Are Christians Obligated to Obey the Old Testament Law?

Several months ago, I read a post by someone whose argument went something like this: In Leviticus 19:19, the Lord commanded the Israelites: “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.” The writer asked whether Christians follow this command; since most Christians are not even aware of this command (or even if they are, they don’t see a need to obey it), he accused them of disobeying God’s law. He went on to say that Christians should either be obligated to obey all of the Old Testament (OT) law or none of it. However, if we obey none of it, then we are free to kill or commit adultery. His conclusion was that Christianity was either not possible to live by or that we Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites.

Let me begin my response by saying that the law this blogger cites, like all OT laws, had spiritual significance to the Israelites. It was an example of the Lord’s saying that they should not be defiled by “mixing with” the pagan nations around them; the one-material clothing served to remind the Israelites of this spiritual principle.

Another example of this is the complex system of sacrifices that the Israelites were required to perform; it’s no wonder there was a tribe (the Levites) that was set aside by the Lord to, among other things, perform these sacrifices as well as many other tabernacle (and then later temple) duties. The purpose of the sacrificial system was to point the way to a Savior who would one day sacrifice Himself for all people who believe in Him for all time. Why don’t Christians still kill and sacrifice animals today? Because Jesus is the only sacrifice we need.

Now let’s look at the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:

  • “You shall have no other gods before me.”
  • “You shall not make for yourself an idol.”
  • “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.”
  • “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.”
  • “Honor your father and your mother.”
  • “You shall not murder.”
  • “You shall not commit adultery.”
  • “You shall not steal.”
  • “You shall not give false testimony.”
  • “You shall not covet.”

The first four are focused specifically on loving the Lord; the last six are focused on loving people. When you think about it, you can probably see the difference between the Ten Commandments and the laws regarding clothing and sacrifices; the latter kinds of laws are ceremonial, while the Ten Commandments and others like it are moral laws. Christians are obligated to obey OT moral laws, but not ceremonial ones. That is the fundamental flaw in the reasoning of the person who argued that Christians should either obey all of the OT law or none of it. Some laws are more obvious than others, but as you read the first five books of the Bible, it’s good to keep this ceremonial/moral distinction in mind. (There are also OT civil laws; the theocratic state of Israel carried out the punishments for breaking these laws.)

I want to comment on the fourth commandment: “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” For the Israelites, that day was Saturday; in the early church, that day became Sunday because that was the day Jesus rose from the dead. I grew up in small towns where stores were closed on Sundays; not working was a way of keeping the fourth commandment. Now, however, it’s difficult to find stores and other businesses in the U.S. that are not open on Sundays. I know believers, for example, who before COVID-19 would usually eat out after Sunday morning church. What are we to make of this? I’ll keep this brief: the Lord wants us to rest, not work, one day of the week. Your doctor will tell you that doing this is good for both your physical and mental health. Historically in the U.S., that day of rest has been Sunday; however, some people–pastors and medical personnel, for example–have to work on Sundays. My father was a pastor; his day of rest was Monday. My wife and I don’t work, shop, or eat out on Sunday because that is our day of rest, and we don’t want to “make” other people work on that day, either. Here’s what Romans 14:5 says: “One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

Sometimes there is a gray area when it comes to obeying OT laws or not; tithing comes to mind. That kind of law requires study of the whole Bible, discernment, and a God-informed conscience. However, there are plenty of laws which are very clear; we who are 21st-century Christians should be obeying all of the OT laws that are moral, but we are not bound by the ceremonial ones.

When Is It Right to Die?

In 2014, a U.K. judge ruled that, at the request of the mother, food and water should be withdrawn from her daughter Nancy Fitzmaurice, who was 12 years old and had significant disabilities which made her unable to talk, walk, eat, or drink; it took 14 days for her to die. One of the things that made this case particularly shocking was that at the time, the U.K. did not even have legalized euthanasia; in fact, it still doesn’t.

