{"id":388,"date":"2008-06-26T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2008\/06\/the-all-important-toupee-question.html"},"modified":"2008-06-26T11:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-26T11:45:00","slug":"the-all-important-toupee-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2008\/06\/the-all-important-toupee-question.html","title":{"rendered":"The All-Important Toupee Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a serious question<\/span> about a silly topic: preachers who wear toupees. I am not dogmatic about very many religious things. I’m pretty easygoing and tend to think, as a rule, grace is always better than judgment.<\/p>\n

Except for this. I am judgmental about this one thing, almost all the time: I personally have a hard time respecting a preacher who wears a toupee. Seriously. In the town where I live, there are at least a couple of highly visible (and well-respected) senior pastors of large churches who disguise their baldness under a synthetic rug. They’re not fooling anyone. Pretty much everyone knows. And yet they continue to perpetrate the fraud.<\/p>\n

The guy below is not one of them, but it makes for a good illustration, in an insane televangelist kind of way:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Anyway, toupee-wearing ministers really bother me.<\/p>\n

Here’s the dictionary definition<\/a> of the noun “lie<\/span>“:<\/p>\n

lie<\/span><\/span> (n.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
1. <\/b> A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.<\/div>\n
2. <\/b> Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
So when you put fake hair on your head, isn’t it for the purpose of giving people the impression you actually have real hair? And isn’t it a deliberate presentation of something being true (“I have hair\/I am not bald”) when it’s actually false?<\/p>\n

So according to those definitions, when it comes to preachers who wear toupees — aren’t they chronic intentional liars?<\/p>\n

Anybody else got a problem with that?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I do. Not that I’m not a liar and an egotist and a sinner myself. I am all those things. But I’m also balding. I’ve had a receding hairline for years, and you know what? I’m cool with that. I’ll eventually be bald. But you’ll never see me wearing a toupee, so this is the one stone I can throw. My opinion: Hairpieces are vain. Hairpieces are a form of lying. To me, a preacher who wears a hairpiece might as well be wearing a sign that says “I am vain and I am a liar.”<\/p>\n

I want to trust you, Pastor Hairpiece. But I can’t, because I take one look at you and think: Liar.<\/span><\/p>\n

I bring this up because an emailer took me to task recently for complaining about a toupee-wearing preacher in this article<\/a>. Who are you to be so mean about a person’s appearance? <\/span>she demanded. I felt kinda bad. For about a second. But then I realized I wasn’t mocking the preacher’s natural appearance — his natural appearance (baldness) was not on display during the church service. It was artfully hidden beneath an obvious hairpiece. I wasn’t mocking the way God made him. What I was mocking was his need to conceal the way God made him. (Anyway, mocking a bald prophet of God can have disastrous results<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So, I want you to weigh in the issue. Am I off-base here? Am I being a jerk? Anyone else feel this way about pastors with toupees? I want your honest opinions. Comment away…<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a serious question about a silly topic: preachers who wear toupees. I am not dogmatic about very many religious things. I’m pretty easygoing and tend to think, as a rule, grace is always better than judgment. Except for this. 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