The facepalm, it burns.

[digitaldiscipline]

So, it's not a surprise that there is some stupid shit in Leviticus (while it may or may not actually be ancient Hebrew for "the law," it might as well be a litmus test for douchebaggery). Slacktivist does a nice job of rationalizing the cherries he picks by at least using the first and second commandments to inform his fruit choice.

Me? I just make fun of prescriptivist dipshits two millenia dead, because... well, that's how I roll.

But, seriously, some of this stuff seems like it's never, ever been read and applied by any Christian, ever.

You read that correctly. Every Christian breaks Leviticus every time they go take Communion. The Catholics, if transubstantiation is actually a thing, might have a loophole, but otherwise...

"Etcet," you say, "we know you have a hate on for organized religion, but what the fuck are you on about?"

THIS: Drinking alcohol in holy places. (Lev 10:9)

Jesus H. Christ (the H stands for "Hizzownself") even broke them, explicitly, and then every single person who did the body and blood thang just compounds the sin. Funny, I don't see a lot of people getting up in one another's lifestyle-choice grill over that.

No surprise at cherry-picking doctrine to suit one's hateful biases, but, seriously, how much other two- or three-thousand year old bullshit are people still fanatically adamant about on all points? The world has moved on in profound and meaningful ways, and even if it hasn't, what kind of micro-managing assholes make tearing your clothes (Lev 10:6) a fucking sin? Even back then, people were goddamned farmers and stonemasons; that shit was pretty much unavoidable. Shit, I have shirts with small holes in 'em from getting caught in my fucking zipper.

Apparently, dead animals of just about every stripe ought to be left all over the fucking place, given the lengthy list of ones nobody should touch. THAT's fucking sanitary (not to mention oh so fragrant), and we have modern medicine to help cope with the diseases all those flyblown corpses tend to harbor.

... and let's not even get into the rampant sexism of that "thou shalt not boink" litany, because, apparently, women don't have any sexual agency or say-so. I bet things didn't go well for ladies who rebuffed male advances using those grounds, and naught was heard of it. Or, you know, it was a heaping helping of healing stonings for the harlot temptress or some such shit, because men are apparently nothing if not ignorant cock-propulsion devices who can't keep their dicks out of anything warm and concave without a lot of fucking help in the form of rules and shame and not, you know, a modicum of self-control or civility.

As for not cursing the deaf or abusing the blind... these are laws written by people that have obviously never heard of professional sports officials.


There's a complete list of Levictimizations here.

Comments

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Maybe transubstantiation makes it all ok, because by the time you go to sip the wine, SHAZAM! It's actually blood.

...which is also banned as an edible substance in Leviticus.

Ah, never mind.

[emzebel.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I see what you did there. It looks like eating Jesus is okay, though, as long as he's not fatty.

[ivy]

I think the way the Catholics argue that they get out of this is that bit in the New Testament where Jesus says that he's here to remake all the old ways of doing things. So IIRC, their view is "what Jesus said > Old Testament > no guidance at all". So if Jesus overrode the OT, then Jesus wins, but if he didn't then the OT rules still apply.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Which makes all the Leviticus-spouting dipshits even *less* Christian in their acts, words, and deeds?

[ivy]

Somewhere there must be a file of Jesus override rules. [grin] I didn't stay Catholic long enough to know most of them. But yeah, "love thy neighbor as thyself" and "judge not lest ye be judged" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" are certainly among them.

[the_axel]

Churches that have theology (rather than the make up shit to suit yourselves approach favoured by fundamentalists) get quite into how to reconcile the Old with the New...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_the_old_covenant

[ivy]

Interesting; thanks for the link!

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's Paul in Romans and Corinthians. He effectively says that if your faith is strong, you don't need to maintain the dietary laws.

(Don't tell the fundamentalists! It's more fun to watch them squirm!)

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

Acts has a bit where an angel and/or G-d tells Peter to go ahead and ditch kashrut too.

[tygenco-x.livejournal.com]

Yes. This post. Yes, yes, yes.

(And aside from some minor editing of language, I now have a great argument to present to my other half's daughters, who are 12 and 13 years old; thank you, sir!)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

As I said in one of my early conversations with ChernobylRed: "Fuck" is like garlic, I use it liberally, because it's delicious.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Jesus H. Christ (the H stands for "Hizzownself")

Actually, it stands for "haploid."

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

Jesus didn't just turn water into wine. He turned into The Best Wine. My favorite argument for holier-than-thou teetotalers justifying it as "real Christian" this or that.

The thing that gets me is that almost 100% of Jesus', Hizzownself's, message was "Don't be a self-righteous douchenozzle". And yet so many of His self-proclaimed followers are self-righteous douchenozzles. Not all, but certainly the annoyingly loud ones. *cough* my brother *cough* And they use His teachings to justify their douchenozzlery.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” - Mahatma Gandhi

BTW, if you friended me on fb I can't see you. I'm not searchable, and my mac is giving weird urls (I'll pm the one it's giving me today) so is there another way friend up?

