Reflections on 1 Corinthians 11:4
“Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.” (1 Corinthians 11:4, NIV)
I had never really looked at this verse before this morning. Lining the translations up side by side, most say much the same thing: a man who prays or speaks for God with his head covered brings shame, disgrace, or dishonor on his head. Then I came to the Living Bible, which turns it into a rule about hats: if a man refuses to remove his hat while praying or preaching, he dishonors Christ.
That is a very concrete reading, and I believe it misses what Paul is saying. Christ is not petty. There is no merit in the outward action of removing a hat. The covering of the head is a symbol of something, and the question is, of what?
Two Heads
Paul has just told us in verse 3 that the head of every man is Christ. So when he says a covered man dishonors “his head,” he is speaking of two heads at once: the one on his shoulders and the One he answers to. The Remedy catches this, describing the covered head as a man symbolically hiding himself from God, as though he were going his own way instead of following the loving leadership of Christ.
What Truly Dishonors Someone?
The translators reach for strong words: dishonor, shame, disgrace, disrespect. So I asked myself, what act truly meets those descriptions? What can we do that shames and disgraces another person?
We refuse to tell the truth about them. We publicly lie about them, saying they have done something horrible, something despicable that they would never even think of doing. That is what dishonors a person.
Christ is our head. When we pray, or talk about Him to others, with a veil between ourselves and the knowledge of Him, a barrier between our mind and Christ, and we choose to keep that barrier in place, we are acting dishonorably toward Him. He has done everything possible to make Himself known to us. Yet we can refuse to know Him personally while publicly telling others that we do know Him and this is who He is.
The Lie Behind the Veil
By calling ourselves Christians we accept the Christ who came to earth and lived a life to overcome and heal the damage caused by Adam’s breach of trust with God. Adam broke faith with his Creator and chose to believe the lies told by a talking snake over the truth spoken by the loving Creator who came daily to spend time with them.
A man keeps his head covered when he refuses to know the One who is his head by creation and redemption, when he believes the lies about Christ and God that Satan has been spewing since before the world was created: that God does not have your best interest at heart, that He would withhold something good from you, that He is vindictive. It is the picture the devil has painted of God all along, a god who needs the appeasement of a blood sacrifice to turn his anger away from the fallen, sinful humans he created.
This is Satan’s lie. If we believe that God requires the torture and brutal murder of His sinless, faithful Son to appease His anger, we are holding a veil between ourselves and the truth Christ came to reveal about Himself and the Father. That veil, that head covering, must be removed before we can speak of Christ publicly, pray, or preach about Him without bringing Him dishonor or shame.
Paul’s Own Veil
I was encouraged to find that Paul himself uses the veil this way. In 2 Corinthians 3:13–18 he writes of a veil that lies over the minds of those who read Moses, a veil that is taken away when a person turns to the Lord. Then, he says, “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18, KJV). And just a few verses on in our chapter, Paul says a man ought not to cover his head because he is the image and glory of God (1 Corinthians 11:7). A covering hides glory. A false picture of God hides His Glory.
In Paul’s day the covered head was a real practice. Roman men drew their togas up over their heads when offering sacrifices to their gods, so a covered head in Christian worship could look like pagan worship. Paul was speaking to that. But behind the outward custom is the symbol, and the symbol is what speaks to us today.
Adam’s Choice
Thinking about the veil took me back to Eden. Scripture tells us Adam was not deceived; it was the woman who was deceived (1 Timothy 2:14). I believe Adam knew Eve had fallen. He did not eat because he believed the serpent. He ate so he would not lose her. He broke faith with Christ by not trusting Him with his own life and the life of his wife, not trusting that Christ could and would fix the damage done to Eve. His fear was focused on himself and on losing her, so he chose to let what had happened to her happen to him too.
Then look at what sin did to him by that same evening. When God came to speak with them in the garden, Adam threw Eve under the bus: the woman You gave me, she gave me the fruit (Genesis 3:12). Before he fell, he was nobly willing to share her ruin. After he broke faith, he was willing to let her take all the blame to save himself, and he blamed God for giving her to him besides. That is what believing the lie does to us. Once we believe God is not for us, we start protecting ourselves at everyone else’s expense. And Adam hid from God among the trees. The veil was already in place.
Questions I’m Still Working Through
This is a first look. I have not yet worked through the translations of verses 5 and 6, where Paul says the woman should be covered. If the man’s covering is the veil of lies between his mind and Christ, the symbol must mean something different for the woman, and I don’t want to force an answer before I’ve lived with the text. Here are the questions I’m carrying forward:
- Is the woman’s relationship to man different from her relationship to Christ, and how does that shape what her covering means?
- Does the man’s place over the woman come from the fall, “he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16), describing what sin does to the relationship rather than God’s design? If so, how does that fit with Paul’s appeal to creation in verses 8 and 9?
- If a woman’s life gives her husband a false picture of Christ, as Eve’s choice did for Adam, does she in some way dishonor her head? And is the other side of that her power to win him by the life she lives (1 Peter 3:1)?
- Why does Paul so quickly add, in verses 11 and 12, that neither man nor woman is independent of the other?
When confused, read on, as Graham Maxwell used to say. But I stand behind what I have seen so far: what dishonors Christ is not a hat. It is the lie we keep between ourselves and Him. Remove that veil, and we can speak of Him with honor.
