Slavery in the Bible - Part 1

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

 

Alas, my pet topic – slavery in the bible. This is one of the earliest reasons for my fall from faith – I could not quite fathom a loving God who permitted slavery. I will freely admit that, as a 13/14 year old, my thoughts on slavery in the bible were not entirely accurate as the verses were not fully and properly analysed.  However, the justifications for biblical slavery that I see now filling the pages of the Internet are still wildly insufficient. These reasons can be laid out into a few broad categories:

 

God wasn’t completely supportive of slavery

1.      God does not support slavery – he allows it.

2.      All people are equal in God’s eyes.

3.      The purpose of the bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society. A person who has experienced God's gift of salvation and freedom from the slavery of sin will realise that enslaving another human being is wrong.

There were many measures in place to avoid slavery

4.      Prisoners of wars were rarely, in practice, turned into slaves; a city that surrendered became a vassal of the state of Israel, and war captives were converted into vassal groups

5.      Family members could not be sold into slavery for the repayment of debts unless they consented, and there were many rules which limited the build-up of debt for Israelites.

6.      Paul the Apostle, in a letter to Philemon, indicated that he was returning a run-away slave, but had implored him to treat the slave as a brother and implied that he should free the slave.

7.      Runaway slaves automatically gained liberty.

It’s not exactly slavery

8.      The term “slave” had a very wide meaning in the bible and can mean anything from a slave in the worst sense of the word to a servant to a subordinate – e.g. slave (really servant) of God; slaves (really subjects) of a king.

9.      Israelites could not enslave other Israelites even where unpaid debts were involved – they could only hired as unpaid works for a limited period – 7 years.

It is slavery, but it’s not as bad as you think

10.  The slavery in the bible is not the slavery we commonly think of – where people are kidnapped and sold into slavery (the enslavement of Africans, for example). Biblical slavery was largely voluntary – life as a slave was far better than life in abject poverty.

11.  The purpose of biblical references to slavery was for the protection of the slaves. They were generally protected from over-abuse; injuring/killing slaves were punishable offenses – even with the death penalty in some cases.

12.  Slaves could not be threatened.

13.  The purpose of slavery in the bible was not to improve the economic advantage of the elite, but to alleviate the poverty of the enslaved

14.  Slaves did not live apart from their owners (in barracks on the fields, let's say) but within the homes of their owners and were able to benefit somewhat from their owners' fortunes.

15.  Slaves were semi-free – in that they had freedom in the sphere of their own activities – e.g. taking part in business, borrowing money, purchasing property; this made them more like servants

16.  Because of the economic security and the quasi-family relationship that was developed between slave and master, there was little incentive for slaves to leave; safety lay in belonging not in freedom

 

I will explore each of these broad defenses in its own entry.

 

Gay Marriage

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

This is a bit of a deviation from the framework, but there has been so much debate about gay marriage in the media in the past few weeks, what with President Obama weighing in and all, that I just couldn't help but pick it up.

I am pro-gay marriage. Not that my opinion matters. That topic wouldn't even be broached as a legal issue in my home country of Trinidad & Tobago within this century and perhaps the next. But I think that my opinion, placed in the context of a country that is supposed to champion the idea of the separation of church and state, is quite important. Now a lot of countries don't really pretend that their legal frameworks are free of the constrictions of the dominant religion (or the religion of the dominant, as the case may be), but some countries do. The United States of America is one of them, but to say that US law is completely devoid of religious tenets is foolhardy.

But let me leave that off for a bit and explain my opinion.

I am not pro-gay. I am not anti-gay. I am gay neutral. I don't care if you're gay. Unless you're effeminate. Effeminate people annoy me. Even overly-effeminate women. But I digress. So technically, in that sense, I am not pro-gay marriage. I don't care who you want to get married to. But I do think that gays should have the right to get married like anyone else.

