What a larf!!
So lets be honest. Wearing a beard is just as much vanity as not wearing a beard. There is no difference to trimming and shaving. If I pluck my nasal hairs or ear hairs I am not going against ‘God’s plan’. The idea that to be clean-shaven is effeminate is crazy. If a clean-shaven man arouses some men and turns them into that hideous breed known as ‘homosexuals’ then let’s be honest, they were homosexual to begin with.
I’ve had guys hit on me before… not that I’m interested, but I’m flattered 
This is a very interesting thread. If I was a man, I know I’d have a beard, as I couldn’t be doing with that shaving every day. I persuaded my husband to grow a beard last year, and it was nearly ‘there’ but then his vanity got the better of him and he shaved it off. (it made him look ten years older as it was quite grey and he’s rather vain but I thought he looked great).
Great points made by Paidion and AllanS. 
This is indeed a very interesting thread. And some good points have been made. Along with a lot of nonsense, in my opinion.
Paidion, your beard is splendid, and looks magnificent on you 
. But I think it’s unfair and unkind to claim that it is somehow shameful for men to shave off their beards. And what CS Lewis, who in every photograph I’ve ever seen of him was clean shaven, is doing claiming that shaving is some sort of satanic conspiracy I’ve no idea. Seems just a tad hypocritical to me, what!
As for the notion that men can be ‘turned’ into ‘homosexuals’ by the absence, or indeed the presence, of a beard - that is as stupid as it is offensive. All gay men hideous? I’d have thought it was the other way round. Montgomery Clift or Gerard Depardieu? George Michael or Johnny Vegas? You decide.
Pip Pip
Johnny (beardless and proud of it)
i flagrantly go against God’s plan to make me an unholy bear/sasquatch sort of thing by shaving my head! 
i’m reasonably sure i’m not that attractive to men (although it takes all types), and i’m shocked and surprised my girlfriend seems to fancy me
Johnny, you’re great for a laugh! Brilliant and fair comparisons!
I updated my avatar, to show off my earlier beard and curled 'stache (though you can’t see it very well). Also… the family dog’s cute puppy 
Now *that *is what I *call *a beard, Andrew. (You know I’m just jealous cos I can’t grow one 
).
We have a sort of half serious, half jokey organistion here called the Beard Liberation Front. Every year they award the title Beard of the Year to a prominently hirsute gentleman. It’s international and entirely ecumenical, so I’m sure you’d be in with a shout if you were to regrow your thatch. Previous winners include Freddie Flintoff and Rowan Williams, but front-runner this year is South African cricketer Hashim Amla, whose beard is mighty indeed. Photo attached!
Cheers
Johnny
I never knew the guys in ZZ Top played cricket…
“Larf” away.
So who’s being dishonest?
You don’t wear a beard. You wear a scarf. A beard simply grows on you of its own accord. Your choice is either to allow it to grow as God intended, or cut it off, thinking this somehow improves your appearance. Do you know better than God how a man should look?
Baloney! If there’s no difference between trimming and shaving, why don’t you shave your head?
The apostle Paul said that it was a shame for a man to have long hair. What would constitute his shame, if it were not effeminate. And if allowing the hair to grow long is effeminate, then surely cutting off the beard to make the face look like that of a woman is also.
Tertullian [200-250 A.D.] understood how going against God’s design dishonoured Him. He carried this understanding much farther than I. In his work about the apparel of women, he wrote:
I am sure it never occurred to Tertullian that Christian men would one day not only pluck out the beard in places and shave around the mouth, but shave the entire beard off!
I repeat:
If I pluck my nasal hairs or ear hairs I am not going against ‘God’s plan’. The idea that to be clean-shaven is effeminate is crazy.
If a clean-shaven man arouses you (as a man) then, truth is, you are homosexual and need to exit the closet. My mother used to tell me that wearing a beard was often a disguise for such men. Thank God that with the passage of time, there is now no need for ‘such men’ to disguise themselves but rather be proud of the love they can offer fellow human beings.
