The Value of a Life

It is impossible not to notice, as a body labors through the Pentateuch, how fussy God is about the material arrangements of the people of Israel. Instead of taking them to a cool mountain lake so that they can “really get close to him in nature”, the mountain is dusty and dry, so that they are too hot and too thirsty and too hungry. There is no way, at the foot of this mountain, to escape the pressing needs of the body and let the mind fly away in a fancy. They have to sit there, and hear the law, and be organized by tribe and by clan. They are preached at, by Moses, and admonished, and exhorted, and told they will fail.

It is a foreign landscape to the modern reader. God surely doesn’t care what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, or so many people trust and believe. And if that is so, then Leviticus will be impossible to understand. Because God, in Leviticus, cares not only what you do in your bedroom, but also about the mold along the inside of the walls of that, and all the other rooms. He cares about how you tend your vine, and who you sell your house to and for how long, and what you wear, and what you eat, and many many other details about your material life. There’s no spiritual escape from a God this caring. No wonder no one wants his attention.

But it ought to be a comfort to the modern ear, once a person has tried to bend the understanding toward the scripture and not thrown up the hands in exasperation. Not many of us can tramp off into the woods to get some peace and quiet and meditate upon the nature of whatever it is might be out there. And many of us are overburdened by the stuff, by the material nature of our lives–what we eat, what we wear, how we arrange each room. It should be a relief to find that God doesn’t distance himself from the creaking sorrows of the body and the house, but is rather intimately caring about the details of our lives.

Here, buried in between complicated instructions about the jubilee (because the land shall have a rest, and the poor shall have a help, and the inheritance shall not be squandered), and before the numbering of the people for the occasion of war, God says, “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” Leviticus 26:11-12

A normal, reasonable person would recoil at this kind of intimacy, of God coming so close as to see everything, as to have ownership over one’s whole life. His far seeing eyes warn the people in the next few chapters that they will not, in any small measure, keep the law, and will therefore go into exile, but that he will go with them. Later, much later, David will cry out, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” Psalm 139:7-10 Wrenched out of context, it might sound like a lament. Is there anywhere a body can go to escape from the Almighty?

As I said, the reasonable person shuffles away backward into the chaos of the age. But if a body is brave, and perhaps tired of trying to get away, it might be worthwhile turning to look this God in the face. You can’t see him, but he can see all the dust on your floor and all the dirt in your mind. You can’t hear is audible voice, but his words leap out at the page to bash through your complacency. You can’t feel his terrible hand, but he knows the number of lines on your palm, the imprint of your index finger better than your apple phone. He knows what you need, what you are running from, what irritates you, what makes you anxious. He knows even your failures before you stumble on them. And more even your successes.

You can use all your stuff as a barrier to his presence, to keep him at arm’s length, tripping over the clutter and worries that you accumulate. Or you can let him have all the stuff, and your own self for good measure. There, as the Warriors are being counted, God gives the valuation of a person–each life measured out shekel by shekel. When you think about it, the price is very small. Am I worth so little? Has God accounted for the substance of my life and said, it’s only worth this much? Not much more than a perfect spotless first born lamb, which cannot be bought back by means of a coin. That isn’t fair.

Except that the blood of that lamb, falling down onto the dry dusty ground, there to be seen clearly by all, is more precious than any household arrangement, any inclination of the body, and trouble of the mind. It quenches the thirst, revives the weary, binds up the broken, and brings the body itself into a land that doesn’t any longer need to rest from sin.