Do Man Buns Signal The Fall of Western Civilization?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we seek to answer the age old question, do man buns signal the fall of Western civilization?

So Tim, why don't you kick us off by just answering that title question for us. What do you think? Do man buns signal the fall of Western civilization as we know it?

I think yes, yes.

All right, that's the episode. See you guys next week.

That's the answer. Absolutely. I think they're the signal. They signal the fall. I wouldn't say that they're the root cause. They're a symptom of the root cause of the fall of the West for sure.

Okay. So maybe fill out that for us a little more. Is it the man bun itself, or is it the long hair in general? What's the main root of the issue there?

Sure, yeah. I think that there is a pervasive gender confusion that has taken hold of our society, where our society is basically rejecting God's purposes for humanity at a pretty fundamental level across the board, and this shows up in all the intersectional stuff.

This shows up in the gender role confusion kind of stuff, and I would say that the man buns are a symptom of the problem, a significant symptom of how far we've fallen as far as that goes, and the more that we have confusion along those lines, the more that we are setting ourselves up as a people who are ready to be conquered or pillaged as far as that goes.

But then in terms of just the moral issues at stake, the question that you're asking is essentially what's the issue with the man bun in particular? Is it the long hair in general, or is it the particular style of hair?

That's kind of where you're going with that?

Yeah.

Yeah, I would just say yes.

Yes to both of them. It's the man bun and the long hair.

Yeah, it's both.

Okay, so maybe there's some people listening who are probably thinking, what in the world? What are they even talking about? What's going on? What am I listening to right now? Right, right.

Hey, we have a trigger warning for just that sort of person.

That's meant to be the filter.

They've been warned. They've been warned.

Fair warning, so we're allowed to do whatever we want now.

Yeah, after you put a trigger warning on, you can say whatever you want after that point.

I guess that's the rule. Well, okay. I mean, why exactly? Maybe help those people that are listening. Why exactly are we making such a big deal out of man buns and long hair? Is it just like a preference thing?

Maybe most Christians just don't like man buns and long hair, or is there more to it than that? What's the thinking behind this?

Sure, yeah. In the Bible, you have a series of passages which directly speak to issues related to clothing and then related to hair length in general. So you have some direct passages in the Bible that seek to address that.

So there's passages like that. In particular, I'm thinking of 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11 .14 says, Does not nature itself teach that if a man wears hair long, it is a disgrace for him? That's in Paul's letters in the New Testament.

Then the Old Covenant law basically says for whoever does these things, which is to wear a garment, like if you're a man wearing a garment pertaining to a woman or a woman wearing a garment pertaining to a man.

It says,.

Whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. Because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. And so it seems like in both Testaments, those are just proof texts basically, which indicate that God has some sort of issue with a man wearing clothing in particular.

And I think that would just very naturally extend to hairstyles pertaining to a woman. And then just that long hair itself seems to be an issue. So you have direct passages like that, which are addressing that kind of thing.

And then you have a lot of examples in the Scriptures that would also speak into this kind of subject. So it's not just two passages like that, that you're trying to deal with. It's just the consistent example of Scripture that has a lot to say to that too.

So you have the passages itself, which are relevant for our consideration related to even the types of clothing we wear and the hairstyles we have and everything else. But then I think there's a logic in the Bible as to why God is saying something like that.

Meaning you can just look at the command and say, hey, well that just seems pretty arbitrary and everything else. But then you could ask the follow-up question, well why is God commenting on those sorts of things and isn't He more interested in the heart than the externals and everything else?

And so part of what you do is just, you need to interpret the passages which are relevant and then you need to essentially think through God's motivation and given those passages and how that all applies.

And then we're living in a society right now who basically are so far removed from that kind of worldview that it just seems confusing. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But where do you want to go with it as far as that goes?

Yeah, I guess just with that last thing, obvious you said basically we live in a culture that's kind of really far removed from all that. And I even remember, I read the, maybe you remember this too, but I read that specific passage, 1 Corinthians 11 verse 14.