In 1992, Joni Eareckson Tada wrote a book with the title of this post; in 2018 the publisher came out with a revised edition, with some new material. It’s clear from the preface that the infamous decision by the U.K. judge is one of the things that prompted Joni to revise her book. I have no doubt that other developments also spurred her on. For example, there are now nine states, plus the District of Columbia, that have “Death with Dignity” laws; they permit doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Assisted dying in one form or another is now legal in ten countries; interestingly, nine of them are majority-white. Here are some definitions to clarify matters:

  • Euthanasia (“mercy killing”): steps are taken to end a person’s life by someone else
  • Assisted suicide: as the term implies, a person who wants to die is assisted by someone else
  • Assisted dying: this is an umbrella term including euthanasia and assisted suicide

I regard Joni as being especially “qualified” to write about this topic because she has been a quadriplegic since 1967, when she was 18. She is also a Christian and thus gives a Biblical perspective on this issue. To give further context: Joni is a staunch advocate for those with various kinds of special needs, whether they be physical (e.g. blindness), intellectual (e.g. autism), or both.

When I started reading Joni’s book, what I wanted was a Biblical answer to the issue of euthanasia. I got my answer, and much more. One important distinction she makes is between passive and active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia refers to the intentional withdrawing or withholding of treatment. An example of withdrawing treatment is “pulling the plug;” an example of withholding is not carrying out surgery that will extend life for a short time. Active euthanasia refers to a person’s directly and deliberately causing someone’s death; for example, a person could deliberately be given an overdose of pain-killers.

Joni comes to the conclusion that if a person is dying, then passive euthanasia is Biblically permissible. “Dying” is defined as a person’s having a relatively short estimated time remaining, as determined by medical professionals. Notice the plural here; this helps protect the dying person from anyone who might decide to take matters into his or her own hands. Maybe it goes without saying that if the dying person has expressed a desire not to have “aggressive” measures taken to extend his or her life, this also makes the decision much easier for the family; without that, such a decision may be too much for anyone to handle. Having a DNR order is also wise in that regard.

All of this explains what happened recently in a family I know. An elderly member of that family had been diagnosed with an illness so advanced that doctors estimated she had a matter of months, maybe even just weeks, remaining. She was mentally handicapped, so she was not able to make her own decisions. Furthermore, she had repeatedly over the years expressed how much she was looking forward to going to heaven to be with Jesus and her parents. Her family made the decision not to subject her to surgery which might extend her life a few months but which would make her remaining days more uncomfortable. Instead, they chose to make her as comfortable as possible at her home, where she had regular visits from a hospice nurse. She was allowed to eat and drink as she pleased. She went to heaven a matter of weeks later and is now indeed in the presence of the Lord and with her parents.

If you have never had these kinds of conversations with your loved ones, I would encourage you to do so; that way, if you face life-and-death decisions, you can make them and have the peace of God in doing so.

LGBTQ: From Tolerance to Acceptance to Celebration

The LGBTQ community has been making very steady gains in terms of rights and other legal protections for decades in the U.S. as well as in other majority-white countries. As I have thought about the changes over my lifetime, it is truly astounding. I think that these changes can be understood as part of a change in non-LGBTQ people’s perceptions of the LGBTQ community over time in three stages: tolerance, acceptance, and celebration.

In the 1960s, I was totally unaware that gays and lesbians existed. In the 1970s, a guy brought an issue of Time magazine to school; on the cover was a man, with the quote, “I am gay.” By that time (high school), I had heard of gays. Then one day while I was reading a novel, I came across the word “lesbian,” and I had no idea what it meant. Moving on to the 1980s, I heard and read about mostly gay men in San Francisco and a couple of other cities being diagnosed with something that later became known as AIDS. Perhaps this is when the idea of tolerance began to take hold in the U.S., as some felt compassion for those whose bodies were being ravaged by this mysterious illness. However, the vast majority of people understood that homosexuality was a behavior of choice. In 1977, only 13% of Americans believed that people were born lesbian or gay, whereas in 2019 that figure had jumped to an astonishing 49%.

Although that huge percentage change tells us a lot about changes in people’s perceptions over four decades, it’s impossible to document the change from tolerance to acceptance; it’s been gradual, I suppose something like the change from one season to another. “Tolerance” means allowing something that you don’t like or agree with; “acceptance” means agreeing with or going along with. And some have written about “forced acceptance,” which is not true acceptance at all. However, eventually the push for more and more rights by the LGBTQ community causes backlash. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the public restroom issue; those who are transgender are allowed in some places to use the restroom of the gender that they identify with. Target became well-known for its “inclusive” policy established in 2016, but experienced backlash. As a result, Target installed more single-occupancy restrooms in all of its stores. However, in 2018 a man exposed himself to a girl in a Target women’s restroom. Target defended itself by saying that the man was drunk and that there was “no indication” he was transgender–which completely misses the point. These kinds of incidents will only increase as long as the push continues for people to be able to use the restroom of the gender they identify with. Eventually, the only solution will be single-occupancy restrooms only–not a bad thing, by the way, but very expensive.

