“They make you shave?”
I looked back a little embarrassed, unsure of how I could defend this position.
“Uh yeah, I have to shave.”
“You are an adult. What harm is there in facial hair?”
And to be honest I really didn’t have an answer.
………..
This blog is about beards.
Yes. Beards, the furry things that grow on people if they produce testosterone and are not prone to a clean and smooth sleek face. Even girls can grow beards. This has happened before. I think that is terrifying. You can probably find a cheap Red Box movie on the concept or a Sci-Fi channel original if you look hard enough.
I’ll just say it.
My beard is a huge part of my identity.
I know. That’s a little weird, maybe even crazy. I noticed it years ago when after shaving I stopped looking in the mirror for a couple weeks. I showered less. I just lost a sense of who I was because for some reason, I found my identity in the beard. I mean you’d think I had an emotional crisis or a traumatic event. I wasn’t upset, I just found… I didn’t feel like taking care of who I was mattered anymore when the ol’ facial hair had been pruned.
To be honest I guess I don’t always like the face God gave me. Ironically he gave me a face with a beard so that argument for identity does stand on unsteady ground. I mean my face does naturally grow a covering for it. Yet, that would mean one day I’ll have to fall in love with the baldness that God also is gifting me with.
(FYI: I’m not actually going bald, my hair is slowly ascending to heaven in a progressive rapture. Some days I almost hear the wind whisper, “Jacob’s hair dwelt on Earth 25 years and then it walked with God.”)
I wondered for a long time. Why does shaving mess me up so bad? I mean life goes on. I’m not like “Wrecked” or anything after shaving. I just know that for some reason my facial hair holds a huge part in my identity. In who I really think I am…
And it shocked me. It did. I never was one to wake up and primp and croon in the mirror singing, “Jacob how you get so fly, said Jacob how you get so flyyyyyy-e-aiiii.” Why would a beard matter to me? I was perplexed.
Until I started thinking about how it’s really not unique. I mean, maybe the beard part, but losing our identity the moment we lose something we like or value? That’s not unique.
We all do the same thing in many ways. Girls wear makeup and often focus on hair and clothes.
It’s not uncommon for me to inevitably hear from a girl “Tomorrow I won’t be wearing makeup when I look up. It’s not pretty. I look like a train wreck. Prepare for the accident. PREPARE!”
Admittedly if she did look like a train wreck I’d probably be more inclined to stare. Rubbernecking as they say, most accidents don’t turn away viewers anymore.
Yet more often then not, they are gorgeous and just trying to justify something that doesn’t need to be justified.
Is makeup really that important? Does not the beauty of the image of God stand on its own? Yet we are prone to try and change it so much. Some of us try to change the image of God until we get surgery and a new identity.
We wear things that say, “I’m a hipster. I’m a Rock-A-Billy. I’m artsy. I play sports. I love the Gators. I hate injustice. I’m smart. I’m dumb.”
We dress and put our hair into complex artistic patterns. Most men just wake up and shower and junk. But as a society we’ve shifted from trim hair to extreme hair, the punk rock scene with hair-straighteners and mad splashes of color. An insane pinterest of fashion and ideas being played out just to belong.
Ride a motorcycle? Leather jacket. Use a skateboard? Vans and skinny jeans. Play video games? Thinkgeek.com. Travel and do Missions work? Facebook profile shot with an orphan or an African on you as you grin.
These are tangible things. Sometimes identity is in the back-patting a pastor receives after knocking a sermon out of the park. Sometimes it is in being told a talent such as singing is good and unique. Sometimes just being told we have value and worth is a part of our identity. Sometimes even pain holds us and says…
I am you. I am all you ever will be.
It’s amazing to me though, the different things we place identity in.
This is NOT an American trait too. It’s a human trait. All cultures have had a mingling and desire for affirmation, to look respected or beautiful, to be different and unique, or to be the same and non-conformist.
They’ve all searched and adventured and experimented to find a place, a definition of style and beauty. From tribal people with tattoos and piercings to teenagers with tattoos and piercings.
The whole sum of us is bursting with a desire to make and create. We are after all made in the image of God. Just open your eyes and look out the window for five minutes. Birds, cars, rain, trees. Our universe is GORGEOUS. Artistic. This is because our God is that way and then… He made us in his image. We should expect to be overwhelmingly passionate about creation. From art to style, it is within us to explore new creative depths.
