal symbol of femininity. Just look at the bathroom doors that you go to. Everyone knows what we're talking about.

So here's the thing. There's guardrails. Long hair on women is a sign of femininity. Short hair on men is a sign of masculinity and then God's saying that nature teaches those things but then at the same time there's different cultures that move over different times where some of those things have changed.

Now one of the things that you don't want to do is you want to hold these things together at the same time without basically just saying hey it's all subjective therefore do whatever you want and who cares.

Multiculturalism, Culture, and Biblical Evaluation

Now part of the reason why people go there and this is what I tried to labor to say in the podcast and maybe I didn't say it as clearly as I could. The reason why people go there is because multiculturalism has infected our brain.

We are trained at every conceivable level to basically think that culture is neutral. So one of the things that you have to do is you have to think culture is neutral. You have to uncritically praise every different culture.

You can't say that one culture is superior to another culture. If you do you're committing a blasphemy. So you can't come along and say that there are certain cultures that are better than other cultures.

But then the problem is from a biblical worldview it's obviously true that certain cultures are better than other cultures. From a biblical worldview it's a lot better that we are not practicing slavery today than when we did at the founding of our nation.

Like it's a lot better that we're no longer engaging in man stealing or the buying and selling of human slaves. It's a lot better that we're not purchasing human beings. Well you know it's widespread as far as that goes and permitted.

It's better that we've cast that relic off. It's also better that we're not engaging in cannibalism. It's also better that we're not walking around naked. You can go and see a tribal situation where people are absolutely naked.

The Westerners come along and give them clothes. Like that's a good thing because not all cultures are the same. And so one of the things to realize is that yes, yes there's been cultures in the past where Native American, Japanese culture where long hair in men was not necessarily associated with femininity.

But then if you don't adopt the multicultural lens then one of the things that you might conclude from that is that that was a problem. That that was an area where that culture was failing to live up to God's design for male and female.

And that may be one of the areas where God was actively judging that kind of society for committing those kinds of abominations. As the Bible says that they will. So one of the things that you can't do is you can't just look at these cultures and these different cultures that had differences of opinion and then declare them all neutral.

One of the things that you want to do is you want to say the Bible is true. I believe what the Bible says. And if Paul says that it's shameful for men to have long hair and it's shameful for women to have short hair then that's fixed and that's black and white and that's unmovable.

And that's going to be the lens by which we judge how well a culture and a society is doing. And so related to the Puritans or something like that where the Westminster divines a bunch of cistified pansies I would say I would agree with those Puritans at the time who were pushing back on the thoughtless adoption of the long hair wig culture of France at the time.

I would just say that their impulses at that time to push back on those sorts of things were better than their adversaries who were adopting more of a licentious stance. And so I would just say that you have to let Paul speak.

Paul is the final word. We have to do something with what Paul says. And so I would say I would agree with Paul there. I would agree with what Paul is saying. And I would say that those divines were rejecting something that nature is teaching.

I would just agree with their peers at the time. That's obviously what's happening. And they would have harsher words for that than the podcast title. So there's that. So what I'm trying to say is I think one of the things that you want to do with whatever culture that you're living in is that you want to say, hey, what are the guardrails?

Hey, there needs to be a distinction of dress between male and female. Men need to not be trying to push the boundaries of fashion and adopting all the feminine forms of fashion. There's something abominable about that.

So pay attention to the particular symbols in your own society that basically distinguish male dress and female dress, and those may change over time. But you don't want to be the one who's pushing the boundaries.

You want to be the one who is doing the best that you possibly can to err on the side of caution in adopting the particular cultural expression of masculinity that your society is producing while at the same time acknowledging that there has to be some difference.

So we're living in a society right now that is pushing celebrities and athletes to wear dresses at the Oscars or something like that. That's bad. That's an abomination. That's what God is condemning. So you don't want to be the person who is thoughtlessly adopting as many symbols of femininity as you can and throwing your hands up in the air and say, hey, it's all cultural.

You don't want to do that. What you want to do is you want to be the kind of person who is basically saying, I want to understand the language of my culture. This communicates femininity. I want to stay away from it.

I want to stay away from it as far as I can. I don't want to be like the little kid who's standing two inches from the road when their dad tells them, don't stand on the road. I want to be the kid who's giving it a wide berth so I can make sure that I'm careful.

But then at the same time, I don't want to be the pastor who's coming along and saying, hey, in order to be faithful, you need to stand at least 10 inches away from the road. The issue is I don't know how long you have to stand away from the road.

I would just say identify the game that's being run on you. You're living in a society that's trying to brainwash you into adopting feminine symbols. So what you probably want to do at that point is stay as far away as you possibly can.

So if the Bible is saying it's shameful for men to have long hair, I would say you probably want to make sure that you're clearly in no way that no reasonable person can look at you and say that you're breaking the line.

Now, there's obviously unreasonable people out there who will basically say any hair over the length of an ear or something like that is crossing the line. Okay, fine. But I think what you want to do is ask the question, will any reasonable person consider this long hair?

Will reasonable people consider this long hair? And if so, don't go there with it. That's what you want to do. And that's what you do in every area of life. In every area of obedience, you're making that kind of calculation.

You're saying, what would a reasonable, godly person consider? Would they think I'm flirting with the line? Would they think I'm right on the line? Would they think I'm across the line? What would most reasonable, godly people assume?

As it relates to the last podcast, is this yelling or is this raising my voice? What would most reasonable people assume? And so one of the things that you want to do is you want to think to yourself, how can I stay away from the egregious examples of this and be cautious and not just rush headlong and adopt in a thoughtless way anything and everything that the world is selling?

And so what I'm trying to advocate, in short, is just a posture that holds two kinds of thought process together. The Bible gives us some absolutes. So long hair in men, off limits. Short hair in women, off limits.

Don't go there. That's an absolute. Men wearing women's clothes. Women wearing men's clothes. Absolute. Don't go there. Don't do it. Now, each culture is going to come with its own set of standards that are going to be slightly different from culture to culture, and you want to pay attention to it.

Just because the fact that cultures are going to change what their understanding of male and female appropriate clothes is, whatever society you happen to live in, pay attention to what constitutes male clothes and what constitutes female clothes, and try not to be the one who's pushing the bleeding edge of fashion that's trying to gender bend.

So stay away from that the best you can in a way that would satisfy your own conscience and would be persuasive to the vast majority of godly people around you. That would be my advice.