I wish that were still true. There are so many sad tales of spiked drinks and food at teenage parties that one really has to watch what one puts in ones mouth these days.
I also sometimes think the old laws were for our protection. I hear tell that you have to sign a waver to eat rare beef in a British restaurant. I wonder if old food regulations come from troubled meats, was pork a dangerous bacteria laden meat in old testament times?
There's an English rhyme about eating a shellfish in the wrong season. Could a similar oral tradition have been incorporated into older religions?
Alex said... "I also sometimes think the old laws were for our protection. I hear tell that you have to sign a waver to eat rare beef in a British restaurant."
Strange, I've never read THAT one in the Bible... ;-)
"I wonder if old food regulations come from troubled meats, was pork a dangerous bacteria laden meat in old testament times?"
Actually, I hear this was precisely the case, due to the archaic level of veterinarian knowledge, and to the practical difficulty of preserving pork meat before refrigerators were invented. A muslim frien of mine once told me that "pork is impure because they eat crap". I had never heard that one before. The same friend absolutely refused to believe that chickens do that very thing, although it is notorious to anyone who's been in a farm. Foals shamelessly peck their own s***. Religious traditions...
There is no possible doubt, if you read Leviticus or Deuteronomy, that a sizeable part of religious law was designed simply to be reliably transmitted, and was more (or entirely) about practical considerations than about any form of worship. Like "leprosy of a house's wall" (Lev 14:33-57). Alternatively, some things were strictly prohibited for the one and only reason that they were religious customs of nearby competing populations (Ex 23:31-33; Deut 14:1-2), and that following these would risk the Hebrew people losing their identity. Remember they were a persecuted minority for a long time, in harsh times. They would, literally, cling to their faith for survival.
Incidentally, I'd like to mention something right here. The First Commandment. What does it mean, "no other God than I"? That there ARE indeed other gods, competition? Or that worshiping a non-existent falseness is even worse than not believing at all, even though God the Creator can only be one? Or that there is only one correct way of belief and worship? Well, elementary logic immediately shows the Universe CANNOT be the work of several different divinities, each believed to be the one and only Creator. So, if Creator God there is, there is only one. For instance, the Hinduists believe in the existence of no less then three million divinities (or is that 30 million?), but they also believe that they all proceed from the Fundamental divinity, Brahma. In other words, "All is One". How very interesting... They also consider some exceptionally holy mortals as having become "gods" to worship. I view this as a simple difference of terminology, for a notion similar to our christian Saints. They are considered holy, and prayed to, but nobody said they were as great as God the One. Or, in the present case, to Brahma the Universal. My conclusion: there are NOT several competing divinities. [The notion of Vishnu's Avatars, his Incarnations, still being Vishnu but each also being an individual, feels reminiscent of God the Father incarnated in Jesus, a divinity in a human body living a special but human life.]
The other two hypotheses are to be addressed together. Is a different religion a pure hallucination, a completely false illusion wasting into nothingness, with no God listening to such prayers? Or is there only one correct way to worship the One? I'll use common sense here too. If this were so important to the Omnipotent, He would've taken the adequate steps to optimally spread the Good Word, and without wasting lots of time for no reason. He would not have waited 2600 years after Moses, 1500 years after Jesus, 800 years after Muhammad, or whichever reference you personally believe in, for the Americas to be discovered and their populations converted, usually by forceful methods not unlike a pillaging, spoliating genocide. There were humans, and urban civilizations, for milleniae on the other side of the Atlantic. The Vikings, the Phoenicians, and perhaps others that we do not know of, KNEW about that distant land and how to navigate there in reasonable safety. So, God specifically instructed no Prophet/Messiah/etc. to send messengers there, even while we could comply. He let barbaric human sacrifices go on for thousands of years without telling us to lift a finger. Same can be said about Australia or Polynesia, or the North Pole: humans went there, but not Monotheism. So, the Omnipotent didn't mind very much that "anarchy", even while the populations following Him were subjected to very strict rules and sometimes still are. [But whose rules exactly?...]
