Leviticus - You will do what I say or else...

Leviticus:

The first chapters of Leviticus describe the many offerings God expects from His people. There are burnt, grain, peace, sin, and trespass offerings. That covers the first five chapters, and chapter six and seven lay down the laws of each offering. After you read through the procedures for each type of offering, I want you to think of the word scapegoating. Scapegoating, in the bible, is when the sins of the people are placed upon a goat and the goat is driven out into the desert to die.

• Leviticus 16:8-10 - “...Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat on which the Lord's lot fell, and offer it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, and to let it go as the scapegoat into the wilderness.

I find this whole concept interesting. They weren't the first to use this technique to make atonement, or clean a villages dirty closest. It was first recorded in Syria, in the 24^th century B.C.E. It was a common practice to use animals or even humans to wash away the evils of the local community. The idea of sacrificing something for atonement is part of almost every culture that has existed, and certainly was around in places God did not reveal himself. I can understand how this concept made it into the Bible.

If you are making a personal or community sacrifice of virgin girls, or of your food/wealth, then maybe the gods will look favorably upon your offering, and reward you with gifts. This is the same offering or sacrifice of the New Testament, but instead of an animal, Jesus became the sin offering or the scapegoat for all mankind.

Look at chapter 6:24-30. This is the law of the sin offering, and it strikes a remarkable resemblance to the New Testament communion. The Old Testament has little tolerance for the use of blood for any reason. However, there is eating of the flesh. The main difference is that in Leviticus the offering is a young bull or lamb, and the New Testament the offering is Jesus, or the Lamb of God, but in the end both where simply a sin offering.

These chapters are intriguing to read. It is all very precisely laid out. Where and what to cut, and what to take. I don't want to sound anti Semitic, but it is no wonder that the Jewish people learned how to make money when you read all of the laws of offering. You would either be wealthy enough to afford the livestock to offer or you would be extremely devout and live within the law. So, one might infer that they made offerings instead of being devout, but I have digressed. It is amazing how specific they get.

Chapter 11 is all about what you're allowed to eat. I found a good article on this once, but I can't seem to find it again. (I like to have valid references.) But if I remember the gist of it, pork was hard to keep for long periods of time, and could easily develop maggots or a whole host of other problems, so it was considered unclean to many cultures of that time. Only after better cooking methods where developed, did pork become a standard food source. But again there is a lot of detail as to what is ok and what is unclean.

I don't like chapter 12 at all. It talks about the ritual after childbirth. It says that a woman is unclean for seven days if she gives birth to a boy, or fourteen days if she gives birth to a girl. This makes me think of what I have already written on the creation of women and I am puzzled why they believed women were so unclean. It also brings up circumcision again. The origins of circumcision is not with the Jewish people. It is thought that they got the custom from the Egyptians. Wherever it originated, it is a wholly barbaric act of butchery, even now, in modern times. I am going to give you two website links, so that you may better understand what this ritual defacing really is.

History of Circumcision

http://www.d.umn.edu/~mcco0322/history.htm

Penn & Teller's – Bullshit: S3 E1 – Circumcision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b73FmTuGk9w

Please watch the Penn & Teller with a bit of parental discretion. It makes me a little sick to watch them actually cut off the foreskin. So be prepared for a little blood and a lot of screaming. This is such an outdated idea. If you can watch that video without a sense of compassion , or if you think that an ancient people had a better understanding of what was good for us as an infant then we do know, then please explain to me why you believe this on religious grounds.

I think Hitchens says it best.

“...If you have kids, imagine the first time you held them. You probably thought the same as me. What a perfect creature? And you loved them straight away. But before we start being parents, first lets get a sharp stone or knife and start hacking away at the genitals. Because apparently the design wasn't perfect...”

“...religion makes morally normal people, say and do, disgusting and wicked things...”

- Christopher Hitchens

If you think that male circumcision for religious reasons is ok, then I would like for you to also state that female circumcision for religious reasons is ok. So lets either give it up, because there is not one good medical reason for it, or wish Muslims a good day with their daughters, and be on our way.

I will leave this subject with a simple thought, these are the unsophisticated ideas that religious people say they agree with, but I doubt that must of them have ever read it, and certainly they have not witnessed this “tradition” personally or would be willing to preform it themselves.

Chapter 13 & 14 deal with lepers, which is obviously a problem of their day and not a universal “need to know”. Chapter 15 talks about bodily discharges, and it makes me wonder how these people were living before this was revealed to them. Did they defecate wherever they wanted? Maybe, they were nomadic. Did they not have a social community established? Did they really need this kind of help to live a good life? Were they so backwards that they needed advice on where to shit, piss, or cum within their own living environment. Whoever you believe wrote this book, they did not think very highly of their own people.

Moving on...

There are plenty of talking points in chapters 16 &17, but I would like to move on to chapter 18. Let us begin with the “Laws of Sexual Morality”. There is so much I have to talk about within this topic that it will be hard to get it all in. (That's what she said)

First is a simple idea of divorce, Verse 7 says that you will not uncover your mothers nakedness, but verse 8 says that you shall not uncover your father's wife. If this are the same people then God is being redundant, but it seems more likely that it is saying that you shouldn't see your own mother naked, nor your father's wife. The distinction is on purpose, and speaking of different people. So, the assumption has to be that God gave two different rules to cover His basis' on some form of divorce.