Let’s move on to the third stage, celebration, which is easier to document. There are gay parades and festivals, for example, and since 2015, same-sex marriage has been legal in the U.S. It is at this third stage that there has been an especially noticeable amount of pushback against the LGBTQ community. To give one example: some non-LGBTQ people who have attended LGBTQ parades and festivals in order to show their support have reported their disgust at some of the behavior displayed at these events. When people are openly having sex in public, that’s a problem. And when law enforcement refuses to arrest such people, that’s an even bigger problem.

Another example is of Christian bakers who have refused to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples. The first well-documented one is of Jack Phillips, a baker in Colorado. The incident happened in 2012; six years later, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker. The second case is Melissa and Aaron Klein, bakers in Oregon in 2013; six years later, the Supreme Court again ruled in the bakers’ favor. In both cases, the Court ruled that the same-sex couples could not make the bakers do something that violated their religiously-informed consciences. While I was very happy about these rulings, what bothered me most was the fact that rather than just find a different baker to make their wedding cakes, these same-sex couples tried to punish those who refused to serve them in the first place.

Sometimes celebration is not at a gay parade, festival, or same-sex wedding, but more benignly at a workplace event. At a place where I used to work, there was a large gathering with various speakers. One of them chose to share that she now had a wife. The vast majority of people in the room spontaneously stood up and applauded; one man that I knew was one of the first up, like a jack-in-the-box. I and some of the other people in the room neither stood up nor applauded, but I felt the pressure.

I read something recently that pleasantly surprised me: acceptance of the LGBTQ community is declining, and most noticeably among young people ages 18-34. The percentage of young Americans who are comfortable with LGBT people in various situations dropped from 63% in 2016, to 53% in 2017, to 45% in 2018. These seven situations include learning that a family member is LGBT and having your child placed in a class with an LGBT teacher. Newsweek and some other media outlets blame the Trump administration, of course, but Nicole Russell of The Daily Signal writes this: “A better way to understand the survey results might be to look at how pushy, even aggressive, the LGBT movement has been in ensuring its rights supersede the rights of others. Whether it’s lawsuits for ‘bathroom rights’ or lawsuits against religious people who can’t in good conscience bake a certain cake, the LGBT community is not advocating ‘equal rights’ but supreme rights that marginalize everyone else’s. This aggressive push for LGBT ‘equality’ may actually be backfiring, causing even young people to feel discomfort and alienation.” https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/06/28/lgbt-activists-could-be-to-blame-for-falling-lgbt-acceptance/ Now that is wisdom!

And let’s not put our heads in the sand. As time marches on, there will be tremendous pressure on churches to compromise the truth by not speaking out against homosexuality and by hosting same-sex weddings. If you think that’s unlikely, just look at what is happening in the U.K.

By now, maybe you think I’m just a religious gay-hater. While there are many things that the LGBTQ community pushes for that make me angry, the truth is that I rejoice when one of them turns to Jesus Christ in saving faith and leaves their life of sin; that is an incredibly powerful testimony. Let’s continue to speak the truth in love.

Should You Attend Your Gay Friend’s Wedding?

To answer this question, I want to begin by looking at what the Bible says about homosexuality. I find it interesting that the 19th chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells us what happened to the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and why. You can read the whole story for yourself, but let me point out a few verses. In verse 4, we are told that “all the men from every part of the city of Sodom–both young and old–surrounded the house.” Verse 5 continues, “They called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.'” In verse 11 we are told, “Then they [the two angels; see verse 1] struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.” In verse 24, after Lot, his wife, and their two daughters have fled Sodom, the Lord destroys the cities and their inhabitants with burning sulfur from the sky. Jude verse 7 corroborates the story of Sodom and Gomorrah: “In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.”

Leviticus has two verses that condemn homosexuality. Chapter 20:13 says, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands.”

