Snyder, K. Alan. Defining Noah Webster: A Spiritual Biography. Washington, DC: Allegiance Press, 2002.
Noah Webster was in interesting man in interesting times. A young man during the American Revolution, he became interested in politics and went on to know many of the statesmen of that era, especially amongst his fellow Federalists . He was published the first magazine of original material in America and edited a Federalist newspaper, sometimes drawing fire from his own party for his evenhanded reporting. He is best known for writing educational materials, readers, texts, and especially his dictionary.
K. Alan Snyder covers this biographical fare in Defining Noah Webster. He is more interested in the philosophical and religious arc of Webster’s life and how his views changed, especially after his conversion to Christianity.
Webster was raised in the Congregational church of his family in Connecticut and attended Yale, which was still ostensibly a religious college at the time. (Incidentally, later in life he would help to establish Amerherst because, among other things, he found Harvard, itself originally a seminary, to be too liberal.) As he reached adulthood and had to fend for himself, he turned away from the faith and sought guidance in literature and philosophy. He is hardly the only Enlightenment-era youth to seek to perfect himself through reason .
Snyder sees Webster falling under the influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. After reading his book, I can’t tell you much about Common Sense philosophy, though Snyder provides just enough to follow how it appears in Webster’s activities and writings in the early part of his career. The major themes are that reason must be guided by conscience, and that as a person matures and develops reason, reason should take the drivers seat and direct his other faculties. Thus, Webster’s educational views include inculcating moral values. Common Sense also viewed political philosophy as part of moral philosophy. Webster valued character in politicians and thought foolish put public trust in people whose private morals were questionable.
While Webster’s views were not opposed to Christianity, his real faith through much of his career as an educator, author, politician, and public figure was in reason, not in Christ. As he saw his country grow and become factious and reported the horrors that developed during the French Revolution, he became disillusioned with the idea that reason, even if guided by a trained conscience, could cure people of moral shortcomings.
Webster converted to Christianity at the age of about 50, to the delight of his wife and daughters. He did not make a disillusioned retreat to religion. He was born again and the experience changed his perspective on everything. The final chapters are the meat of the book. Snyder writes about how this conversion changed Webster’s views on politics and education and influenced his dictionary.
Webster remained a staunch Federalist. However, the reasoning behind his political views changed. He found the roots of republican government in the Bible-base wisdom of America’s Christian settlers. Solid character, especially Christ-like character, became an even more important requirement for elected officials.
Before his conversion, Webster steered clear of what he saw as the overuse of the Bible in readers. Afterward, he no longer trusted natural conscience and reason. People were too prone to error and selfishness. They needed revelation from God’s Word as a reliable to guide to what is right.
These Christian views are prominent in Webster’s dictionary, though largely removed from its successors. Webster traced etymologies with the notion of finding the true meaning of a word in its origins in an Adamic tongue. His illustrations of meanings frequently reflected his Christian views.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query moral. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query moral. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Nothing can be more false than the opinion that honor can exist without moral rectitude
Nothing can be
more false than the opinion that honor
can exist without moral rectitude.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
When I speak of the Christian religion as the basis of government... I mean primitive Christianity in its simplicity
When I speak of
the Christian religion as the basis of government, I do no mean an ecclesiastical
establishment, a creed, or rites, forms, and ceremonies, or any compulsion of
conscience. I mean primitive
Christianity in its simplicity as taught by Christ and His apostles, consisting
in belief in the being, perfections and moral government of God; in the
revelation of His will to men, as their supreme rule of action; in man’s
accountability to God for his conduct in life; and in the indispensable
obligation of all men to yield entire obedience to God’s commands in the moral
law and in the Gospel.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people
Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of
any other kind.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius
Harry
Bruinius takes the title of his book, Better
for All the World, from a quote from famous United States
Supreme
Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr. In his opinion,
written for a court majority that authorized states to forcibly sterilize some
people, Holmes expressed the notion that it was better to sterilize a defective
person than to permit them to have defective children who may place greater
burden on government
systems for justice
and welfare.
This legal
justification for forced sterilization was just one of the policy
victories of the eugenics
movement in the America.
Eugenicists were also influential in establishing state marriage
laws and
federal immigration quotas and restrictions.