There is a lot of nakedness in this chapter, like that of your sister, your daughter, or your son's daughter, or your daughter's daughter, or your father's wife's daughter (which I think is your sister, I'm so confused). So many rules... I find it hard to believe that these people were breaking all of these “rules” before this time. Don't sleep with your aunt, or your uncle, or your daughter-in-law, or your brothers wife... If these people were living this type of life, then it is a good thing that someone intervened, weather godly or not.

Now, there are specific sexual rules for men and rules for women, and there is a review of these in chapter 20. So, after reading through this and trying to decipher the prohibited relationships, I realized a couple of things. First, it says that a man shouldn't lay with another man like he would with a woman. Personally, I don't think a man/man sexual relationship is the same as a man/woman sexual relationship, if nothing else, the plumbing is wrong, but this is the basis for the churches stances on homosexuality.

This is the basis for the churches stances on homosexuality. If you analyze it closely, then lesbians are ok because there are different rules for men and women, and there is nothing about two women being together, but I'm sorry to say that the Bible definitely says male homosexuality is a sin and they should be put to death... Sorry guys, I'd like to find a simple way around this but it is right there in the word. You'll just have to decide for yourself if God actually wants you to die for how you behave. Personally, I don't care what people do, as long as it is consensual with everyone involved.

I think George Carlin said it best, “...we're not going to bother consenting adults who like to dress up in leather boy scout uniforms and smash each other in the head with ball-peen hammers while they take turns blowing their cat. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. It's a victimless hobby. And think of how good the cat must feel...”

In the end, I say, do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else.

Moving on...

Chapter 19 is all over the place. Much of it is just review, don't steal or lie, don't cheat with your neighbor's wife. As well, you can't eat of a fruit tree until it is five years old, because the fruit is uncircumcised, and you should not prostitute your daughter or seek out mediums. Really, it's all over the place.

The next couple of chapters deal with regulation and laws for the people and priests. A lot of rules, too many rules, and the punishments tend to be replacement of property or death. It's pretty strict.

Chapter 26 is all about what will happen if you stand against God. Honestly, the first time I read through this chapter, it brought to mind the Holocaust.

Leviticus 26:16 - “...I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart...”

Leviticus 26:22 - “...I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number...”

This is not the work of an all loving, compassionate God. This chapter shows the difficulty of saying all good things come from God, or even if we don't understand it, that things we think are evil, are still good to God. If you really believe that God knows best, then this chapter is for you and your faith. I can't reconcile the ideas of a loving God and an angry, jealous God.

I do not see any greatness or godliness in the book of Leviticus. If you think that this was written by God, then God needs a lot of stuff given to Him when we break His laws. We have to suffer to make atonement. To expand this idea beyond the scope of stuff, I have heard sermons on how God is hurt when we sin or move away from His grace, and this would dictate an underlying condition in Leviticus. Although, God isn't sad when we sin, He is angry.

Let us have a simple discussion about my own temperament. When I do something wrong, and someone yells at me for it, I don't feel very bad about what I did, in the end. If they get angry at me, I usually finish the discussion of what went wrong, with a feeling of anger as well. But when I do something wrong and the other person shows disappointment or a sense of empathy, then I tend to do whatever I can to make atonement for my wrong doings.

So, the more I read about an angry God, the more I feel a reason to rail against Him.

Also, what does this say about God's freedom? Has God placed control of His pleasure and pain in my willingness to adhere to His laws? When you give up control of your own happiness, and place it in the hands of another person, then you become vested in the well being of that other person, and I think that most Christians would believe that God is personally vested in the lives of all creation. But if God's happiness, or pain, is dependent on my choice to ask for forgiveness, then that means I have some small amount of control over His existence. I, and everyone else on the planet, would have control over God's emotional state, or at the very least, influence on His desired interaction with humanity.

I think that there is no way an all powerful being would allow itself to be hurt. In fact, the notion that an all powerful being could be hurt, even emotionally, would necessitate an imperfect creature. Besides, what arrogance to think that a created being could ever have the power to harm its creator.

I have come to a point, in my interpretation of the Bible, in which a fundamental change has occurred. I began this with a hope of becoming more religious, and finding a better connection with my own spirituality. But after reading Leviticus, I have found myself fully believing that all of these laws and punishments are man made. Whoever wrote this book only wanted power over his people. He claimed that these were Gods laws to frighten his people into compliance, and unfortunately it is the same story today.

Religious people cherry pick the verses that they agree with and simply don't mention the ones they feel uneasy about. We all manipulate the writings to be whatever we need them to be. There is not any universal religious idea, but a different one for every person who has ever existed. The fracturing of Christianity was the best thing that ever happened to it. It allowed a broader range of acceptance, and pushed for a need of inclusion. If everyone did what the Bible said we are suppose to do for punishment of sin, our society would be completely different.

Some people will say that our legal system is built off of the Judah-Christian religion, and I would say that your half right. We do basis laws off of our beliefs and dominate religious base. But we only basis the laws off of it, and not the punishment. Capital punishment is mandatory in this ancient book. It is a must, not an option.