My friend I am Jewish… you don’t need to teach me about religion I almost became fully observant…
Messiah
Messiah; Way; Christ; God; Anointed One; etc., these are tropes for inner states of understanding and enlightenment.
Waiting for the Messiah to come? You might as well wait for Samuel Beckett’s, “Godot!”
The only coming of the messiah will be into the personal private inner subjective world each of us inhabits.
He’ll never appear in the, “real,” world; never in any external earthly realm. If you want the messiah to come, be pro-active and look for him within your own self. There you will find him, (waiting to be invited in,) and there alone.
or… Jezus was just a good guy who cared for people… the blown-up stories came afterwards…
In the final analysis there’s only one good guy who gives a fuck about me and that’s me!
That’s what morality is: me, giving a shit about myself, i.e., self-respect!
God’s prohibition of pork:
Was for the nation of Israel as He was forming it to become a strong and healthy nation through which the Messiah would be born.
Has the following possible implications for protecting health:
Prevention of certain parasitic infestations.
Prevention of food poisoning.
Raccoons, skunks, foxes, pigs are all mammals which spend alot of time rooting around in or eating things in the soil. Soil contains myriad microorganisms and parasites and their eggs. Eat raccoons and you can get a fatal brain disease. Rabies is endemic in foxes and skunks in large parts of the world. Bats are animals, they eat huge quantities of insects, which were usually borne out of the soil, and bats can carry rabies. Armadilloes aren’t mammals if I remember right, but they root in the soil all their lives and can give you leprosy.
Also, there is now known to be a pathway between waterfowl, domesticated waterfowl, and pigs and people, which leads to new virus varieties all the time. In rural areas of China, people live in close proximity to their animals. Wild waterfowl mucking around in the marshes of the world, pick up viruses which they carry and spread to ducks and geese on farms. The viruses mutate in the farmers waterfowl into varieties which pigs are suspectible to. Then the viruses may mutate in the pigs into varieties which can affect humans. So, we end up with new flus often originating in rural densely popullated areas of China. Perhaps God wanted to prevent similar things in ancient Israel.
Besides the disease prevention aspect, there is another which is likely and I’ve never heard anyone mention.
Pigs are reportedly quite similar to people in physiology and biochemistry.
Now, most people don’t like the idea of eating pigs which have been pumped full of growth hormones at the feed lot. There are alot of people today afraid of the phthalate plasticizer chemicals in plastics, like in food packaging materials. And, not to mention, all the other estrogen-mimicker chemicals in the world.
But, correct me if you’re an expert and I’m wrong, if you eat pig meat, you’re also going to ingest pig sex hormones.
And unless the cooking or digestive process destroys the hormones, eating pig meat (more than any other meat because of the physiological similarities aspect) is going to give you pig hormones.
Just as the Roman Empire was affected by lead in cooking and wine vessels, causing brain damage and aberrant behavior, so too, today, unless it just isn’t possible physiologically, perhaps Western civilization is being affected by an unrecognized problem of hormones in meat. Maybe today’s sexual morality breakdown is partly due to what we are eating, stimulating and altering sexuality more than is supposed to be. We eat alot of meat, too, not just pork, which besides having natural hormones is likely to have artificial hormone residues.
And, we think we are so wise, don’t we? What about the effects of pig hormones on unborn babies, especially in the tiniest stages at and just after conception? Could this be a cause of sexual identity and birth defect problems? Maybe God knows alot more than we think He does?! Assuredly He does!
According to Genesis, God designed the herbs of the field [probably including vegetables], the fruits of the trees, and the seeds of the fruits therein as food. The vegetarians are right in their path, mostly.
Before the Biblical flood, too, trees probably bore much larger fruit, with much higher trace mineral content as well as the major nutrients like protein, and vitamins. Experiments looking at CO2 content, oxygen content, complete ultraviolet shielding, as well as higher atmospheric pressure, and high levels of nutrients, and also high frequency sounds found in bird calls which stimulate plant stomata to open, have shown that much faster growth, larger and more nutrititious produce, are possible.
Probably, there were types which are no longer present today, nor preserved in the flood record.
It was only after the Flood, that God okayed the eating of animals, probably because in the post-Flood hydrologic system trace minerals would be getting scarce in many soils around the world, as rain began leaching them from the soils which developed after the Flood and a period of climatologic and tectonic re-adjustment. Many types of animals concentrate trace minerals in otherwise trace mineral deficient areas, in their organs and tissues. In some parts of the world, the only way you are going to get trace minerals is with very careful agriculture or by including animals in your diet, because the high rainfall over the millenia has leached the trace minerals to the point only the organic matter in the top several inches of the soil contains any.
For several years I have read books from the creation point of view, and I have heard people speak on the subject. I have come to believe the Bible fully, and not to doubt it, because their is always a good, reasonable answer for any question I can ask. I believe that for every one of those odd-sounding ordinances which the Israelites received, there is a good reason behind it.
And behind the good reason is not some cosmic kill-joy, but rather, a very humble, extremely caring and loving Creator God, who has nothing but each person’s best interests in mind when He provides guidance.
Great post! I loved it.