Even from its start, notions of social
engineering and politics
tinged the science
of eugenics. Francis
Galton coined the word that applied to both the study of heredity and the
improvement of humanity through selective breeding over generations. Galton
established the field based on concepts from his cousin Charles
Darwin’s books on evolution, Gregor Mendel’s
studies of plant heredity, and his own statistical
studies of human characteristics. Though he mostly kept these speculations to
himself, he considered the possibility of improving humans through breeding
just as farmers improved plants and livestock.
American reformers of all political persuasion welcomed Galton’s ideas;
they were looking for reliable, scientific means of tackling poverty and crime.
Galton’s method were used to study families and supposedly proved that traits
related to poverty, criminality, low intelligence,
and the harder to recognize (therefore more dangerous) feeblemindedness. These
studies also uncover a troubling pairing in females of feeblemindedness and
fecundity. The implication was that the good stock of moral, productive
Americans risked overrun by a class of hereditary degenerates. America’s best
needed to produce larger family, and its poor and feebleminded needed to be
restrained from passing on their inferior traits.
Much of Bruinius’ book focuses on this American eugenics movement.
Representing leadership in the scientific community is Charles
Davenport. He popularized the work of Galton, convinced the Carnegie
Institute to fund a station to study eugenics, and did research that
contributed to the early development of genetics.
Representing the bridge between science and policy is Harry
Laughlin. A Missourian
and a protégé of Davenport, his reports and advice to Congress helped
to inform restrictive immigration policy and support state programs of forced
sterilization of convicts and the feebleminded, ultimately upheld in by the Supreme
Court, as previously mentioned, in the case of Buck vs. Bell.
The development of eugenics policy in the U.S. was being watched
overseas. In particularly, racial purity laws enacted by the Nazis in Germany
explicitly cited American research and legal precedents. Many reformers in
America and elsewhere were gratified by the apparent success of eugenics
policies in Germany.
Even as it was reaching its peak as a political reform movement,
laboratory science was undermining eugenics. Laboratory studies of the
mechanisms of heredity, which had discovered chromosomes by the 1930s, were
showing that heredity and the expression of traits, especially moral or personality
traits, were much more complicated and harder to predict than the eugenicists
assumed. Through its association with the Nazis, eugenics became wholly
discredited in the public mind, though its effects lingered in American
policies for decades.
Our understanding of genetics and heredity has improved a lot.
Biotechnology has made a new kind of genetic engineering possible. The
eugenicist dreams of eliminating disease and creating better people in future
generations is more attainable than ever, at least in limited ways.
If this puts our evolution in our hands, are we ethically
and morally evolved enough to use this power? Are humans intelligent animals or
are we unique creatures? Are human rights
inalienable characteristics of human beings, or are they social constructs,
ideas that can rise, fade, or change like other ideas? How does the good of the
species relate to the good of the individual? What does it mean to be a parent?
The way we answer these questions, and other related to the implications of our
science and technology,
will establish what kind of people we are, and possibly the destiny of
generations to come.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Bruinius, Harry. Better for All
the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for
Racial Purity. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2006.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Oscar
Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian
Gray is a classic of English literature.
I’m writing a review of it because I want some horror
to feature on Halloween.
Dorian Gray is, in my mind, a
weird tale. Wilde
produces a sense of creepiness that begins even in the seemingly light and
hopeful first chapter. The title portrait is a supernatural
object that horrifies and fascinates Gray. He is
preserved in youth
and beauty,
and possibly even saved from the consequences of evil deeds, but the
portrait become a mirror to his dark and sinful soul, something
that eventually becomes too horrible for him to endure.
In addition to being a weird tale, it is a moral tale. Gray
has beauty, wealth,
and status,
but he gives himself over to any kind of wickedness if their might be pleasure in it.
At first, it is the infatuation of a hollow love for the
actress Sibyl
Vane. When she disappoints him on the stage by failing to present an ideal
picture of love because acting it seems shallow compared to her real passion,
he rejects her. Her suicide nearly
turns him off the path he is pursuing, but when the thrill of the moment passed,
he nearly forgot her. The sins of youth and ignorance turn more willful as he
falls into using drugs
and prostitutes.
