Dear Rev. Know it all,
Recently a friend of mine sent me the link to a site entitled "Why Can't I Own a Canadian?" Much of the content mocks Mosaic Law in context of our current day and age. I've looked around the web for info to respond to my friend but mostly I just found this very same content posted on multiple sites and people commenting on how ridiculous Judaism/Christianity is. This has really been bugging me... even to the point of losing some sleep researching answers. I thought I turn to "Charismatic Catholic Capped & Caped Crusader for Christ" for help.
Thank you & God bless!
Lee Gulistick
Dear Lee,
Who would want to own a Canadian in the first place? A Canadian will eat you out of house and home. And sometimes they only speak French. Zoot, alors! I’m just kidding about Canadians. They’re lovely people.
The question you ask about the old covenant law and the New Testament is easier to answer than one might think. Have you seen the movie Forrest Gump? There is a scene in which Forrest and his shrimp obsessed friend are cleaning the floor with tooth brushes. This exercise is not intended by his superiors to get the floor clean. It is intended to work a change in raw recruits. An inefficient way to clean floor is a fine way to create a soldier.
God's Mosaic commandments may seem arbitrary to the rebellious narcissists who populate the modern world, but remember, God wasn't just training soldiers. He was training a people to be his ambassadors to the world until the time was ripe for the Messiah and His universal message of God's love. Moses went up the mountain and received 10 commandments, all of which were fairly reasonable; don't kill, lie, steal, or commit adultery. Worship God, rest now and then. Don't envy your neighbor. Moses came down from the mountain and saw Edward G. Robinson and the Israelites dancing around the golden calf. He broke the tablets, made everybody drink the powdered up idol and went back up the mountain to try again.
This time God sent him down with 613 commandments, 603 more than the first time. Obedience to the whole law of Moses was the moral and theological equivalent of cleaning the floor with a toothbrush. When a few reasonable commandments aren't enough, God gives us more. We need them. When the need was past, Jesus came and said, "Alright, I'm from God. I'm the Messiah and I'm going to begin the restoration of the human condition as it first was in the garden when the most basic and simple commandments applied.” That's why Jesus says, "Moses allowed you to divorce, but it was not that way at first. In His own image He made them, male and female He made them. For this a man shall leave his mother and father and cling to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."
The dietary laws and the ritual laws fall away as the Messiah restores the first covenants between God and humanity. The natural law doesn't fall away, because it is the very reflection of the divine nature in the image of which humanity was first made. The faithful, fertile, forever relationship between Husband and Wife is the reflection of God's own reality. God is love, sacrificial love. Married love is natural. The fascinating variations we have come up with modern times are, well, unnatural. Look at the equipment. It seems clearly designed for a specific use and a specific purpose. God's nature is intimately involved in the natural, sometimes difficult, though always wondrous, relationship between man and woman.
God's nature has nothing do with eating shrimp, or mixing different crops in a field. Self-sacrificing Love and family and charity, respect for human life, these are from God's own heart. The humanist web site sight you refer to is pretty shallow. I remind you that it is the fool who says in his heart there is no God, or so says the Psalm.
Rev. Know-it-all