love and holiness

Continuing on with Leviticus...I read through Chapter 20. Again, feel free to skim if you're trying to follow along.

I'm going to start by focusing on Chapter 20, verses 7-8.

"Set yourselves apart for a holy life. Live a holy life, because I am God, your God. Do what I tell you; live the way I tell you. I am the God who makes you holy."

This could be one of those times that I take the verse out of context and make all of us feel guilty. We'll see, I haven't decided yet how I want to write this.

But I'll give you some background: this verse comes after reading all of the (tedious) ways to make sacrifices (Ch. 1-7) and all of the things that require a sacrifice (Ch. 10-19). Chapter 19 especially focuses on what acts should not be committed and many will sound familiar:

"Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't deceive anyone. Don't swear falsely using my name, violating the name of your God. I am God."

Others seem obvious, but apparently nobody told Jerry Springer:

"Don't have sex with a close relative..." Which goes on to define all of the possible definitions of "close relative".

Still, others are listed that may be outdated (word choice?):

"Don't eat meat with blood in it...Don't wear clothes woven of two kinds of material...Don't pollute yourselves with any animal or bird or crawling thing which I have marked out as unclean for you" (by the way, pigs make the list).

So, that's all it takes to be holy, huh? Well, look deeply at Chapter 19. It's a real expansion on the Ten Commandments. The real question comes in as "What set of laws should we follow?"

I go back to something that I learned about the commandments as viewed from the New Testament. Look at Mark 12:28-34. It was once shared to me that the Ten Commandments could be summed up with one word: Love (meaning love for all). If you truly feel a loving care for all, you will obey the commandments without need for a right vs. wrong thought discussion. What I find interesting here is the response from the religion scholar in verse 32. He says:

"A wonderful answer, Teacher! So lucid and accurate - that God is one and there is no other. And loving him with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that's better than all the offerings and sacrifices put together!"

Jesus follows this by saying, "You're almost there, right on the border of God's kingdom."

It seems to me that God cares less about the sacrifices or offerings that we make and more about the reason for the action. If we can keep a continual sense of love in our soul, we won't have to think about what we should give up to God. Our natural action will be to sacrifice whatever is needed in order to serve God's Will. The same is true of the actions we should avoid; these "unclean" behaviors won't even come into question because our love for all would prevent us from even considering sin.

How to maintain a continual sense of love? This I cannot give and nor can the 5 step program to a deeper faith. We have to consistently seek God, both individually and in groups. Only he can help us to attain a true sense of love.


God, be with me as I strive to do your will. Give me the ability to open my heart to love all around me. Help me to use the gifts you've given me to help others. Amen.