People need to keep in mind that marriage is an insitution of two parts – a legal institution and a religious institution. Therefore, to deny someone the right to marriage is to deny them both their civil rights and freedom of religion.

Let's start off with marriage as a legal institution. See, people forget about that part. They think the word, "marriage" and they start thinking about churches and priests and "before God", but they forget that marriage is also a contract. Not just any contract, either. It is a contract that your government recognises, and then immediately grants the signing parties particular rights. These rights include:

• Property rights – in the case of divorce as well as in the case of death of either party
• Custody rights – of children and other dependents
• Other authorities – such as the right to make medical and financial decisions in the case of the incapacitation of either party
• Tax benefits – in some countries

So when you get married, you're not just telling the government:

"I love this person and if I'm not having sex with them already, I'm gonna be starting real soon."

You are also telling the government:

"I trust this person, and hereby bestow upon them the right to my estate when I die, the right to my children/dependents, the right to pull the plug should I go into a coma, and the right to write off particular expenses in their tax returns."

To deny homosexuals the right to marry is to therefore deny them the right to tell the government who they trust enough to make the above-mentioned decisions. Even if you believe gay marriage to be sinful, how can a man telling the government that he trusts this other man to do those things for him to be sinful? Or woman for a woman? It's not. It is purely a legal issue. It has nothing to do with religion.

Now, there are two ways to address this.

The first way is to tell a gay couple:

"Look, you can't get married. But you can go to a lawyer and draw up a legally binding agreement that would bestow upon each other all of the property, custodial and medical rights that a married couple has. Tough shit on the tax, by the way."

That certainly solves a lot of the legal problems right there, except that it's unfair. A heterosexual couple simply has to get married to automatically get these rights. A homosexual couple is relegated to a lawyer's office and all of the headache and legal fees that come with it. And of course, if the government decides to change their laws, married couples are automatically provided the benefits (or losses) of such a change, whereas the gay couple would have to return to the lawyer once again. Of course, practically speaking, the gay couple may simply draw up a document that speaks to all of these rights, but draft the agreement in a manner that they are comfortable with and not necessarily one that is reflective of the laws followed by heterosexual couples. Still, the need to draft such a document at all, is a reflection of that statement "separate but equal".

And that brings me to civil unions. Civil unions solve the legal problem, though in the manner "separate but equal", with all its discriminatory implications. But let's put aside the rhetoric and emotions of that for now. Civil unions aren't enough. Why? Because of the second institution of marriage – the religious institution.

At first glance, there may seem to be no case for gay marriage on religious grounds. God doesn't like gays. He destroyed a couple of cities for it. And so on and so forth. So it's clear. Homosexuality is a sin. But so is apostasy. And so is paganism. But those are legal. Why are sins legal? Because of the separation of church and state. Sinful and illegal are not meant to be equal terms.

A Christian is legally allowed to renounce their Christian faith (apostasy), convert to Hinduism (paganism) and get married to another Hindu. Why then can't a man marry another man? Because it is against God? So is Hinduism. So is Islam. So is Judaism. So is Buddhism. So is Mormonism (to a lot of Christians). So is Scientology (to almost anyone). But because people are free to believe whatever mumbo jumbo they want to believe, the government allows them to practice their religion however they see fit, once it does not break secular laws.

People believe a lot of absurd things. There are people out there who believe that:

• Some guy named Xenu was the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs (Scientologists)
• Some guy named Joseph Smith was directed to some golden plates in 19^th century New York by an angel, translated the plates from “reformed Egyptian” to American English using a seer stone, birthing the Book of Mormon (Mormonism)
• Cows should be revered rather than consumed (Hindus)
• God wants them to strip the skin off of their newborn baby's penis (Jews)
• Their child is better dead than alive with a blood transfusion (Jehovah's witnesses)
• Women should be covered from head to toe save narrow slits for their eyes in order to detract sexual attention from themselves (Muslims)
• One can attend church in the nude (a church at a nudist colony in Ivor, Virginia)

