Physophical Question of the Day:

[ickaimp]

Bizzare Job Opening of the Day:
'Human Intelligence Instructor **Secret Clearance Required**'

Y'know, I can't make these sort of titles up. ^^;;

Physophical question of the week day:

A while back, one the kids I watch was doing their spelling homework, making sentances with their spelling words. The sentance the kid came up with (and he was rather proud of this) was:

"We burned the church down to the ground."

I was kind of horrified by this, and steered the sentance to something else, also using the spelling words. But he couldn't understand why I was disturbed by this sentance and I couldn't figure why he wasn't. Until he said that he'd never been to one. To him, a church was just a building. ~_~

-Since his father is supposedly bringing them up Christian, that's for him to teach them about and one discussion I'm not getting into. I'm there to make sure homework gets done.

But I was talking to my Dad about this and he made a comment that has had me thinking. He thought that it was a pity that the kids weren't going to some sort of church, because religion tended to be one of the major things that shaped one's morals and sense of right and wrong.

I've been kind of pondering that ever since... Just how much does religion reflect on a person's sense of morals or is something that is more dependant on the person?

er, does that make sense? ._.

impfics: Murder on the Dancefloor (Kazuha/Heiji)

Comments

[sister-dear.livejournal.com]

I wasn't trying to pick and choose, I was trying to avoid a long and windy explanation. (Which this is, but the issues you posed are hard to go into at any shorter length.)

‘Ceremonially unclean’ is not the equivalent of ‘sinful.’ Physical and spiritual wellbeing were thought of as all but the same thing, so they’re spoken of in very similar terms. Being ‘unclean,’ whether male or female, meant you were not allowed to touch spiritual objects or have sex. There were similar laws of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ that applied to men; touching a dead body was one of them. As for women; childbirth is not sanitary. Women in this culture also sequestered themselves when they were on their period (this is the ‘customary impurity’ mentioned in v.2), and went through ritual washing at the end of their period before they were ‘clean’ (read: sanitary) and rejoined their families. I wouldn’t want someone who’s been on her period without the benefit of pads or soap to be cooking my dinner. The longer amount of time for girls vs. boys is a throwback to Eve, one which was made unnecessary by the New Testament.

The law you’ve mentioned about spirits applied to both men and women. Being a medium, someone who called up spirits of the dead and/or demons, was something prevalent in other religions of that area. It was the equivalent of devil-worship, which was extraordinarily immoral in a nation that was supposed to worship one God alone. Anything even remotely resembling something common to outside cultures was met with extreme punishment. Would I have a problem with people actually carrying out some of these laws today? Of course: they don’t apply to my culture and the New Testament makes them spiritually unnecessary. No, you can’t edit the Bible, but in this case it edits itself. The New Testament specifically states that the specifics of some of the OT laws are no longer to be followed. So I wouldn’t throw Leviticus at a five year old without explanation any more than I’d let them figure out the finer points of Song of Solomon on their own. (Which I don’t think I’d throw at a five year old at all.)

Religions can be both mentally and morally challenging. Why not expose kids to it? Make them think, but be sure there's someone around (parents, preferably) to answer the questions they'll have.