19 And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.
20 And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean.
21 And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
22 And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even.
23 And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even.
24 And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean.
Now we shift our attention to a bodily discharge from a woman, as opposed to a man. The most obvious example of this, of course, is when she has her period. This is the situation that today’s verses cover, and we are told that she will be ritually unclean for the duration, and anyone or anything that touches her throughout this duration will need to be washed and then be clean again the next day.
It is important to note that the situation for the woman is the same as for the man. There are those that will take special offense that the Bible talks about a woman’s period as being an “unclean time,” while ignoring the fact that women were not singled out in this regard at all. We have already seen in this chapter that all people were subject to unclean times, and that there was no special shame in that condition. We even discussed yesterday how Jesus, while sinless, most probably was ritually unclean at times himself, and that is the greatest evidence of all that there is no condemnation in it.
But so far, we have talked only about a woman’s regular menstrual cycle. What if she had one of the conditions that made the discharge of blood much more prolonged, such as the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’s robes for healing? We will discuss that matter tomorrow.
16 And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.
17 And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.
18 The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even.
Today’s verses are clearly referencing a man’s ejaculate, and the method for cleanliness around it is very simple. Any person or item that makes contact must be washed, and it will be considered clean again at the start of the next day. This notion of tomorrow being a clean new day is one that we still naturally hold in today’s culture. Especially in the modern era where the day changes in the middle of the night, so we go to sleep in the same day as our troubles and then rise reborn in the morning.
For this next bit of commentary, I want to assure you that I am not trying to be crude or sacrilegious in any way, but I find it worth considering that Jesus’s body presumably followed the standard biological functions, which would include the occasional nighttime emission, which would mean that even he would be ritually unclean at certain times. Far from trying to demean him, I think this demonstrates how our modern culture puts far more shame on the Biblical idea of being “unclean” than was ever intended.
Yes, of course, one could be made unclean by personal error, but it would also come by simply living life. It was an inevitable state. Being declared unclean was simply an appropriate recognition of the perpetual fallen state that we all find ourselves in, not in-and-of-itself a consignment of guilt. It was an invitation to consider that that state we live in is lower than God’s, and we should feel humbled by that fact, but not ashamed.
In my last post I talked about the claim that men struggle because they don’t share their feelings, and how there is a real truth to that statement, but that too often the proposed solution is unhelpful, even harmful. For too many, “sharing feelings” just turns into complaining, to shifting blame outwards, and finding others to stoke one’s feeling of righteous indignation. Feeding one’s rage is quite the rush. It feels “good” in a power-fantasy sort of way. But it does not do good for us. Ultimately, it only makes things worse.
I also mentioned in my last post that there is such a thing as acknowledging and surrendering genuine wounds, and that is healthy. The critical difference is that this healthy sharing is oriented towards accepting and releasing, not clutching and festering.
What is more, there is another sort of “sharing feelings” that is healing, needed constantly throughout life, and it hardly ever gets discussed at all. Usually, it only comes up in religious contexts, while the broader world shrinks from it at any cost. And that is, confession of guilt.
Admitting Wrongs)
By far, the bottled-up feelings that afflict the most people and cause the most damage is their shame. The feelings that men (and I suspect women, too) most need to share with one another is their deep regret, embarrassment, and guilt.
People try to live without shame by just not acknowledging it. By being “shameless” and pretending they don’t feel bad about what they have done. But if one cannot own their own shame, then they cannot be freed from it. Genuine shamelessness comes from fully embracing it, fully sharing it, and fully giving it to God. As James taught us, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).
Of course, you mustn’t just share your greatest flaws with just anyone. “Cast not your pearls before swine,” (Matthew 7:6). Our sins and our crimes against God and man are very vulnerable and must only be shared in the most sacred and trusted of space. But shared they must be. We should all seek a group, a sincere friend, or an honorable spiritual leader where we can bring out our worst and receive of their best. And we must have this communion continually, as new wrongs require new confession, and we live in a perpetual cycle of taking on burdens and then having them taken off.
This is the sort of emotional unloading that will actually make men healthier, stronger, happier, and whole. Not complaining about the wrongs of others, but admitting to the wrongs of themselves. This is where true healing begins.
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean.