Paidon’s attempt to make a categorical distinction between trimming and shaving rested solely on this:
Always the assumptions! Usually wrong. I do shave my head Paidon as well as my chinny-chin-chin. I recommend some mustard on that baloney of yours.
If you REALLY went down your theological rabbit hole (which has no scriptural basis), you should have the courage to allow your beard to grow to the length God has planned. The alternative, which is all anybody asks for, is that you not create stumbling blocks and admit that it is simply a personal choice. If you feel that it gives you a needed air of manhood or wisdom then go ahead.
P.S.
Correct - I am clean shaven head and chin. It is you who wears a beard.
P.P.S. Johnny - I hope you understood my attempt at satire when I used the term hideous?
I will take no further part in this thread as I don’t want to perpetuate what could be a stumbling block to other christians.
Paidion, I would be interested to know what you think about deodorants and anti-perspirants — you deliberately avoided that in my original post As far as I understand, deodorants mask your natural, God-given scent; a scent that was originally “designed” to attract women (much like the beard, although this attitude too has since changed — which I’m sure most women today are content with). Anti-perspirants further still, actively clog the sweat glands in your skin with completely foreign, unnatural materials. The aluminum present in almost all anti-perspirants are arguably adverse to one’s general health. These materials aren’t simply a matter of maintenance, they actively upset the functions of the natural body “unnecessarily” (i.e. purely for cosmetic reasons, much like beard-shaving, and in another sense, not unlike contraception).
Thank you, WAAB, for your persistence in asking the deodorant question. I regret that I didn’t answer you sooner. I just didn’t around to it. Thank you also for your courtesy; it is quite a contrast to the attitude of Grim Pill.
I think it is important to realize that the world as we have it today, and have had it for thousands of years, is the result of the fall, and that we need to fight against these negative results as much as possible. Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed, mankind as well as animals and birds have suffered from the spoiling of God’s creation. We read in Genesis how after God looked at what He had made in each day of creation, He saw that it was GOOD, and on the day that He made man, He saw that it was VERY GOOD. On that day, he also gave to man as well as to every breathing creature on earth the plants for food. But, after the fall, as time went on, some animals developed teeth and intestinal systems suitable for eating flesh. This was not God’s original intention. Mosquitoes started to suck the blood of animals instead of the juices of plants. I once read in a science book that in an experiment, mosquitoes were isolated in an enclosure where was no animal life available. They sucked the juices of plants and produced their young just the same! And that took place thousands of years after the fall.
Today, many atheists try to show how foolish they think it is to believe in God pointing out the various worms that slowly kill animals and people, hyenas which literally bite chunks out of their prey until it dies in agony, the way cancer causes great pain in people, and other horrible ways in which some forms of life prey upon others. They say, that if God exists, and created those horrible predators, then He cannot be the loving God that Christians claim Him to be. What they neglect to consider is that God didn’t create these creatures that way. God recognized everything He created as GOOD. These life forms BECAME that way as a result of the fall. If a person has intestinal pin worms, they should be killed with medication. It was not God’s intention that people be infested with these fallen creatures.
Animals and people are sometimes born deformed. Twins are born conjoined at the head. Chickens sometimes lay double-yoked eggs which, if hatched produce a chick with particular parts of its body doubled. I had an aunt who, if she had not shaved her face, would have had a beard. I do not consider it wrong to have shaved because “God made her that way.” God didn’t make her that way. She was that way because of the fall. Conjoined twins are that way because of the fall. It was not God’s intention that twins be born conjoined. It was not God’s intention that women have beards. We should fight against the way the fall affects us biologically. It was okay for my aunt to shave. Perhaps she could have helped solve the problem also by having the estrogen level increased in her body.
Grim Pill states and repeats: “If I pluck my nasal hairs or ear hairs I am not going against ‘God’s plan’.” I agree. For it was not God’s plan for people to have ear hairs. They exist as a result of the fall. I’m not sure about nasal hairs. They might now serve the purpose of filtering pollutants from the air, or disease germs. But He probably didn’t create man with them since there were not air pollutants or disease germs in the beginning.
