Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 19:19

19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Verse 19 is about keeping things separate and pure, not mixing parts together. It can be seen as a continuation of the laws against eating unclean meat and not using leaven during the Passover. All of this, of course, is a symbol of being a separate and chosen people. Though Israel would necessarily live alongside pagan cultures, they were not to mix faiths, not to corrupt their worship of God. Unfortunately, Israel would on many occasions fall into this very error and would lose their kingdom because of it.

Of course, we cannot judge them too harshly. Corruption of the faith is a very real problem in our day, too. There are many “Christians” who are more converted to the trends of our current society than their actual doctrine, seeking to blend fabrics of love and tolerance with sins like homosexuality, to give just one example. Mankind has ever been too concerned with looking right according to the current social standard, and not in being right in God’s eyes.

It is interesting that it is this particular verse has become a favorite go-to for those wanting to discount the Bible’s commandments against homosexuality. “Why do you hold to the Bible’s condemnation of gay people, but you still wear clothes with mixed fabrics?” The answer is that, as previously mentioned, the mixed fabric law was part of the unclean meats and leaven laws, which was explicitly withdrawn in Acts 10, whereas the sins of sexual immorality have never been rescinded. Still, it is ironic and poetic that people attempt to justify homosexuality by referencing the very category of commandments that symbolically opposed the mingling of faith with the immoral trends of the day.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Fickle Popularity

I may not be very old, but I have already witnessed the way society can swing from one trend to another. I see the masses scramble onto today’s favored platform, only to be embarrassed when it becomes tomorrow’s laughingstock.

I believe that a key component of this is that too often we choose our stance more off of who else is standing there, and not by the merits of the platform itself. The fact is, there are values to be respected in most every position. Conservatism and liberalism, inclusivity and solidarity, faith and skepticism, individualism and collectivism, a solid case can be made for each of these, and it is my personal belief that the correct position comes by taking the good parts of each.

But balance is not the typical position of society. Typically, people go all in on one or another, believing that they do so because of their commitment to its underlying ideals, but more so because of the attractiveness of the community that is built upon it.

Whenever a platform becomes too popular, it starts to attract “all kinds.” Some of the meanest and least understanding jump onto it, and they bring out all the worst extremes of that particular ideal. The rest of society can see the growing ugliness in that position, and so they take up the opposition. In order to escape the depravity of the old platform’s worst tenets, people fully commit to its opposite, until it becomes the popular thing to do. As the masses invest in that side, then they also start to attract even the uglier parts of society to their platform and the cycle repeats, over and over again.

Playing this game is exhausting. Great effort is made, but any short-term progress is eventually undone by an over-correction in the other direction. It’s a pity, because I don’t think it has to be that way. I see the potential for mankind to balance one another out, to elevate the most powerful ideals in each platform, but to circumscribe them by the bounds of all the others. By this I believe we could continually progress towards greater and greater virtue, rather than rising only to fall as has been our historical pattern. I believe this unified progression is a vision of heaven, the society that we shall have when our Lord reigns supreme.