5. I Spy… Numerous Contradictions in the Christian Faith!

One of the most fundamental complaints of non-believers is the supposed contradictions between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  It is a commonly espoused view of the uninitiated that the Old Testament represents Yahweh’s cruelty, unshackled justice, and so forth, whereas the New Testament introduces to us Jesus, God’s mercy, love, turning the other cheek, thou shalt not judge, and so forth, until we have what seems to be two completely different religions and faith traditions.  It may be legitimately asked: is God bi-polar?  What is the nature of the madness that presents itself to us in the Bible?  On the face of things, it appears plausible; however, this assessment is wrong: the Old and New Testaments are simply two sides of the same coin, and they contradict each other inasmuch as a mother and father’s different parenting styles contradicts their love for their children.

I would like to target the issue of homosexuality in this post, as well as direct it toward your average Reddit-using atheist/agnostic—may God bless them all the days of their lives—whose posts concerning this issue often run along these lines: “Leviticus also says ‘no haircuts,’ but I guess we’re skipping that one!?”  These posts are directed toward Christians—Catholics in particular—who oppose gay “marriage,” marriage equality, as it is so charmingly referred to now.  These cynics list a number of supposed offenses that Christians breach, Leviticus being their favorite whipping boy.  They claim that we arbitrarily pick and choose which rules and commands we would like to follow; therefore, the accusations go, we Christians maliciously choose to quote Leviticus 18:22—“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (in my opinion, a pretty clear ban on homosexual relations as far as bans on homosexual relations are concerned)—whilst ignoring some 60+ other bans, ranging from getting a tattoo to even touching a sea animal without fins or scales.  (The full list is here if you care to see just how badly we are all breaking the rules.)

Now, as much as these hecklers would love to hear me sputter and say what your typical Christian would: “Well, the Old Testament doesn’t count anymore because of Jesus!”—(whatever that actually means is beyond me)—I will (sadly?) do no such thing.  The simple fact of the matter is that I need not backpedal in the face of these “Free Thinkers’” onslaughts, for there exists no contradiction between the two testaments of the Bible: they are in perfect unity with one another and with God.  Two reasons: first, the proper context—ah, that wrench that gets thrown into just about every argument!  Curse it till the sun shineth no more!—must be had in order to accurately understand both testaments in conjunction with one another; and second, Catholicism does not encounter the same problem with reconciling the Old and New Testaments as the numerous non-Catholic Christian faiths of the world do.

Now, the Old Testament can be clearly placed during a certain time period in recorded history.  No need to dig too deeply into the details, but, suffice to say, it is set several thousand years ago in humanity’s history.  The Old Testament essentially chronicles God’s plan of salvation for the Israelites.  He promises a vast number of descendants to Abraham, leads the Israelites out of Egypt, guides them in the desert, sends numerous prophets to them to lead them back to Him when they stray, and so forth.  The Old Testament is a kind of record of the Jewish people’s exploits during a specific period of time.  God wishes to make the Israelites His own special people, a nation set apart from all the godless heathens in the land of Canaan.

This is the backdrop against which the various laws of the Old Testament can be properly understood.  Why weren’t the Israelites allowed to cut the hair on the sides of their heads or trim their beards?  Because God wished to set them apart from the nations in the land which He was to give to them!  They were to be special.  All the odd rules?  Well, they would have indeed been quite odd, and that was the whole point!  God wanted a people for His own: “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6).

Now the New Testament, at first glance, appears to cast off these seemingly small-minded and arbitrary rules.  Those who oppose Christianity love to quote Jesus’ words on “not judging” and “turning the other cheek,” yet ignore the painfully inconvenient fact that these admonitions by Christ do not in any way behoove Christians to simply lie down on the proverbial train tracks of sin and allow a “train of a particular sin” (in this case, homosexual “marriage”) to destroy them.  Sorry world! The Church will forever be a “sign of contradiction” because Christ, the True Contradiction of the world (Luke 2:34), personally established it and promised that it would remain so until the end of time (Matt.16:18).

And like I said, the New Testament actually does no such thing.  What Christ accomplished, by the merits of His birth, life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension (The Paschal Mystery) was a “de-exclusification” of the Old Covenant between God and the Israelites.  He has invited all peoples to celebrate in the joy and promise of His victory over sin and death because His Cross has sufficiently and perfectly atoned for all the sins of humanity—past and future—in order to reconcile the entire world to Himself: hence, a New Covenant that includes all peoples.

Now a word about Yahweh’s harshness and apparent cruelty is in order. On the face of things, it appears cruel, those things that God commands the Israelites to do to other nations in the land (like slaughtering everything, in this case).

But it is entirely in line with His will that they be a special nation, one for Him alone, He Who is Holiness Itself.  He understood how alluring the sins of the heathens were: orgies, idolatry, soothsaying, etc.  He had to be strict with them, lest they stray from the path of what was good, true, righteous, and holy.  In terms of the rules that they had to follow internal to their nation (e.g. bans on homosexual activity): it is evident that, whatever God commanded them to do, or not to do, in pursuit of having a special people for His own possession obviously worked.  They kept the moral law, but even then not always perfectly.

Our own experiences in today’s day and age will hint at why God had to be so strict and uncompromising in His justice with the Israelites: do we keep the moral law?  It is very difficult to do, is it not?  Doesn’t having a strong, driving force to do good help us all to seek and do the good?  Think about it: how many times growing up were we admonished by our parents not to “hang out with the wrong crowd”?  The idea being that hanging out with bad people makes us more likely to engage in bad behavior, while hanging around good people tends to promote the opposite.  That was the purpose of all the rules and their corresponding consequences in the Israelites’ case: deterrence from sin (and just punishment for said sin).

Now, Catholics are in a unique position in this discussion.  Other Christian groups are forced to accept the Bible alone as their teaching authority (a practice called sola scriptura), as they have forsaken the pope, the Vicar of Christ, the Rock of the One True Church.  It is then difficult for these sects to consistently justify why they are not abstaining from cross-breeding animals and stoning adulterers to this very day (putting aside for the moment the glaring flaws in the doctrine itself).  The Catholic Church, on the other hand, bases Her teaching on three distinct, though interrelated and complementary, branches: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.  The Magisterium (the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church) interprets—authoritatively—the meaning and proper adherence to all of Sacred Scripture, and Sacred Tradition—since the very beginning of the Church’s life—has consistently backed up this position.  Protestant denominations must fumble and stumble and blubber as to why they follow this verse and not that one and why another denomination (one of 40,000, mind you!) does it differently.  The Catholic Church is the only Christian church to never contradict itself and to never have fallen into error.  What She teaches now had been believed and espoused by the Apostles, the Early Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, and every single pope since the first, St. Peter.

As such, it is right and just that the moral law within the Old Testament (thinking broadly, though certainly not exhaustively, of the Ten Commandments) is still followed but dietary restrictions and customs are not.  It is quite simple: the moral law set forth in the Old Testament is binding (and yes, this includes bans on homosexual relations, which is certainly a moral issue) because it is eternal and objectively true; hence, it is to be followed by all peoples, regardless of time or place.  The dietary restrictions and customs, on the other hand, were confined to a certain nation and time period: the Israelites.  They are better thought of as “culturally conditioned” (for all you anthropologists and anthropology majors out there), as they were specific to the Israelites and, as such, need not be followed by Christians today.

Kinda makes you wonder which other genius Reddit posts are actually not-so-right after all, huh?

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