I hate to point this out, but Kim Davis' arguments about refusing to issue marriage licenses in Rowan County, Kentucky, are not just legal nonsense. They also are a biblical train wreck.

Davis is, of course, the county clerk who has refused to obey a court order – one upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court – to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That defiance has put her in jail for contempt of court. It also has made her the most famous county clerk in America, and that is reason enough for me not to write about her. She and her offensive claims about religious persecution have gotten her far more publicity than she deserves. I hate to add more fuel to a controversy that already has exceeded its fifteen minutes of fame.

I also hate to write about Davis because, in my opinion, the very lunacy of her legal claims is actually a good thing for the future of marriage equality. The outrageous nature of her argument – that she has a constitutional right to ignore and defy the rulings of the Supreme Court – only goes to show that marriage discrimination is on its last legs. If Kim Davis is the symbolic leader of the rebellion to keep gay and lesbian couples from marrying, it is a rebellion that is looking increasingly like a fringe movement of the willfully ignorant and the intellectually dishonest.

But I can't help myself. I have to write about Kim Davis because there is such a glaringly obvious contradiction in her understanding and interpretation of the Bible. I am such a consummate nerd of biblical study that it pains me not to point it out.

In her defense, Davis published a statement that says, in part, "I never imagined a day like this would come, where I would be asked to violate a central teaching of Scripture and of Jesus Himself regarding marriage. To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God's definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience."

I'm going to put aside for the moment the idea that there can be any religious justification for public officials to refuse to carry out the duties of their offices. More on that later.

I have written in the past about the so-called "biblical definition of marriage." Suffice to say, if God has a definition of marriage, God has never published it. There is no single, clear definition of marriage to be found anywhere in the Bible. Any biblical support for Davis to justify her refusal to do her job must be based on her interpretation of the Bible. The Bible does have a few things to say about sex between people of the same sex and about marriage, but not all of them will support the choices that Davis has made in her job and in her life.

Davis, I am sure, will rest her case largely upon Leviticus 18:22, which states: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman. it is an abomination." This is not the only biblical verse that deals with male-male sexuality, but it is one of the clearest. The Hebrew Bible does not like the idea of men having sex with men. It is not clear whether the verse is talking about consensual sex between men who love each other, or if it is talking about rape. There are no examples of the former in the Bible, but there are examples of the latter (see Genesis 19:5-6.) It is entirely possible that Leviticus 18 is talking mainly about rape, not consensual sex.

Some will note that Leviticus 18 is a prohibition against sexuality, not against marriage. That is true, but marriage is mostly equated with sex in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, there really is no verb "to marry" in Biblical Hebrew and there is no noun that just means "wife." The idiom for marriage is "to take." A wife, in the Hebrew Bible is a woman who has been acquired as a possession. When the Bible says, "He took her to be his woman" it means both, "He married her" and, "He had sex with her." From a biblical perspective, sex is marriage and marriage is sex. Some sex is permitted, and, thus, marriage is permitted. Some sex is prohibited and, thus, marriage is prohibited.

The word "abomination" used in Leviticus 18 about sex between two men sounds pretty strong – definitely not something that God wants people to do. However, this is not the only place in the Bible that talks about "abominations." In fact, the Bible uses the exact same word (to'eivah in Hebrew) in the book of Deuteronomy to talk specifically about marriage. Here is a fairly literal translation of the passage:

When a man takes a woman and masters her, but she does not find grace in his eyes because he finds something obnoxious about her, he writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house. She leaves his house and goes to become another man's. But if the other man hates her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her away from his house – or, if the last man who took her as his woman dies – then the first husband who sent her away cannot take her again to be his woman after she has been made ritually impure — for that is an abomination before Adonai. You shall not bring sin upon the land that Adonai your God is giving to you as a possession. (Deuteronomy 24:1-4)
 
Any honest reading of the Bible would suggest that if a marriage between two men is prohibited, then the remarriage of a divorced couple after the woman has been married to someone else must also be prohibited. The first prohibition is based on an interpretation of Leviticus – one that says that they cannot have sex with each other even if they are in a consensual relationship, and that the prohibition against sex implies a prohibition against marriage. The second prohibition requires much less interpretation, as it is clearly spelled out in Deuteronomy in precise, legal language. The prohibition in Leviticus is tangentially related to marriage; the prohibition in Deuteronomy is directly fixed on marriage.