Yes, these are all recognised religions, folks. All of these people are allowed to believe what they want and practise their religion. But if two dudes believe in the same Christian God that you do, except that they think that God is okay with their gaydom, how is that any more absurd than any of the beliefs listed above? And why can't they practise their absurd religion like everyone else? Freedom of religion. Plain and simple. I understand that people believe that gay marriage is against God. And they are free to believe that, once they understand that it is against their god, and not the gays' god. Just like the Mormons' Jesus visited the Americas after his resurrection but most other Christians' Jesus did not. Very similar Jesuses but not the same. And so for the gays, very similar gods, but not the same. And no one should impose their god on the entire population, no matter how similar these gods may be to others, unless they want a theistic state.

Now, some people then go on to say, sarcastically, mind you:

“Well, why stop at the gays? Why not legalise polygamy? Let men marry animals, while you're at it!”

Well, yes and... no.

Let's start with polygamy. When people say this word, it immediately conjures up images of a single man with multiple wives (often hooded wives because they're Muslim, or in large, ugly dresses because they're holed up in a farm in the middle of nowhere, USA). But this could also mean a single woman with multiple men, or multiple men and women. Now, there are many societal and cultural reasons that has allowed and continues to allow polygamy as it is usually practiced around the world. This often has something to do with allowing women to gain some benefits – through marriage – that would have been otherwise extremely difficult to gain in a society that does not really grant equal rights to women. I am not getting too much into that – you can research it yourself.

As for practical reasons why polygamy does (or should) remain illegal. I imagine it can create an underclass for men. Minding wives is an expensive business – or so I hear – so the men with the most wives are likely to be rich, leaving the poor men to be single and more likely to become societal degenerates. This is far less likely to happen in the modern world with women capable of fending for themselves, of course. And speaking of independent women, let's not forget all of the misogynist overtones associated with polygamy that said independent women are unlikely to tolerate.

Apart from that though, there is no real reason to frown upon polygamy except for the statutory nightmare it would be to determine the property, custodial and medical decision-making rights of a dead man's 5 wives. So I'm okay with polygamy really. I surely couldn't do it, but kudos for those who can. And kudos to the government who can untangle that legislative web.

Bestiality by marriage though is absolutely absurd. A marriage is a legal contract. A legal contract can be drawn up only between two or more consenting parties of sound mind. Children cannot be parties to most contracts because they are not considered to be old enough to fully understand the implications of a legally binding resolution. Insane people cannot be parties to contracts because they too are not able to fully understand contractual obligations – but not because of their age, but because they don't have a sound connection to reality. Similarly – and it is absurd that I must say this – animals cannot be a party to a contract. And do I really need to say why?

If a man wants to fuck a goat, by all means, let him go ahead and fuck it. He should face no legal consequences (although this is certainly not the case in many countries, including mine) unless there is some risk of goat-to-man sexually transmitted diseases. But the law cannot (not “does not” or “should not”) legally recongise such a relationship.

So, please. Please, people. Stop using YOUR god as a reason to deny the gays their rights. They have a right to be miserable and boring like everyone else is.

Is the Old Testament Relevant to Christians? Part 4 of 4

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

I still have a few minor questions, but after a little research, these I were mostly able to answer. Mostly. Sort of. For example:

How do we know that the ceremonial laws and civil laws were part of any covenant between God and the Israelites only?

God and covenants are like Pinocchio and lies – you can't tell a story about one without the other strewn throughout it. The covenants God made were between himself and several people – individuals, individuals and their families, individuals and all future offspring, the entire people of the world. In addition to covering a specified person or group of people, covenants also cover specified promises and requests/demands. Among the multitudinous covenants that God made, there were specifically a Mosaic covenant and a covenant with Israel. So go research those.

Did Jesus ever really delineate between the different body of laws to make it clear which ones related to all and which ones were no longer applicable?

