Why Not? (2)
You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. Leviticus 18:22
Abomination – Yesterday we commented on Feinstein’s insight that the prohibition against homosexuality “is at its core an appeal to the emotions.”[1] We noticed that the real issue for contemporary society is the lack of cultural disgust concerning certain behaviors. For example, we simply don’t get sick to the stomach thinking about eating bacon. It isn’t abhorrent and because it isn’t abhorrent, we can imagine a society that accepts it as food. But if you grew up in ancient Israel, even thinking about pigs would make you emotionally sick. You can see the same thing with regard to sexual practices, religious rituals (can you imagine Israel without Sabbath?), festivals, literature or social obligation. These are learned cultural responses. Every culture has them although they differ from culture to culture. For example, in the West we may be disgusted at the thought of eating insects, but in biblical cultures some insects were commonly eaten. The point is this: Torah is a plan for teaching learned cultural responses. It is designed to condition its followers to a disgust response about certain things and behaviors. In the absence of these learned cultural responses, Torah itself often seems not to make any sense. Thus, we who grew up under the influence of Christian cultural norms have no emotional disgust about pork but we do have these feelings about obesity. In the Bible, pork causes disgust and being fat is considered a sign of prosperity.
Just for a moment, imagine the biblical record as cultural conditioning. Training starts early and is focused on the objective of creating conditioned responses that affect the relationship with YHVH and the cultus. Torah is not a list of universal, timeless truths but rather a map for creating emotional responses that shape automatic behavior. In the West, we simply don’t think of the Bible like this. We have been “universalized” by Greek philosophy so we think of the Bible as essentially a vehicle for teaching temporally and culturally transcendent truths, like the axioms of geometry. From our perspective, what Torah teaches Israel is really not as relevant to Israel as it is to the entire human population. Treating Paul this way leaves us with church doctrine about the way women dress, the hierarchy of church politics, the limited atonement of Calvin and the necessity of speaking in tongues. It also provides the basis for the myth of legislated morality.
But what if it’s all about cultural conditioning? What if it’s a way to get us to adopt certain automatic revulsions and automatic agreements? Idols = yuck! Who could imagine such atrocity? Hesed = great, even if it requires me to act with benevolence toward an enemy. Child sacrifice? Absolutely no way! Disgusting! Capital punishment for murder? Of course! How could it be otherwise? Do you see what’s happening?
Once our view of the Bible shifted from a pattern of cultural conditioning to theological arguments about existence, God and Man, we lost the necessary adoption of patterns of disgust and acceptance. The result has been a wholesale attempt to reinterpret the Bible as a textbook of spiritual philosophy rather than a training manual. Perhaps we need to rethink our penchant toward abstraction. Perhaps it’s not really about profane versus sacred or sin versus holiness. Perhaps it’s about disgust versus delight.
What’s on your “delight in the Lord” list? What’s on your “that’s disgusting!” list? Do these match the biblical categories?
By the way, you might reflect on the role of cultural icons and media in shaping our views of what is disgusting and what isn’t. Hollywood knows the power of emotional reaction perhaps better than we as followers of the one true God do. Isn’t that a shame?!
Topical Index: abomination, culture, disgust, Leviticus 18:22
[1] Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible, p. 113.
Disgust and Delight? Yes.
But I would rather use the much more important eastern ideas of honor and shame. THAT’s what life is all about in eastern thinking and culture.
I was taught this is conscience. Now I see the western influence. If the conscious was seard with truth, it would instantly react to a situation with this kind of reaction. The conscience would instantly know right from wrong. The key is how it is taught.
Kees, that was an insightful comment for me. How often do I go through my day thinking about HONOR as the correct sieve to determine my choices? Thank you!
Teaching a child in the way he should go so that when he is old he will not depart from it is all about setting his responses to life, and the largest part of it is aligning the emotions, as anybody knows who has done this.
Religious taboos depend largely on emotions, and they are not wrong to do so. (Depends on the taboo!) In fact, there is a good argument I keep running up against in the Bible about if I do not have something down in the “belly” (seat of the emotions; i.e. “fire in the belly”) I might not have it at all!