Romans 1:18-32 is an extended passage about God’s wrath against mankind. Verses 26-27 tell us, “God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” I Corinthians 6:9-10 include “homosexual offenders” in the list of the wicked who will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Scripture makes very clear that homosexuality is a sin. However, in recent years, I have read and heard a lot of interpretations about these Scripture verses (and others) by people who seek to justify their and/or others’ homosexual behavior. For example, people say that these verses refer only to homosexual promiscuity; in other words, if two men or two women are faithful to each other sexually, their behavior is condoned, not condemned, by God. Another bizarre interpretation by those who seek to justify homosexual behavior is that these verses condemn only pedophilia; in Andrew Marin’s book Love Is an Orientation, he wrote about those who hold to this interpretation. While I’m not a Biblical scholar, it should be obvious to anyone who reads these verses, and who understands the Bible as a whole, that God condemns homosexuality. A more recent argument I have heard is that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. My response to that is, Jesus never mentioned “grace,” either. Does that mean we should ignore the wonderful teaching about grace in the rest of the New Testament?

One thing I want to make clear is that what the Bible condemns is homosexual behavior. There are people with a homosexual orientation who have chosen to remain celibate for the sake of the Gospel. My wife and I met such a man a couple of years ago. Does he struggle with temptation? Yes, but in the power of the Holy Spirit, he has been keeping himself sexually pure.

Over the course of the last 40 years, the U.S. has been moving in the direction of granting same-sex couples more and more rights. This culminated in the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 26, 2015, which legalized same-sex marriage by requiring all states to grant same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states. There was, of course, great rejoicing in the LGBTQ community. In my own heart, there was a mixture of anger and sorrow. Some of the sorrow that I felt was for same-sex couples who now had the right to get married. Why? Because when they got married, it would make it even harder than before for them to leave their life of sin. In fact, a couple years ago, a brother in Christ told me that his lesbian daughter’s wife had come to faith in Christ. However, when I asked him if anyone had spoken to her about what this meant for her relationship with his daughter, he was silent.

This brings me to the question I posed in the title: Should you attend your gay friend’s wedding? I know that not all Christians will agree on the answer, but here is a series of questions I urge you to ask yourself.

  • First of all, ask yourself, “Am I convinced that homosexuality is a sin?” If not, then read your Bible, which gives a very clear answer.
  • Second, ask yourself, “Where is my friend spiritually? Have they shown any inclination toward Christianity?”
  • If your friend has shown an interest in Christianity, then ask yourself, “Does my friend know what I think about homosexuality?” If not, that should be a red flag. Why? Because I would assume you want your friend to come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, and that can’t happen if they persist in their sin of homosexuality. After they are married, it will be even harder because repentance would mean that they need to break off that sinful relationship.

If your friend knows that you think homosexuality is wrong, I would be somewhat surprised if they send you a wedding invitation! However, if you are invited: should you attend? My personal answer is No, because a wedding is a time of celebration, and I don’t celebrate sin. If you choose to attend, then at a minimum, I believe your friend needs to know what you think about their behavior; if not, then they will assume that you condone it. Not only that, but again, once they are married, it will be even harder for them to come to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

A couple years ago, a close friend of mine told me that an acquaintance of his, a believer, had been invited to the same-sex wedding of a lesbian colleague. This acquaintance couldn’t think of a good reason not to go, so he went; besides, he reasoned, maybe his “tolerance” would show something of the Lord’s love to her. Before the wedding, this woman had been very friendly to him at work. However, afterwards she constantly gave him the cold shoulder at work. He was puzzled because he had attended her wedding and had not given offense, either there or at work. My wise friend surmised what had happened and explained it to him. He had been her Christian “token.” In other words, she had wanted him at her wedding to give it more legitimacy, and indeed, she had introduced him to some people at her wedding as her Christian colleague. Afterward, she no longer needed him, so she tossed him aside.

As I mentioned earlier, I know that not all Christians will agree on the answer to this question. What’s most important is that you have a clear conscience before the Lord if you answer differently. Of course, you want to preserve the relationship, but if you don’t tell your friend now what you think about their behavior, when are you going to tell them? It will only get harder later. Lastly, may what happened to my close friend’s acquaintance serve as a cautionary tale.

What Is Black Lives Matter All About?