It doesn't really seem that he did. It seems, instead, that to come to a conclusion on which group of laws he found relevant, one needs to research, to an extent, what Jesus said about specific things and draw the principles he seemed to be espousing from that. This, I believe, harks back to my issue with the subjectivity of the New Testament.

How can we be sure that the 10 commandments are really all moral laws and therefore remain applicable when they seemed to be so certainly part of the covenant between God and the Israelites?

Is keeping the Sabbath holy really a moral duty? How could not working for a day be moral in any way? It seems to suggest such a thing is to assign any arbitrary meaning to the word “moral” - i.e. “moral” is whatever action a religious philosophy describes as such. Others who say that keeping the Sabbath holy is a metaphor for keeping our bodies holy do not seem to read the full verse of the commandment which specifically disallows labour on the seventh day. Also – while I can understand why many could consider disrespecting God in any way (i.e. saying his name in vain, etc) could be immoral, I find it a bit silly. God on an ego-trip, perhaps. But that's slightly beside the point.

In any case, I don't intend to pay too much mind to these points in the interest of wrapping up with one final concern. And this concern cycles back to the original purpose of this entry, which was to understand how I am really supposed to react to Christians disavowing sections of the Old Testament when some of the sick shit in it was brought up.

What I have discussed so far I think helps me to avoid making particular arguments that perhaps might have spoken to an accused hypocrisy on the part of the Christian. For example, when Christians abide by certain tenets seen in the Old Testament (considering homosexuality an abomination) yet blatantly disregard others (eating pork with relish), and I am tempted to point such out. Now I understand that while many laws lumped together in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are still applicable because they are moral laws, others are defunct, and I know why. This research will help me to avoid such straw-men arguments in future.

Still, because of the relationship between the civil laws and the moral code, certain laws, though no longer applicable, are still fair game. For example, the law that requires a rapist to marry his victim and never divorce her (Deuteronomy 22: 28-29), or the laws about the treatment of slaves (Exodus 21), though meant to protect rape victims and slaves, are very telling about the overall moral fabric of the society in which these persons live (and which God allows). I am not going to get into the how and why of what I just said as this demands entries unto themselves. Trust me though – these entries are soon to come.

Also events still remain fair game. Such as the Israelites commonly carrying out genocide and infanticide on God's command – entering cities and killing everyone including men, women, and children, saving only the virgins. The explanations I have heard for these appear, on the face of them, to be severely wanting. Some of the explanations speak to a distinction between the people of the Old Testament and the people of the New Testament or the rewards and punishments available at that time. It is these explanations I think are extremely relevant to a discussion such as this, but ones, I think, are better framed in the context of specific biblical verses with their own theme (e.g. “God-sanctioned Genocide”). I will follow this entry therefore with such a discussion, and then later by my pet topic of old - “God-sanctioned Slavery”.

But for now, I shall wrap this up saying that I have most definitely learnt quite a bit in this research, and feel much more knowledgeable having made it. I think even that this four-part entry may be useful to the theist and non-theist alike. That being said, I am quite excited to finally start an entry on the meat of the Bible and look forward to my next entries all the more.

Is the Old Testament Relevant to Christians? Part 3 of 4

 

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

And the questions continue.

If the civil laws were never meant to be applicable to Gentiles and the ceremonial laws became defunct with the coming of Jesus Christ, what civil laws and ceremonial laws are Christians meant to follow?

The Old Testament is very prescriptive when it comes to crimes and punishment and precisely how ceremonial offerings are to be done, and feasts and festivals celebrated. The New Testament – not so much. Now the New Testament mentions “the law” multiple times in reference to “the law” of the Old Testament, but it rarely explicitly states which Old Testament laws (or groups of laws) it is referring to. By no means does the New Testament explicitly lay down the law the way the Old Testament does – legislative style. It is interesting to note however, that despite the continuous references to “the law”, the way the New Testament treats with the law is different from the way it was expected to be followed in Old Testament times.