Eventually he murders
a man. The book hints at other wrongdoing, possibly homosexuality, affairs with
married
women,
seduction
for the sake of its own pleasure, gossip, excessive
drink, greed,
blasphemy and leading others into all
these things.
The book could be a social commentary
on the upper
class of his time. With all the advantages they had, they were still corrupt. A
fortunate life is not a sign of a good person. As with Job, poverty and
hardship are not indications of an evil life.
Some think Wilde is exploring own life in the book. One can read hints
of homosexuality in Basil Hallward’s
feelings toward Gray (Basil paints the portrait), and in Gray’s feelings toward
Lord
Henry Wotton. Possibly Wilde was critiquing his own aestheticism, finding
that it did not necessarily lead to a higher morality, but could as easily lead
one to an immoral, selfish, and consuming pleasure-seeking.
In the book, Wilde never comes out and says what his intentions are, if
he has any at all in terms of exploring himself, his society, or notions of
beauty, art and morality. It seems clear, though, the Wilde suggests a person
cannot be separated from his deeds and his consequences as Gray is with the aid
of his magical
painting. A man, his deeds, and their consequences may not be the same thing,
but they are linked in a powerful way. When Gray tries to destroy the painting
that bears the ugliness of his soul, he plunges the knife into his own heart.
Though some have accused Wilde of writing an immoral book, one could as
easily argue that he wrote a very moral book. Gray is sympathetic to a degree,
but he is an evildoer destroyed by the evil he did. The reader can contemplate
issues of art, beauty, and morality for himself. Along the way, he can enjoy a
creepy thrill.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Nehemiah
Nehemiah
presents itself as a firsthand account by the titular character of his calling
and work to rebuild Jerusalem.
Some think some or all of Nehemiah may have been written by Ezra, who is attributed
authorship of I
Chronicles, II
Chronicles and Ezra. Though divided into four books in Christian
editions of the Old Testament,
Jewish
traditions present these as one or two books.
Nehemiah was cupbearer to Persian king Artaxerxes.
This must have been a high and trusted position. He was deemed trustworthy
enough to serve the king food and set in on the intimate dealings of the king’s
court. He was also considered competent to be governor of a province of the
vast Persian Empire.
Around the middle of Artaxerxes’ reign, Nehemiah was moved by news of
the conditions of Jerusalem and his Jewish brethren there. Though Jewish people
were being permitted to return to their ancestral homeland, the fortifications
of Jerusalem had not been rebuilt and they were subject to the harassment of
surrounding nations. Artaxerxes responded favorably to Nehemiah’s request to do
something about the problem, and appointed him governor.
Nehemiah was a shrewd governor. He had to lead Jewish people who were
disorganized and disheartened after decades of captivity in foreign lands. He
had to manage the clash in cultures between the descendants of those who had
been left in the land and those who were returning after being raised in alien
cultures. He oversaw a renaissance of Jewish culture and religion with
the aid of the priest Ezra and the rediscovery of scriptures in the remains of
Solomon’s temple. He fended off jealous neighbors, some of them Persian
governors who must have had some clout in Artaxerxes’ court. He also retained
the favor of his king, who repeatedly reasserted his desire to rebuild
Jerusalem, and his command that the governors of the region provide material
support for that purpose.
The book suggests that Nehemiah’s success as a political
leader
was due to his moral
leadership.
He desired to set an example for the people. He also expected other leaders to
do the same. This led to a moral renewal of the populace. This fits the model
in I & II Chronicles, in which the uprightness or degeneracy of the king
lead to the same in the people.
This also suggests another point: God is behind it
all. God stirred Nehemiah’s heart, and Artaxerxes’, to help a people chastened
by the exile to turn their hearts back to the God who called them to be His
people.
Books of the Bible that are
closely related to Nehemiah are
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Old Testament History
The historical
books of the Old
Testament (the first 17 books in the typical organization of Christian
Bibles)
tell the story of the rise and fall of the Israelite
nation. The big chunks of history are organized in this manner:
1- Founding the nation and receiving the Law (the Pentateuch,
which includes Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers,
and Deuteronomy),
The books are not organized in a strictly chronological order. In
addition, there are overlaps and gaps.
A theme that runs through the books is the active engagement of God. He is engaged
in all of His creation, and particularly in the history of the Israelite
nation. He called them out to be His people, he caused them to rise and prosper
as a nation, and when they turned away from them, He brought them low.