3 And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.
4 And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled.
5 But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.
This chapter speaks about childbirth, and how the mother would go through a purifying period before participating in regular tabernacle ceremonies. These passages have been used as evidence by some that the Mosaic Law treated women and childbirth as shameful, given the use of terms like “unclean” and the requirement of a “sin” offering. And this has not only been the argument of those antagonistic to Christianity. Even believers have used passages such as these to suggest that we are born in sin, shameful from our very beginning, and that sex acts are inherently vile.
While I can see where such interpretations are coming from, I feel that they are unnecessarily negative. It would be very helpful to know how ancient Israelites felt about these requirements, and whether they felt ashamed of them. We do not have that information, so we must be careful to not assume how they must have felt about these requirements.
On the matter of uncleanliness, I wish to point out that unclean is not one and the same as guilty or evil. There were many things that could make one unclean, including things that a person would have no willful agency over. A man having a nighttime emission was unclean for a time. A man stumbling over the corpse of a pig was unclean for a time. It is more accurate to think of uncleanliness as the spiritual equivalent to getting mud on our clothes. Getting muddy is nothing for us to be ashamed of. Sometimes it just happens, and we are not lesser people because of it. And yet, while we are muddy, we still keep distant from formal functions, public events, and clean places. We know we have to take a bath and wash ourselves before we go to these sorts of places because there is just too much earth on us.
Being unclean in the Old Testament seems to be the same, but in the realm of the spirit. The things that make one unclean are do not need to be shameful or guilty, they just happen to leave too much “earth” on us. They are things that mark us with the residue of the mortal world. Given that perspective, it is hard to think of anything so mortal as giving birth, and it makes sense that that would therefore make one ritually, but not morally, unclean.
Not only does birth involve the bringing forth of a mortal soul, but as verse 5 specifically calls out, it involves a considerable discharge of mortal blood. Many have noted that the purifying period is doubled when having an infant girl, and that this is likely due to the fact that this act of childbirth is inseparably connected to the female sex. The bringing forth of another woman means bringing forth another vessel of mortality. It is both issue and future issue all in one, so two purification cycles.
In tomorrow’s verses we will hear about the offerings that would accompany a new child’s birth, including a sin offering. In that post I will address why I think this offering is also not so shameful as some seem to think.
21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)
Moses asks the same question of Aaron that we posed earlier: why would he submit to the Israelites’ demands for something that he knew was wrong? Nothing in Aaron’s response suggests that he thought it was a good thing that he did. Rather, the fact that he asks for mercy strongly suggests that he knows that he was wrong to concede to the masses. At least he is completely forthcoming in recounting what he did.
I had wondered whether Aaron agreed to their demands out of spite, as a way to say, “if you’re so set on damnation, by all means go ahead!” One thing that may support that theory is what verse 25 states about Aaron having them get naked as part of their idolatrous revelry, with the objective of bringing shame upon them.
Continuing with the idea of Moses up in the mountain representing the elevated soul and the wicked people in the valley representing fallen mortality, then Aaron might represent to us the basically decent person who is surrounded by a sea of iniquity. He stands in place of all those who try to balance their own survival against their morals. There are many of us who become compromised, who seek not to deprave ourselves, but who stand back and let the depravity happen.
If I were to give a personal definition of shame, it was all the things in my life that were unspeakable. Since about the age of 7 or 8 I started to collect certain things that I didn’t dare talk to anyone about, and it grew throughout the years. It was filled with deeply embarrassing things that I did, times that I hurt someone I loved for selfish reasons, and secret repulsive behaviors I engaged in.
All of these shameful things were real weights in my life, they were extremely present and significant in my mind, yet totally absent in my words and confessions. My reality was therefore twisted around things that were genuine, but treated as if they weren’t, and that twisting caused me all manner of anxiety and misery.
In the moment my conundrum seemed so incredibly complicated, yet the solution to it was ridiculously simple. If my crushing shame was all of the things that I couldn’t speak, then all I had to do was speak them aloud and they would cease to be shame, by definition. After twenty years I did eventually start divulging the things I had refused to talk about, and the relief and release that I experienced took me entirely by surprise. Only in hindsight has the logic of what transpired in those moments of confession revealed itself to me. I confessed not knowing the significance of what I was doing, but I received the full benefits of it regardless. I was speaking the unspeakable, so the shameful became unashamed.
