When it comes to verses that Christians admit they don’t understand, 1 Corinthians 11:10 tops most of our lists.

Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. (1 Cor 11:10 NASB)

The Apostle Paul just told us that we’re to practice head coverings because of the angels. So no matter what this verse means in its fullness, what we know we have is one of Paul’s reasons. This point can’t be stressed highly enough. We don’t seek to understand what this verse means and if we do “get it”, it will become a reason. Rather, because it is a reason we therefore seek to understand it. The difficulty to us is that Paul says this in passing without explaining what he meant. A likely reason for this is that the church in Corinth understood what Paul meant, therefore an explanation would be unnecessary. In his letter to the Thessalonians, he said that he had explained details about Christ’s Second Coming to them when he was with them (2 Thess 2:5). This too may be one of those doctrines that was articulated while in their presence. Read more