Category Archives: Christianity

Just Say No! (To Tim Allen)

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What You’ve Missed…
* God has the Israelites blowing trumpets every time they move camp, to call a meeting of the elders, during battle, during times of gladness and at annual festivals. That’s a lot of trumpet action. How did they not invent Jazz?
* The Israelites do the whole Locks of Love thing. Except instead of giving their hair to cancer patients, they burn it on an altar as a sacrifice to God. Close enough.
* God tells the Israelites to stone a guy who was caught gathering wood on the Sabbath day of rest. I bet the dude’s wife told their kids that he died fighting a bear or something. Death from picking up wood on the wrong day? No one wants that to be their legacy.
* Oh yeah…we’ve finished the books of Exodus and Leviticus. We’re in Numbers now.

Day 62
Daily Reading: Numbers 14-15

I bet God is the kind of guy that loves movie previews.  (Yes, I have seen the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises.  Yes it looks awesome.)  So, while the Israelites are hanging out in the desert, God tells Moses to send twelve men to scope out the promised land, giving them a sneak preview of what’s to come. More than a month later the men return with their report, stating the land is incredibly fertile and rich. But ten of the men start whining saying things like, “It’s scary out there,” or “We saw giants,” or “I want my mommy!” Okay…maybe not that last one.

Anyway, two of the men who actually have a spine, Caleb and Joshua, tell Moses the land is good and worth entering into, despite the dangers, because they trust God. But our good friends the Israelites, who seem to love a good mob mentality, don’t listen to Caleb and Joshua. They listen to the other dudes, and they start crying about the whole deal, complaining about life in the desert, all night long like a bunch of children who can’t stay up past their bedtime to watch some crappy Tim Allen movie on TBS.

However, God, like any reasonable parent, isn’t going to put up with it. (First of all, if I ever have kids that act this way, my biggest concern won’t be their behavior, but rather my lack of good parenting skills that has lead them to believe a Tim Allen movie is a great use of their time.  Obviously this doesn’t include Toy Story.  Obviously.) So how does God handle this group of adult crybabies? He grounds them. And how does He ground them? Like this:

“…I will bring them (your children) into the land, and they will enjoy what you have despised. But as for you, you will drop dead in this wilderness.” (Numbers 14:31-32)

“Because your men explored the land for forty days, you must wander in the wilderness for forty years – a year for each day, suffering the consequences of your sins. Then you will discover what it is like to have me for an enemy.” (Numbers 14:34)

Daaaaaaaang. And I thought picking up trash for 4 hours outside the gas station where I got caught stealing when I was twelve was rough. (By the way, thanks Mom and Dad for making me do that. It worked.) But God wants to make an example of the ten men who started all the whining in the first place, so He simply strikes them down where they stood.

After seeing that happen (which at this point has to be something fairly normal for the Hebrew people, seeing as it seems to happen fairly often) and after hearing God’s punishment, the Israelites do the typical, “I’m sorry. I’ve learned my lesson. Now can we please forget about that whole punishment thing,” and decide to just go ahead into the promised land without whining about it this time. But God’s no softie, and as the Israelites move forward into the new country, God allows them to be attacked by the locals who chase them away.

And so starts the Guinness World Record for the longest grounding in history. God has His children think about what they’ve done as they wander around the desert for forty years. (You know anytime some kid complained about how their parents were punishing them for being bad, the parents responded with, “You think doing the dishes for a week is bad? You just be grateful that I’m not God. He’d make you do them for a lifetime.” I bet that shut those punks up pretty fast.)

These Guys Are Fired Up!

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What You’ve Missed…
* We’ve taken a detour into the book of Leviticus, which includes:
* An incredibly detailed list of exactly which family members you shouldn’t sleep with.
* An incredibly detailed amount of instructions for burnt offerings, and peace offerings, and sin offerings. The priests of the day had to have been the best butchers in town at this point. (The legacy of the Jewish deli begins…)
* An incredibly detailed amount of instructions on how to avoid becoming “unclean” and an incredibly detailed amount of instructions on how to become clean if you are “unclean”. I’ve never been more thankful for hand sanitizer.
* Finally, God must really love pancakes, because He sure does talk a lot about unleavened bread. I bet that’s why He was taking the Israelites to the “land of milk and honey”…it’s all about breakfast.

Day 50
Daily Reading: Leviticus 9-11

Now I have to admit that Leviticus doesn’t make for the most exciting reading. But I think whoever wrote it knew they had to keep their readers’ attention, and so every now and again the author includes something crazy to keep things lively.. Like God incinerating two dudes out of nowhere. Yeah, that got my attention too.

So at the end of Leviticus 9 Moses and Aaron bless the people and “the glory of the LORD appeared to the whole community.” Now, I have no idea what that even means, but I have to believe it was pretty intense. I mean, the last time God appeared to the people it was through a pretty radical thunderstorm with a little earthquake on the side. This time He simply reveals Himself in all His glory. Are we talking a crazy blinding light, pulsating to the rhythm of God’s voice as He spoke? Or did they see a very big man with flowing white hair, surrounded by angels, sitting on a throne the size of a small planet? Or was it something else? I don’t know. All I know is that being in God’s presence caused Moses’ face to glow from time to time, so God revealing His glory to everyone must have lit the place up like Vegas.

