37 And he shall look on the plague, and, behold, if the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strakes, greenish or reddish, which in sight are lower than the wall;

38 Then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days:

39 And the priest shall come again the seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague be spread in the walls of the house;

40 Then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the plague is, and they shall cast them into an unclean place without the city:

41 And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scrape off without the city into an unclean place:

42 And they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those stones; and he shall take other mortar, and shall plaster the house.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, leprosy in the house would mean a spreading mold. Of course, identifying and removing mold from a house is a very wise and important thing to do, as otherwise it can weaken the structure and trigger disease. Mold in a house is sneaky, because at first it just seems like a discoloration, but repeated cases of collapsed homes and respiratory illnesses must have awoken even the ancient people to its true threat.

Mold is also difficult to evaluate because what we see of it is not always its furthest extent. Hence the test where the priest waits to see it spread, then has them scrape away the entire area. If the homeowner is lucky, just a replacement of the afflicted area will be enough to eradicate the problem, but as we will see in tomorrow’s verses, if it reappeared, then more drastic actions become necessary.

Mold in a house can be seen as another symbol of infectious ideologies, something that spreads throughout a society, whose color seems a little off. At first appearance it may seem of little concern but could lead to unforeseen structural compromises down the road. A modern-day example of this would be those who believe that the Earth is flat. As in verse 38 from today’s verses, it is wise to have a period of waiting and observing. Perhaps what we find is that this notion does not spread, it does not become mainstream, it does not go deeper in its claims. So far it seems to me that that is the case. It looks like flat-earth theories were mostly a passing fad, with fewer and fewer adherents as time goes on, and this isn’t of serious concern and doesn’t present any threat.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this seemingly innocuous trend is but the beginning of a wider culture of reality-denial. Then the mold is likely to weaken the timbers of our home and a society should try to dismantle and replace these cultures, but it may be impossible to do so. It may be that the society is already condemned.

That may seem an exaggerated claim, but we have seen it in the real world. Consider the case of Jonestown in Guyana, where a quirky ideology grew, avoided disbandment, and culminated in the mass suicide of its entire population. In the most extreme cases, a society gone rogue can indeed result in the destruction of the whole.