And I remember going to you and basically asking, is this really saying that men can't have long hair? That seems kind of crazy and just not something, a way that we think in our society. And I'm sure probably most people who don't have an issue with long hair, they might look at a verse like that and either just throw it out altogether, basically saying, ah, well, who knows what that's supposed to mean?

Move on. Or be tempted to say, hey, anyone who actually tries to enforce a verse like this is just being legalistic. So when it comes to that verse specifically, is this just like a, hey, look, that was then, this is now kind of thing?

Maybe in their culture it wasn't really widely accepted, but then in our culture it seems more and more like it is widely accepted for a man to have long hair and that be normal. So are we just being legalistic with our application of what this verse seems to be saying from Paul?

Yeah.

Legalism in common parlance is any serious attempts to obey the Bible. Particularly where it's controversial. So I would say under that definition of legalistic, I guess we are. If that's what it means.

You're giving everybody ammunition, Tim.

Yeah.

Call me a legalist if trying to obey the Bible means I'm a legalist. So sure, yeah. No, I think the liberals are very adept at playing this kind of game with the scriptures in general where they basically just look at a passage and say, hey, that's time bound, culturally relative, and we know better now.

And that can be done in kind of a crude form where the logic of the liberal project is essentially, it ends up with people basically just saying that Jesus was a bigoted first century Jew, man of his own time kind of thing.

And we know better now today than they did then. And the Bible's filled with a lot of cultural prejudices that we now find to be monstrous and everything else. And so the liberals are adept at playing that game.

And one of the things that's amazing to me is that when you get to passages like this, conservative Christians, there's a few passages where this kind of impulse shows up with the conservatives. So conservatives, there's a lot of people who believe in gender roles and believe that abortion is wrong and everything else.

But there's a few passages like this, and this is one of those, where we just sound like crazed liberals at this point, and we're just saying the same kind of thing that they say. And that's always concerning in terms of just whatever you do, you don't want to use the same kind of trite arguments as a liberal would do.

We'll do the same thing with capital punishment laws in the Old Testament and things like that. The angular passages, the things that the conservatives don't know what to do with, or corporal punishment of children.

We just sound very much like that. And I think that's always a dangerous place to be. So whatever it is that you're doing, even if you're arguing that there's some kind of time-bound application or something along those lines, one of the things that I think you want to make very clear is that you want to point people to what obedience looks like, even in that kind of arrangement.

And we're not doing a very good job of basically doing that, even if there's an area where we wonder, was that a unique cultural application? But we're not doing the work of showing, well, what is the right application today?

And so what it feels like is that we very much are doing the Thomas Jefferson approach to the Bible, where you just cut out the parts you don't like, and that should be troubling. So I think that kind of posture, we have to do something better with it as far as that gets concerned.

But maybe you can repeat the question you're getting at now.

Yeah, so I think you answered the first part of it, just mainly being, essentially, is this verse just kind of like a culturally motivated saying that Paul is giving, that maybe it applies to the Corinthian church, but then it doesn't necessarily apply in the same way for us?

Yeah, well, I think the reason why, what's happened is, and feminism is the culprit here, as it is with so many things. And as I've said in one of the shorter podcasts we've done, when I'm criticizing feminism, I'm not criticizing women.

I'm criticizing an ideology, essentially, that both women and men share. And the basic idea of feminism is basically to blur any distinctions between male and female. So one of the things that happens is you're living in a society that is so pervasively dominated by feminism, essentially.

And that whole project, basically, it doesn't see any difference between male and female in terms of their ontology, or God's purposes, or God's design for them. And so when you're living in a society like that, that sees no functional difference between male and female, as far as that goes.

We don't even notice the obvious biological differences very much, as far as that goes. But we're trying to blur the line. Basically, a woman is just, in our society, a better man. That's the way it works.

But there's no difference between male and female in terms of their function, God's purposes for them. A woman can do anything a man can do, and better. But when you go that route, then we're at a passage right now that is pointing to a clear, creational difference that Paul is grounding in nature itself.