Paul's letter to the Romans (a genuine Pauline epistle) is probably the best way to show this difference, although I will be the first to declare that the letter is not particularly easy to understand. It's very nuanced (or confusing – depending on your philosophical leaning) and it took several re-readings of specific passages, checking back to my Study Bible, and researching the meaning of particular verses to make sense of the portions that relate to this entry. But I quite like it – in part because it speaks directly to the question of the applicability of “the law”. Here are a few verses that I would like to quote and then explain:

1. “For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law.” - Roman 5: 13
2. “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be! However, I wouldn’t have known sin, except through the law. For I wouldn’t have known coveting, unless the law had said, “You shall not covet. But sin, finding occasion through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead.” - Romans 7: 7-8
3. “Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God set forth to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance;” - Romans 3: 20-25
4. “For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be!” - Romans 6: 14-15
5. “But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.” - Romans 7: 6

So translating item into simple English, item by item:

1. Sin always existed in the world, but the law had not been explicitly stated from the very beginning. Because of this people were sinning – doing wrong – but there were unaware of the laws they had broken and should have been made accountable for.
2. The law is not evil or defunct. In fact, it is useful because it helps us to identify what sin is – it helps us to tell the difference between right and wrong. However, because the law essentially tells us what is wrong, we find ourselves being tempted to do these wrongs, sinning at the very least in our thoughts.
3. Paul now differentiates between what the law can and can't do. The law can tell us what is wrong. The law can't reveal the righteousness of the Lord – apparently this can only be done apart from the law – through Jesus Christ. Because of the nature of people and the nature of the law, everyone will break the law at some point in their lives – and therefore will sin and fall short of the glory of God. And because the laws can't reveal the righteousness of the Lord, the laws in themselves are not enough. We also need Jesus.
4. Therefore it is no longer the law we need to focus on, but salvation through Jesus. But this does not mean we can break the law (i.e. commit the wrongs that the law helps us to identify).
5. Instead, we should serve the lord “in spirit and in truth” instead of by rigorously following laws to the letter.

This only make sense to me if it is meant to be a shift away from following God by rote and a move towards following God by principle. I say this because it seems to be consistent with Jesus' teachings elsewhere in the New Testament. Instead of giving a new set of the 613 commandments contained in the Old Testament (yes – there are 613, although frankly I thought there would have been more), he taught in parables – seeming to impart principles instead of rules. Also, when he did clarify rules, he seemed to imply that people were carrying out the law to the letter, abusing its loopholes and ignoring the spirit (or intention) of the law.

My favourite example of this is the seemingly contradictory principles of the Old Testament “eye for an eye” and the New Testament “turn the other cheek”. The Old Testament rule had been meant as a means to end feuds in a manner that was perceived as fair – the punishment should be equivalent to and not exceed the crime or the compensation should be equivalent to and not exceed the loss incurred. The New Testament rule was brought to bear because people were abusing the Old Testament rule – using it as a justification for vengeance instead of the final settlement of legal disputes.

Now, applying this new way of thinking to my previous entry where I had selected what I considered nonsensical verses, I can understand how the New Testament approach is far better than the Old. Instead of analysing the law in a pedantic manner to follow it religiously, you try to understand – what is the purpose of this law? What is the principle that God wants us to follow? What is God's intention?

If God's order to cut off a woman's hand if she grabs the “secrets” of another man while he is fighting her husband was intended only to prevent disruption to a male's ability to procreate, I can understand that. So perhaps it's not just about an woman grabbing the man's balls, but really about permanently damaging it, like I was thinking. If God's order to disallow eunuchs from going into leadership positions in the church was to demonstrate his preference for procreation, I can understand that. And I suppose God, being God, is entitled to his biases (I'll actually discuss that at a later entry). But the fact remains that these laws were extremely poorly written. Particularly the law on the testicle-grabbing, because, while it can cause a great deal of pain and even make a man throw up, a well-placed knee to the groin is unlikely to cause permanent damage to a man and cause him to become sterile. Why would God ever write a stupid law like this when, in the vast majority of instances, the man who got the knee to the groin will have no permanent harm come to him, while the woman who committed the “foul offense” will have a single hand for the rest of her life?