Historically, for a VERY long time, every major city had its own tutelary divinity. Worshiping it meant pledging allegiance to the city. It was, first and most, a political and social commitment, not a statement of faith. The notion of monotheism, in spite of its philosophical obviousness (IMHO), imposed itself very slowly over time. The Hebrews were never in a position to spread Yahve's sole cult to a majority of the known world (the official one). It would seem this was not All-powerful Yahve's main priority. between 3100 BC and 30 A.D. Christiannism fared better, but still. I'll take note of the whole Roman and Russian Very Christian Empires... which were forever antagonistic, in the form of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. East versus West, waaay before the Cold War! ;-) Even within one faith, there was and still is division, sometimes extremely bitter (I've witnessed it myself). A good part of the extent of Christiannism today is the result of conversion campaigns in which there is very little glory and even less christic principles: conquest, force, violence... When no fairly warning local prophecy ever demanded that the various American native people converted "or else, there would be great sorrow". Not until the White Man came. Islam? It would be anecdotic today, if it hadn't spread by official Koranically-required military conquest. This is not the way of the God I believe in. These are not the love teachings of Jesus. This is more akin to raw bullying, however noble the original intention may have been. (Yeah, suuure... "Let's colonize and convert the Western Indias, there are tons of gold to find there, more than enough to justify financing very costly expeditions" sounds more like it.)
One would really wonder, reading Exodus, what was Yahve's intent. I mean, there Moses had all of Egypt by the b@||$ (admittedly, I'm not discussing the rather uncertain factual historicity of these events). Unworldly calamities raining, first-borns dying like flies, Pharaoh crushed in the middle of the Red Sea, and then... in the middle of this golden opportunity to submit a huge Empire like Egypt entirely to the cult on the One True God, perhaps a brilliant first step before worldwide spreading, it was just about "let my people go". According to the Scripture we believe in. So, according to this reference we trust, why did Yahve NOT push this unprecedented strategic advantage to have all of Egypt worship Him alone, in the canonic manner? Either the Hebrews exagerated the story over the subsequent centuries of oral tradition that preceded the actual writing of the Pentateuch, putting aside serious bits of logic in their zealous enthusiasm... or it was just not meant to be. Perhaps Yahve simply did NOT want to force anybody's culture by changing its ways. Perhaps judaism was adequate for Hebrews, but not for Egyptians. It could be this simple, without questioning anybody's sincere religious faith. So perhaps, or rather very likely, there is no divine decree for the whole world to worship one single Name in one single Manner, period.
Which brings us to several hypothetical possibilities, stricto sensu. This means that maybe: 1 - There is no God all along, at least no God that communicates with us after eventually creating the Universe. Some (namely, atheists) believe so. There is no RATIONAL concrete evidence to disprove it, only one's belief. Or faith, if you prefer. 2 - Or, God simply doesn't care that much, only the CLERGIES do, because to THEM it is essential. Tutelary divinity, earthly power, and that sort of pragmatic, prosaic stuff. While God essentially leaves us the freedom to think, understand, discover, and make moral choices by ourselves.
I vouch for #2, by individual belief and choice. This would certainly explain, without me HAVING to become a non-believer, why all ultra-strict moral priests abusing children, and all rabid murderous fanatics like Bin Laden, haven't been instantly slain down by a lightning bolt or similar stuff, first and last sterr-rike, yer out! I believe God gave us freedom, which by essence is absolute. Freedom to think, and act. The only true eventual retribution would be happening on a plane of existence which, once again, we may believe in or not, but cannot discover by any there-and-back expedition. There have been mystics saying they've done it, but we can only trust their word. They have no material evidence or independently reproductible experimentation to back it up. We remain free to believe and/or to follow. This would also explain why some people who appear to be very believing can also turn out to secretly be blatantly perverted or corrupted, and yet never state, when exposed, that in reality they did NOT believe they were sinning and facing a punishment Beyond. They do believe, theird rigid moral simply has its elastic sides. (Please bear in mind that I mean this in general. The US society and Evengelic movement hold absolutely no exclusivity on such sad widespread hypocrisies. The exact same thing happens in Pakistani madrassas, for instance, home of the strictest Islam known on the planet. To mention just one example.) The label of a "man of God" is no guarantee in itself, and never bears God's direct and official seal, no matter how many holy books one brandishes. Freedom, here too, is absolute, and everything remains possible.