I want to make clear that this is not my interpretation of the Bible and it is not my understanding of what Judaism teaches. But Kim Davis reads the Bible rather differently than I do. She claims to read the Bible as giving clear and certain teaching for the present day about a definition of marriage. My belief is that the definition of marriage has changed greatly over the centuries and that we should feel fortunate not to live in a time in which the Bible's rules about polygamy, captive brides and women being required to marry their rapists still apply.

I respect those who have a greater sense of certainty than I do about what the Bible decrees about marriage, but I do ask them to apply those standards consistently. Kim Davis does not.

One might assume that Kim Davis, who refuses to "violate a central teaching of Scripture…regarding marriage," would refuse to issue marriage licenses to couples who want to get remarried after their divorce even after the woman was subsequently married to someone else. After all, such a marriage is clearly and directly prohibited in the Bible. It is an "abomination." Maybe Davis did refuse to issue such marriage licenses. I don't know.

However, I do know that she would have a pretty hard time explaining her refusal to the couple who wanted to get remarried, because she was in exactly the same situation herself. Davis has been married to Joe Davis since 2009. It is her fourth marriage. Joe Davis was also her second husband, from 1996 to 2006. In between her marriages to Joe Davis, she was married to Thomas McIntryre in 2007. Kim Davis' lawyer says that she is "a completely different person" today than she was in 2011 because she now "loves the Lord." Her conversion, however, did not include the rejection of her marriage which is a clear violation of a biblical law, an ongoing and current "abomination" according to a literal reading of Deuteronomy.

Is it fair for me to use Kim Davis' personal life as an argument against her? After all, people can make mistakes, change, and be forgiven. How long can we hold a person's past against him or her? Should not Jewish and Christian ideals allow us to forgive past mistakes? Yes, absolutely. 

However, it is Kim Davis who has not repaired her past mistakes according to her own stated fidelity to the "teachings of Scripture regarding marriage." She is still married and enjoying the benefits of marriage to a man who is biblically prohibited to her according to her own strict standards. It is Kim Davis who has intruded into the personal lives of others by denying them their constitutional rights to benefit from civil marriage. I think that opens the possibility that we look at how she applies her principles to herself.

Here is our biblical train wreck, and it is becoming all too common in our times. Many so-called "biblical literalists" and fundamentalists like Kim Davis grant themselves the authority to apply their interpretation of the Bible to other people's lives. Even worse, people like Kim Davis are using Scripture as a weapon against others without applying it equally to themselves. That is not what either Judaism or Christianity teaches. Both religions guide us to be scrupulous in applying high standards to ourselves and to be compassionate and loving to others. Kim Davis has done the opposite.  

Just to make matters worse, Davis, her lawyers and supporters have thrown on top of this noisome heap of hypocrisy the charge that Davis is being persecuted for her religious beliefs. No less a figure than Senator Ted Cruz has charged, "Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America."

No, Senator Cruz. Davis is in jail for disobeying a court order. If she wants to conduct herself according to a religious standard in her own life – even a hypocritical standard – that is her right and she is welcome to it. But she does not have the right to use her elected office to impose that standard on others. Religious persecution is when the government prevents you from practicing your religion, not when the government stops you from forcing others to adhere to your religion. Claiming religious persecution, in this case, is offensive to the many people in the world today and throughout history who have been been denied basic rights of faith and religious practice.

We are a country in which public officials perform their duties according to the law, not according to their ecclesiastical whim. If there is no way for Davis to execute the duties of her office within the confines of her conscience, she should resign. 

