Men and women were created differently. The God-given distinction between the two genders should be not be blurred, but preserved and celebrated. That’s why I am opposed to men shaving their facial hair. Facial hair is the only natural, publically visible, God-given distinction between the sexes. While men can grow their hair long and women can cut their hair short, and while men can dress effeminate and women can dress masculine, only men can grow facial hair. It is the unique differentiator between men and women, and thus should be preserved.
Facial hair is part of God’s creative design. And since the ability to grow facial hair is unique to the male gender, it seems obvious that God provided facial hair to men as a distinguishing feature of their gender. If God did not want men to have facial hair, why would He have included it in our design? What makes us think that have the liberty to artificially remove this God-given gender distinction? For a man to shave his face is to say to the Creator, “You did not make me right. This hair on my face was a mistake.” When a man shaves his face, He is violating God’s creative intent and attempting to erase a unique stamp of his masculinity afforded to him by God.
Why would a man want to shave his facial hair other than to feminize himself? To shave one’s face is an attempt to mimic the softness of the female face. What a shame that Christian men would rather look like a woman than the man that God made them. Given this tendency toward self-feminization, how long will it be before men will start dressing more like women and growing long locks of hair? It’s time for us Christian men to man up and quit acting like girly men. It’s time for us to grow out our facial hear!
I propose that pastors everywhere issue a standard of holiness that all Christian men in their congregations must grow a beard. They will no longer be allowed to shave their faces clean. This is particularly the case for those men who wish to be involved in ministry. It is not appropriate for ministers to be clean shaven. They need to set an example of masculinity. If a man is clean shaven – in rebellion against nature and nature’s God – then he should be prohibited from serving in the ministry.
Surprised? You should be. I don’t really believe what I just said. Well, not entirely anyway. I do not believe a man is required to grow a beard, but I do believe the arguments in favor of facial hair are more sound than any argument I have heard against it. For those of you who think it is wrong for a man to grow facial hair, how would you respond to the argument I presented above? What are your reasons for thinking men must be clean-shaven?
Thinking to Believe 
January 5, 2015 at 10:46 am
Check out this great article on the wars over beards in Christian history:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/september/wars-over-christian-beards.html
“Vanity” it seems is the common argument against — which could, of course, “cut both ways.”
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January 5, 2015 at 10:56 am
Yes, the debate over facial hair has gone on for a long time. It’s almost always a matter of cultural influences and aesthetical preferences. Right now, in our wider culture, facial hair is in. Men prefer it, and roughly half of women do as well. It’s even becoming commonplace in the business world again.
As for vanity, I agree that it can cut both ways. Some men would be horrified if they were forced to grow a beard because they think it detracts from their looks. Indeed, I would be horrified if Christianity required that men not be able to trim their beards, because a ZZ Top beard is not exactly physically appealing in my book!
Jason
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January 5, 2015 at 12:01 pm
First of all there are some good reasons not to grow a beard:
1. Not having a beard shows you are not Muslim,
2. Not Sikh,
3. Not Jewish, Amish or Orthodox Christian; in other words, not
denoting religious affiliation and I find that the non-religious value of being
clean shaven particularly note worthy, except Monastic Monks who shave
for religious reasons.
4. For health reasons: to keep lice and other blood sucking creatures from
congregating, procreating and sucking blood, transmitting pathogens
parasites and infectious diseases the blood sucking way by lodging
themselves in the hairy parts of the human body and I find health
reasons a very good reason to maintain a “clean” shaven face.
5. To be groomed neatly; not sporting unkempt or unruly hair on the face or
head.
It is curious however that while “masculinity” seems to be the prime reason for not shaving facial hair, crediting or debiting it to God’s design of course, masculinity seems to have lost the argument when it comes to pubic hair and hair on the head the both men and women.
The bottom line: pro or con, shaving should remain the discretion of human right activities as much as body piercings and tattoos and one should not be forced to grow or not to grow hair based on culture, religion or gender orientation, peer pressure and fashion crazes notwithstanding.
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January 5, 2015 at 3:10 pm
You can dissemble an argument quickly by denying it it’s assumptions and premises. Those in this are that there is a God sanctioned concept of what “masculinity” is, and that it is demanded for individuals with penises to be masculine by this God. Naturally, also assumes that there is a God who is so involved with its creation’s lives that it cares about such things.
It’s quite an absurd argument when those assumptions and premises are denied outright.
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January 5, 2015 at 3:12 pm
Yeah, I never could figure out why the ladies weren’t “allowed” to pluck their eyebrows, but the men had to be clean shaven.
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January 5, 2015 at 8:45 pm
Dora,
Not able to pluck their eyebrows? Wow. Could they shave their legs? If so, what was the difference?
Jason
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January 5, 2015 at 8:56 pm
Nikeyo, the argument for facial hair does not employ a God-sanctioned concept of what masculinity is. It merely appears to normal male biology. Male biology includes the growth of facial hair.
God only comes into the argument to say this feature of the male human was intended by God to distinguish the male from the female. The only “demand” would be to let the facial hair grow so that it can fulfill its intended function of distinguishing the sexes. Insofar as the argument appeals to design and intention, yes, it does presuppose God’s existence.
Of course, I assume I am talking to theists in this argument. Also, as noted in the closing paragraph, I am not really arguing that men must have facial hair. I am simply pointing out that a better argument can be made on behalf of the necessity of facial hair than for forbidding it.
Perhaps some context for this post is in order. I come from a denomination that, in reaction to the hippie movement 50 years ago, took a stand against facial hair. A good number of churches in the denomination still take a stand against facial hair, even though the cultural association between facial hair and social rebellion has long passed.
