Crystal Writes A Blog

A Family Affair–It’s All Relative

It Is All Relative by Flickr User Lorenzo Pasqualis, CC License = Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works
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What’s wrong with the above picture? Nothing? Look again. Actually, I really like what the photographer did with it. It’s a creative and beautiful treatment. We know from creation history that there are waters above the earth and below it, but even in a heavy downpour, I’ve never seen so much water in the heavens as to create ripples in the sky. And if I saw this in real life, I’d be running for cover. Even when presented as beautifully as this is done, we all know it’s not the way God made things.

In today’s reading from Leviticus 18:6 through Leviticus 18:21, we read about God’s designs and plans when it comes to human sexuality. The presentation goes into tomorrow’s reading as well, but the breaking point for today is at verse 21, so I’ll only discuss up to there. Of course, from the beginning, we know that God made Adam & Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply. And from the ark, we know that God had Noah collect a male and female animal from each species and told them to be fruitful and multiply. But somewhere along the line, people apparently got more interested in the being fruitful part than in the multiplying.

So now God is following up on His ruling not to imitate the behaviors of the former inhabitants of the land. He goes into great detail to explain that no one is to approach a close relative to have sexual relations with them. He not only says that fathers should not be with daughters, and mothers should not be with sons, but that neither should be with step-parents, step-siblings, half-siblings, etc. He even says that no one should be with a woman and her daughter.

I’ve known of brothers who would date each other’s girlfriends, and sisters who even stole the other’s boyfriends, but according to this, the code about not sharing that is kept among most siblings is also the way God wants things. God even says not to take a woman to be a rival of with her sister while the sister is still alive. And I can see how that would be even more important when everyone lives in a community as the camp of Israel is living.

God designed everything about us with a perfect plan in mind. He designed our bodies to work a certain way, the harvest to work a certain way, the seasons to work a certain way, and procreation to work a certain way. I don’t know if He installed failure mechanisms to kick in when things don’t go by design, but I know they do kick in. Many of the diseases and issues we have these days can trace their lineages back to relatives that should not have slept together, or an infusion of contagions by animals that should not have been brought into human sexual relationships.

Like the picture above, some things not of God’s design may look okay on the outside, but only God knows what’s really changing on the inside. He knows about the crossed lines of DNA that should not happen. He knows about that hormone they call the “monogamy hormone” that He put in men to make them want to be with the same woman, and how the overly active sexual appetite of men these days is making them immune to it, and making men almost unable to be faithful. And all we have to do to make sure things go as He planned is to trust Him and obey His word–the written one, and the one He speaks to our hearts.

April 10, 2014 - Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, God, Holy Bible, Israel, law, Leviticus, Lord, obey, Old Covenant, Old Testament, Parashah, Portions, Scripture, sexual laws, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, trust, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yahveh, Yahweh