Several years ago, when ``Dr`` Laura Schlesinger was quite popular, there was a mocking rebuttal dealing with her stance on sexual preference. It referred to various obscure and seemingly quite strange segments of the Old Testament law apparently trying to demonstrate how out of touch and ridiculous the Bible is in giving direction to moral issues in this supposed day of enlightenment (actually the article is kinda humorous in a twisted way).
Yet, far from really making any kind of relevant point about freeing us from the moral shackles of traditional thinking, it mostly just pointed out the need for a better understanding of how to properly interpret the Bible. I’m sure that there are many who celebrate and press the "like" button on their Facebook page and are thinking, "Oh yeah, I thought there was a good reason why I didn’t buy into that God stuff." But I find this is kind of sad because it often seems that those who really need some life direction from a reliable source are the very ones that in denying the Bible forfeit great quantities of hope, encouragement and guidance. In any case, what follows is my attempt to make some sense of these strange Bible passages that some feel excuse us from looking into the Bible as a reliable source for direction in life and a moral compass.
The afore mentioned article takes all their laws from the book of Leviticus, which is where God gave His "Law" to His people, the Jews. God, the Creator, called out of all the nations a select people group that He wanted to be His special possession and for them to be different. This was to demonstrate and proclaim to the rest of the world what it looks like to have a covenant relationship between God and His people. Most likely even they did not understand the reasoning behind all those laws, but by respecting them they were honouring their Creator who should have a right to dictate how His creation acts.
Now, understand we sit 3,500 years later and within a culture that is worlds apart from those that received those laws. Maybe some of them would have made more sense if we understood the cultural situation. For instance, the writer of the article mentioned the law in Lev19:27 that forbade shaving your head in such a way that left just a crown of hair on top (sounds like a pretty ugly haircut to me). This was a practice the brutal pagan religions around them had (the ones that sacrificed their children into fires). I remember 25 years ago a group of extreme hateful racists shaved off all their hair and called themselves "skinheads" as a way to identify themselves. Today that particular hairstyle doesn’t say anything about any extremist views, it’s just a convenient style that middle aged guys like me are kinda forced to wear due to our baldness! When you think of it that way maybe this strange haircut law does make sense. 25 years ago I wouldn’t dare be a skinhead, it wasn’t who I was or what I believed in. Same thing for the Israelites 3,500 years ago too.
So how do you interpret these curious Bible Old Testament laws? Some of them sound somewhat reasonable, like a few of the 10 commandments. Things like not lying, stealing or committing adultery sound like good advice. And that one about murder....probably definitely keep that one. As it turns out the second half of the Bible (the New Testament) gives us a lot of direction.
As an example, the article’s author mentioned the prohibition on eating shellfish (Lev. 11), yet 1,500 years later Jesus taught that the O.T. dietary rules didn’t even apply anymore (Mark 7). He said it’s far more important what’s in the heart than what’s in the stomach. Hey, that sounds pretty wise!
Later, after Jesus was off the scene, His followers had to address these very questions about the laws. This new way of believing in God, through Jesus, was becoming quite popular beyond the Jewish nation (and really those laws were just meant for Jewish followers of God) so they had to sort out what these new gentile believers should continue to adhere to. In fact they had a big council meeting to prayerfully sort through this question. The answer is found in Acts 15.10 "Now why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither we or our fathers nor we have been able to bear?"
Paul, who was in on this council and a leader in the situation, later wrote...
Rom. 8.2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death (referring to the O.T. law)
Rom. 10.4 For Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified (in Jesus, not by keeping O.T. rules)
To keep us from having a moral free for all, perhaps we should look at the O.T. laws that are affirmed in the New testament. Because there’s still a lot of wisdom in there and most importantly the book points us to an eternal love relationship with someone that totally loves us and has given us so much.
So you may now ask, "So what DO you believe about sexual preference?" Well, I’m not going to tell you. At least not here. I’ll save that for a future blog entry, but let me tell you this....my answer will probably surprise you.
