It turns out there’s more than a hairs-width of difference between the theology of the TheoBros and most everyone else.
The Christian Twitterverse has been aflame the past few days about an article published on the website of the conservative Reformed Christian group Desiring God. That article by staff writer Greg Morse, is titled “O Beard, Where Art Thou?”
For the record, Morse is a bearded man. And, by his estimation, that makes him a model of masculinity in a world where men should be men and women should be women.
Desiring God is well-known for its advocacy of complementarianism, the belief that God created men and women differently for distinctly different roles in church and home. The group’s philosophy favors male headship.
Greg Morse
But Morse’s Aug. 22 column left many a bald man scratching his head in befuddlement: Is this satire, or is this for real? That was, in fact, a recurring question on social media where response to the column quickly grew into a tangled mess.
Three days later, it appears the column was intended to be taken seriously, not as satire. And in that, it illustrates a sometimes humorous yet decidedly serious distinction between the male headship crowd and the rest of Christianity.
Morse teases out every possible pun on facial hair in his column, which begins with a retelling of the story in 2 Samuel where Joab and his men face the Syrians and Abashai and his men face the Ammonites. The king of the Ammonites captures the army of King David and humiliates them by shaving off half of each man’s beard.
This is important, Morse says, because “in Israelite culture, the beard served as a sign of mature masculinity. … Beards were a facial billboard for manhood, distinguishing men, at first glance, from boys and women.”
Morse then grows out his case to say that “the connection between manhood and unmown cheeks today has flowed down through church history, like oil running down the beard of Aaron.”
He quotes Augustine: “The beard signifies the courageous; the beard distinguishes the grown men, the earnest, the active, the vigorous. So that when we describe such, we say, he is a bearded man.”
“Growing a beard is a habit most natural, scriptural, manly and beneficial.”
And Charles Spurgeon: “Growing a beard is a habit most natural, scriptural, manly and beneficial.”
And even C.S. Lewis from The Screwtape Letters: “Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females — and there is more in that than you might suppose.”
But what of the beardless man today, Morse posits.
“When these beardless came to the bearded Christ, they did not need to grow one to enter the kingdom of God. They, like we, are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone — apart from any strands of good works, lest the hairier among us boast. Of course, on the face of it, beards hold no salvific design, nor are they commanded. Even the shaved can be saved. Nor do beards make us men. Some boys living in basements, addicted to video games and porn, grow beards. But here we walk a fine line. Does this then relegate the beard, that ancient landmark, to a matter of obsolete decoration, of mere preference?”
Not so fast, he writes. While not all godly men may be able to grow beards — or want to grow beards — the fact that men generally have facial hair is a sign and symbol of God’s intended differences between men and women, he explains.
“Why did God make men with the capacity to grow beards? Why grow beards at all, or why not give them to children and women, like some speculate of the dwarves of Middle earth? Is it not because God delights in the distinctions he made? The day and the night, the land and the water, the heavens and the earth, the man and the woman,” Morse expounds.
Even back to the Garden: “He shaded the man’s face with his pencil from the very beginning. What ecstasy of Adam observing the beautiful and smooth face of Eve — like me, yet not.”
Then a warning about the threat to masculinity in modern culture: “Figuratively speaking, our culture dislikes everything about beards. We paste false beards on women and shave the beards of men, catechizing the children that there isn’t any difference. Hair is just hair. With enough hormones, anyone can grow them.”
“Beards protest against a world gone mad. … They testify, in their own bristly way, that sex distinctions matter, that manhood will not be so easily shaven, shorn or chopped.”
Beards, then, are “worth having,” Morse concludes. “Beards protest against a world gone mad. In other words, beards beard. They testify, in their own bristly way, that sex distinctions matter, that manhood will not be so easily shaven, shorn or chopped by the Hanuns of this world. Its itchy and cheeky voice bears witness, ‘Male and female he created them.’”
Online responses to the beard column created a comedy routine of their own, with response by GIF (an eye-rolling Panda, for example) and by words.
Writing on Twitter, David Carlson, said: “OK, since this article argues that God made us good (he did) and this creation includes the capacity for beards and so we shouldn’t be quick to shave them … I look forward to the next article that says women shouldn’t be expected to shave their legs or armpits. Be consistent.”
While Josiah Hawthorne tweeted: “Greg Morse never met my grandma.”
The Desiring God column drew an immediate (and satiric) response from Sojourners, where Senior Associate Culture Editor Jenna Barnett wrote a hair piece titled: “O Solitary Chin Hair, Where Art Thou?” She quipped: “Most people think that Jesus’ ministry began when John baptized him in the Jordan River. Most people are wrong. It began the day he grew a beard.”
Barnett encouraged women who have been plucking stray chin hairs to stop. Growing those hairs might be a sign they are allowed to teach or preach in churches where they previously were shunned, she implied.
Scholar and author Kristin Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, tweeted a response: “Tried to describe beard post to my non-Twitter husband. Wasn’t conveying the essence so I tried to read the best paragraphs. Ended up laughing/crying so hard I couldn’t even squeak out the words.”
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