This brings me right back to a conclusion I had already stated a while ago: extreme strictness is essentially a recipe for neurotic disorders, severe repressed issues, and grave hypocrisy secret deviations. Sometimes (often?) reaching "murder in the name of a God of Love". Evidently, this is not God's insisting will, or it would be enforced universally WITHOUT relying on human actions, which can always be doubted (strictly speaking). The Omnipotent is not so weak that without your active help His will shall remain undone! So we need to rely on some genuinely universal things, like human sympathy, our sense of right and wrong, and our intelligence which will open our minds and let us differenciate between true wrongs and cultural ones (like, say, these bundles of notoriously absurd US State laws). In many Amazonian tribes, all folks live naked, all the time. It does so not encourage "vice" in the Western meaning, that adultery is very rare, and punished by death. Reminds me of the similar laws in ultra-covering Saudi society. We Westerners are simply accustomed to relating the sight of nude bodies with sexuality, even though we know it isn't always so. In Renaissance Europe, a woman's bare breasts were perfectly ordinary, while the sight of uncovered legs, even the glimpse of an ankle, would've sent any hetero man's blood pressure sky-rocketing. (Yes, smart-Alec, they already knew about fireworks in these days.) One part of responsibility in today's conventional inhibitions goes to the ancient hebraic euphemism for having sexual relations, "uncovering someone's nakedness". Remember, it is only one of many ancient manners of speaking and litotes. There were no clothes in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:25), nothing but recommended about sex (Gen 2:24), and clothes were invented by us humans(Gen 3:7), before this change in attitude was acknowledged --clearly as a gesture of mercy-- by God (Gen 3:21) who understood there was no turning back the clock (or who just chose not to reboot His two first Sims). Leather is so much more comfy and durable than fig leaves, which are so irritating to the skin. (Believe me, I know fig leaves VERY well. You don't want that stuff in contact with your sensitive bits for too long.) Besides, remember this is all allegoric anyway. Genesis is a totally unrealistic fable scientifically-wise. You take the intended allegories in it if you will, but remember God would never have "revealed" such flawed "facts" about Creation, starting with the description of the Cosmos. (And what about "He created the Dinosaurs for a few hundred million years, then decided to make them extinct and develop the genus of mammals instead"? This part was strangely forgotten...)
We only went orbiting into Space after it was accepted that Galileo's knowledge of Astronomy, although in contradiction with Genesis Ch.1, was indisputable fact. The Earth didn't SUDDENLY become spherical and start orbiting around the Sun, it had always been so. This proves, if need be, that God did NOT put the secrets of Creation in the Bible. Or the equations of General Relativity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics... even though that would've been a great help. I would'be been happy with just the revelation that the Penicilluim mold contained a life-saving antibiotic, or that oral rehydration with a specific saline solution was all it took to cure Cholera. Books of religion are not meant for scientific reference, only as the basis of one's own way of worshiping the One God which I believe does exist. A belief that is my fully free choice. I don't know whether God made it implicit or explicit, but He wants us, as basic reasoning definitely confirms it, to leave everybody free of his beliefs in Him. Or Her, or It, or whatever. To each his/her/its own. ;-)
TTL said... "What we eat matters much less than what the health surgeon would like us to believe."
Hey, may I remind you that there was NO fully artificial indistrial chemical foods in the days of Moses? :-/ Let this belief of yours not lead you into swallowing just anything and everything, either. For starters, spoiled food IS highly toxic. Also, you CAN trust that saturated fats abuse will greatly increase your risks for heart disease, smoking for lung and bladder cancer (yes, bladder, it's even better documented and more significant than lungs), and chronic alcoholism for liver cirrhosis and eventually cancer. So, don't indulge in whimpering whining alimentary paranoia, but don't become too confident either. Because, you know, I like you TTL, and I'd like to see you live long. And prosper. (Double two-fingered salute, Vulcan style.)
