Anything Goes

It's been a hard couple of days of Leviticus reading. The last two days have been filled with several proscriptions against having sex with animals, sisters, aunts, same sex partners, and the list goes on and on. But in the midst of all these rules, there is a reason given. The land that the chosen people were entering was filled with people who did practice these patterns of behavior.

Over and over again, God tells the Israelites to set themselves apart from others. He gives rules of moral living and tells His people to follow these rules as a method of discriminating themselves from the people who were currently occupying the land into which they were entering. By hearing that these were the practices of those occupants, we see that the Israelites were entering a promiscuous, permissive society in which anything goes. The list of proscriptions, some of which seem quite "commonsensical" and so why list them, was put in place as a reaction against the practices of the people in the land, as a way of separating the behavior of the Israelites from the behavior of the others. As yeast is used in the bible to represent the small amount of evil that can permeate an entire culture, so these rules were designed to keep even the smallest amount of evil away from the Israelites culture, so that the culture could flourish as it was designed to do.

And although its effect was to enforce the separation, the list also had elements of morality and social structure to it. Don't defile family members. Honor the aged (Lev 19:32). Don't sacrifice your children. Honor God. Have rules. Don't show permissiveness. In short, behave, people! In this manner, the Israelites structured society would serve as a beacon of light and truth amidst a dark and permissive chaotic environment. And even though these lists of rules were given both to act as a moral guide and a culture separator, one rule was given that resonates throughout the OT and NT. In Leviticus 19:34, we hear that we are supposed to love the foreigners in our land as we love ourselves. So, all the legalistic people who prooftext specified sections of Leviticus to express some personal viewpoint must realize that in order to utilize any of the sections as "truth," one must accept the truth of every section, or else one's prooftexting has no fundamental ground upon which to stand. The emphasis on loving each other, even those who are foreigners in your land, is as valid as any and all sections of Leviticus.

So, the Israelites are given an amazing task. They are to live a "moral" life, separated from the cultures of those around them who are practicing "wickedness" and "abominations," yet at the same time are supposed to love those people as they love themselves. This is one of those amazing yin/yang conflicts of human behavior that are presented over and over in the bible, creating a push-pull of emotional and spiritual conflict within oneself that causes one to grow in understanding of the spirit and nature of God. We practice abominations in God's eyes all the time, yet He loves us. By participating in the practice of loving those who commit abominations, in the same manner in which we love ourselves, we gain insight into the nature of God's character.

A few hundred years later, Jesus sees the inversion of this practice. A religious group has come into power that has taken the yeast of wickedness into itself and clothed it in religious principle. By ultimate adherence to the laws, pride and vanity is born, crowding out the love that God intended in Leviticus. Jesus's warnings to the disciples in Mark 8:14 was to avoid this yeast. Even a little pride, self-satisfaction, legalism without love, will destroy the Temple meant to honor a God who specifically instructed us to love others as we love ourselves.

So, as I read these graphic rules set forth in Leviticus, I think of the culture of a people who is breaking all of these rules. I think of its sadness, chaos, hopelessness, lack of purpose. And then I think of the light surrounding a group of people, moving in, who "behave" and also love those around them as they love themselves, mimicking the true nature of God. Light was brought into a dark, sad world through the Israelites, and through Jesus' descriptions of the Pharisees, we see how easy it is for us to snuff out that light through legalism and pride. But the main thing that connects the Israelites, the culture Jesus espoused at His time, and who we strive to be today, is love. To me, that seems to be the link between the OT and NT readings today.