Anyway…so God is hanging out with His people, when two of Aaron’s sons decide to burn some incense. But they must not have read the packaging correctly, because they chose the wrong stuff. No big deal right? I mean, what’s the worst outcome possible here; that their girlfriends come over and tell them that creating the bare minimum romantic atmosphere isn’t enough to seal the deal? Wrong. Here’s another possible ending:

“In this way, they disobeyed the LORD by burning before him the wrong kind of fire, different than he had commanded. So fire blazed forth from the LORD’s presence and burned them up, and they died there before the LORD.” (Leviticus 10:1-2)

That’s nuts! Before even discussing why this happened, can we just pause for a moment and imagine what that was like? Fire shooting out from the glory of the LORD!? That’s like fire shooting out from a giant ball of pulsating light that’s just hovering around outside, killing two guys instantly. This sounds weird enough to be the climax of some crazy science fiction movie…except it isn’t fiction. You know people were standing around with their jaws on the floor, their minds completely blown. And you know there had to be one adolescent kid who leaned over to his buddy and whispered, “That was awesome.” And that kid would be correct.

Now, again, it’s stories like this that tell me God means what He says. He just lit two guys up for BURNING THE WRONG INCENSE IN FRONT OF HIM. He clearly wants His people to know the seriousness of His power and words.

Way to go Leviticus. You went from slightly mundane to incredibly insane in just two versus. Well done, my friend. Very well done.

(Note: If you want to read something else completely random and slightly bizarre, check out Leviticus 14:33-57. And if you can make some sense of it, by all means, please share it with the group. Man, the Bible is weird!)

Intense Family Arguments Never Looked So Good

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What You’ve Missed…
* God gives the Israelites a couple of construction projects, providing some pretty detailed blueprints for them.  Incredibly detailed, actually.  We’re talkin’ like almost OCD level here.
* God trumps Trump, stating a lot of the stuff to be built needs to be made out of gold, or covered in gold or made out of gold AND covered in gold, which begs the question: Is it really possible to have too much bling?

Day 42
Daily Reading: Exodus 32-34

So our buddy Moses has been spending some time up on a mountain, talking with God, learning some basic rules for healthy community living, and he’s been up there for awhile.  He’s been up there about 40 days actually, and the Israelites are getting a little restless.  They go to Aaron saying, “Come on!  Make us some gods who can lead us.  We don’t know about this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.”  (Exodus 32:1)

I can imagine the local Hebrew stand-up comedian (and I’m imagining a Jerry Seinfeld slightly-high-pitched-voice here) saying, “And what is the deal with Moses?  I mean, have you seen this guy?  Me neither!  That’s the problem!  What could he possibly be doing up there?  We haven’t invented skiing yet.  And rock climbing isn’t really a hobby or sport since we’re still doing it to survive.  What is going on up there?”

Now, I try pretty hard to see the people in these stories as human and relatable.  But I’m really struggling on this one.  They wanted a god who would lead them!!?  What do they think God’s been doing this whole time!!?  He’s given them food from heaven!  He’s provided clean water in the middle of the desert!  They heard God speak from a thundering cloud!  He has LITERALLY led them day by day and night by night.  What are these people talking about!?

I don’t get it.

So, they pool together a lot of gold and Aaron melts it down, forming it into a giant gold statue of a calf for them to worship.  (Remember, this is the guy God chose to be His mouthpiece for all of Israel.)  As they’re worshiping, God tells Moses He is going to destroy the Hebrews (except for Moses who He will bless) for being stubborn and rebellious.  But Moses asks God to change His mind, to remember His promise to give them the promised land, making them a great nation.  And get this…it works!  “So the LORD changed his mind about the terrible disaster he had threatened to bring on his people.”  (Exodus 32:14)

So God doesn’t destroy His people.  He has mercy on them.  But Moses is pretty dinged up that they’d turn away from God so easily.  In fact, he doesn’t just give them a pretty heavy scolding, but melts down the calf idol, grounds the gold into powder and makes the people drink it.  I would imagine that would take some serious time and effort, and that a person would have to be pretty angry to see that undertaking through to the end.  I’m pretty sure after about fifteen minutes of grounding gold into powder I’d get pretty tired, convince myself it was overkill and follow it all up with a solid nap.

However, suffering a little yelling and some basic hazing-as-punishment isn’t enough to get the Israelites off the hook.  Moses is serious about letting the world know God means what He says when He refers to Himself as the One True God, and that He is the only one to be worshiped.  How serious is he about communicating this point?  He’s this serious:

“Moses stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, ‘All of you who are on the LORD’s side, come here and join me.’  All the Levites gathered around him.  Moses told them, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of Israel says: Each of you, take your swords and go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other.  Kill everyone – even your brothers, friends, and neighbors.’  The Levites obeyed Moses’ command, and about 3,000 people died that day.”  (Exodus 32:26-28)

That.  Is.  Intense.  I can’t even begin to imagine having to kill my family or friends.  That’s just…that’s no joke.  When I read this, my jaw hit the floor, and I just sat for a minute, stunned, not knowing how to respond.  I might have even drooled in a little in my stupor.  If a stranger had been walking by at that moment and taken a second look at me, I’m sure they’d be wondering where my caretaker was and why they left this poor, helpless man all alone, sitting in a puddle of his own drool.

Think about it.  These were people who probably earlier in the day were laughing with their brothers.  Or maybe some young dudes were being taught how to make tents by their fathers.  Or maybe a group of buddies just found out their best friend got engaged.  And then later they’re told they have to kill the people they just shared these good times with because of different beliefs.  That would be tough for anyone…no matter how much religious fervor or passion had been worked up.  This is people attacking people they love, because they chose obedience to God above everything else.  That is a seriously high level of dedication to and faith in God.

I’m still not sure fully what to make of this story other than God seems to be incredibly serious about the things He says, like worshiping Him and Him alone.  I’m starting to think He doesn’t just say things half-heartedly.  Which is a good thing.  Scary, but good.