I have been somewhat hesitant to write anything about Black Lives Matter because American society has become so racially charged. Witness, for example, USC professor Greg Patton, who was suspended from teaching an intensive communications course last month because during a lecture, he used the word neige as an example of a common filler, or pause, word in Chinese. (A common filler word in American English is “Umm…”) Unfortunately for him, that word sounds somewhat similar to a racial slur which I will not repeat here; thus, his suspension. Black students in his class complained, and he was summarily replaced by another professor for the duration of the three-week course. He was not even given a hearing before a “faculty body.”

Let me give a similar personal example for the sake of comparison. Many years ago when I was a university teacher in China, I commonly gave my students English names if they wanted them. Sometimes the students wanted to choose their own; sometimes they preferred that I give them one. Students commonly wanted an English name that sounded somewhat like their Chinese name, so when I had a graduate student named Hu Kaibao, I gave him the English name “Hugo.” One of the young women in my class burst out laughing because, as it turned out, “Hugo” sounds somewhat like “Heigou,” which means “black dog” in Chinese. I had unintentionally embarrassed, even insulted, my student; one of his classmates suggested the name “Frank” because it fit Hu Kaibao’s personality, so that became his English name. Was I “reported” and suspended because of this? No. Did “Frank” hold this against me? I don’t believe so, based on our interactions both inside and outside the classroom.

Another example from American higher education where someone has been suspended or fired for a perceived racial slight is Leslie Neal-Boylan, former dean of the nursing school at the University of Massachusetts; she was fired in June because she wrote in an e-mail to the nursing school community, “BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS.” The student who complained to the university about this email used the hashtag in her response.

These examples and others caused me to go to BlackLivesMatter.com to investigate what the organization really stands for. I discovered this statement on their About page: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” (This statement was “scrubbed” from their website about two weeks ago, but they have neither replaced it nor repudiated it.) Even at first glance, there are a couple of things about this statement that are troubling. First of all, they have as their goal to “disrupt” the nuclear-family structure (two generations: mother, father, and children). The extended-family structure which they reference has commonly been understood to be at least three generations, usually consisting of grandparents, parents, and children, but that doesn’t seem to be their goal, either. Here’s another statement from their About page: “We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.” In fact, if you read their About page now, you will not find a single reference to families, which is stunning to me. Another thing that is less obvious at first glance is that Black men are not specifically mentioned. (Black women are.) I wonder if any of the Black men who display or tweet “Black Lives Matter” are even aware of this.

Perhaps you are familiar with statistics like these: 72% of Black children are born out of wedlock, and 65% live without a father in the home. According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, children from fatherless homes (in general, not specific to Blacks) account for the vast majority of suicides, runaways, high school dropouts, juvenile detentions, and substance abuse. (See https://www.liveabout.com/fatherless-children-in-america-statistics-1270392 for more details.) I know that there are people who blame law enforcement and the criminal-justice system in general because of so many Black men being incarcerated. However, that deflects attention away from the more fundamental problem: Men need to learn how to be good husbands and fathers. However, I don’t see anything on BlackLivesMatter.com that encourages them in this.

Thankfully, there are Black men like Marcellus Wiley, former NFL lineman and host of FS1’s “Speak for Yourself,” who are not afraid to critically examine Black Lives Matter and to speak up for the nuclear-family structure:

“I don’t know how many people really look into the mission statement of Black Lives Matter, but I did — and when you look into it, there’s a couple things that jump out to me, and I’m a black man,” Wiley said. “Two things: My family structure is so [vitally] important to me … Being a father and a husband — that’s my mission in life right now. How do I reconcile that … with this mission statement that says, ‘We dismantle the patriarchal practice. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement,’” Wiley asked before sharing statistics showing the negative impact of single-parent homes versus two-parent households. “So when I see that, as a mission statement for Black Lives Matter, it makes me scratch my head.” https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/blm-removes-website-language-blasting-nuclear-family-structure/

I believe that the key to transforming largely Black communities, in fact any community, is for men to take responsibility and lead their families. (Click here to read Part 1 of 2 about what Christian manhood looks like: https://keithpetersenblog.com/2020/08/26/what-does-christian-manhood-look-like-part-1/) And when my Black brothers do this in the power of Jesus Christ, they will experience genuine transformation in their lives, families, and communities.