Leviticus 20:22-27

Since my random Bible verse generator spit out Leviticus last week, this week I’ll finish discussing the rest of Leviticus 20, verses 22 to 27.

These verses are mainly concerned with God’s desire for people to keep true to the covenant he made with them.  If they obey the laws, they will possess “a land flowing with milk and honey.”  If they break the laws, they may be “vomit[ed] out” of the land.  The way to set yourself apart from other people is to eat only things which are clean, not unclean.  Thus, verse 25 says “Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground.”  There’s more about what you can eat and what you should avoid elsewhere in Leviticus (chapter 11), but here’s an interesting verse that no one pays attention to:

Leviticus 20:27  A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death.  You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.

Think of all the mediums we put up with in modern life, from Sylvia Browne to Pat Robertson, from astrologers to psychics.  According to Leviticus, you can kill them by stoning and do so without the consequences of going to jail or, in the afterlife, hell.  I wonder if anyone used this is a defense against murder charges in Biblical times?  “But, your honor, that person was a medium!  The Lord commands us in Leviticus to kill all mediums.”  

As with most Bible verses, believers pick and choose.  An Orthodox Jew still keeps kosher, but he doesn’t murder astrologists.  A fundamentalist Christian claims to follow the Bible, but he ignores the verse about loving one another in favor of the verses that seem to condemn gays.  And to those of us on the outside, deriving meaning from the Bible makes no sense.

Leviticus 20: 1 to 21

It seems as though it would be much easier to re-read the Bible and write about it if I were actually reading the part I like--the Old Testament--instead of the New Testament, which I find boring (not as many battles, JC says a lot of weird, conflicting things, Paul hates women, and so on).

So I'm thought of following the old practice of picking up the book, closing my eyes, opening it and pointing to a passage, at least as a way to jumpstart my writing.  The trouble is, I can manipulate the results, so I've decided to use a random Bible verse generator.

Yeah, this is definitely more fun.  The verse that the Random Bible Verse generator gave me is this one from Leviticus  20:7-8.  "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.  Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you." Leviticus is a book of laws, and it establishes God as a strict guy.  A lot of the laws concern the commandment that the Israelites should worship only one God.

Let's play a game and see how many of these laws I've broken:

Leviticus 20: 2:  "Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death.  The members of the community are to stone him.  3:  I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people; for by sacrificing his children to Molek, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name.  4:  If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death, 5: I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek."

No problem there.  I don't worship god, let alone Molek, and I've never sacrificed anyone, let alone one of my children.

Leviticus 20: 6:  "I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostittue themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people."

No problem there.  I don't believe in mediums and "spiritists" any more than I believe in God.

Leviticus 20: 9:  "Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.  Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head."

I am not fond of my parents, but he seems to be talking about cursing them like a witch would.  I had no role in their deaths (one is still living), so there's no problem here.

Then we go into laws related to sex.  Verse 10:  commit adultery, but both the adulterer and the adulteress to death.  Verse 11:  Have sex with your father's wife, both will be put to death.  Verse 12:  Have sex with your daughter-in-law, both will be put to death.  Verse 13: A man has sex with a man, both will die.  Verse 14:  a man marries both a woman and her mother, they all have to be burned in fire.  Verse 15:  a man has sex with an animal, kill both.  Verse 16:  A woman has sex with an animal (or, as it says "approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it", kill both.  Verse 17: A man marries his sister and they have sex, they are to be publicly removed from their people (wow, at least aren't stoned or burned).  Verse 18:  A man has sex with a woman while she's menstruating--cut them off from their people.  Verse 19-20:  Have sex with your aunt, and you're held responsible.  the punishment?  They will die childless.  Verse 21:  Marry your brother's wife, that's impure, and you won't have children.

We were taught in Sunday School that the laws in Leviticus were designed in part to minimize conflict in a nomadic tribe.  I suppose it's good that they spell out clearly what's forbidden and what the punishments were, but since there is no god, I wonder how they made people die childless?

Next time, I'll write about the rest of Leviticus 20.

