Random Thoughts: Nose Ring Sunday

I am in my favorite coffee shop in Idyllwild that I have mentioned before, and we are discussing the rapture. While we are sympathetic to the people deceived, it is a source of amusement.

We are listening to Internet radio. Should I tell the owners that they are violating international copyright law? The penalty used to be $500 per song, but I think they have raised it. Of course they make it expensive to buy a license. When I was a video game vendor I had to buy a license for each of my jukeboxes. The structure was that the first license is expensive, but each additional license is cheap, forcing the owner to hire someone like me to provide the jukebox. This is Typical Babylon, favoring the large company over the small owner.

There is one group of ladies who have nose rings. Why people have to flaunt tradition is beyond me! Why can't the normal biblical standards apply? What does the Bible say?

        Ezekiel 16:11-13 11

I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen.

Here the prophet is comparing how God treated Israel with a man who treated his wife very well but the result was adultery. But the point here is that nose rings were acceptable and expected forms of adornment. Abraham’s family used them as well. (Gen 24:22) There was nothing wrong with nose rings in 600 BC, and there is nothing wrong with them today, from the Biblical point of view.

Oh, there are some things that are culturally assumed in the Bible that are not necessarily mandated today. So there is nothing wrong from the Bible's viewpoint with nose rings. The same is true in modern Indian culture. Of course if you choose to wear counter-cultural adornment, you have to live with the consequences that breaking with your culture brings. Whether or not it is worth it is an individual decision.