Another theme in these books is the importance of moral
leadership.
When the nation had morally upright leaders, the people tended to also be
morally upright. When the leaders were selfish, greedy, lustful, and following
false gods, the people followed them into every kind of sin. We are strongly
influenced by others, especially our leaders.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
James
James. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson,
1982.
*
Several related themes run through James. These are trials, self-control,
practical faith,
and humility.
James begins his letter with a discussion of trials. We all have troubles. Disconcertingly, sometimes our worst problems
arise from doing the right thing. Though
it may seem like God
has abandoned us in such times, God is at work.
Facing trials with patience and
faith builds our character.
Part of a godly character is self-control. A mature Christian will discipline
himself. In particular, he will watch
what he says. It is hard to control what
we say, refraining from idle and harmful words.
It is hard to speak convincingly about the love, grace, and faithfulness
of God when you just spewed a lot of gossip, lies, and nonsense.
James writes of faith in very practical and active terms. Sermons, exultations, and moral sayings are
hollow and useless if they are not coupled with service, aid and upright
living. If we really believe the Gospel and
have call to be followers of Christ, we will
act like Christ who humbled Himself to labor with men, heal the sick, feed the
hungry, and care for the needy.
Emulating the humility or Christ is a theme of the letter in
itself. James extols believers to act
with humility and treat everyone fairly.
Wealth and position are temporary, but in our eternal relation to God
we’re all the same: each Christian is a
sinful person saved by the grace of God.
Pride is
a source of strife, people in conflict as they all try to get their own way,
but humble people trust God and can let go of strife.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Google
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
October Featured Book
Happy Halloween! Admittedly, KBR doesn’t feature much horror. We still have some suspenseful
books that may give you a thrill. This
month, we are featuring A
Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
It’s a space
fantasy
story appropriate for young adult
readers (possibly younger,
I’m no expert on such things) with a frightening villain and a strong moral
(and implicitly Christian)
theme.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Second Kings
In the Hebrew Bible,
First
and Second Kings are one book.
Collectively, they are a history
of the Israelite
monarchy. During most of this period, it is dual
monarchies because two southern tribes make up the kingdom of Judah, the remaining
tribes being Israel.
Second Kings covers a period of about 250 years. It begins in the reign of Ahaziah. It ends with the fall of Judah to Babylon.
Fall is an appropriate word. The
book describes the decline of the Israelite monarchy. It is strongly associated with moral decline
and apostasy. Israel was called out to be God’s people. Instead, they worshiped the gods of the
people who occupied the land before them or of their neighbors. Sometimes this idol worship was
introduced and encouraged by the kings.
Some of the practices associated with these foreign religions included
temple prostitution, sodomy, and child sacrifice.
When God established ancient Israel as a nation, he made a covenant
with them. If they followed Him, He
would cause them to prosper in the land He gave to them. If they did not, and especially if they
abandoned Him to worship other gods and do evil, he would cut them off from the
land and let their enemies overcome them.
That is exactly what happened.
Israel, the northern kingdom, succumbed first. It fell during the reign of Hoshea. It became a vassal state to Assyria. More than that, the Assyrians removed the
Israelite population to other lands and resettled Israel with people from
across its empire. Chapter 17 is an
indictment against Israel, listing its crimes the judgment of expulsion from
the land.
God did not let Israel go easily.
Much of the first half of the book is devoted to the exploits of Elijah and Elisha. These prophets called people back to God and
stood up against the influence of false religions. Later, Isaiah would warn
against the coming captivity to Assyria.
Judah held out longer, in part probably because of fitful reforms by
kings such as Hezekiah
and Josiah. None of the kings of Israel committed
themselves to god, but some of the kings of Judah turned their hearts to God,
restoring the worship of God and sometimes even breaking down the idols of
false gods. Even so, they fell like
their brothers to the north.