Essentially, Paul's argument in this passage is that if a woman has long hair, verse 15, it is for her glory, for her hair is given to her for a covering. So a woman's long hair is meant to be a mark of beauty for a woman, and it's meant to be something that is praiseworthy for her.

But then nature itself, Paul is saying, is teaching that if a man wears long hair, it is a disgrace to him. What's happening there is that the Bible is giving a very clear difference in the purpose between a man and a woman, and how just something as simple as a hairstyle can either reflect the creative purpose God has for a woman, or it can be a source of disgrace based on nature.

This is why you can't just wave your hand and dismiss this as some sort of cultural relic, because there's an argument that's being made from nature, meaning God's design. God's design for men and women has some relevance to hairstyles, is the point.

And now because we don't think in those terms that there's any difference between God's design for men and women, what that means is you look at a passage like this and you just don't know what to do with it, because functionally you're trained to think men and women are essentially the same kind of thing, just maybe with a little bit different parts.

But then functionally, a woman can do anything a man can do, probably better, and that kind of thing. We're basically designed for the same purpose, we don't know the difference, and so then these things just appear completely baffling.

But then God does have a purpose. There's a reason, based on the way God created us and made us, as to why long hair on a man is disgraceful and short hair on a woman is disgraceful, is based on His design for men and women, which is fundamentally not the same design, and He doesn't have the same purposes in mind, if that makes sense.

And just to clarify something that you had said earlier, when it comes to this passage, the enforcing of it, it's not legalism to hold men and women to these standards in general, any more than it's legalism to say, hey, we need to be loving the Lord our God and we need to be loving our neighbor as ourself, right?

Well sure, yeah. And over and over and over again you can read the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John and you hear that, what does it mean to love God? If you love me, you will keep His commandments.

And His commandments are not burdensome. I mean, you just look up, keep His commandments in the Bible and you're going to get a lot of references that are connected to love God. If you say you love God and you don't keep His commandments, you're a liar and the truth is not in Him.

So whatever it means to say Jesus is Lord means to follow His commands and follow His purposes and follow His design for the world and not fight it. And that's one of the things, the problem that we're living in, in our society right now is we've rejected God's design for humanity at every conceivable way.

And the man buns on the men is just a symptom of a metastasized rebellion which is ultimately, yes, signaling the fall of whatever Western civilization stood for. I mean, it was basically founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview that we're trying to chuck, you know, toss over the side of the boat as fast as we possibly can.

But maybe it would be helpful just to say, explain what I mean. So basically what I'm trying to say is that this passage in 1 Corinthians 11, the reason why we have a hard time with it is because we don't have any understanding of the difference between men and women in terms of their design by God.

And so then it just feels like it's just a purely arbitrary thing and, oh, it must have just been a cultural relic and, you know, a prejudice they had at the time. And, you know, maybe we don't share that, maybe it wasn't really a big deal and we don't really understand the significance of it and that's the problem, right?

But then if you say, well, what is God's design? And this is where it gets really offensive. And so God's designed women to be pretty and God has designed men to be strong. That's the point, okay? So then that's not all that God has designed women to do.

And people go there with it when I say something like that. And that's mostly just because of listening comprehension problems as far as that goes. I don't understand why, you know, people do that kind of thing.

It's just kind of a childish thing that reflects poor listening skills. But what I said was God has designed women to be beautiful or pretty and God's designed men to be strong. And so, you know, Paul's frequent admonition to men is to be strong, to act like men.

And that's because that's a created feature. The woman is described as the weaker vessel. And, you know, one of man's jobs is to protect his woman because men are significantly stronger than women. That's the way things work.

Just, you know, every single athletic competition in the world would bear witness to that brute reality as far as that goes. But then, you know, you look at, like, just read through the Bible and one of the things that you're going to find is that over and over and over again women are described in the Bible as being beautiful.

It's one of the main adjectives to describe women. And it's a pretty interesting thing if you pay attention to it, if you have eyes to see and, you know, ears to hear. Just read through the scriptures and notice how many times that the divine author comments, you know, does the ghastly thing, you know, exposes these women in the passage to the male gaze of objectifying them based on their looks, you know.

