I have long hair.

Honestly, it is not because I like long hair. I find long hair to be rather annoying.

But I grew my hair out for symbolic reasons which have to do with my job as a prison chaplain.

First, although I am a prison chaplain, I am a correctional worker first, and am there to protect and serve the community by helping maintain the safe and orderly operation of the prison. And yet, as a follower of Jesus, I wanted to show the men at the prison that I was not just another prison guard. I was different. Most of the prison guards have military backgrounds, and the military haircut to go with it. By growing my hair out, I visually set myself apart from the other prison employees, even though I was one of them.

Ironically, in the process of growing my hair out, I soon found that the people who judged me for it the most were the incarcerated men.

I cannot tell you how many times I have had a man come up to be after a Bible Study or a church service in prison, and ask to speak to me in private. When we get back into my office, they pull out their Bible and tell me that God has given them a verse for me. Then they read 1 Corinthians 11:14: “Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?” I once had a man misquote the verse and change “dishonor” into “abomination” but that is beside the point.

The first time this happened, I had a little debate there in my office about using proper historical-cultural hermeneutics to interpret Scripture, but over the years, I have finally settled on a simple answer. I say, “That is exactly why I wear it long. I want to be shamed.” They usually don’t know what to say to this, and the conversation ends.

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We have previously seen that Jews practiced baptism, and Jesus underwent this Jewish baptism. What does all this mean, and how did Christian baptism develop?

Jewish Rebirth through Baptism

In Judaism, baptism in water represents a death to the past and a new birth to a completely different future.

It symbolizes death, burial, and new birth. The coming up out of the water did not symbolize resurrection (for many Jewish people did not believe in the resurrection), but of being reborn out of water, like a newborn babe.

This partly explains why Jesus is incredulous that Nicodemus does not understand about being “born again” (John 3:10). Baptism as a means of being “born again by water” was a common practice among Judaism. Entering the water was a way of identifying oneself with the purity of a newborn infant, and indicated that a person was turning away from something in their previous life and making a fresh start in a new direction.

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