"And, as to stuff coming out of our mouths"...
I'd dare say that halitosis is worse than nearly everything one might eat, AND the way they eat it. I've seen babies eat with a spoon. Sometimes it was MY spoon, too. Honestly, there's lots of worse stuff I can imagine. For instance, those words coming out of a mother's mouth: "I do not love you. I hate you." Mercifully, I've never witnessed such a horror yet. Even though, amusingly, the Orientals around here often say the opposite of what they mean (and when they do it is very clear). I think it goes back to the superstitious times where blessings and praise were believed to attract wicked but dim-witted invisible Djinns, spirits, that could have cast the Evil Eye on one's loved child. Hence that amusing display of a parent/relative hugging and kissing a child while saying: "Curse you, you're so ugly!" A notable exception being when there are blessings (or curses to an enemy) involving God's name. Because God's no fool, d'uh!
What Jesus meant, of course, was that words, which carry thoughts, are by essence liable to be impure and sinful to the extreme, while anything non-toxic that you eat or drink has no genuine consequences. (As he figuratively explains it further on in the Gospel, it will end up as waste in the sewers anyway, whatever it was at first.) A saint is a saint, whether he eats wheat, corn, rice, tofu, or eggs and red meat. Whether he (or she) is slim, fat, dark-skinned, read-headed, drop-dead sexy, or a butt-faced cross-eyed hunchback mumbling "Sanctuary!". If the heart is pure, the person is. This IS an important part of my own beliefs and faith.
"Not to mention that the process looks rather ugly."
(Humming) Somebody's been watching The Exorcist... "Your grandma wore high heels! Your sister dyes her hair! Your dog's a female! Braaaahh!"
Jes said... "Great quote. I'm not a Christian myself, but I still find a lot of wisdom in the New Testament."
Nicely said. :-) I'll take wisdom wherever I may find it. As the Arabic proverb goes: "Receive the wisdon, even when it comes out of a madman's mouth." Wisdom is deeply revered. "It is worth a camel, but people will discard bucketloads of it." I'll befriend any sensible person, no matter what their creed. I believe this is what God gave me an open mind for. I'd be much more worried about an eventual language barrier. Wouldn't bother me to talk with an open-minded atheist, either. God is way above feeling insulted by a measly human's ramblings, anyway. (Hey, otherwise, what good would it be to be God? Even some mortal humans can remain indifferent to the worst insults.) Blasphemy only truly harms --hurts, more aptly-- humans' beliefs and their sense of respect. It is another plane of reference entirely. Another level of consciousness. Or reality. Whatever. If a mouse craps on your shoe, it certainly won't threaten your honor. The mouse has no notion of this being an insulting gesture, anyway. Maybe it "lost control" vecause your mighty size terrified it. :-) If a mouse is still not insignificant enough, think of an ant in its place. Or a bacteria. Billions of bacteriae discard their metabolic waste on our skin and in our natural cavities for our whole life. And so what? Now, igf we were talking about an elephant, I would definitely worry. And mercifully, whales don't dwell on land, or we'd REALLY be "deep in it".
Eolake said... "The problem is that they get presented as word from Above, and nobody dares change them, even after times change."
Are you sure? I've been reading the Times for quite a while, and I don't see much editorial change. ;o) Does time really change itself, or does it only change us? Okay, sorry, I'll stop with the nonsense now. ;-)
6 comments:
excellent scripture used here eolake. excellent. it takes a wise man to heed the word of God.
I wish that were still true. There are so many sad tales of spiked drinks and food at teenage parties that one really has to watch what one puts in ones mouth these days.
I also sometimes think the old laws were for our protection. I hear tell that you have to sign a waver to eat rare beef in a British restaurant. I wonder if old food regulations come from troubled meats, was pork a dangerous bacteria laden meat in old testament times?