But, I mean, it's amazing, you know. You think about it, like Sarah was described as beautiful. She was so beautiful that Abraham was afraid for his life. The same thing with Isaac, you know, with Rebecca.

Rebecca was, you know, so beautiful that he was scared. He was scared also. You know, Jacob's wives, Rachel and Leah, Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance, meaning she had a great body and she had a nice face, you know.

That's what it's saying. And then, you know, Leah, her eyes were delicate or weak. She had pretty eyes, you know. But then you think through the whole, like, just read through the Song of Songs and one of the things you're going to find reading through the Song of Songs is that over and over and over again, like 50 times, like the woman's described as

I'm just making up a number on the spot, but it's a lot. But, I mean, it's just beautiful. You're beautiful among women. You're the fairest among all women.

And that is like a tower.

Even in those descriptions, he says beautiful over and over again, even in the tower.

Might be lost on our modern reader's eyes.

Hair is like a flock of goats.

Yeah.

This might be more akin to insults in our day.

I saw a picture of that one time that wasn't lovely. But, yeah, we've lost the symbolism. But the thing, though, is like over and over and over again, women are described as being beautiful. And then you get to 1 Peter, and it's just like women are told, hey, don't let your beauty be merely external, but also work on the character of a heart.

Because, you know, like as the Proverbs say, you can put a gold ring in a pig's snout, and a bad character doesn't help anything, right? And so, like the thing is, like every little girl, every little girl wants to be pretty.

And every little I'm speaking in generalities here, but I mean every little girl wants to be pretty. And every little boy wants to be strong. And that's the way it works. That's the way it works. And that's the way God's designed them to do, and there's no way you can break it.

Now, like some women just like throw their hands up in the air and say, hey, you know, maybe I'm never going to live up to this, you know, subjective standard of beauty, whatever, you know, that men have.

And, you know, I don't just exist here for men. And then they, you know, pursue feminism and try to make themselves as revolting to look at as they possibly can. But then that's a rejection of something that like that just proves the point.

You get what I'm saying? Like it's just like that's just proven the point. God's designed women to be beautiful. He's designed men to be strong. And like a man can do the same kind of thing and just, you know, I'm never going to be this manly man, whatever else.

And so he, you know, pursues effemacy with all he has. But then the point remains the same. And so then, like if that's true, just in terms of God's design of things, this is just part of why this is not just arbitrary.

If that's true as far as God's design for men and women is fundamentally different, which is obvious because men are looking for women who are attractive. And women are, you know, if you live if the zombie apocalypse is right there, you know, like a woman's going to want a strong man.

She's not going to want the pansy effeminate guy with the long hair and who cries, you know, when he gets to the next round of the singing competition. You know, she doesn't want that guy to protect her from the zombie horde.

You know, she wants someone else, you know. And so, like, women value different things than men because God's made us differently as far as that goes. And women how many times have you seen, like, the beautiful girl married to the questionable looking guy?

You know, it's like, how did he pull that off? He has a lot of other things. He has a lot of charisma and confidence. And, you know, he doesn't know that he should be embarrassed of his appearance, you know, as far as that goes.

But, I mean, it's just women are looking for different things than men. And the psychologists, the sociologists would tell you, you know, it's just God's world. It's how it's designed. And so, just to let me just say one more thing and then we'll just related to that, you know, have you ever noticed girls fight?

Have I ever noticed them fight?

Have you ever watched have you ever watched videos online or at school, remember, like girls fighting with each other?

Where they're, like, clawing at each other and everything?

Clawing at each other and grabbing their hair. I mean, it's just gruesome, right? It's gruesome. I mean, it's just awful to look at. But then the thing is, it's just like now, think about those girl catfights that are happening with all the scratching and the pulling of the hair.

You know, you can picture those videos of the one girl on top of the other pulling her hair and kicking her and everything else. And it's just awful to look at. But, like, the thing is, long hair is, like, a liability in combat.

