There is a theology about not keeping kosher. Not circumcising your boys (Yes, I know my generation, to a man, did undergo that procedure: but most of us are not Jews, and it was done for medical reasons around STI and penile cancer, even though the balance of risks is close to even).
For if we adhere to the regulations of the Law we must keep it. The covenant of Moses is alive and active, and it leads to life, not death.
But none can keep it. Paul would say he least of all [1].
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion is not from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
(Galatians 5:1-15 ESV)
The bigger question is what do we use our freedom for. Do we use it to be enslaved by the memes of this world? Do we turn either to sin or embrace a set of rules that place us under a greater burden? For the times are bleak: as the regressive morons of the “Islamic State” look to obscure parts of incoherent texts to justify backwards burning a serviceman of Jordan, they do no realize that when Jordan says they will kill them all they are being Arabs. They are not joking.[2]
Jordan’s King Abdullah, himself a former general, angrily vowed to pursue ISIS until his military runs “out of fuel and bullets,” in a closed door meeting with U.S. lawmakers that followed the release Wednesday of a grisly video showing a captured Jordanian airman being burned alive in a cage by the terrorist army.
The pledge preceded the hanging of two Al Qaeda terrorists early Wednesday in Jordan, a swift response to the video that could be a mere harbinger of coming retribution from the Arab kingdom in the wake of the sadistic slaughter. King Abdullah’s words were echoed by military leaders, who vowed an “earth-shaking” response, proportionate to the magnitude of the tragedy of all Jordanians.” But it was the words of their visibly shaken king, who commanded his nation’s special forces before assuming the throne in 1999, that could foreshadow what is in store for the black-clad terrorist army whose atrocities have shocked the civilized world.
“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king. “He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”
In this time, the Law that we need worry about is generally not Judaism. It is either Islam, with an insistence that we adhere to Shari’a because of threats of violence (as if Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan are peaceful, or that we adhere to a modern form of Pharisee-ism, generally a secular “for the environment/children” version.
And both are wrong. We cannot earn our way back to God by acts of penitence. Our sins are piled too deep, and they are stinking. Christ died a death worse than that poor Jordanian pilot — interestingly, the one IS would cheerfully do to me, as they have done to many Assyrian Christians — so that we could have peace in God.
And for freedom Christ made us free. Not Shari’a.
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1. Paul at times says “I not Paul”
He generally means this is his comment, his gloss on things. Paul was a Jew: he was circumcised.
He did not see that circumcision as preventing him from following Christ. At the time there were teachers telling Gentiles they should follow the law and get circumcised, as if Christ was another teacher of the Mosaic Law, and not the guarantee of a new covenant.
2. Before Islam, in the ancient times, and until today, the laws of Hospitality and Retribution have been part of the Middle East. This is now a Hobbesian zero game fight. Either Jordan will reduce the “Islamic State” to a pile of skulls, or Jordan will fall. The Geneva Convention is going to be ignored. Pray this does not happen, but expect horrors untold.