There's an English rhyme about eating a shellfish in the wrong season. Could a similar oral tradition have been incorporated into older religions?
Just my uneducated ramblings...
I agree with Jesus on both counts.
What we eat matters much less than what the health surgeon would like us to believe.
And, as to stuff coming out of our mouths, yes, for one the acid in vomit is bad for our teeth. Not to mention that the process looks rather ugly.
"I wonder if old food regulations come from troubled meats, was pork a dangerous bacteria laden meat in old testament times?"
Actually yeah, I've heard that's where those old laws originally came from.
Great quote. I'm not a Christian myself, but I still find a lot of wisdom in the New Testament.
"I also sometimes think the old laws were for our protection."
Probably.
The problem is that they get presented as word from Above, and nobody dares change them, even after times change.
I also like this one a lot. :-)
Alex said...
"I also sometimes think the old laws were for our protection. I hear tell that you have to sign a waver to eat rare beef in a British restaurant."
Strange, I've never read THAT one in the Bible... ;-)
"I wonder if old food regulations come from troubled meats, was pork a dangerous bacteria laden meat in old testament times?"
Actually, I hear this was precisely the case, due to the archaic level of veterinarian knowledge, and to the practical difficulty of preserving pork meat before refrigerators were invented.
A muslim frien of mine once told me that "pork is impure because they eat crap". I had never heard that one before. The same friend absolutely refused to believe that chickens do that very thing, although it is notorious to anyone who's been in a farm. Foals shamelessly peck their own s***.
Religious traditions...
There is no possible doubt, if you read Leviticus or Deuteronomy, that a sizeable part of religious law was designed simply to be reliably transmitted, and was more (or entirely) about practical considerations than about any form of worship. Like "leprosy of a house's wall" (Lev 14:33-57). Alternatively, some things were strictly prohibited for the one and only reason that they were religious customs of nearby competing populations (Ex 23:31-33; Deut 14:1-2), and that following these would risk the Hebrew people losing their identity. Remember they were a persecuted minority for a long time, in harsh times. They would, literally, cling to their faith for survival.
Incidentally, I'd like to mention something right here. The First Commandment.
What does it mean, "no other God than I"? That there ARE indeed other gods, competition? Or that worshiping a non-existent falseness is even worse than not believing at all, even though God the Creator can only be one? Or that there is only one correct way of belief and worship?
Well, elementary logic immediately shows the Universe CANNOT be the work of several different divinities, each believed to be the one and only Creator. So, if Creator God there is, there is only one. For instance, the Hinduists believe in the existence of no less then three million divinities (or is that 30 million?), but they also believe that they all proceed from the Fundamental divinity, Brahma. In other words, "All is One". How very interesting... They also consider some exceptionally holy mortals as having become "gods" to worship. I view this as a simple difference of terminology, for a notion similar to our christian Saints. They are considered holy, and prayed to, but nobody said they were as great as God the One. Or, in the present case, to Brahma the Universal. My conclusion: there are NOT several competing divinities.
[The notion of Vishnu's Avatars, his Incarnations, still being Vishnu but each also being an individual, feels reminiscent of God the Father incarnated in Jesus, a divinity in a human body living a special but human life.]
The other two hypotheses are to be addressed together. Is a different religion a pure hallucination, a completely false illusion wasting into nothingness, with no God listening to such prayers? Or is there only one correct way to worship the One?
I'll use common sense here too. If this were so important to the Omnipotent, He would've taken the adequate steps to optimally spread the Good Word, and without wasting lots of time for no reason. He would not have waited 2600 years after Moses, 1500 years after Jesus, 800 years after Muhammad, or whichever reference you personally believe in, for the Americas to be discovered and their populations converted, usually by forceful methods not unlike a pillaging, spoliating genocide. There were humans, and urban civilizations, for milleniae on the other side of the Atlantic. The Vikings, the Phoenicians, and perhaps others that we do not know of, KNEW about that distant land and how to navigate there in reasonable safety. So, God specifically instructed no Prophet/Messiah/etc. to send messengers there, even while we could comply. He let barbaric human sacrifices go on for thousands of years without telling us to lift a finger. Same can be said about Australia or Polynesia, or the North Pole: humans went there, but not Monotheism. So, the Omnipotent didn't mind very much that "anarchy", even while the populations following Him were subjected to very strict rules and sometimes still are. [But whose rules exactly?...]