If you have any things in your own life that are unspeakable, I urge you to look for the person and place where you can start to confess your guilt and shame. I wouldn’t say to divulge those things to just anyone, Jesus did teach us not to “cast our pearls before swine,” after all. But I would hope that you could find at least one trusted minister, or well-meaning friend, or recovery group of similarly-burdened individuals. Just find anyone who can receive that confession and offer you peace and wholeness in return. I can tell you that in my own life nothing else has given me as much healing and change of heart as this, and I pray it may be the same for you, too.
In my last two posts I have described two parts of a paradox in addiction recovery. Part one was that we have the greatest success when we do not ruminate on our failures, but simply let them go. Part two was that the addict who breaks beautiful things and hurts loved ones feels it is too flippant to just let those things go. It seems necessary that the addict should be devastated about his failure for some time.
Thus, the addict finds himself caught between the surrender of guilt that would give him the best chance of recovery, and the sense of justice that demands he pays for what he has done. Thankfully, there is a third element that comes to bridge this terrible gulf, to provide a ladder from the darkness to the light.
The Need for a Savior)
At the core of the addict saying that it is right and appropriate to feel devastated for his failures is a recognition that he has broken a moral crime, and so justice ought to be carried out on him. But once we recognize that this is a matter of paying the price for a moral crime, Jesus Christ steps into the picture. The whole point of Jesus Christ is that he, himself, paid the price for these crimes so that we wouldn’t have to.
If I responded to my most shameful acts with nothing more than a “yeah, that happened, but moving on…” then yes, that would be too flippant. But there’s nothing flippant about saying “My best friend died for what I did, so that I could go free.” If anything, that adds even greater gravity and weight to the situation, while also justifying me in letting go of my shame and moving on.
Yes, it is appropriate to be devastated about the seriously wrong things that we do, but Christ offers to feel that devastation for us. When we take him up on that offer, and surrender the weight to him, then it is entirely appropriate for us to get right back in the saddle and try again.
I think this is why having a Higher Power, and more specifically a Savior, is essential to recovery, because when I don’t account for the fact that someone paid for the price for me, I get stuck at an impasse between parts one and two. I need this final part to bridge the gap and bring it all home. It allows me to live as if I had never done anything wrong, while also not minimizing the very real wrong that I really did do. Bringing Christ into the recovery allows us to exchange our worst for his best, and thus the captive may go free.
Yesterday I considered how obsession with failure only tends to yield further failure. In order to change our lives and habits, we have to let go of our tendency to punish ourselves, we have to forgive ourselves for falling short, we have to get right back up and resume living our commitments.
Speaking for myself, just by understanding this fact I do find it easier to let go of my more minor indiscretions. If I eat too much at a party, if I stay up too late playing games, if I find myself distracted at work, I find it within my reach to set aside the self-resentment and instead say, “yes, that happened, but I should get right back to living my commitments, hopeful and trusting that I’ve still got this.”
But not every wrong fits into that “minor indiscretion” category. We addicts are defined by how consistently and repeatedly do heavy and major wrongs. We do things that not only hurt ourselves, but those we care about most. We break beautiful things and cause irreversible damage. And just letting go of that doesn’t feel so easy. In fact, it feels disrespectful and inappropriate to just let it go. It seems too flippant to say “yes, that happened, but moving on…”
And yes, focusing on the guilt and failure of our major wrongs is still the surest way to end up repeating those painful behaviors. Pragmatically we ought to just let them go, but in our hearts it feels like we should be distressed and devastated for a time.
This is a great conundrum then. It is the impassable gulf, the catch-22 of recovery. How are we to do make the surrender that help us get better when doing so feels actively wrong? This is the gordian know we will untangle tomorrow.
18 And he went out from Pharaoh, and entreated the Lord.
19 And the Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red sea; there remained not one locust in all the coasts of Egypt.
Just as an east wind had brought the locusts into the land, a west wind took them out. This wind would have come from the Africa mainland, and evidently it blew across Egypt and into the Red Sea.
