Leviticus 19: What Would Jesus Pick and Choose?

In my Sunday School class we have been working through Scot McKnight’s book The Blue Parakeet. In the chapter we are up to, entitled “The Year Of Living Jesus-ly,” Scot asks readers to consider some commandments found in Leviticus 19 and check off which ones they think should be followed today.

I encourage readers to do the exercise too, and I think it is important to read the whole chapter, since there are some very famous and popular commandments in there intermingled with the obscure and less well-known ones.

So please read Leviticus 19. I am pretty certain that there will be significant agreement, even among people of very different religious backgrounds, on the applicability or irrelevance of at least some of the statutes found in this chapter.

I think this could lead to some interesting discussion. What in Leviticus 19 do you consider relevant and applicable? More importantly, why do you think these commandments are of lasting value? I think this last question is the most interesting one, and the one that this discussion is supposed to lead us towards. I am sure that many readers will not consider them to be applicable for any reason that has to do with their inclusion in the Bible. But that itself is worth discussing, and I think such a discussion could be useful to readers across a range of religious and non-religious backgrounds and worldviews.