If you have a large lump on your face, you are not going against God by removing it. God didn’t put it there; He didn’t intend for it to be there. If a person is born without ears, he is not disrespecting God by having plastic surgery so that he then has ears as God intended people to have. On the other hand, if he already has ears, but thinks he looks better without them and has them surgically removed, he is disrespecting God, thinking that he can improve on the way God designed man. The same thing applies to shaving one’s beard — or a woman shaving off her eyebrows, and believing she can paint on better eyebrows.
So I see body odour as existing as a result of the fall. Perspiration — probably God’s design to cool us off when we are working or exercising. But, to put it frankly, it is probable that in the beginning man’s sweat didn’t stink. So in using deodorants we are not opposing what God has created, rather we are fighting against just one more result of the fall of creation.
So the bottom line is that we must be able to distinguish between God’s design, and the unpleasant characteristics we happen to possess as a result of the fall. These are totally different categories. We should accept the former with gratitude, but fight against the latter.
Hi Paidion
Your defence of your position on beards, and other ‘alterations’ to God’s creation is admirable. But I am afraid I must disagree with you almost entirely.
Numbers Chapter 6 begins thus:
(My emphasis)
Now if the Lord Himself says that Israelites who wish to dedicate themselves specially to Him mustn’t cut their hair, surely this trumps Paul’s personal prejudice against long hair on men?
Whither Samson?!
Let us not forget that Paul was a Roman, and from what I have read Roman men generally had short hair. Hence Paul was simply reflecting the cultural view of his time and place.
And I don’t think we need to take every word that Paul wrote as gospel, as it were. He was just a man like you and me, and like any man he both had his own prejudices (which included some decidedly dodgy views on women, by the way) and was not infallible. And on this hair business he was, in my opinion, just plain wrong.
John (Pilgrim) is absolutely right to say that “the idea that to be clean-shaven is effeminate is crazy”. It is crazy indeed! And there is, as John points out, zero scriptural basis for it. (And John, I must apologise here, because alas I did indeed miss the satire in your previous post . Which was very dull of me, considering satire, and its poor cousin sarcasm, are two of the chief weapons in my armoury! I did you a grave disservice in inferring something negative from your satirical comment, for which I offer you an unreserved apology.)
I also disagree with what you say about the fall and its ramifications. I think a biologist would take serious issue with your view that all animals were originally vegetarian! And I for one find it absurd to blame the existence of ear hair and BO on the fall!
I respect your right to believe what you believe. But please do not be too hard on those who, like myself and John, disagree with you. We are, like you, simply doing our best to be true to the light God has given us. I know John to be scrupulously fair, and scrupulous for precision and logic in our discussions.
All the best
Johnny
also, what’s wrong with being effeminate? as a wise man i know once said “it takes a man to be a girl!”
I appreciate this paragraph, Johnny, and generally agree with it. Who’s John? Pilgrim? If so, I disagree with the final sentence.
As a matter of fact, I don’t try to convince others of my view of the matter. However, if I have the opportunity to explain my position, I do so. We may consider the matter closed, with us all hopefully submitting to the will of God as best we understand it.
Amen to that Paidion.
Peace and love to you
Johnny
The quaint country commedian Minnie Pearl was once asked if she liked beards on men and she replied, “I’ve never minded going through the bush to get to a pick-nick!”
On the subject of facial hair, some races like the American Indian do not have facial hair. I’m 1/16th Indian and have facial hair, but my cousin doesn’t. And when I was young I had hair on my head, now I just have a ring, the top being bald. I find it easier to just shave every morning and not have to care for it. And my wife prefers the bald with a goatee look. I really don’t care and don’t think the Lord does either.
1/16 North American Indian, eh? Well then, I guess it’s okay for you to shave 1/16 of your beard.