Babylon was the empire that overtook Judah during the reign of Zedekiah. Zedekiah himself was appointed by Babylon
after it took his nephew Jehoiachin as
a prisoner. Babylon also moved much of
the population. The poor were left to
tend the farms, but anyone with status, military skill, training in crafts, or education
was moved to Babylon to serve there. The
Israelite monarchy was finally broken and replaced with a Babylonian governor.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Second Kings. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
Google
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Choosing Civility by P. M. Forni
In a previous job, I worked in the field of industrial safety. This is partly a matter of regulation,
so there was often great concern about the rules. Though it was necessary to
follow the rules, I also wanted to people to think. If they were going to be
safe in reality, they needed to be aware, use their imagination, solve problems
and ask for help.
I found a parallel to this in P. M. Forni’s
approach to civility. As he put it in Choosing
Civility, “Consideration is imagination in a moral track.”
In the early chapters Forni considers the notion of civility and how it
relates to courtesy,
politeness
and manners. He wrote, “Being civil means being constantly aware of others and
weaving restraint, respect and consideration into the fabric of this awareness.
Civility is a form of goodness; it is gracious goodness.” Civility is the art
of living well with others.
The second part of the book includes brief chapters on the rules of
civility. In some cases, Forni prescribes some behavior, but in mostly this is
an exploration of how awareness, respect and consideration
of others can practiced in various ways.
I think a few of these worth highlighting. The first of Forni’s rules
is to be attentive. Your attention is
one of the most important and valuable things you can give to someone. Paying
attention to others is the starting point of showing respect and acting in
kindness.
Related to attention is listening.
Careful listening is a skill. When practiced well, it can build understanding
and rapport between people. It requires focus, generosity,
responsiveness, restraint and cooperation.
I think Forni’s admonition to avoid complaining
is especially worthy. We have legitimate concerns that we should speak up
about, but often complaints are just a way to drag people into a negative
outlook or some minor problem that is not theirs.
“’Nice’ is something that must be built, something that doesn’t simply happen or come to us out of the blue but instead requires work," P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility
P. M. Forni also wrote The Thinking Life.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Forni, P. M. Choosing Civility:
The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 2002.
Faith by Jimmy Carter
President
Jimmy Carter is well known for his Christian faith. Excepting a handful of famous pastors, Carter is one of the few Americans who is known as a Christian almost as
much as he is known for other things; this is especially extraordinary for a
former president.
Faith is the title and subject of his
recent book. He addresses religious faith, but other types of faith are
important to him as well.
For instance, each
person need faith in himself to take action with hope to achieve positive
results. We need faith in each other to live, work and trade together peaceably.
We even need some degree
of faith in government. If we hope to achieve the ultimate
purposes of government, justice, equality under the law and peace, we have to believe it can be done.
Especially in a republic we need to believe we can achieve these goals through
our institutions, laws and the people we elect to represent us.
“A country will have authority and influence because of moral factors, not its military strength; because it can be humble and not blatant and arrogant, because our peple and our country want to serve others and not dominate others. And a nation without morality will soon lose its influence around the world.”-Jimmy Carter, Faith (quoting a speech he presented in 1978)
There are also personal goals that require faith. Justice and
equality may be the highest goals we can expect from government, but we want
more. If we also hope for love, humility, generosity and kindness, we need another kind of faith.
For many, including
Carter, this is religious faith. We find in religion reasons to believe that
things like love are real and worthy of pursuing, even if we don’t always get
it right.
For Christians, this
faith is founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the proof of God’s loving mercy and grace. It all starts with God,
and we can hope to be better people through the empowerment of God and our
grateful response to His love demonstrated in Jesus Christ. As Carter puts it,
“It is not what we do for God that is important but what God does for us. Faith
brings about good works, but doing good things does not result in faith."
For Carter, Jesus is
worthy of consideration as an example of the ideal in human character. Being
like Christ is being a better human being. As a Christian and Protestant, Carter believes he has a personal
relationship with an ever-present Christ. The faith that underlies Carter’s
career and achievements as a politician, philanthropist and peacemaker is that he does not walk
alone, but he walks with a living Christ and with other believers who seek to
follow Him and see His good will done in our time.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Saturday, October 31, 2015
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
We may convince ourselves that we are decisive beings, making choices
and reasoning our way through problems. Duke University
researchers
found that 40 percent of our daily activities are habits. Psychologist
William
James put it more starkly: “All of life, so far as its definite form, is
but a mass of habits.” These are just a couple of the sources Charles
Duhigg draws from in The Power of
Habit.