I have reflected in the past on the religious underpinnings to the, say, planting of corn for the native Americans. There were religious connotations to every aspect of it: you had to put just the right amount of fish in the hole, say, and then make sure the ‘Three Sisters’ (corn, beans and squash) got planted together. This is what we would recognize as attention to fertility and also to what we farmers call “companion planting”, which is good for the plants, but it also insured that there was a complementary diet, too. If you eat corn, beans and squash together, you have complete nutrition. Now, did they ‘know’ all that? And if they did, would they have done it simply because they did? (Do we?!) But, if you thought the gods would be upset if you did not, or that they might cause the crop to fail, wouldn’t that ensure a strong impetus to do exactly what the instructions said to do, every time?
Emotions are an instantaneous response: emotions (to me, anyway) say “hey, here is where you are ALREADY AT with this. Emotions are set by past choices and responses and beliefs in the heart about life. If those have been set well, then an automatic response makes life choices easier. Most of us, I think, in fact, go through life not even questioning our set responses: that’s how strong they are. That’s how we are made, in fact. (But then, there are all those pricks I keep kicking against to show me how incorrectly I got set the first go-round! LOL!)
In Galatians 5:21 there is a long list of sins, and the warning that those who ‘habitually practice’ them run the risk of not inheriting the Kingdom. To me, this verse talks to the automatic set point of the heart. And that is definitely a “disgust” or “delight” question!
I know emotions are no substitute for righteousness, any more than a rave party is a substitute for love (I am sorry, but, for me, that would include ‘rave’ parties that are held on church property!), but an emotional response to LIFE does let me know where I am already at with something, and where I need a little more light to shine. For example, the other day I found myself between two parties who did not want to deal with each other, so one of them asked me to inform the other of what they intended to do. Looking back, my automatic response should have been disgust (anger), which would have clued me in to the fact that I was being used. I had to go back later and reset where I was at with those people. Not there yet! Maybe automatic disgust will protect me next time!
I work in the operating room for nearly twenty five years and was recently off for three months while recovery from surgery on my shoulder. When I came back to work I experienced a pulling back repulsion to the sight of blood. I say all that to say, what I expose myself to on a regular basis doesn’t even phase me. I have my hands all up in things that most people can’t think about. I think that living and exposing ourselves to is along these same lines, What we feed the most is what becomes our point of insensitivity.
Some parts of this teaching are confusing to me. Perhaps it is because I do not understand what you are really saying? Here’s my viewpoint based on my understanding of Torah’s function. We are not to rely on our emotions when deciding what is right vs. wrong, pure vs. impure, tame’ vs tahor. Doing so can and often does lead us down the wrong path, even to the point of sinning. I don’t think about bacon, but should the idea of a BLT enter my subconscious mind, I would be worried about all the nitrites in TURKEY bacon and weighing my options to eat something not necessarily good for my body. Pork bacon would never have been part of the equation. Why? Because Yah instructed me in clean and unclean and because I believe & trust my Creator, I don’t have to be “culturally” conditioned. I fear offending my Yah. I want to be qadosh because He is qadosh and He instructed me how to do so, individually and within my or any culture. If He was merely “conditioning” me to react in a certain manner to certain things, then I have no freewill to decide: then I am conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs. I know that pork is unclean and I therefore attempt to avoid it–even though our “culture” has snuck it and other unclean elements into our food stream without our knowledge. We are all likely “unclean” to some degree without our knowledge.
The very thought that Yah would not want to/ COULD NOT touch me because I am unclean is reason enough to avoid, to the best of my ability, anything unclean, regardless of any particular “cultural” norm.” My delight is in Yah, not food or other items, and He has clearly outlined those things that are an abomination to Him. They are therefore an abomination to me. Relying on my own emotions is dangerous and thankfully unnecessary–but not because of my cultural upbringing, but because of scriptural teaching. That being said, I would never eat “clean” insects because the thought is unappealing to me, even though it would not be a sin (and I’ve been culturally conditioned by friends who eat chocolate covered ants, etc.), I am exercising my freewill within the Mispatim of His Word.