Okay?

So, does not nature itself teach that long hair is, like, a shameful thing for men? Well, because men are designed for different things. So, think about, like think about the way the world actually works.

There's evil in the world that needs to be stopped. And you grow your hair out long, you're going to end up like that. That's why no UFC fighter has long hair. That's why no boxer has long hair. That's why like, there's an example of Absalom having long hair in the Bible, right?

And people will often say, well, I guess that means long hair is okay, right? Well, the problem was, like, narratives, they show you theology. They don't tell you theology in the same way. Meaning, like, what was the moral of the story with Absalom's hair?

Well, do you remember what happened to him when he died?

Tell us.

He got his hair caught in a tree, and he was, you know, he was being chased by David's men. And he, you know, he has this thick, long, luxurious hair or whatever. He's riding off. His hair is so thick it gets caught in a tree, and he's hanging there.

And one of David's men comes up and, you know, spears him to death. And so, like, but that just like, that's the thing. Like, that's like, men are made for a different purpose and made for a different design than women.

And so nature does, like, teach, like, in terms of, like, people's function in the world. Like, there are things, like, that's a liability when it comes to you don't want some big, long-flung mane if you're going to war, right, with other people.

You don't want that. Like, you don't. Like, that's going to give your enemy an advantage. But then, you know, men, like, typically lose their hair, too, and they can't hold on to it in the same way. Or a lot of men do lose their hair and everything else.

Nature itself even teaches that, you know, women like, men and women are different, you know. And, you know, like, long hair in women has been a universal symbol of femininity since time began, because this is God's world, and this is how He made us.

And so, anyways, there's just some thoughts on that. There's a lot more that could be said related to that, too.

So, if I could just kind of summarize real quick. Essentially, the reason Paul is writing against long hair is because Basically, for a man to have long hair is essentially to reject the design that God had for him as a male.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I've given some kind of, like, creational reasons why that's not just a purely arbitrary thing related to the biblical passages and everything else. But then there's something like, you're talking about rejecting of the design that God has for you.

There's something let me so, I remember when let me give you an example about how it's a rejection. So, one of the things that's happening is it's, like, functionally, it's practically doesn't fit the design God has for men to be strong, women to be beautiful.

But then, like, if a man wears long hair, one of the things that's happening there is he's signaling in a very overt like, he's doing something that is fundamentally rejecting God's design for him in a way that there are a lot of examples like that.

So, when, like, men started wearing their sister's pants, you know, I remember growing up, all of a sudden that became a trend. And when I was in my early college, like, guys would start wearing their sister's pants, and all of a sudden the skinny jeans came from after that.

But when men did that, they were basically fundamentally going to war against God's creation of male and female. So, in the beginning, he made them male and female. God has designed men and women to be fundamentally different.

And when you do that kind of thing, when you wear a garment pertaining to a woman, what you're doing is you're rejecting, like, these creational differences. You're trying to intentionally blur those lines.

And so, when the guys did that, you know, you roll your eyes at it, and you think, how in the world can you even fit in those things? Like, what's wrong with you? You know, so, like, there's an eye roll.

You're kind of emasculating yourself. But I remember when Hillary Clinton came on the scene, like, as a politician, she was doing something very similar to that. And I remember, you know, even as a pagan, this stood out to me as being something, abomination about it, immoral about it.

And, you know, she came on the scene wearing the pantsuit, right? And now every female politician wears the pantsuit and everything else. And what they're doing is something very, like, specific. And you know what they're doing.

Like, what they're doing is they're basically trying to, you know, instead of wearing the dresses and all that, like, you know, old Barbara Bush did, like, one of the things that you find is, like, they're trying to present themselves as a man because there is an intentional effort to blur gender roles.

Does that make sense? And so when God says, like, don't, like, it's an abomination for, you know, people to wear clothes of the opposite sex, the point there is that, like, what you're doing is you're rejecting His design for you.

