A God of Reason

When I was a young boy growing up on the island of Tobago in the West Indies, my parents provided my brothers and me with the responsibility of taking care of animals – sheep, goats, cows and chickens. Our duties included taking the sheep and goats out to pasture in the morning where they were tethered to stakes or trees and allowed to graze. In the afternoon after returning home from school, we would bring the animals home for the night. I recall one afternoon we found one of the goats hanging by its rope – dead. It had been tethered on an embankment and had gotten itself entangled and slid down the bank. Unable to gets its feet safely on the ground below, the rope around its neck formed a noose choking it to death by asphyxiation. We hastily called our Dad. He concluded that because its body was quite warm, the animal had recently died. Because of our religious tradition, Dad indicated that it was unfit to eat. He called the neighbor and offered it to them, which they gladly accepted. “Why did you do that?” I asked my Dad. His explanation shaped my thinking and became the foundation for how I have made many decisions in my life with regard to religious, ethnic and social diversity.

Christians and Jews believe that the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy contain God’s laws for living – instructions that govern health, social interaction, diet, and worship. My Dad’s explanation was based on the following passage found in Deuteronomy 14:21 (New International Version). The passage reads as follows: “Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God.” In the book of Leviticus, God had previously instructed the Jews to abstain from certain foods, including the flesh of animals that had been found dead. In fact, the process of slaughtering and draining the flesh of all blood is still carefully followed today in Jewish culture (Kosher meat). Leviticus 11: 39, 40 (NIV) reads, “If an animal that you are allowed to eat dies, anyone who touches its carcass will be unclean till evening. Anyone who eats some of its carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening. Anyone who picks up the carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening.”

Given the strict instructions previously given, why did God recommend that such unclean meat could be given or sold to the ‘foreigner’ for food? Did he not care about the eating habits of the non-Jew? Was he subscribing to a double standard? What is meant by the ritual cleanliness suggested in Leviticus? Are these values critical to people living in the 21st century? (In a future blog, I will express my opinion about the relevance and timeliness of these laws for society today.)

Lessons Learned
God is a God of reason. I believe that these illustrations demonstrate a God that respects the power of choice; a God that encourages people to live within the constructs of their understanding of Him; a God who does not legitimize the enforcement of values by one people on another; a God who teaches us to be tolerant; a God who allows us to choose to be wrong; a God who encourages us to reach people where they are based on their understanding of Him. Although God encouraged the Jews to be an example to all people, their example was to be one of personal holiness and personal obedience to Him rather than the imposition of our, or His, values on our neighbors. In that boyhood experience, my father taught me that respect for the choices of others is God’s supreme gift for living in a community of love and respect for each other. The current militarism of fundamentalist religious groups, be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Bhuddist, or Hindu, does not demonstrate the will of God for human beings living together in a world of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity. The fusion of political power with the religious legalism is destined to be the death knell of a constructive and ordered society.