Once again, the effect of this healing is as absolute as the plague had been. In the time of affliction we were told that the locusts consumed “all the fruit of the trees…and there remained not any green thing.” So, too, here we are told there “remained not one locust.” God is able to take and give in absolute measure.
I can’t help but wonder what it was like for the Egyptians to see all the locusts blown away and witness the nakedness and barrenness of their land revealed underneath. This image of exposed desolation reminds me of Adam and Eve with their fig-leaf aprons, covering their shame from God, only to have Him see right through them. When we sin, our good fruit is withered and we are left with a shameful desolation that we typically go to great lengths to hide, but when a west wind blows our humiliation is uncovered, much to our embarrassment, but this can also be the first step to true repentance if we will allow it.
I’ve already talked about our tendency to minimize our addictions, and I have encouraged all to bring their full resolve to addressing these “minimal” issues, so that they may quickly ascertain how “minimal” they really are. At the end of my last post, I suggested that even if one discovers that their vices are not a matter of choice, but of compulsion, they might still be reluctant to call their situation an addiction.
There are a few reasons why this might be, let us first consider that the person might have an aversion to that label due to social pressure. Most of us are blind to just how much we are molded by the society around us, so our addict-in-denial probably doesn’t even recognize this factor in his life at first. Through introspection, he may realize that he has always heard of addicts in association with murderers, liars, the homeless, and thieves. He has considered anyone with that title to be hopeless, broken, and perverse. In short, he views the label “addict” prejudicially.
He might express a fear of how others will view him if he labels himself as an addict. He knows that the label is stigmatized, for he has held that same stigma, and he is terrified that others will assume all manner of perversions about him that are inaccurate. He, himself, remains suspicious of addicts as a whole. He views them as an unpredictable group, and he only meets with them while inwardly pinching his nose. Frankly he believes that he is better than them. Thus, he would rather find a term that tells gives people a more favorable view of his problems.
And while that may sound terrible and judgmental, it is a completely understandable place for one to begin their journey. So many of the very people in the twelve steps started in just the same way. We have all had many years to reinforce the stereotypes of what an “addict” is, and it is going to take some time for us to broaden our perspective. We have to learn to let go of our bias and see things with more honesty and nuance.
Not That Bad)
But ignorance and bias are not the only possible reasons why one might be averse to calling himself an addict. Another reason might be that our one genuinely doesn’t think his problem qualifies under the category of addiction. Most of us feel that only certain sorts of actions can belong to an addiction. And maybe this is accurate, and maybe it isn’t, really this is merely a matter of semantics.
Some, for example, feel that an addiction must involve some sort of foreign chemicals. Thus, they would say that one could not be addicted to overeating. Others say that it doesn’t have to be a chemical, but the taking in of some substance must be involved, which would rule out being addicted to pornography or gambling.
There are also many different opinions as to how afflicted one must be before their situation can be considered an addiction. There is a sense that there is a quota of suffering and senseless behavior that must be met before the addiction is official.
But frankly, in this case arguing semantics isn’t very meaningful. So long as one realizes when and where they are powerless over their behavior, and acknowledges that they need drastic changes and external help, then who cares what they call it?
I have my own issues that fall into this gray area. One of them is my seeming refusal to get to bed on time. Every day I tell myself that I’m going to, I know that I am going to suffer if I don’t, yet night after night I find myself making the same unhealthy choice to stay up too late. Does that really qualify as an addiction? Even by the most broad and inclusive definition of the term, it seems a bit of a stretch. But I don’t care. If someone decided to call this problem of mine an addiction, I would feel absolutely no need to correct them. My addictions and my compulsive negative behaviors still live under the same umbrella, and I still need to work on each of them in the same way. In all cases I need to identify my triggers, discover my underlying mental and emotional states, seek support from understanding friends, and surrender my failings to my Higher Power.
“Addiction” or “compulsive negative behavior?” It just doesn’t matter. That which we call a thorn, by any other name, would pierce just as painfully. So long as we are no longer in denial about our affliction and our powerlessness, we may call it whatever we will. If you feel reluctant about labeling yourself an addict, I would simply encourage you to consider what the reason for that is. Is it due to some social bias, or have you become hung up on semantics? In either case, can you set aside the periphery and deal with the problem honestly and wholeheartedly? Are you humble enough to get the help you need?
Spiritual Wanderings 