To reiterate my point – as much as I agree that understanding and applying a law in principle is far superior to following it to the letter, many Old Testament laws remain nonsensical because they appear to corrupt, misrepresent and misplace emphasis on the principle of the laws they are trying to shape. But there are other problems now that people are now encouraged to follow the principle of the law, guided by the “spirit”.

Suddenly things are open to interpretation. While I understand that people were abusing the possible “loopholes” in the prescriptive laws of the Old Testament – surely an easy task as 613 commandments could never hold a candle to the smallest country's voluminous criminal/civil codes – now the principle of the laws are susceptible to people's personal biases and cultural traditions. Think about it. Let's say the entire world followed a single authority for the source of their moral values, and that authority wakes up one day after having a dream, describes the dream to the world, and then says:

“Because of this dream, I now believe that >these are the laws we must follow<.”

Let's say people are confused and say they don't understand why these laws are necessary and how they must follow them. The single authority travels throughout the western hemisphere saying that the dream explains the importance and purpose of the laws, and these laws are so important they must be followed to the letter. Then the single authority travels throughout the eastern hemisphere saying that the dreams explain the importance and purpose of the laws, and these laws must be followed in spirit (in principle) and in truth (while being true to oneself and the purpose of the law). Imagine how different the western hemisphere will honour the laws from the eastern hemisphere. Not only that, the range of ways in which these laws are followed will be different within hemispheres, with the eastern hemisphere likely to have a wider range than the western, particularly with different cultures and social and economic brackets.

This is probably why there are so many denominations of Christianity (which, I believe, far outnumber the various Muslim, Jewish and Hindu sects). Whether this is what the God of the New Testament and Jesus wanted – a wide interpretation of the laws of God with each person firmly believing that they were following the laws as they should be followed – is an entry unto itself. It speaks to the question of whether there is any such thing as a personal truth. That is a wonderful entry that I had started and do intend to finish in the future.

I must admit though that I found understanding Paul's very nuanced letter to the Roman quite inspiring, especially when I linked it to the bits of research I had done on particular preachings of Jesus and found that it can be tied together. But like I described above, there are still problems. And I still haven't gotten into all of them.

Is the Old Testament Relevant to Christians? Part 2 of 4

 

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

As I said in the previous entry, while I now understand which parts of the Old Testament are applicable, I still have a lot of lingering questions. This is not to say that at least some of these questions don't have appropriate answers. They probably do, but require a level of research that I am perhaps not fully prepared to carry out – maybe because the answers are buried within inordinate amounts of information (as opposed to directed Internet essays which can then be referenced back to my Study Bible). I have a lot of questions, and fear that each may require its own entry. But let's just start with one:

Does the bible really have such a clear cut line between civil, ceremonial and moral law?

The short answer is “no”.

This consideration was actually discussed in several web pages. But I still view it as a concern for reasons I will now go into.

So let's say you're reading your bible like a good Christian girl, and you stumble across a rule or practice that is either condoned, preferred or explicitly commanded by God. How do you know which category the law falls into? After reading the different types of laws, you understand now that the category the law falls into is important because this determines whether you should still be following it or not. You're not always going to get the answer directly from the Bible itself because the bible was not written in such a sectionalised way. So how are you going to resolve this?

Well, distinguishing between civil law and ceremonial law may not be too difficult – most confusion here may stem from a lack of understanding of the definitions themselves. A little googling and flipping through the pages of your Study Bible might help fix that misunderstanding. But perhaps this is not the case for moral law and any other. A moral code, after all, is the fabric from which all other laws are weaved. So how can any other law – be it civil or ceremonial – be considered in isolation from it?

