Recently I heard about a new superstition going around among some of the kids here. If you want to make it snow, flush ice cubes down the toilet and/or wear your pajamas inside out. I don't know how this got started but it has something to do with the fact that it's been an exceptionally mild winter so far and there hasn't been any real snow to speak of. So this is what the kids are doing. Makes sense to me.
Of course we adults all laugh at them, and shake our heads and say, how ridiculous. There's no way silly little rituals like that can affect the weather. It's just a fad and pretty soon something else will come along.
Anyway, after we got done discussing the kids' latest foolishness, we began our Bible Study. Tonight's topic was blood. As the leader pointed out, we live in a very different world, and to understand the Bible we have to understand the culture. It's rather a shock to realize that for most of human history, religion was not the sanitized affair it is nowadays. We sing about being washed in the wonderworking power of the blood of the lamb, to us it's a symbol. Back then, it was literal. In the HBO series "Rome" there is an unforgettable scene where one of the upper-class Roman matrons goes to a temple to pray. As she kneels in a pit, the priests slit the throat of a bull above her, and the blood gushes out, covering her in a crimson cascade.
Blood had power. Blood was power. The Aztecs knew it, the Mayas knew it, all the Near Eastern peoples knew it. The Romans knew it, the Greeks Knew it, the Hebrews knew it. Most of the 613 laws in the Torah have to do with the Temple sacrifices, twice a day. The Israelites were commanded not to eat blood because that is where the life is. Covenants were sealed with blood as well. Last night's lesson was about the bizarre scene in Genesis where the childless and aging Abram, having been told yet again by God that his descendants would number as the stars, challenges God to prove it. He takes some animals and birds, cuts them in half and lays them on either side of a path so that their blood would flow down into the path. This was a common Near Eastern practice and what it meant was "if you don't keep your word after walking through this blood, may the fate of these animals be yours."
It's dark, Abram falls into a trance and sees a smoky brazier and a torch moving between the animals. This, said the leader, was God walking through the blood. And he went into how all this foretold the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. See, blood plays a central role in Christian theology. According to the Christian interpretation of Genesis, Adam and Eve's sin was so great that only God's own blood could atone for it. All the Temple sacrifices were just a foreshadowing. Sin can only be wiped away by blood--Jesus' blood.
But, at the risk of sounding blasphemous, how is this so much different than what the kids are doing with their ice cubes and inside out pajamas? Does blood really have that much power? Or is that just another superstition, a relic from an earlier age? How does this hold up in the 21st century? How is it relevant in an age where blood has lost its power--worse yet, has become a biohazard to be avoided?
Of course we adults all laugh at them, and shake our heads and say, how ridiculous. There's no way silly little rituals like that can affect the weather. It's just a fad and pretty soon something else will come along.
Anyway, after we got done discussing the kids' latest foolishness, we began our Bible Study. Tonight's topic was blood. As the leader pointed out, we live in a very different world, and to understand the Bible we have to understand the culture. It's rather a shock to realize that for most of human history, religion was not the sanitized affair it is nowadays. We sing about being washed in the wonderworking power of the blood of the lamb, to us it's a symbol. Back then, it was literal. In the HBO series "Rome" there is an unforgettable scene where one of the upper-class Roman matrons goes to a temple to pray. As she kneels in a pit, the priests slit the throat of a bull above her, and the blood gushes out, covering her in a crimson cascade.
Blood had power. Blood was power. The Aztecs knew it, the Mayas knew it, all the Near Eastern peoples knew it. The Romans knew it, the Greeks Knew it, the Hebrews knew it. Most of the 613 laws in the Torah have to do with the Temple sacrifices, twice a day. The Israelites were commanded not to eat blood because that is where the life is. Covenants were sealed with blood as well. Last night's lesson was about the bizarre scene in Genesis where the childless and aging Abram, having been told yet again by God that his descendants would number as the stars, challenges God to prove it. He takes some animals and birds, cuts them in half and lays them on either side of a path so that their blood would flow down into the path. This was a common Near Eastern practice and what it meant was "if you don't keep your word after walking through this blood, may the fate of these animals be yours."
It's dark, Abram falls into a trance and sees a smoky brazier and a torch moving between the animals. This, said the leader, was God walking through the blood. And he went into how all this foretold the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. See, blood plays a central role in Christian theology. According to the Christian interpretation of Genesis, Adam and Eve's sin was so great that only God's own blood could atone for it. All the Temple sacrifices were just a foreshadowing. Sin can only be wiped away by blood--Jesus' blood.
But, at the risk of sounding blasphemous, how is this so much different than what the kids are doing with their ice cubes and inside out pajamas? Does blood really have that much power? Or is that just another superstition, a relic from an earlier age? How does this hold up in the 21st century? How is it relevant in an age where blood has lost its power--worse yet, has become a biohazard to be avoided?
