You know, I wasn’t just yelling into a closet when I asked for an explanation from any Christians on how to tell what parts of the Old Testament are ceremonial and therefore to be ignored, and which ones are eternal and important.
Seriously, there are parts of Leviticus that demand really outrageous death penalties for things people do all the time, and they are ignored, while the few references that can be construed as forbidding homosexuality are the basis of the modern church.
Are these stands defensible?
Can somebody help me with this?
Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
2 comments:
The Mike is on, but I hope your playback speaker is too…is this just a rant, or do you want an answer? Read no further if it is the former.
Here we go...
This is a classic issue of responding to a boogey man, or a stereotype that is not reality. It wouldn’t take you long to skim the book and see that your premise is just plain inaccurate. Actually, there are very few death penalty issues in Leviticus...unless you are referring to bulls and rams.
For the sake of the thread of thought, I will do a Quick outline:
It is mainly ceremonial in the first half. How to divide the various offerings and complete the priestly officiating with the very messy business of blood and guts and fat and muscle. Since I have become sort of like a Levite ( dealing with the sacrifices of God's people to HIM with me as the administrator, not the owner) I find it pertinent and practical…but you or many others not so called can be excused from this class. But your question is: how do I know that this might be something that applies to me but is not universal? Just read it openly, plainly, and without the religious and irreligious slants: It says in the prologue: this is to Aaron and his sons (as well as the title!). Then "clean" and "unclean" issues, which has some obscurity, but also some practicality. Again, all of this is ceremonial, but it won’t kill you to live like that. Historically, the “Church” has said these ceremonial rules and sacrifices were resolved with the coming of the Lamb of God, who once and for all provided the atonement. But if you want to follow these, as some of my friends do, I have no quarrel. And they have no quarrel with me, who treats it figuratively, or maybe better to say: archetypically.
Then there is one (out of 27) chapter on close relationship incest, and homosexuality and invoking a death penalty. Which of these are the things people you know do every day? I personally will be glad (OK, maybe not gladly…but surely) to kill any father, slowly and painfully, who rapes his daughter.
Then in the next chapter, further away (more distance in the relationship) incest, and close relations (In-Laws) sex, and it mandates banishment from the community. Pretty practical, I say.
Then there is a chapter or two with some clearly good ideas regarding how to live in community with others ( Care for the poor, deal justly with your neighbor.)
Then a cool concept of the Jubilee year, and how to care well for the land.
You may have been thinking of another book, or a caricature of the law of Moses. If you don’t trust my outline, as I said, it won’t take long to see for yourself.
I think the Pentateuch has been given a bum rap ( anti-Semites in the Baptist churches in the 19th century?) But in this specific case, in the premise you have stated, your rant has no merit.
I can't believe that people ascribe to an ancient text to tell them how to live. Here we are in the here and now, alive, flesh, breathing, feeling and thinking (hopefully), engaging, interacting, and we need to adhere to an old book to make sense of it? to tell what feels right, what is criminal?
Hey, folks, we're alive right now and then we die. Let's focus on the light we know. It still amazes me how mortality and insecurity motivates folks to adhere and relinguish reason to ancient fables and religious garbly goo. All this Leviticus this and Leviticus that just comes across as high drama for peeps who like to read old stories.
If two people rub flesh in love, don't go running to a book to interpret - let it be. If harm is done to an innocent, their will is violated, no need to reference ancient scriptures for guidance. If it smells rotten, it IS!
We (most of us), via Higher Power or whatever, possess a knack for reason and the sense to do right; in the form of justice, protection, acceptance, tolerance, celebration, and love. The proof is that we're still here, we didn't extinquish ourselves, just yet, anyway. Same sex love isn't a recent invention (and there's a sound reason for it's continuity - love). Rape isn't either, but perps have a way of being stoned to death.
It sounds to me like mental masturbation to take this old text and give it literal translations, meanings, too much merit. Being human isn't a perfected art form, but we do the best we can, and by trying not to hurt ourselves and others we'll keep going. Old stories just help us pass the time by reminding us that the same shit has been happening for centuries.
Our reverence should be for believing in and loving the life that we know, that we feel in the present.
If one is looking for sin, they'll find it, even if they have to fashion it out of something that is unfamiliar or uncomfortable to them, therefore 'deviant'. That's our most primitive nature, I suppose. Homosexuality, in most cultures, is the last frontier in the realm of social integration/acceptance. The sooner we get over our ignorance, fear, basically ourselves, the better the landscape.
Post a Comment