A Couple of Weeks Ago I Cut All My Hair Off

I'm not very imaginative in the haircut department. I'm sure the last big change in hairdo for me was cutting my '80s high school mullet off when I got to university in the early '90s. That means the top of my head has looked more or less the same for about 30 years.

I had the story from Acts 18 in the back of my mind in which Paul has his hair cut off, “because of a vow he had taken.” It seems like simply a note for the record. I'm not aware of any other scriptural connection to that verse and it's never mentioned again. A quick Google search tells me that there's no end of speculation about what the vow was all about but no consensus. It appears that Paul was in the middle of a life change of some sort and decided to have all his hair cut off – the end.

For me, there were some changes going on personally and at work. I felt like it was time for a visible change so out came the clippers on a Friday evening and a few minutes later it was done. After it was finished, it became immediately clear to me why a person would get a dramatic haircut because of a vow. 

First, to the few people who ever see me without a hat, it was obviously noticeable and as such there was no shortage of comments. Even if I didn't say anything about other changes, there were several days in which I was regularly reminded that something was new. With the upcoming end (hopefully) of public health restrictions around covid, there is no shortage of people looking forward to good summertime changes. Seeing someone make a minor personal change like a short haircut let out a general sense of expectancy for the future among the people who mentioned it to me. When a vow or promise or change of direction is new there is that excitement of novelty. Evangelical Christians sometimes talk about this around the experience of Christian conversion. There's an initial buzz of excitement for the person and those around them as the change gets made public. Other vows like a wedding or baptism work the same way in that there's an exciting and notable event that the person can feel self-conscious about while their friends either cheer or jeer depending on point of view. We have no idea what sort of vow Paul made but clearly his haircut made enough of an impression on his friends that they wrote it down and we're still talking about it now all these years later.

Second, after a day or two everything went back to usual except that my head is cold and itchy now. Paul's friends made a one-line note about his vow and haircut but that's it. After his haircut, he got on a boat headed for Ephesus to resume the same sort of preaching he had been doing before. Other passengers on the boat didn't know or care that his hair (maybe beard too?) had been worn in a long Jewish style until a few days before. On the positive side, he maybe wasn't as prone to lice or other bugs as his fellow passengers. On the downside, I'm sure his head was as cold and itchy as mine is now. As a Jewish man and Pharisee, he will have worn a full beard and long-ish hair his entire adult life and going without may have been uncomfortable without a toque out on the open sea. Either way, after the first bit of notice and excitement, nobody really cared and for him personally, it may have been a mixed bag of costs and benefits. The novelty wears off quickly and the situation you find yourself in goes back to its usual mix of drudgery, routine, and habit. Those things coexist with whatever new pattern you are trying to establish and after a few days, the biggest reminder is the occasional discomfort of a cold head. I wonder what Paul thought about his recent vow during that time? Did he keep up with it or did he slip back into his own routines? Did the excitement fade after the thrill of novelty passed by? Were there unexpected costs and benefits for him not directly related to the vow itself? I feel like I've learned some important life lessons during this past year of public health restrictions but once everybody gets vaccinated and we can all go back to gathering in groups, having meetings, and rushing about here and there will I remember any of them?

Finally, I often hear people I know with long hair complain about how slowly it grows. If you cut it all off it grows amazingly fast. If I want to keep the new look I'm going to have to get the clippers out again this weekend. I would have to put regular and consistent effort into making this change into a permanent part of my life. If you make a change as a result of an important vow or just some minor whim that change will only stick out for a little while before easing back into the general flow of how you live and that's OK. If you'll indulge my word nerd self for a minute I think we could spend some time thinking about entropy as Christian folks in the church. Entropy is a word borrowed from science that means things tend from order to disorder. All toward equilibrium. A burst of energy quickly fades. It's not unusual or remarkable in any way. It happens every single time something burns or collides with something else or makes any kind of significant change. As people of faith, I think it sometimes feels disappointing that the enthusiasm for a new project quickly drops away. The odd thing about that situation, however, isn't the fading enthusiasm, it's our disappointment about it. Sudden dramatic changes aren't difficult. Sustaining a change in direction over time is the hard part and it doesn't come with the public notice or excitement of the initial shift. The Scripture doesn't note whether Paul went back to growing his hair and beard like Jewish men did or whether he kept it short as Greek and Roman men sometimes did. Whether to behave like a traditional Jewish person or a Gentile person was often part of Paul's teaching so it would have made sense to use his haircut as an ongoing example. But it would appear that nobody including him cared one way or the other even enough to write it down one more time.

However, that quick fade doesn't mean that the first vow wasn't important. For all we know, he may have vowed to eat less meat and more vegetables or brush his teeth every day. It may have been more significant in a practical way – 'be careful about gossip and harshness when disagreeing with people' would have made sense for him as a personal resolution. Each of us has areas that we need to keep well trimmed in our own life, as well. Or it may have been completely symbolic as a cultural practice that he wasn't sure had any practical consequences. It's risky to make conclusions from what scripture doesn't say but clearly, the vow was his personally and we don't read that he made a dramatic change in his public presence as a result of it. Maybe all that happened was a quick adrenaline burst that got him going on his way to Ephesus and beyond. If that's all that was required at the time then even if the vow didn't last very long it lasted long enough to do its good work.

Have you ever taken a vow or made some personal change that you recognized with a short-term physical change like a haircut?

Were the changes long-lasting or short?

Did things work out well or was it a struggle?