by josh » Thu May 22, 2008 4:39 pm
I needed only one glance at the link you sent to see how confused you are. The link starts off with the book of Leviticus - Old Testament. And I can already tell from the way you framed your opening statement that you are going to cite the old testament law, which was handed down to the Jews, as being contradictory to the way we as Christians live today.
That is ignorance on your part. And I don’t mean to say you as a person are ignorant, but that you have a deep, fundamental ignorance of the Bible. And that is ok…because my ignorance has only diminished slightly over the years. But the key here is to know what you are talking about before throwing up evidence that you don’t understand.
The Old Testament law (the first 4 or 5 books of the bible, of which Leviticus is one) was given to show the Jews how to live and abide by God's law under a theocracy. Leviticus in particular has a primary focus and that is dealing with cult-sacrifice, priesthood, and ritual purity. In Leviticus, it talks about ritual purity, not always moral purity. The abolition of eating pork was so the priest and Jews would be ritually pure when they came to temple (as an example). You are probably familiar with the Ten Commandments. There were in fact over 300 commandments given to the Jews – the Mosaic law.
But then came Jesus. Jesus did away with the Old Testament laws by giving himself as the pure sacrifice, once and for all, for man’s sins. With Jesus, there was no longer a need to bring pure animal sacrifices to the temple as atonement for our sins. He became the sacrifice for our sins. And because of that, Christians are no longer bound by the Mosaic law. So you see, it isn’t being hypocritical on our part for not keeping the Mosaic Law. We are no longer bound by that law.
When you say “what gives you the right to stop people from being happyâ€, what do you mean? Do you mean to say that anyone who is pursuing happiness has a right to pursue that without interference? What about the killer who truly is happy when he kills? Of course you don’t mean that. So what you mean is that I don’t have a right to stop people from doing what you perceive to be morally good things. But then, that puts you in the position of defining what is morally good. And I think I hear you trying to tell me and others that we don’t have a right to make moral definitions. So just curious – can you clarify for me?
I apologize if you have encountered Christians who do not truly reflect the love of Christ. I know I have come across plenty of judgmental Christians who treat those they view as immoral with contempt. That is truly not Christ like.
“"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" —Samuel Adams