{Do we buy only footballs made with bison skin for our children or does that even enter our thought processes? Do we ask the attendant to show us which of the balls are of pigskin so as not to touch them? Is this cultural or scriptural or extreme? Do we refrain from watching football games, because they are throwing around a “pigskin”? How far do we take our cultural mores?}
Is Yahusha our example? Did Yahusha touch unclean people? Leprosy? (Matt 8:2) Did He enter their homes? (Matt 26:6) How could He do so without sinning or becoming unclean? Why wasn’t He emotionally abhorrent of lepers or their disease? Did he not feel empathy, compassion? Did He instead apply the “love your neighbor as yourself” command, regardless of the “culture”? Of the 10 lepers that He cured, did not the only one to return and praise and thank Him belong to another “culture”? And yet He used this very disease to punish Aharon and Myriam? Hmm….. Was He conditioning them? I hope you can see my confusion. I am not attempting to be disrespectful, but I simply don’t understand the viability of using the Torah as a “pattern of cultural conditioning…” I don’t understand the take home message in this teaching. Higher are His ways than mine.
We are to hate sin and atone for the sins we commit, beg forgiveness… This means all sin described in Covenant Torah which obviously includes those listed as abominations. Yet, we can become so conditioned to sin that we overlook it. Should we then band together in a “culture” that is conditioned with the same Pleasure vs. Disgust as the Israelites were “conditioned” in the desert. Or did the Israelites need to be instructed because they had been so far removed from Yah’s Holiness (Kedoshim Q-D-S, touch the door of El Shaddai?) that they no longer could discern on their own what was Holy and what was profane. We are called to be Holy. I view Holiness as distinguishing between what is tame’ and what is tahor. And then applying the distinction. As a personal choice, we choose what is clean, regardless of its “delight” quotient.
Now, that all is said, was this perhaps the same thing as you are saying? If so, please forgive my inability to understand your teaching, Skip. Sometimes I get caught up in the forest or go down the wrong “rabbi” hole. If so, please forgive me.
Donna — what you are describing IS cultural conditioning — it’s the “new” (or maybe I should say “renewed”) culture of Torah that we are trying to absorb.
BTW — Footballs are generally made of cowhide or vulcanized rubber; but I’ll raise the ire of some by saying I wouldn’t mind seeing the end of Monday night football anyway. LOL
We all need to live in submission to Abba’s way
as summed up by the prophet Micah Chapter 6 verse 8
“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk in humility with your God?
This is surely the only right way to live, by YHVH’s order for all mankind.
Cultural or not, it is a paradigm. A discipline.
When we ‘discover’/learned that certain foods we were used to are not kosher/clean, as not meant by our Creator as food for consumption, we are awakened and astonished that such foods were once delightful to our palates. We then have a change of heart. That reveals our attitudes towards YHWH and His authority in our lives.
We are no longer enslaved to such, both natural and spiritual food addictions, that lead to the destruction of our spiritual well-being but turning away from them to start afresh. A desire to change according to YHWH’s instructions.
It’s not that difficult, if we choose to walk/live pleasing to Him.
Shalom.
I am really grateful for this perspective Skip. I prayed a few decades ago that Our father would teach me to love what He loves and to hate what He hates. I didn’t care what the truth was I just wanted to be assured that it was truth and safe to practice. The first thing He showed us was Shabbat, then the feasts, then…… The rest is history.
I now find myself shuddering at the thought of frying my eggs on a griddle that bacon has been cooked on. Just can’t do it. So even for us late comers, the torah has the effect He is looking for. The trick is you have to actually start practicing it.
So I have a question. The book of Revelation as I see it now (might be different tomorrow) is an unfolding of judgments upon the whole earth based on the standard of Torah (which of course includes grace because of ignorance). If only God’s children are expected to walk in these things…………?
I’m with you, Pam, on the practice makes paradigm!
The way I read Revelation, the whole earth is going to be brought to a ‘learning point’ (judgment – thank you, Ester, for pointing that out!), where everyone can see clearly the Way. How will they see it? It will have become perfected in an obedient Body: those that “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus”. At that point, accountability is applicable, and, subsequent to that revelation and deciding point will come Judgment Day, where everyone finds out where everyone is already standing. It looks fair and decisive, both, to me.
Imagine the surprise when this happens.