Historically, for a VERY long time, every major city had its own tutelary divinity. Worshiping it meant pledging allegiance to the city. It was, first and most, a political and social commitment, not a statement of faith. The notion of monotheism, in spite of its philosophical obviousness (IMHO), imposed itself very slowly over time. The Hebrews were never in a position to spread Yahve's sole cult to a majority of the known world (the official one). It would seem this was not All-powerful Yahve's main priority. between 3100 BC and 30 A.D.
Christiannism fared better, but still. I'll take note of the whole Roman and Russian Very Christian Empires... which were forever antagonistic, in the form of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. East versus West, waaay before the Cold War! ;-)
Even within one faith, there was and still is division, sometimes extremely bitter (I've witnessed it myself). A good part of the extent of Christiannism today is the result of conversion campaigns in which there is very little glory and even less christic principles: conquest, force, violence... When no fairly warning local prophecy ever demanded that the various American native people converted "or else, there would be great sorrow". Not until the White Man came.
Islam? It would be anecdotic today, if it hadn't spread by official Koranically-required military conquest. This is not the way of the God I believe in. These are not the love teachings of Jesus. This is more akin to raw bullying, however noble the original intention may have been. (Yeah, suuure... "Let's colonize and convert the Western Indias, there are tons of gold to find there, more than enough to justify financing very costly expeditions" sounds more like it.)
One would really wonder, reading Exodus, what was Yahve's intent. I mean, there Moses had all of Egypt by the b@||$ (admittedly, I'm not discussing the rather uncertain factual historicity of these events). Unworldly calamities raining, first-borns dying like flies, Pharaoh crushed in the middle of the Red Sea, and then... in the middle of this golden opportunity to submit a huge Empire like Egypt entirely to the cult on the One True God, perhaps a brilliant first step before worldwide spreading, it was just about "let my people go". According to the Scripture we believe in.
So, according to this reference we trust, why did Yahve NOT push this unprecedented strategic advantage to have all of Egypt worship Him alone, in the canonic manner? Either the Hebrews exagerated the story over the subsequent centuries of oral tradition that preceded the actual writing of the Pentateuch, putting aside serious bits of logic in their zealous enthusiasm... or it was just not meant to be. Perhaps Yahve simply did NOT want to force anybody's culture by changing its ways. Perhaps judaism was adequate for Hebrews, but not for Egyptians. It could be this simple, without questioning anybody's sincere religious faith. So perhaps, or rather very likely, there is no divine decree for the whole world to worship one single Name in one single Manner, period.
Which brings us to several hypothetical possibilities, stricto sensu. This means that maybe:
1 - There is no God all along, at least no God that communicates with us after eventually creating the Universe. Some (namely, atheists) believe so. There is no RATIONAL concrete evidence to disprove it, only one's belief. Or faith, if you prefer.
2 - Or, God simply doesn't care that much, only the CLERGIES do, because to THEM it is essential. Tutelary divinity, earthly power, and that sort of pragmatic, prosaic stuff. While God essentially leaves us the freedom to think, understand, discover, and make moral choices by ourselves.
I vouch for #2, by individual belief and choice. This would certainly explain, without me HAVING to become a non-believer, why all ultra-strict moral priests abusing children, and all rabid murderous fanatics like Bin Laden, haven't been instantly slain down by a lightning bolt or similar stuff, first and last sterr-rike, yer out!
I believe God gave us freedom, which by essence is absolute. Freedom to think, and act. The only true eventual retribution would be happening on a plane of existence which, once again, we may believe in or not, but cannot discover by any there-and-back expedition. There have been mystics saying they've done it, but we can only trust their word. They have no material evidence or independently reproductible experimentation to back it up. We remain free to believe and/or to follow.
