Reflections on today's reading.
I'm a little behind, but I expect to be caught up by tonight on my OT reading.
One of the things that strikes me as I go through this is stuff I didn't really remember from going over it before. All the slavery and the fact that this is considered perfectly okay. I came across that the other day, too, when after hearing about this "Titus 2" business I went and just sat down and read Titus. (It's short, after all.) And Titus 2, true to form, does tell women to submit to their husbands... and oh, by the way, slaves should also submit to their masters without complaint.
Which made me wonder. Why do we, as Christians, so often just *ignore* sections of the Bible? I don't mean studying things and concluding that they no longer apply to us for some theological reason... I mean just ignoring. In some quick Googling, I came across many, many websites which used Titus 2 as the model for what a good Christian woman should be... but from the descriptions in those places, you'd think the chapter says nothing except to women. I often hear Leviticus quoted on homosexuality, but never on shellfish except by the people trying to point out how ridiculous it is to quote Leviticus on homosexuality.
In Sunday school, they tell you the story of Abraham and Sarah. You *may* get to hear the part where Abraham lies on several occasions and says that Sarah is his sister because he believes that saying she's his wife could be dangerous. I remember that part of the story getting mentioned once. The one time I remember hearing this story, the part where it turns out he wasn't actually lying was most certainly not included.
Not everything in the Bible is pretty. And I'm not saying that we're supposed to keep slaves and marry our half-siblings now just because it happened in the Bible, because of course I'm not a literalist that way. But if you're going to use the Bible as a reason to insist that people ought to behave a particular way (rather than just behaving that way yourself), then it's probably a bad idea to pick and choose what you pay attention to. Let he or she who does not wear cotton/polyester blends cast the first stone, or something.
One of the things that strikes me as I go through this is stuff I didn't really remember from going over it before. All the slavery and the fact that this is considered perfectly okay. I came across that the other day, too, when after hearing about this "Titus 2" business I went and just sat down and read Titus. (It's short, after all.) And Titus 2, true to form, does tell women to submit to their husbands... and oh, by the way, slaves should also submit to their masters without complaint.
Which made me wonder. Why do we, as Christians, so often just *ignore* sections of the Bible? I don't mean studying things and concluding that they no longer apply to us for some theological reason... I mean just ignoring. In some quick Googling, I came across many, many websites which used Titus 2 as the model for what a good Christian woman should be... but from the descriptions in those places, you'd think the chapter says nothing except to women. I often hear Leviticus quoted on homosexuality, but never on shellfish except by the people trying to point out how ridiculous it is to quote Leviticus on homosexuality.
In Sunday school, they tell you the story of Abraham and Sarah. You *may* get to hear the part where Abraham lies on several occasions and says that Sarah is his sister because he believes that saying she's his wife could be dangerous. I remember that part of the story getting mentioned once. The one time I remember hearing this story, the part where it turns out he wasn't actually lying was most certainly not included.
Not everything in the Bible is pretty. And I'm not saying that we're supposed to keep slaves and marry our half-siblings now just because it happened in the Bible, because of course I'm not a literalist that way. But if you're going to use the Bible as a reason to insist that people ought to behave a particular way (rather than just behaving that way yourself), then it's probably a bad idea to pick and choose what you pay attention to. Let he or she who does not wear cotton/polyester blends cast the first stone, or something.