Jason
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January 6, 2015 at 6:08 am
Well, let me see where we’re at here. Science has demonstrated that evolution can proceed just fine without an intelligent designer (yeah, yeah, science hasn’t – yet – defined the origin of life, I’ll concede that point). One can make an argument, based on faith, that God fined tuned the universe, but an argument based on logic that it is not is equally valid, so that one is a wash. And Buddhism shows that the God is not necessary for morality. Which leaves us with, what? God is responsible for men’s facial hair? I don’t have enough hair on my cheeks to grow a decent set of side burns, let alone a full beard. Guess that means I can’t be a Muslim or a Sikh and apparently not a believer in the Christian God either. Native Americans don’t have much facial hair. I wonder if the Spirits of the Sioux Nation will accept me as an honorary member.
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January 6, 2015 at 1:05 pm
Jason: ” I am simply pointing out that a better argument can be made on behalf of the necessity of facial hair than for forbidding it.”
Depends on one’s opinion of “better argument.” Neither are valid or truthful in themselves. Perspective is everything.
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January 6, 2015 at 1:23 pm
Bob Mason:
You might just be able to become more than a mere honorary member; if you hearken to the call of a cult known as the “Military”! lol
In a very practical way beards and head-hair leave the religious world of speculative philosophies and spiritual debate and become more focused on the world of Reality as it relates to the warring nature(not God’s nature, surely[debatable]) but man’s nature it seems.
I offer you a brief excerpt from a book that explains the context more fully, FYI.
Manliness has always been linked to physical prowess and to war; indeed the warrior has been the archetypal man across countless cultures throughout time. In this magisterial excursion through literature, history, warfare, and sociology, one of our most prominent scholars tracks the complex relationship between the changing methods and goals of warfare and shifting models of manhood. This journey takes us from the citizen soldiers of ancient Greece to the medieval knights to the misogynistic terrorists of Al Qaeda.
As he chronicles these transformations, Leo weighs the significance of everything from weapon technology to the hairstyles favored during different eras. He offers fresh insights on codes of war and codes of racial purity, and on cultural and historical figures from Socrates to Don Quixote to Napoleon to Custer to Rambo. Epic in scope and free of academic jargon, From Chivalry to Terrorism is a masterwork of scholarship that is both accessible and breathtakingly ambitious.
From Chivalry to Terrorism:
War and the changing nature of masculinity.
By Leo Braudy.
Medieval theory generally viewed society as made up of three social groups or “estates”: the oratores, the people who prayed, who were part of the church; the pugnatores or bellatores, who were the war makers; and the laboratories, who were the farmers and craftsmen. This tripartite arrangement bears some resemblance to classical efforts to describe the makeup of society, like Plato’s division in The Republic bwteen the guardians(ruler), auxiliaries(warriors), and farmers and craftsmen. It is also similar to the three prime social functions that Georges Dumezil has ascribed to the Indo-European heritage: the priestly-judicial, the military, and the productive. These categories are very general, and they shift according to the specifics of social context. But they mark an explicit medieval effort to imagine the structure of society in terms of a differentiation of male social function.
The association of hairiness with…..masculinity is ancient in Indo-European cultures. As in the biblical example of Samson, the warrior’s terrifying prowess is visually expressed by an abundance of head hair, either his own or that supplied by a shaggy helmet. The practice has an obvious connection to the practice of wearing animal skins in battle,(as in Hercules’s or Alexander the Great’s lion headdress), and is socially confirmed by the Greek and Roman practice of having males slaves wear close cropped hair.
But when such an obvious contrast as long hair/short hair exists, it can be redefined. Caesar turns the distinction around at the battle of Pharsalia when he and his troops shave their beards so that they can’t be gripped in hand to hand combat, while the more vain troops of Pompey wear their beards and long hair down to defeat. Henry V in the fifteenth century similarly popularizes short hair for the soldier. With the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, hairstyle supports even a more obvious ideological distinction, pitting the long locked Cavaliers against the close shorn parliamentary Roundheads. The association of long hair with military prowess persists formally in the high beaver-fur helmets of nineteenth-century troops and informally in the long hair of irregulars like the bushwackers along the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. By World War II, of course, the look of the soldier has once again become associated with short hair, and in the United States at least, the masculinity equation becomes reversed again in Vietnam, with long hair of war protesters signifying an alternate to crew-cut military masculinity.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=OWK23H1xK80C&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=HAIR+AND+HAND+TO+HAND+COMBAT+IN+WAR&source=bl&ots=yxGdkqQLhg&sig=kzmrIBnfP4ruGP_r3elYJY9CtPQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-ECsVLDbJNLloASt9YHQCQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=HAIR%20AND%20HAND%20TO%20HAND%20COMBAT%20IN%20WAR&f=false
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January 6, 2015 at 1:36 pm
Jason:
Is this a typo in your comment: ” It merely appears to normal male biology”
should this be …………………………………….”appeals”?
Just an observation.
In any case the argument for short or no facial hair or head hair is a better argument, as nikeyo puts it: “Perspective is everything.”, that serves a much more useful purpose in hand to hand combat and I submit is a “better” argument for less or short hair than more long hair. If you have ever witnessed women fighting hand to hand, you’ll see why long hair would not be an optimum masculine tool in this man’s army.
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January 8, 2015 at 4:10 am
I grew up in a very rigid Holiness church. The men were required to shave thier faces. While the women were forbidden to shave thier legs. Confusing? You bet…there was a mass exodus from that local assembly when we all started to “think” for ourselves. Too much emphasis is placed on these trivial matters. We should strive to keep unity within in Church.
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