Leviticus- a Necessary but Boring Bible Book

I’m trying to read the Bible in a year. Its not going to happen, but I figure if I can create a habit of reading the Bible everyday and at least make it through the Old Testament, I, and God, will be happy. Why won’t I make it through the whole Bible? In a word, Leviticus.

That’s right, folks. Its the third month of the year and I’m only on the third book of the Bible. But it is a doozy. There are so many different sacrifices and rules and guidelines. No romance, no mystery, no suspense. Just rule after rule after rule. I’m not going to lie, its pretty boring.

In past attempts to read the Bible, I usually give up towards the end of Exodus. At that point, the Israelites have made their harrowing escape from Egypt and are in the desert. Moses goes on and on about all the specifications for the tabernacle not once, but twice. Reading this in a regular Bible was tedious and my flightly brain just gave up. But this time, I got smart. I got an awesome Apologetics Study Bible that actually explains why the exact size of every curtain in the sanctuary is important information. This Bible takes chunks of verses and puts them in historical context and explains their cultural, historical and theological significance. It’s not only helping me understand parts of the Bible I never understood before, it’s also shedding new light on stories I’ve heard a million times. It was really interesting to read through Genesis and gain a better understanding of what life was like for the Patriarchs. By understanding the cultural and historical context, I was better able to understand the theological impacts of their actions then and how that relates to me now.

Okay, back to Leviticus. Despite the fact that it is taking me a long time (I can’t pay attention for longer than 2 chapters at a time) I’m really enjoying the book. All the rules about sacrifices, rituals and purification aren’t things God just made up for fun. He called the Israelites to be a holy people, seperated from the pagan and worldly cultures around them. The rituals where a physical symbol of what their spiritual lives should look like.

Here’s an example. There are lots of rules related to the purity of men and women and their sex lives. Leviticus 15 goes through them in detail, but the basic gist is that after a man and woman have intercourse, they must bathe in water and are unclean until evening. hat sounds a little odd, right? When I first read that I felt the Bible was condemning sex by labeling it as a dirty deed. However, in this case, being unclean did not mean being in sin.  No sacrifice was needed to make them clean, all they had to do was wash and wait until night. Their uncleanliness simply met they could not go to the sanctuary until they were clean. The ooint of this was to keep sex as far away from the place of worship as possible. Many neighbor socieities used sexual intercourse as an act of worship to fertifility gods, and the God of Israel did not want that taking place. Therefore, He instituted a rule that would ensure sexual intercourse stayed in the tent and never came near the Sanctuary. Again, it goes back to being holy and set apart. God had to establish his dwelling, the sanctuary, as a pure and holy place that demonstrated his purity and holiness. Only then could He demand such purity and set apartedness from His people.

In regards to the purity laws, one commentary in my Bible states this:

In the NT, Mark 5:25-34 reveals Jesus’ general attitude concerning the uncleanness regulations; His focus was on faith for healing the condition, rather than upon the ritual pollution of the afflicted person. HJesus pointed beyond the letter of the OT regulations to the moral principles that informed them, within God’s greater purpose of revealing His kingdom.

As a Christian, I don’t believe that I have to follow all of the rituals laid out in the Old Testament. I do believe, however, that I must adhere to the moral principles that informed them. Just as the Israelites were called to be holy and set apart, so am I. So what does that mean for young woman in the 21st century? I think it means limited, or ideally completely getting rid of, the crap that goes into my soul. The Isrealites could not eat pork or blood, I think as Christians we should not listen to inappropriate music watch videos with sex and cussing in them. The Israelites had to go through many ritual cleansings before offering a sacrifice. I think as modern day Christians, we should purify our hearts and minds before going into Church. For me, this means listening to Christian music on the way to church instead of pop. It means seeking and giving forgiveness and working throuh any bitterness or hatred in my heart. The Isrealites were called to be set apart from neighboring communities. As modern day Christians, we are called to do things differently than the culture in which we live, to stand apart from the crowd and to cause people to ask “what makes them different?”

I will get through Leviticus before the month is over. And I will pick up the pace because I still have 36 more books left and only nine months…o boy…

5 Reasons Why You Should Read Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I recently finished reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It was amazing and I immediately reccommended it to everyone. One friend said “I dunno. It’s about a boy stuck in the middle of the ocean with a tiger. That doesn’t seem very exciting.” I conceeded to her point. When I first read the summary on the back cover I wasn’t to excited about reading it either. But it had been reccommended to me and once I started reading I was hooked. So, if you are like my friend and don’t see a reason to read a book about a boy, a lifeboat and a tiger, allow me to give you 5 compelling reasons.

