Tag Archives: sabbath

“But those are Old Testament laws!”

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I will often challenge my Christian peers with some of the following laws put forth in the Bible:

  • If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother, and his blood will be on his own head. (Leviticus 20:9)
  • If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
  • If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
  • If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. (Exodus 21:20-21)
  • Keep my decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. (Leviticus 19:19)
  • When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. (Leviticus 15:19)
  • For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death. (Exodus 35:2)

…and so on, and so forth. I then ask of them which of these laws have they broken? Why is it okay that they have not yet been put to death for their violation of Biblical laws? Why do these things apparently no longer matter to their god?

Every answer is exactly the same: those are Jewish laws of the Old Testament. Those laws were put forth by Moses. And then something about Jesus dying and those Old Testament laws not being of relevance any longer.

A couple things come to my mind at that point. First, the law forbidding homosexuality is a so-called Old Testament law (Leviticus 20:13 which, for the record, not only says homosexuality is an abomonation, but that anybody committing such a treacherous act should be put to death immediately) which Christians just love to quote when attempting to pry their religious beliefs into politics. That and, y’know, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21). That old thing which the “New Testament Christians” place as the foundations of their morality. As a sidenote, Jesus later references the “commandments” (Matthew 19:17-19), but only six of them. He omits the first three, which are all about loving God, and then sort of combines the last two so as to say simply to treat your neighbor as yourself. The “golden rule,” so to speak. The important thing here, though, is that even Jesus himself was saying to follow those Old Testament laws.

So are the Old Testament laws still relevant? You say no, but Jesus says yes.

The second thing that comes to mind is Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” God does not change his mind. Whether they’re laws put forth in the Old Testament or the New, he does not change his mind. Did you work last Sunday? Time to die.

Oh. Also, there’s this, which can be found in the New Testament.

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. (I Peter 2:18)

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