Religious Purity and beards – When purity for some religion is about the state of the heart and how you live your life. Some other religion associate purity with the keeping of long hair and beards.
This religion believes that leaving the hair and beards to grow without any alteration is a sign of respect and devotion to God.
Purity is the freedom from contamination. It is a form of cleanness, clearness, clarity, freshness, freedom from adulteration, lack of pollution, freedom from immorality, especially of a sexual nature. The various type of purity is known to be purity of conscience, purity of heart, purity of mind and purity of action.
The purity of conscience may be ours when we hate all sins and faults when we have no attachment to sinful things or actions to feel guilty about, but the mere intention of turning away from all faults, or at least seriously trying to do so.
The purity of heart is not so easy to acquire. It consists in a certain attitude to all created things. It entails not being attached to anything created but only to God Who created all things. The need for this purity of heart, this detachment of the heart from the encroachment of created things is clear.
For the mind is very active with most of us and tries to think about whatever it likes from morning to night. The purity of mind we need is not just a question of avoiding sinful thoughts obviously we must oppose them in order to have a pure conscience but the mind has to be trained not only to avoid evil thoughts but to think the right kind of thoughts.
The fourth disposition is the purity of action is that we have to act in keeping with God’s order in things and solely for the love of God.
Therefore some religions have summarized purity to be by works creating a significance around beards and making it become dominant. Even though the people of this century believe more in appearing neatly shaved. This practice is common amongst religions like Sikhism, Judaism, Islam and others who practice keeping of beards in their everyday life.
Sikhism and Beards
In Sikhism, one of the five articles of faith also known as the 5 Ks ( Kakaars), These outward symbols ordered by the tenth Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh in 1699 is one of the prominent means to profess the Sikh faith. These Kakaars include that the hair must be unaltered. This particular Kakaar is referred to as Kes. When one is initiated into Sikh, the hair from the head to the facial hair and every other part of the body are left to grow according to the genetic capability of an individual. This is a point of reference to God and honoring the intent desires of the creator.
You may ask how do they keep their hair? There is another ‘K’ on the Kakaars called the Kanga. The Kanga is a wooden comb and it is used in combing the hair twice a day and tied into a simple knot known as a Joora or Rishi knot and then covered with a turban.
At a summit, Amrit Sanchar in 1699, Guru Gobind Singh Ji explained the reason for the Kes and Kanga:
My Sikh shall not use the razor. The use of razor, for him or shaving the chin is as sinful as incest. Obeying this is one of the things that counts a Sikh to be pure.
Through the Norse history, Beards are seen as sacred and are associated with men and masculinity. The beards is one of the characteristics of those who otherwise follow the old ways of Forn Sidr. Loki happens to be the only Norse god without a beard. They also believe that the Loki god is the very opposite of what a man should thrive to be. A direct association is made between beards and masculinity as well as virtue with stanza 34 stating “Long-bearded, bold, the warriors entered”. A beard is associated with excellence, masculinity, sound moral judgment and to them, the absence of beard expresses feminization as well as immorality and depravity. In the Norse mythology, Thor the god of thunder is portrayed wearing a red beard.
Hinduism and Beards
Hinduism believes that one of the first steps in salvation is a renunciation of the world. The shiavite of Hinduism keep long beards and are not permitted to own anything including a razor. The hair can be taken care of in two ways; shaving everything which means: no hair, no maintenance or you stop caring about the hair and let it flow. Just let it grow and let it flow. To avoid the distractions of maintenance and for hygiene, they often use the sap of the banyan tree and/or wax from honey bees to turn their hair into waterproof dreads that you are commonly seen of them. As far as the correlation between spiritual ascendances, wisdom, and beard is concerned, the wiser and older a person gets and more they grow spiritually, the less they’d be concerned with such acts of vanity and with their physical appearance. This is one of many reasons why wise kings, gurus, philosophers, and prophets have massive unkempt beards.
Judaism and Beards
Judaism hangs on one of the books of the Torah (Old Testament) – Leviticus 19:27 which states that “You shall not round off corners of your heads, nor mar the corners of your beard”. Talmudic tradition renders its explanation that this means that a man may not shave his beard with a razor with a single blade since the cutting process of the blade against the skin “mars” the beard. However, scissors have two blades, hence, some opinions in Halakha (Jewish law) permit the use of scissors to trim the beard, as the cutting action occurs at the contact of the two blades, and not necessarily the blade against the skin.
Following this reason, some Jewish legal deciders called Pokism (You can call them the Pharisees of the Bible) concluded that Orthodox Jews can use electric trimmers shave their beards since such trimmers cut by trapping the hair between the blades. Other Poskim oppose this, they insist that electric trimmers constitute a razor-like action, and therefore prohibit their use.