This would also explain why some people who appear to be very believing can also turn out to secretly be blatantly perverted or corrupted, and yet never state, when exposed, that in reality they did NOT believe they were sinning and facing a punishment Beyond. They do believe, theird rigid moral simply has its elastic sides.
(Please bear in mind that I mean this in general. The US society and Evengelic movement hold absolutely no exclusivity on such sad widespread hypocrisies. The exact same thing happens in Pakistani madrassas, for instance, home of the strictest Islam known on the planet. To mention just one example.)
The label of a "man of God" is no guarantee in itself, and never bears God's direct and official seal, no matter how many holy books one brandishes. Freedom, here too, is absolute, and everything remains possible.
This brings me right back to a conclusion I had already stated a while ago: extreme strictness is essentially a recipe for neurotic disorders, severe repressed issues, and grave hypocrisy secret deviations. Sometimes (often?) reaching "murder in the name of a God of Love". Evidently, this is not God's insisting will, or it would be enforced universally WITHOUT relying on human actions, which can always be doubted (strictly speaking). The Omnipotent is not so weak that without your active help His will shall remain undone!
So we need to rely on some genuinely universal things, like human sympathy, our sense of right and wrong, and our intelligence which will open our minds and let us differenciate between true wrongs and cultural ones (like, say, these bundles of notoriously absurd US State laws).
In many Amazonian tribes, all folks live naked, all the time. It does so not encourage "vice" in the Western meaning, that adultery is very rare, and punished by death. Reminds me of the similar laws in ultra-covering Saudi society. We Westerners are simply accustomed to relating the sight of nude bodies with sexuality, even though we know it isn't always so. In Renaissance Europe, a woman's bare breasts were perfectly ordinary, while the sight of uncovered legs, even the glimpse of an ankle, would've sent any hetero man's blood pressure sky-rocketing. (Yes, smart-Alec, they already knew about fireworks in these days.)
One part of responsibility in today's conventional inhibitions goes to the ancient hebraic euphemism for having sexual relations, "uncovering someone's nakedness". Remember, it is only one of many ancient manners of speaking and litotes. There were no clothes in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:25), nothing but recommended about sex (Gen 2:24), and clothes were invented by us humans(Gen 3:7), before this change in attitude was acknowledged --clearly as a gesture of mercy-- by God (Gen 3:21) who understood there was no turning back the clock (or who just chose not to reboot His two first Sims). Leather is so much more comfy and durable than fig leaves, which are so irritating to the skin. (Believe me, I know fig leaves VERY well. You don't want that stuff in contact with your sensitive bits for too long.)
Besides, remember this is all allegoric anyway. Genesis is a totally unrealistic fable scientifically-wise. You take the intended allegories in it if you will, but remember God would never have "revealed" such flawed "facts" about Creation, starting with the description of the Cosmos. (And what about "He created the Dinosaurs for a few hundred million years, then decided to make them extinct and develop the genus of mammals instead"? This part was strangely forgotten...)
We only went orbiting into Space after it was accepted that Galileo's knowledge of Astronomy, although in contradiction with Genesis Ch.1, was indisputable fact. The Earth didn't SUDDENLY become spherical and start orbiting around the Sun, it had always been so. This proves, if need be, that God did NOT put the secrets of Creation in the Bible. Or the equations of General Relativity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics... even though that would've been a great help. I would'be been happy with just the revelation that the Penicilluim mold contained a life-saving antibiotic, or that oral rehydration with a specific saline solution was all it took to cure Cholera.
Books of religion are not meant for scientific reference, only as the basis of one's own way of worshiping the One God which I believe does exist. A belief that is my fully free choice.
I don't know whether God made it implicit or explicit, but He wants us, as basic reasoning definitely confirms it, to leave everybody free of his beliefs in Him. Or Her, or It, or whatever. To each his/her/its own. ;-)
TTL said...
"What we eat matters much less than what the health surgeon would like us to believe."