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

The lack of establishment of the "Don't be a self-righteous douchenozzle" is something that's a pretty common theme in Fred Clark's (the original Slacktivist guy, before the bringing on board of several other authors, who still writes at patheos.com) writings. I like Fred's writings.

[critus.livejournal.com]

While you know I'm all up in your anti-religious attitude, I have to point out a few things.

1) The eat of my body/drink of my blood thing didn't happen in a holy place. It happened in the garden of Gethsemne.

2) Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana, but the bible does not indicate that the ceremony happened in a holy place.

3) Many Christians argue in either case that the wine in question was "new wine," also known as grape juice.

4) Catholics are the ones that are big on the water and wine thing, and we all know Catholics are batshit crazy. In any case, many churches also use "new wine" during communion.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

The only time I've ever seen communion wine replaced with grape juice was for the teetotalers in the church I went to as a kid. So, yes, while I know that JC didn't drink or serve wine in holy places, because he was a Nice Jewish Boy, he did encourage (whether explicitly or apocryphally) others to do so.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Eh, not so much. Again, you're talking about something that Jesus said during the last supper to the disciples. He never said "Now go out and tell everyone you meet that they need to do this on Sunday." That was the kind of shit that his followers started making up well after he died.

[the_axel]

Of 2 200 million Christians, most of the major sects use wine, and deem it an important part of the rite_[1],1 712 million insist on it (I didn't go into much detail on the minor sects, and

Catholics (1200 million), Lutheran (75 million), Presbytarians (40 million), Anglicans (85 million), Eastern Orthodox (230 million), Oriental Orthodox (82 million).
I don't know if Baptists (100 mil), Continental Reformed (30 million) or the assorted Modern Protestants (140 million) do or not.

Methodists (75 mil), Pentecostalists (130 million) and Restorationists (50 million) don't. I don't know about the other two but the Methodists made the decision to stop using wine to express pastoral concern for recovering alcoholics, enables the participation of children and youth, and supports the church's witness of abstinence. They don't try and pretend that J did not create or drink wine.

The Last Supper happened in spring. Grapes are harvested in the fall. The technology to prevent grape juice from fermenting over 6 months in Israel did not exist. Claims otherwise are pure truthiness.

[1] For instance, The Presbytarian Churches stance on the choice of wine or juice is "If Christ the king and head of the church gave his church the use of wine in the holy Supper, who are we to set aside the divinely-appointed element and exchange it for something else? To do so would be to assert that we are wiser than God."

[feyrieprincess.livejournal.com]

A most splendid and enjoyable rant!

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

For the record, United Methodists do Welch's grape juice for communion, not wine. (Stephen King refers to this in his books now and again, and it's what I grew up with.) They also quietly espouse teetotalling, but I never saw anyone get preachy about it. But then again, I don't know that any of my church friends' parents or my mom's church friends drank much, if at all; alcohol was certainly never part of any church-related activities.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

Christians are off the hook for Leviticus, though, to the best of my understanding. The new covenant wrought in the death of Jesus supersedes the prior contract between G-d and the Jews, so Christians are not bound by the mitzvot.

Don't mind me but I love having Leviticus (from the Latin and Greek, "Of the Levites" - in Hebrew it's "Vayiqra", "and He called") chats with people. For some reason I show up at Torah study more often during the Leviticus weeks. So if you ever want a perspective hailing from the people who have spent a few extra thousand years extensively bashing their heads against this particular brick wall I am here to party.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many of them know that (re: off the hook), because... they sure don't act that way.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why any Christian bothers with Leviticus ever. A whole lot of the commandments in it don't apply to anyone ever anymore (Temple-specific regulations), and the ones that apply to anyone apply to the Jews or to specific subsets of the Jews.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

P.S. Lev. 10:9 totally doesn't say you can't booze it up in holy places in general, or Purim would be off the market. It says you can't booze it up in the Tent of Meeting, which is the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. And it MIGHT just be saying that only Kohanim/Levites can't booze it up in the Tent of Meeting but that's kind of a null set since they were the only ones allowed in the tent in the first place. This is one of those rules that completely doesn't apply to anyone anymore because the Temple doesn't exist anymore, kind of like the laws pertaining to animal sacrifice.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I THOUGHT it had to be a misreading, because my brain was going "but Kiddush!" Makes sense.

[yelena-r0ssini.livejournal.com]

My brain did that and then went through a huge convoluted rationalization about how you do Kiddush at home or in the social hall, and had I ever seen it done on the bimah, and oh shit I HAD so what was going on with that, and then I finally looked it up and said "Oooooh. The Tent of MEETING. That explains everything."