Day 64 Deuteronomy 21-23

            The following things are not allowed under the Law:

Denying your first-born son his rightful inheritance because you don’t like his mother

Leaving the body of a criminal on display on a pole overnight

Seeing your neighbor’s animal wandering off and not stopping it

Taking a mother bird from the side of the road with her young

Not building a railing around your roof

Planting two kinds of seed in your field

Plowing with an ox and a donkey together

Wearing cloths of more than one kind of cloth woven together

wearing a cloak without tassels           

Littering in the camp

Handing over a runaway slave to their master

Being a shrine prostitute

Having anything to do with the money made by a shrine prositute

Charging another Israelite interest

Harvesting in your neighbors fields, although you may snack in them as long as you take none home with you.

Marrying your father’s wife

            The following things prevent one from entering the tabernacle to worship:

Having something wrong with your testicles

Being descended from a forbidden marriage

Being an Ammonite or Moabite

            The following things will get you killed with rocks

Disrespecting your parents

Raping a woman in the city or in the country

Being raped in a city

Sleeping with another man’s wife

Sleeping with a virgin pledged to another man

Cheating on your husband

Cheating on your fiancé

            I would feel a lot better about sifting through these piles of strange rules if I understood better what my relationship was as a Christian to the law of Moses.  Jesus says later on that he’s not there to change the law, but He very clearly does, or at least changes the way it affects us.  I’ve never seen a Christian who takes the Law seriously.

            At least not the whole law.  Sometimes people like to latch on to a specific verse or two when there’s politics involved.

            I guess it may be more complicated than this once I get to what Jesus specifically said, but it seems like we either have to follow these rules or we don’t.  I don’t understand this kind of half-obedience, half-unaffected attitude that I see in American Christian culture.