Leviticus Defiled

Here’s a larger taste of the latest post at Susan Pigott’s blog Scribalishess, “Leviticus Defiled”, from which the above quote is taken:

Leviticus is a book that most Christians simply don’t read—won’t read. They find it tedious and difficult to understand. They say it’s “Old Covenant” so they don’t have to observe any of its strange laws (especially the dietary ones). “Jesus freed us from all that,” they say, happily. They see no real use for it, and say that it has no relevance to them. They ignore it, and the pages of Leviticus still stick together in their Bibles, the gold embossed edges unmarred.

Leviticus is the ugly step-daughter of the Old Testament—easily forgotten, overlooked, and untouched like an unclean woman.

Except when Leviticus is useful.

It’s useful when you want to pluck a few convenient verses out of context from the book to condemn and humiliate and justify hatred. Or when a parent wants to keep his/her child from getting a tattoo.

Such “uses” of Leviticus are defilement. When you use a biblical book only to condemn but ignore it otherwise, that’s bibliolatry. You are defiling God’s word by using it wrongly and selectively. When you ignore a book filled with important (but difficult) theology only to appeal to it when it’s convenient, you are abusing it. This is biblical pornography—putting selected verses on display in a way that defiles them and uses them for your own perverted purposes.

“God hates fags!” (Lev. 18:22; Lev. 20:13). That is Leviticus defiled. Does Leviticus really say God hates fags? No. Do people who use such verses have any other purpose than to promote hatred? No. Have these people ever read Leviticus in its entirety? Likely, no. And have they ever bothered to read these verses in context? No.

Click through to read the rest.