One of my relatives has several daughters. During a visit, one of my nieces announced that she was thinking that she might like to get a tattoo. Her father, who is rather conservative by nature, immediately whipped out his Bible and turned to the Old Testament book of Leviticus, sometimes referred to as the Holiness Code. He went to chapter 19, verse 28, which to my astonishment he had already underlined:
You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks for yourselves. I am the Lord.
For my relative, this was decisive. It was unequivocally God's will that his daughter should not procure a tattoo. What I wanted to ask him was,
- Ever eat lobster? Shrimp? Prawns? Crab? Better read Lev. 11:10 where they are banned, along with several dozen other potentially edible living organisms ranging from rabbit to bear to snails to crocodile. Grasshoppers are okay, however.
- If a man entered your house and tried to assault you, would you object if your wife attacked the intruder and saved your skin? Well you may have to fit her for a prosthesis should she immobilize him in the wrong fashion, as God's law in Deuteronomy 25:11-12 indicates: If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.
- You
are a pillar of your local church. If the grandson of an illegitimate
person were to start attending, would you have any objection? No? Then
clearly you haven't considered God's clear teaching in Deut. 23:2, which
would forbid church attendance not only to a child born on the wrong
side of the blanket, but also his
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchild: No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the
assembly of the Lord; none of his descendants, even to the tenth
generation, shall enter the assembly of the Lord.
- I sported a beard for about ten years. Unlike the rubes on Duck Dynasty, I got a routine trim. Should you have taken me to task for such obviously sinful behaviour? God says you should have in Lev. 19:27: You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.
- You seem to love your wife and daughters dearly. But do you consider them to be, in human worth, about 60% of what you are? No? Apparently you should according to Lev. 27:1-5: The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If anyone makes a special vow to dedicate a person to the Lord by giving the equivalent value, set the value of a male between the ages of twenty and sixty at fifty shekels of silver, according to the sanctuary shekel; for a female, set her value at thirty shekels; for a person between the ages of five and twenty, set the value of a male at twenty shekels and of a female at ten shekels...
But while my relative would not consider any of my five examples above as relevant to life today, he and many others would quickly cite other teaching from Leviticus with respect to the issue of gays:
Lev. 18:22: Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
Lev. 20:13: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Given that these are two of a mere handful of biblical passages that address the gay issue at all, the question must be asked, Do I take these as definitive for making a decision about God and gays, or do they go the way of shellfish and untrimmed beards?
So you know what we'll look at next.
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