1. Exquisite Language– Martel is a literary artist whose words paint amazing pictures in the imagination of his readers. Although his main character is stuck in the middle of the ocean for half the book, he finds such beautiful ways of describing sea creatures, storms, sunrises and water that it feels as if the story changes settings with every chapter.
2. A surprising amount of action and suspense– You might be tempted to think that this book will be similar to the movie Castaway. There is a major difference, however. Pi, the main character, is not stuck at sea or on a deserted island alone. There are animals onboard with him and each of them have distinct personalities that cause conflict, action and suspense.  Plus, he is at sea for an insane amount of time and overcomes the most challenging obstacles. His day to day survival is a continued source of suspense.
3. The ending will make you want to read it again– I liked the book until I got to the ending, then I loved it. I won’t say much on this point because I don’t want to give anything away, but honestly the ending was a complete surprised and changed my outlook on the whole book. When I’m done going through my book bucket list, I plan on reading Life of Pi again. Knowing how it ends will give me new insights into the rest of the book.
4. You’ll fall in love with Pi– Martel invests a good hundred pages or so at the beginning of the book introducing you to Pi and his family. He pulls you into Pi’s life and gets you emotionally invested. One way he does this is by writing as if the book is a true story. He even includes excerpts of his fictional interviews with Pi. By the time it gets to the part where Pi is at sea, you will have fallen in love with him and won’t be able to put the book down until you know his fate.
5. Its a philosphical book that’s easy to read– I love books that make me think about themes: relationships, humanity, morality, religion, society, etc. I don’t like books that use complicated sentence structure and hundreds of words that I have to look up in the dictionary. Life of Pi is an easy read that is also compelling and thought provoking. Martel impresses with his story, not his pompous language.

Have you ever read Life of Pi? What did you think? What reasons would you give someone to read it or not read it?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

SPOILER ALERT! I don’t give any specifics on the ending, but I do talk about in general terms that might still give it away. If you are currently reading this book or plan to read it soon, you should probably wait until you’re done to read this review.

I love predictable movies, but when I’m reading I prefer endings that make me say “holy crap, I did not see that coming.” The ending to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd floored me in a way no other book has managed to do. It was surprising but made perfect sense. Agatha Christie gives subtle clues and lays the groundwork in such a way that you never see the ending coming, but once it does you think “o ya, I should have seen that coming.”

As a television crime drama junkie, I’m used to brilliant detectives who use a plethora of scientific gadgets and gizmos to solve incredibly complex crimes. But this book was set in a much earlier time, I’m guess around the early 1900’s when Christie was writing, and the most complex thing they are able to do is retrieve and compare fingerprints. Detective Poirot has only persuasion, keen observation, sharp logical and a strict methodology to assist him in a case that might stump the cast of CSI…especially Miami…they suck.

What’s amazing is that even without modern technology Christie’s mystery is still very fast paced, unpredictable and entertaining. I’m not the brightest crown in the box so I never had the whole thing figured out, but there were definitely times when I thought I had eliminated one suspect only to turn the page and learn new information that put that character in the prime spot. Christie pulls the reader into a relationship with each and every character, so much so that you will find yourself cheering for the innocence of Ackroyd’s son and hoping that jealous, uptight housekeeper is the guilty one. Until you find out about the housekeepers secret family and then your convinced it was the over eager secretary. Until you find out that he is to laid back and jolly to kill anyone, so now your back to the obvious suspect, Ackroyd’s step son. But that parlor maid is acting really suspicious…

50 books to read before I have kids

Two things have inspired this list. First of all is the book club me and some friends have recently started. We’ve only had one meeting…and I think we talked about the book for about 5 minutes…but its still my favorite new activity. Even if we aren’t really discussing the book, it is motivating me to read more. Plus the girls in the club are awesome and I’ll take any excuse to hang out with them. My second motivation came from a book I found in the library called “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die.” I do not do well with long term goals like that, so I decided to shorten it to 50 books I want to read before I have kids. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll start a family in about 5 years which means i have to read 10 book a year, which seems pretty doable. My friend Corri thinks I’ll read more than that, but I think I like facebook and Glee too much to read more than 10 a year. But we’ll see. And now, without further ado, the list. Feel free to submit ideas for my next list “100 books to read before I turn 40.”

1. East of Eden by Steinbeck
2. Cannery Row by Steinbeck
3. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
4. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolfe
5. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
6. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
7. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolfe
8. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
9. Sherlock Holmes by Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle
10. The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett
11. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
12. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Getrude Stein
13. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Gone with teh Wind by Margaret Mitchell
15. The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West
16. Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck
17. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
18. Miss Petigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
19. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
21. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
22. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
23. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
24. The Graduate by Charles Webb
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Break Time. You’re probably sick of reading this giant list right now, so I’ll take a break to let you know how I decided which books to put on the list. I used the book “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die” as a guideline. The author was the main factor in deciding if a book made it on the list. Authors I knew I liked, like Steinbeck, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Agatha Christie got at least one book put on the list. Then there were books that were pretty common to read in high school or college that I, for some reason, did not read. Catcher in the Rye and Cry, the Beloved Country were two such books. If there was a title that had been made into a movie and I had either seen the movie or had wanted to see the movie, I added that title. Then I veered away from the book and looked on my bookshelf and discovered some books that I had started but never finished. Bam, on the List.   And lastly I asked for some suggestions from my lovely book club ladies. So ya, that was my process. Now on to the next 25.

1. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
2. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
3. Ragtime by E.L. Doctrow
4. The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
7. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Like Wather for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
9. The Virgin Suicides by Jefferey Eugenides
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
11. Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
12. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
13. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
14. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
16. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
17. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
18. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
19. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
20. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
21. Saturday by Ian McEwan
22. God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
23. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
24. Journal of a Novel by Steinbeck
25. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

I didn’t list the books in the order I will read them. I really have no idea in what order I will read them…I’ll just see how I feel after each book. And the list will probably change a bit. I might tweak it to fit what we are reading in the club or I’ll take a book off if I start to read it and really really really don’t like it (just not liking it won’t be a enough…i have really really really not like it in order to take it off the list and not finish). So there you have it, my literary aspirations. If anyone wants to join me on this reading journey, let me know. I’d love to discuss with you!