Cheryl Schatz

Don,

Good thoughts.

The key to establish the meaning is to understand that glory should never be covered up.  If a person is God’s glory, then that person should shine forth the glory.  If a woman is the man’s glory, then she should shine forth his glory and not cover up.  This works well with the man being God’s glory, but a woman has two things to consider as you said.  Just as man from the beginning covered up because of his sin, men were conscious of their sin and wanted to show their awareness of their sin.  But if indeed man is really forgiven of his sins, then there is no need to cover up for sin, but shine for the glory of God.  Jesus said that a light is meant to shine in the darkness and not be covered up.  So man was meant to shine forth God’s glory and not cover up.

Women too have God’s glory but they were also seen as having something that only a husband should see – and that was her hair.  The husband wanted to keep that part of a woman private so that only he could see her glory with a full head of hair.  It appears to me that women originally were covered up as a sign of the shame of sin, but later it became a symbol of her special oneness or intimacy with her husband and he did not want to share that with the world.  In our culture the hair on one’s head is not seen as a thing that would produce men’s lust and thus women have the full privilege of showing themselves as being the glory of God and the glory of the man.  It is a wonderful thing when the man is proud of his wife and is proud to share her gifts and talents with the church rather than keeping her only for his own self.  Keeping her hidden away from the public speaks of his insecurity and perhaps his own pride which produces jealousy instead of the man glorying in his wife’s gifts.  If the woman is truly the glory of the man, then she must be released to be that glory.