Look at the universe, the stars, the mountains, humanity. Everyone so unique and so different. It’s strange how we are hardwired to look for and search for our identity in things that make us different or set apart.
Yet it sets in slowly. An obsession to make that creative art measure up to some unknown standard. To be the best. Sometimes to best what God has declared good. To sing on American Idol. To speak in front of millions. These overwhelming urges for affirmation and purpose start to come from flawed broken sources. Cursed frail humans, images of God that are marred with sin. So then we cling to what can most easily define us. The affirmation we can seek. Some find identity in failure, sin, sexuality, drugs, alcohol, success, riches. Then…
We cling to that. It’s who we are. It’s what we think we need to live and breath and survive.
And when that identity gets messed with. We flip. Like silverback gorillas around poachers. We violently clench our teeth and get fierce. We feel as if our very humanity is assaulted. As if someone painted over our already used and beloved canvas.
Ouch.
“You will not tell me who I am. You will not change what I am.”
I look at the things that we believe define us and think, “Is that really a secure identity at all?”
Is that really who we are?
Is it fair to place identity in hair if male pattern baldness, cancer, or a knife can deftly take it away? Even so for the Christian we will one day have new bodies. Is it fair to put that weight upon fragile uncontrollable biological forces?
On fashion that changes so much that sources of pride in 1990’s clothing now seem trite embarrassments. More than once have I worn something only to find years later I didn’t like it anymore. I had gone from loving what I wore to being actually ashamed.
This summer I work at a camp I love. I adore the place. And when I first worked here years ago the rules were a little stricter than these days and a little confusing to someone from the non-conservative West Coast culture. A.K.A. In Seattle people paint themselves blue and ride naked on bicycles through the streets every year. It’s not a land of strict standards by any means.
So I was a little shocked years ago to see the South and the different ways that people lived. Back then I didn’t really have long hair, a long beard, or care too much about how I dressed. Folding into a system with standards and rules was very easy. I had to shave since I was fifteen and I worked for a police station.
Yet as the years have gone on I’ve found myself liking certain things. Be it tattoos and beards or just lumberjack shirts. And I am cooler than James Dean in Lambda Lambda Lambda. Maybe you won’t get that unless you were born in the 1970’s.
I have developed an identity and more independence. I have become more of who I believe I am.
Independence. I really have always loved that one.
For this place to run though, sometimes we are asked to lay down a little bit our independence. To adhere to a stricter life-style and be a great testimony. I honestly believe this to be an incredible opportunity to unite as a body of Christ. To partner together and say that Jesus is valuable enough for us to give up anything.
What is funny to me is that living by standards…
This one thing upsets people almost more than anything else I know.
I have heard people rattle off angrily about having to shave. I have heard people frustrated over having to wear clothing that may be less revealing. Not drinking. Not smoking.
Little things like that make people fiercely opposed to a place that faithfully shares the gospel day after day and has a ton of life change. And that’s… sad.
To miss that because of something as silly as my own self-reliant nature of loving individuality.
“You make me shave, therefore I am angry.”
That view is so shortsighted!
Why aren’t we angry at the pornography industry? Why aren’t we angry at the drugs sold on street corners? Why do we laugh at films that demean woman, marriage, and godly standards? Why aren’t we upset at all these other vices and problems?
Yet when a God-Honoring group of people rises up and commits to living out a lifestyle of love and sacrifice they get the most flack from the very brothers who are supposed to stand with them?
I’m not saying we need more legalism. I declare war on it often, I watch horror movies, and get a lot of trouble for making too many jokes. But we need to honestly evaluate…
Who are we even fighting anymore? When we attack our brothers does it help anything? Isn’t the gospel the unifying factor? Didn’t Paul become all things to all men? Didn’t Paul change his hair and dress and even diet to bring people to Christ?
I think people feel as if rules are a “Judgment on spirituality.”
Nope. That’s all wrong. How we follow them can be though. Not always too. Life isn’t about rules. But we have to live by principles. Sometimes people don’t get that. But that’s on them, right?
Join the military and you have to shave and wear special clothing. You get a new identity with a military branch.
Join the police. Same thing.