I think they can – to an extent anyway – for ceremonial laws in particular. Generally speaking, ceremonies (and therefore ceremonial laws – be they from a religious text or elsewhere) are symbolic – they have only as much meaning as is ascribed to them. This meaning is relevant only to the extent that it reminds its participants of some greater underlying tenet.

For example:

“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not crossbreed different kinds of animals. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; neither shall there come upon on you a garment made of two kinds of material.” - Leviticus 19: 19

The vest I'm wearing as we speak is 65% cotton and 35% polyester (it was also made in China). That God would be upset with my wearing such a vest is patently absurd. However, it appears that the “moral” basis of this ceremonial law is to be holy and separate oneself from ungodly mindsets. Not mixing fabric in clothing was therefore a symbolic representation of not mixing good with evil. So if God wanted Israel to partake in symbolism (clothing) in commemoration of his covenant, this is perfectly reasonable. And it would not be contradictory to then say that us Gentiles don't have to partake in such symbolism, but that we do still need to maintain the underlying principle upon which this symbolic Israeli law was based.

Now I want to make something strikingly clear – and this is a criticism for atheist/agnostic sites. Many non-believers pick up verses like these (including my younger self) and say – look at what bullshit God wants us to follow. But I am realising more and more that such verses need to be put into perspective. Absurd as these things seem to be, they were symbolic – important religious gestures (key word being “gestures” in this context) – not inherently good/evil acts. What's more, they are gestures which are no longer applicable.

The only point I would allow to agnostics/atheists in this matter is that some of these gestures, in addition to being a bit silly, seem counterintuitive. That God would ever (in ye ancient times or modern days) want anyone (his chosen people or Gentiles) to follow these laws seem extremely nonsensical. I'll get into a couple later, so in the mean time, let's move on to the distinction between civil law and moral law.

Now, whether we can make the distinction between the moral code and civil law is less obvious. Particularly for the criminal aspect of the civil code. Think about it. The civil code is really a two part consideration – the first being the crime or the unfavourable action requiring compensation and the second being the punishment or the compensation itself. It seems that Christians no longer consider the punishment/compensation relevant, but consider at least some of the crimes still relevant as it relates to the breaking of some aspect of the moral code. For example:

“If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” - Leviticus 20:13

So in the verse above, homosexuality is the crime and death is the punishment. A modern day gay guy then will no longer be put to death, but is still considered to be engaging in moral wrongs. Just as an aside, I have seen quite a few websites dedicated to explaining why homosexuality (which is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, believe it or not) is no longer wrong. I assume these persons are arguing that homosexuality is a ceremonial prohibition instead of a moral sin – so, much like eating pork was forbidden in ye olden days, but you can stuff your ass with ham at Christmas time, homosexuality was an abomination in the Old Testament days, but now you can stuff your ass with cock any day of the week.

It's an interesting argument, perhaps not entirely baseless, but still a losing one in the end. It's something I hope to research further and discuss in a much later entry and so don't intend to discuss at length here. But the mere fact that homosexuals who argue this point have a toe to stand on (and it's just a toe – maybe two toes, but certainly no more), demonstrates in part the difficulty in distinguishing between a strictly civil law and one that is also based on a moral law. The Old Testament specifies punishments for many things, including the contravention of ceremonial laws, and it is not always easy to determine whether the law being contravened was moral or ceremonial.

This is why some people consider the splitting of Old Testament law into the 3 laws as an arbitrary distinction. This certainly makes following Old Testament laws “the way a Christian should” problematic. It seems to me, in order to be in the clear, you need to have a pretty close relationship with your bible (and the Internet) and research the individual propositions, particularly within civil laws. The vast majority of people however do not do this. They rely instead on what the leaders in the branch of their religion tells them (the Pope, their pastor, etc) and, depending on their age, filter it with the current cultural mores.