Habit formation is built into the structure of our brain, as Duhigg
describes in the early chapters of the book. It is a matter of efficiency.
Thinking and deciding are demanding mental tasks. The brain gains efficiency
through automation, chunking together even complex activities into routines we
can perform with very little mental effort or attention.
The difficulty with this biological economy is that we form many habits
without consciously choosing. Some of those habits may have negative
consequences. This is the central point of the book. Habits can make or break
us, so it is important to understand habits, how they are formed, and how they
can be changed.
There is good news and bad news about habits. The bad news is that the
encoding of habits in the brain seems to be permanent. The good news is that
they can be overwritten with new, more powerful habits.
Duhigg breaks habits down into parts. A cue triggers the habit. We
perform routine. Finally, that routine produces or acquires a reward.
Eventually, we conflate the cue a reward, having a strong anticipation of the
reward that creates a craving. This craving gives the habit its power. Changing
habits involves inserting a new routine between the cue and reward that
satisfies the craving (and hopefully producing a more positive result than the
bad habit you’re hoping to change).
Changing a habit is difficult. Some habits can only change with much
time, effort, and support. There is not one-size-fits-all approach to changing
habits, but Duhigg presents a general framework.
· -First, identify the routine you want to change.
· -Next, experiment with rewards. By substituting
different rewards, and tracking how you feel about it, you can isolate what you
are really craving.
· -Isolate the cue to see what is triggering the
habit. Duhigg offers a simple handful of questions that can narrow down your
search. Figure out what is happening just before you feel the craving.
· -Finally, develop plan to implement a new routine
that satisfies the craving. It will also be good to plan how you are going to
handle the inevitable setbacks you’ll experience as you change your habits.
I was surprised by the moral
stand on habits Duhigg took in the latter chapters of the book. He argues that
if you know you have a habit that is dangerous or destructive, you have an
obligation to do something about it. Fortunately, awareness of a habit puts you
on the path to being able to do something about it. Unfortunately, that may be
a rocky, uncomfortable, and difficult path.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Duhigg, Charles. The Power of
Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business. New York: Random House,
2012.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Leviticus
Leviticus. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Leviticus continues the story of the Israelite nation from Genesis and Exodus. God took the Israelites out of oppression in Egypt, as describe in Exodus, and preparing them to be a nation when He leads them into a new land. Characteristics of the Israelite nation were to be its religion and its government. Leviticus deals with the religious and civil laws that were mostly administered by the Levites, a clan that God set aside for His service. In particular, Aaron and his descendents, part of the clan of Levi, were set aside for the priestly duties that involved the closest proximity to God. Much of Leviticus deals with the religious ceremonies the Israelites were to observe, especially the role and conduct of the priests in these ceremonies. The priests served as intermediaries between God and His people. The priests were set apart for God and were to be treated as holy, as was everything set apart for God. The people made various types of offerings as an acknowledgment of their sinfulness and their debt to God, who accepted their sacrifices to atone for their sins. The death and blood of animals substituted for the loss of life that was the consequence of sin. In Christianity, the understanding is that these sacrifices foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is sufficient for the sins of all people in all times. Further, Jesus fulfills the priestly role of intermediary and advocate before God-the-Father. Because Jesus is God, He and His Father are one, Christians enjoy a direct relationship with God. Some of the chapters of Leviticus deal with moral and civil laws. These laws involve property, farming and husbandry, marriage, self-care, foreigners, protection of life, and other matters. We see embodied in these laws a principle that is emphasized throughout the Bible. Kindness to others and generosity to the needy are prized behaviors. God called the Israelites to love their neighbors. They were to pay workers promptly and not charge excessive interest on loans, even leave food in their fields for the poor to collect. They were to make gifts and loans to the poor. They were to care for widow and orphans, especially their relatives. An extraordinary requirement was that Israelites were to treat law-abiding foreigners who dwelt among them with the same love, respect, and protection of law as natives. As we see in the preceding books, God is active in Leviticus. Moses is God’s prophet and Aaron is His priest, but God is the motivating force and active agent. Leviticus, like the rest of the Bible, doesn’t depict man reaching out to God; it shows God reaching out to man. If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in Genesis The Gospels Exodus
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)