The Zohar, one of the original sect of the Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah, attributes piousness to the beard, indicating that hairs of the beard stand as a means of subconscious holy energy flowing from above to the soul of man. Therefore, most Hassidic Jews, for whom Kabbalah plays a crucial role in their spiritual apply, historically don’t take away or perhaps trim their beards.
Traditional Jews refrain from shaving, trimming the beard, and haircuts throughout bound times of the year, like Passover, Sukkot, the tally of the Omer, and therefore the 3 Weeks. Cutting the hair is additionally restricted throughout the 30-day mourning amount when the death of a detailed relative, celebrated in Hebrew because of the Shloshim (thirty).
Christianity and Facial hair
The Orthodox Christians likewise kept up a beard. The custom of keeping up beards and whiskers among the religious and married clergy. No uncertainty follows back to the monastic life of the desert. Similarly, the religious practice has impacted our fashion sense, so ascetic dress and grooming have assumed a noticeable part in setting up the standard for administrative dress among these married Clerics. But among “Westernized” Customary, who are against these ascetic inclinations, this impact by the gauge of otherworldly life, the devout bequest, on the alleged “secular” clergy has dependably been idea positive.
Since a self-denying devout foregoes the trimming of his beards with a specific end goal to maintain a strategic distance from vanity, this custom has a functional reason. In this manner, clearly, an ascetic would likewise abstain from looking delicate or styling his hair. It is thus that, if his hair gets too long, with the end goal that it takes after that of a lady, a religious cleric may request that his superior trim it. When he goes out into the outer world, as well, he should, in such conditions, trim his hair and keep it tied up in back, just like the custom in the Greek and some Slavic Chapels. This is with regards to the heart of St. Paul’s advice against men having long hair like that of ladies when this counsel is perused in a setting.
What we should comprehend, here, is that the trimming of hair in these examples amounts to simply trimming off hair that falls below the center of the back. We are not discussing the advanced hairstyle, which is, truth be told, the likeness the despoiling of the head that prompted Samson’s loss of quality and power.
Ministers are, along these lines, unjustified in trimming their hair in the cutting edge style, which is relatively obscure in Christian history, until late hundreds of years. Besides, not only should pastors ought to not shave, as per different Church specialists, but rather numerous blessed men, for example, St. Kosmas Aitolos, hold that laymen should let their beards, or minimum a mustache, grow normally.
The Ordinances take into account the trimming of the mustache fundamentally on account of the Sacred Fellowship and furthermore, a pastor can trim his facial hair somewhat for work reasons. This does not refute the way that these clergymen follow that their beards are spotless and trimmed. Long hair ought to likewise be tied up in the back or tucked under the neckline, for which reason it once in a while displays an issue for a working Cleric who really wishes to comply with authoritative exactitude.
Islam and Beards
Muslim scholars have since quite a while ago contended over the significance of beards. Some view shaving as illegal in light of the fact that his prophets and his prompt adherents wore beards while some different Muslims have confidence with some restraint and serving God with the entire of their souls. In spite of the fact that the Quran says nothing particularly in regards to this. Muslims contend that enabling the facial hair to develop and trimming the mustache is mandatory as indicated by the Sunnah in Islam by agreement.
Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 72, Hadith 781 Described by Abdullah ibn Umar says, “Allah’s Messenger stated, ‘Cut the mustaches off, and leave the facial hair’
Ibn Hazm announced that there was an insightful accord that it is a commitment to trim the mustache and let the facial hair grow. He cited various hadith as confirmation, including the hadith of Ibn Umar cited above, and the hadith of Zayd ibn Arqam in which Mohammed stated: “Whoever does not expel any of his mustache isn’t one of us”.
As of late, the individuals who look to maintain a political type of Islam think that its less demanding to do as such by entirely policing sex and sexuality. Young men ought to be young men, in their brains, and one approach to ensure that is to influence them to grow beards. Their confidence is joined to manliness and appearance. A portion of the Muslims devout who frequently wear ladies’ apparel, have huge long beards and move at the hallowed places of their Sufi experts expressing that they are the ladies of God and this is their accommodation to God. This unquestionably confounds any perfect of bearded Islamic manliness.
How the millennials religious purity and beards
Anyway, the facial hair began, it has now developed into something altogether different. This state of mind has made a lot of pain among the individuals who don’t fit in.
Disregarding the greater part of this, numerous religious Muslim men today, including a few scholars, shave their cheeks or are even spotless shaven. Shaving is generally acknowledged, except for the Salafi development.
In present day times, the pattern of short hair has infringed upon this custom. It is evaluated that half of India’s Sikh men have deserted the turban and cut their hair. A large portion of their ladies likewise decide on hair styles as against the standards of not cutting their hair with cases of societal weight. Reasons incorporate basic comfort; keeping away from the day by day brushing and tying, in light of the fact that their folks cut their hair and they chose to get their hair cut also, and social weight.
These days it’s difficult to tell individuals keeping their hair for manliness purpose as every religion have individuals who have left their approaches to shave their hair.