An atheist's despair

I took a long-term job subbing for a high school English teacher, and one of the topics we covered was the Bible as literature.  In spite of the teacher's warning (she came into the class to deliver this warning in person), the small class divided itself into believers and non-believers, and the believers were highly offended when one of the non-believers described the Old Testament God as an asshole.  Of course, the offended Christian was too passive to mention it that day--instead, she brought it up the next day, causing all discussion to end, and causing me to deliver a written lecture to them.  One of the examples I gave in support of God being an asshole was this verse, Deuteronomy 6:15:  "For the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land."  Sounds pretty obnoxious, doesn't it? Then I spoke for the Christians and said that they would like the non-Christians to know that their conception of God is that he is a loving God, and that the covenant changed with the New Testament.  At least after I read that, they started talking to each other again, but really, how could that girl get upset--God *is* an asshole in the Old Testament--in fact, that's the point.  An omniscient, all-powerful God is going to get grumpy.  He even becomes grumpy enough to flood the planet. This is one of the most annoying traits of Christians--their inability to hear a description that doesn't fit with what they're taught. In this case, it led to oppression of free speech, and to everyone feeling bad, or at least tense.

Notice on this list that the nature of God is described in many different terms, but they leave out grumpy asshole (hey, they even leave out angry, even though God describes himself that way): http://www.godonthe.net/evidence/atribute.htm  

Christopher Hitchens

I never managed to finish a Christopher Hitchens book, and in general, I found that his voice had a droning quality which put me to sleep. But in case you like Hitchens, you might be interested in the links featured on the C-SPAN video library blog.

Prayer

Have I ever prayed? Yes. I grew up in a church, so we prayed a lot.

There was the formal prayer that we said every week--was it before or after communion? The Lord's Prayer. There were sung prayers--the Doxology, which we sang every week. Hymns either took a position about life--e.g., "Count your blessings"; tried to teach us how to be Christians--e.g., "Have thine own way, Lord"; or were about hanging out with Jesus--"I come to the garden alone", but quite a few were either prayers or designed to teach us how to pray.

We prayed at Sunday School. In movies, we saw images of people who prayed before meals, although in my family, we only said a "thank you" prayer, a grace, on Thanksgiving.

One of my childhood books was a book of prayers which included that bizarre poem (at least to a 20th century kid) "Now I lay me down to sleep" since it was about children dying before we woke up.

And during one years-long OCD-infested period, I prayed every night for everyone. It took 45 minutes. Breaking free from that prayer was as useful as finally coming to terms with my lack of belief. Life became simpler after that.

Last week at my temporary job, a temporary colleague said, when she saw my wet hair, "No wonder you have a cold." I told her that it was an old wive's tale that you could catch cold from having wet hair, and she disagreed. I know better than to do the research that would prove her wrong. I've tried that tack before. If she is 50-something years old and still chooses to believe in the fantasy that going outside with wet hair will give you a cold caused by a virus, she isn't going to change her mind now. That's the way belief is--it's like a bad cold that keeps you from thinking clearly because your head is stuffed with nonsense.

The idea that asking for something from a non-existent being could change things--it's nonsense that I outgrew a long time ago. "I'll pray for you" or "I'll pray about that" or "God answers prayers" is such nonsense, but at least it gives you a clue about the person who makes the statement, and warns you away from revealing your true self to the one who prays.

Dinosaur, Schminosaur

If this doesn't work when you try to play it, turn off the auto option.

Atheism and faith

I read a lot of atheist blogs, which might be why I haven't posted in such a long time. I'm constantly annoyed by things I read, by other's perspectives, by plans by atheists to "convert" others to their points of view. I subscribe, then unsubscribe, and sometimes *re-subscribe* to blogs like Pharyngula. It's as though I have a desire to connect with other atheists on some level, but I'm easily appalled by actions and viewpoints of other atheists.

This is probably why I'm an atheist in the first place--I seem to be incapable of agreeing with anyone else about faith, religion, and atheism. One of my colleagues explained my atheism to another person this way (interestingly enough, he was a still-believing former minister): "She's an atheist because she *thought* about it."

Tony Blair explains that his faith and values are important to him and affected his decision-making, but he draws the line at someone who believes they have a direct line with God (yeah, because *that* would be crazy). It's gibberish, but he seems not to notice.