Politics. Law. Science. All the things we do come with clothing and rules and parts of our identity. Yet for some reason when I talk to people its accepted everywhere else, but if a group of Christians all agree to abide by certain standards it’s like Satan decided to have a revival crusade and punched a baby.
Mixing the spiritual with standards and rules for some is a place of past hurt and shame and I can understand why some get frustrated. There is truth to that. There really is. I grew up with less rules than many. I needed them to grow. Every case is different.
Should we not consider ourselves blessed and lucky? I can get an education, I want not for food. In most cultures for thousands of years life wasn’t about identity. It was about survival! Drafted into the military. Dragged to different countries. Some live as slaves. Even in Taiwan, every person had mandatory military time which including shaving the head and giving up time with the high school sweetheart.
I am so blessed to be part of anything in life more than survival. To thrive and watch souls get saved and changed.
I love the perspective of a good man I met recently, Barry Russell, he leads a church with his brother in Titusville called the grove. They are pro-beard and that is glorious. But he was talking about his days in college and how he had rules and needed to abide by them at Bible College. Some people would and some wouldn’t. Yet Barry decided to seriously strive to fit the dress code, to do what was asked and then he dropped one of those wisdom bombs…
“How could I ever expect to be a Pastor of a church if I can’t even follow the little rules and requirements of a college?”
Barry was practicing discipline when he was at Bible College. That’s a man who has a perspective on why we do funny things like wear dress shirts and shave sometimes.
I can flip-flop sometimes and struggle in following rules. I’m a rebel at heart. I need to practice self-discipline like Peter said. I need to actually practice it. Maybe some people are born able to look at a calendar and wear a tie. Me though? I literally have to wake up and act like I’m training for the Olympics. Taking my calendar seriously is an act of endurance. Taking schedules as more than ideas is similar to sprinting during a marathon to me. It’s exhausting and I struggle to grasp how practical it is. I struggle to think I will ever do well, let alone finish. That’s who I am. I need to practice that.
Sometimes we don’t practice discipline. We practice angry inner rebellion and frustration.
I’m guilty of wasting many a good moment in life over something so temporary and fragile as hair or curfew instead of seeing the beautiful way God is moving and running with these people. Instead of seeing how tons of lives walk away from camp and everything changed. I’m guilty of being a source of grief some days instead of rest for people because I was bitter and angry at rules. I really had to learn to get past that. To get over myself.
So today I had to shave my precious facial hair.
It all boils down to this.
Who I am is not what my hair says. The brand of my shoes. Nor whether or not I can or am allowed to drain a cold one.
Who I am is found in Christ, a man who was fully God and came and died to pay for our evil, rose afterwards and then declared me not only forgiven. But a Son of God. A child of the Lord. He declared me righteous. Justified. He likes me. Loves me. And earnestly desires me. He wants me to grow though and part of that is practicing a life of self-discipline. Learning to grow-up. Learning to find hope and joy and see the good things in life.
I mean really is the image of the eternal God placed on your life and the declaration that you are His child enough for you? Is that identity cool enough? One that transcends so much. Nothing can change the image of God in us even if we try. Isn’t that a beautiful enough place to find worth and value and strength in? That God has declared that He adores and loves us? Can you believe that?
How He Loves Us – David Crowder
I mean shaving is a small thing. It really is.
Don’t minimize my pain though, my beard is fierce. Make fun of it and I will scratch you. With my beard. It’s sand-papery.
What harm is there in beards? Nothing. But… there is so much harm in being unable to submit and change. So much harm in idolizing my individuality when I may need to sacrifice it for the kingdom of God. Making idols out of the most stupid and simple things. Making entitlement our god.
It really is so small compared to the great glorious things I see in joining alongside other Christians. So I joyfully am submitting to many different things today and for the rest of my life in order to see God work. Submission can be a beautiful thing.
Maybe you’re angry at rules. At a job. Maybe you have lost your identity and don’t know who you are anymore. Rest in Jesus. Rest in His love and affirmation. That someone would love us enough to let us be children of God. There is so much joy and wonder to life. Don’t miss it.
I’m so stoked for this summer and rejoice knowing I can step in unity with other brothers who have an identity so much deeper than what we wear or how we look. I am so excited to go on the Race next year and fight my notions of entitlement. To cleanse myself from selfish ambition. To practice self-discipline. To come back different.