Hey, may I remind you that there was NO fully artificial indistrial chemical foods in the days of Moses? :-/
Let this belief of yours not lead you into swallowing just anything and everything, either. For starters, spoiled food IS highly toxic. Also, you CAN trust that saturated fats abuse will greatly increase your risks for heart disease, smoking for lung and bladder cancer (yes, bladder, it's even better documented and more significant than lungs), and chronic alcoholism for liver cirrhosis and eventually cancer.
So, don't indulge in whimpering whining alimentary paranoia, but don't become too confident either. Because, you know, I like you TTL, and I'd like to see you live long. And prosper. (Double two-fingered salute, Vulcan style.)
"And, as to stuff coming out of our mouths"...
I'd dare say that halitosis is worse than nearly everything one might eat, AND the way they eat it.
I've seen babies eat with a spoon. Sometimes it was MY spoon, too. Honestly, there's lots of worse stuff I can imagine.
For instance, those words coming out of a mother's mouth: "I do not love you. I hate you."
Mercifully, I've never witnessed such a horror yet.
Even though, amusingly, the Orientals around here often say the opposite of what they mean (and when they do it is very clear). I think it goes back to the superstitious times where blessings and praise were believed to attract wicked but dim-witted invisible Djinns, spirits, that could have cast the Evil Eye on one's loved child. Hence that amusing display of a parent/relative hugging and kissing a child while saying: "Curse you, you're so ugly!"
A notable exception being when there are blessings (or curses to an enemy) involving God's name. Because God's no fool, d'uh!
What Jesus meant, of course, was that words, which carry thoughts, are by essence liable to be impure and sinful to the extreme, while anything non-toxic that you eat or drink has no genuine consequences. (As he figuratively explains it further on in the Gospel, it will end up as waste in the sewers anyway, whatever it was at first.)
A saint is a saint, whether he eats wheat, corn, rice, tofu, or eggs and red meat. Whether he (or she) is slim, fat, dark-skinned, read-headed, drop-dead sexy, or a butt-faced cross-eyed hunchback mumbling "Sanctuary!". If the heart is pure, the person is.
This IS an important part of my own beliefs and faith.
"Not to mention that the process looks rather ugly."
(Humming) Somebody's been watching The Exorcist...
"Your grandma wore high heels! Your sister dyes her hair! Your dog's a female! Braaaahh!"
Jes said...
"Great quote. I'm not a Christian myself, but I still find a lot of wisdom in the New Testament."
Nicely said. :-)
I'll take wisdom wherever I may find it.
As the Arabic proverb goes: "Receive the wisdon, even when it comes out of a madman's mouth." Wisdom is deeply revered. "It is worth a camel, but people will discard bucketloads of it."
I'll befriend any sensible person, no matter what their creed. I believe this is what God gave me an open mind for. I'd be much more worried about an eventual language barrier.
Wouldn't bother me to talk with an open-minded atheist, either. God is way above feeling insulted by a measly human's ramblings, anyway. (Hey, otherwise, what good would it be to be God? Even some mortal humans can remain indifferent to the worst insults.) Blasphemy only truly harms --hurts, more aptly-- humans' beliefs and their sense of respect. It is another plane of reference entirely. Another level of consciousness. Or reality. Whatever.
If a mouse craps on your shoe, it certainly won't threaten your honor. The mouse has no notion of this being an insulting gesture, anyway. Maybe it "lost control" vecause your mighty size terrified it. :-)
If a mouse is still not insignificant enough, think of an ant in its place. Or a bacteria. Billions of bacteriae discard their metabolic waste on our skin and in our natural cavities for our whole life. And so what?
Now, igf we were talking about an elephant, I would definitely worry. And mercifully, whales don't dwell on land, or we'd REALLY be "deep in it".
Eolake said...
"The problem is that they get presented as word from Above, and nobody dares change them, even after times change."
Are you sure? I've been reading the Times for quite a while, and I don't see much editorial change. ;o)
Does time really change itself, or does it only change us?
Okay, sorry, I'll stop with the nonsense now. ;-)
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