There are a lot of extremely religious people I know, for instance, who freely engage in “fornication” let's say. Most (but certainly not all) are not fucking for the fun of it – they seem to restrict the fucking for dedicated boyfriends. But they certainly had premarital sex and it quite often was not with just one person. Is this okay? Without doing the specific research, I believe I can hazard a response, as when I bring up God after a lively discussion on what sexual adventures they conducted with their boyfriend, they tend to clam up. Of course, I have only conducted this experiment a very small number of times because even before broaching a religious topic at this juncture, I sense to do so may not be particularly welcoming. But what is the issue at hand here? Are people cherry-picking the bible to suit their own personal vices? Or are people abiding by cultural norms that have been justified (in some small part) through the bible itself?

Another interesting example is that God forbade cross-dressing (men wearing women's clothes or women wearing men's clothes) in Deuteronomy 22: 5. Is this a ceremonial law or a moral law? The way many people talk about transvestites (whether or not they're gay) you would think it is a moral law, but is it? Laws on clothing after all were generally characterised as ceremonial. But I thought – well it had to be a moral law because God called cross-dressing an abomination. But you know what he also called an abomination?

• Eating flesh of a peace offering on the third day, as opposed to the first or second day when it is allowed (Leviticus 7: 18).
• Offering an imperfect animal to God as a sacrifice (Deuteronomy 17: 1).
• Coming near to a menstruous woman (Ezekiel 18: 6)

The list of abominations is quite long. Take a gander of:

http://richardwaynegarganta.com/abomination.htm

So God calling something an abomination isn't the gold standard of sin. But what this demonstrates here is how blurry the lines are between the different laws and, also – quite significantly, how blurry the lines therefore are between deliberate cherry-picking, subconscious cherry-picking and whole-sale misinterpretation. How can people feel comfortable that what they're doing is really the right thing? I simply don't know. This question seems to be unanswerable (unless, like I said, they read the bible closely). I think my next entry may address this concern in the end, but we will see how even this answer is not conclusive.

In any case, it seems we can go no further. So let's end it here, and, as previously promised, here are a couple examples of ceremonial and civil laws I find nonsensical:

• “When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draws near to deliver her husband out of the hand of him who strikes him, and puts forth her hand, and takes him by the secrets; then you shall cut off her hand, your eye shall have no pity.” - Deuteronomy 25: 11-12

So if a wife intervenes in a fight between her husband and another man, and she grabs the genitals of the other man (I assume with the intention of debilitating), her hand must be cut off. The Christian sites I've seen dealing with this link it to the importance of the perpetuation of the family – the punishment of the woman is severe because she may be limiting the ability of the other man to have a family. But I simply cannot accept this explanation at face value. If perpetuation of the family was the important factor here, then the verse would talk about either man's genitals being damaged in the fight, not simply grabbed by a third party. Although I understand that the intention of the person doing the grabbing will factor in, it seems unbearably harsh to have the same punishment for the intention to temporarily deliver pain, as well as the successful committing of bodily harm, particularly when it is in defense of one's husband or even his life. Also the perpetrator of the damage should be irrelevant, yet it is oddly focused on the woman.

• “He who is wounded in the stones, or has his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh.” - Deuteronomy 23: 1

While this verse is mostly directed to eunuchs, it also refers to those “wounded in the stones” emphasising how important fully functional male genitals are to God. And this, I think, gives more insight into the first example verse I gave. A eunuch, by the way, is a man who was castrated early in his childhood in order to influence hormonal changes and prepare him for a life of servitude. It may also refer to impotent men, celibate men, or men otherwise not inclined to “go forth and multiply”. Why God would ever want to deny certain persons rights to membership in the Assembly (which I believe is not the church itself but perhaps Church leadership) because of factors mostly outside of a person's control (castration at boyhood, medical impotence) is beyond me. Then again, God is no stranger to discrimination.

More questions to come.