You're rejecting roles. Like, your clothing, your hairstyles, they're saying something about, you know, how, like, your willingness to follow God's purposes in that way. And so, and these are symbols that are designed to do that kind of thing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, so it's essentially, yeah, that rejecting of God's design for men and women. So, I guess, maybe help us out a little bit here. You know, obviously, it's one thing to say, all right, if you've got long hair, then you're breaking this command.

You're essentially, you know, like I said earlier, rejecting God's design for men and women. But then it doesn't necessarily define how long is long hair. So, what are we supposed to do with that? I mean, it's a pretty serious thing to reject God's design for you.

But then it's also hard to know, just based on a passage like this, exactly where is that point where you ventured from just, you know, a thick, full head of hair to now all of a sudden woman's hair, right?

So, how exactly are we supposed to know how long is too long?

Yeah, well, let me, I'll answer that in two ways. I'll talk about how long is too long and then talk about the rejection. Because I don't, with the rejection, I don't know that there's in every case, you know, someone has long hair in particular.

I don't know that there's some kind of intentional rejection of God's design in that it's knowledgeable. But I would say that functionally you're living in a world that is trying to reject that. And so then these trends kind of become popular, if that makes sense.

Kind of as like a, like they're popular because they're rebellious.

Right, right.

Yeah, and everyone knows, you know, you see a guy in a man bun, that's edgy, right? And what edgy means is it's just like you're essentially, you're doing something that's suspect, you know. Now it's just like, now are we just purely tossing off, you know, arbitrary cultural relic of Western civilization?

Or is it something like that is more than that, right? And so is it just, is it something more significant? But I would say everyone who's doing that, it doesn't necessarily have some intentional overt rejection of God's purposes in mind.

But, you know, we need to talk about that. So like how do we process that too? But then related to the how long is too long kind of discussion.

Tell us, preferably in inches.

In inches, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I always hate those kind of questions because those kind of questions are kind of like how far can we go, you know, as a couple. You know, it's like, well, I mean, I think you want to, my kids do this all the time.

It's just like I, you know, I tell them, hey, don't get on the stage, you know. And so then they decide to like at church or whatever, don't get on the stage. And then they'll try to, instead of getting on the stage, they'll jump on the steps right next to the stage.

They were doing that this week and it's just like, come on, you know, like. And then, you know, then it's like, then they're going to jump on the steps on the stage and then accidentally fall on the stage and be like, oh, it was an accident, you know.

It's just like, well, yeah, I mean, you know, if you stay away from the stage, period, you won't even have to worry about that. Or I'll tell them don't go on the road and they'll stand like two inches from the road, you know.

And then like put their head over, you know. It's just like, you know, that's just human nature, wanting to get up on the line as far as that goes. And I think, yeah, I would say that, I don't know. It's helpful.

I mean, I would say like in the extreme, I mean, it's like these things are just easier to, you know, you have someone with waist-length hair, you know what you're talking about, you know. And I think you know what you're talking about way before that, you know.

I think you know what you're talking about way before that, like in terms of like where we're at, you know. I think my grandpa used to preach on this kind of thing and he had a little bit of legalistic tendencies where he was, you know, I think he defined it as anything below the ears.

Okay.

But I don't want to say that. But I would say that I think, you know, I think we all know, like I think everyone knows, you know, for the most part what we're talking about. And like I think we're kind of playing dumb if we don't, you know.

Like I think we all kind of intuitively know. Like I think whenever you're at that point where you're looking at a person from the back and you don't know what you're looking at necessarily. So I think if you want to know a good test for where the line is, like if you just imagine yourself sitting behind someone in church and all you can see is maybe their neck and slight bit of shoulders hanging over the chair and you're unsure, you know.

That's what it is.

That's too far. We've gone into effeminate territory.

If you don't know, if you don't know what you're looking at from behind necessarily, you know. Now some guys can, like the problem is some guys are so like, you know, Cobra back and everything else that it's just like you know what you're looking at, you know.

But then I would say just picture a more narrow shouldered guy. I would say picture a more narrow shouldered kind of guy who without a whole lot of muscle kind of guy. Whatever the line is for him would probably be the line for everyone.