Bad legal arguments and bad biblical interpretation are the double sign of those who want to cling to a discriminatory past – a past that is now sputtering to its oblivion in much the same way as biblical arguments in favor of slavery sputtered out in the 19th century, and biblical arguments against interracial marriage sputtered out in the 20th. I remain hopeful that this train wreck is a sign that the debate over marriage equality is coming to an end.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Searching for How the Bible Defines Marriage
What Does the Bible Say about Marriage? What Should We Say?

I'm on vacation this week in Massachusetts. We took my eight-year-old daughter today to see the monument at the Old North Bridge in the town of Concord. 

If you've forgotten some of your American history, let me remind you that this is the spot where the American Revolution began with the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. The poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, immortalized the battle in his poem, "Concord Hymn," as the "shot heard 'round the world."

Emerson wrote those words in 1837 for the dedication of the monument that now stands on the east side of the Old North Bridge. Just a few yards away from that obelisk — easily overlooked — there is a much smaller monument dedicated to two British soldiers who died in the Battle of Concord. The British, in the fury of the battle and facing a long retreat back to Boston, were not able to recover the bodies of these two men. Instead, the American colonists buried them close to the place where they fell. 

To this day, two small British flags (accurate to the time of the Revolution) are placed on the spot. An inscription bears words from a poem by James Russell Lowell:

They came three thousand miles and died,
to keep the past upon its throne:
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
their English Mother made her moan.

My eight-year-old daughter had a hard time identifying the country against whom the Americans fought a bloody war to win their independence. To her, Great Britain (now the United Kingdom) is the country where they make Doctor Who, her older sister's favorite television show. It is the place where her mother's favorite author, Jane Austen, lived and wrote. Hardly the stuff of bitter enmity. 

The small monument to the two British soldiers, also, says something about the attitude of contemporary New Englanders to their "English Mother."  They love their ancestral connection to Britain and, as in Lowell's poem, they are much more inclined to think of the Red Coats who fell here with compassion than with bitterness. After the long decades, and especially since the experience of two world wars, Americans now view their one-time arch-villain as a partner and beloved cousin across the waters. 

This week's Torah portion (Ki Tetze) suggests that this is the proper way for enemies to be  reconciled into friendship. The lesson comes in a surprising verse that says, "You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land" (Deuteronomy 23:8). Even someone with only a casual familiarity with the Torah will know that the Israelites had more reason to hate Egypt than any other nation. It was Egypt's Pharaoh who enslaved Israel with cruel servitude and ordered their baby boys to be thrown into the Nile. Why would this same Torah command Israel "do not abhor an Egyptian"?

The medieval commentator Rashi explains that the commandment applies to those Egyptians who convert to Judaism. They are permitted to do so and are welcomed into the fold of the Jewish people, as are all converts. Rashi says, though, that our compassion toward Egypt is not only because of the many centuries that separate us from the ordeal of slavery. It is also out of remembrance of the fact that, before we were slaves, the Egyptians took us in with friendship when we were on the brink of starvation in our own land. 

Torah commands us to remember the best about other people, even of our enemies, and to welcome them as brothers and sisters. Just as Americans have long forgotten the hatred we once had toward the British — and now remember only the gifts of language, culture and fellowship in arms — so should we as Jews foreswear from hating those who once were our enemies. 

In contemporary times, we have seen this happen. Today, Germany is one of Israel's strongest allies. One hardly ever hears Jews speak scornfully about contemporary Germany, and Jews accept the many sincere expressions of contrition that Germany has offered for its Nazi past. You would think that if the Jewish people could forgive Germany, there is no nation that we would not be willing to see in the best possible light, to accept, and to forgive.

The Jewish people today certainly have enemies. The commandment, "You shall not abhor an Egyptian," does not require us to love people who are trying to kill us. But, it should be a reminder to us that there is no enmity that cannot be overcome, whether it is a personal enemy or a national enemy. Americans build monuments to British soldiers who once shot at us. Jews find friendship with a country that once committed genocide against us. Surely, we can recognize in our hearts the ability to find reconciliation and peace with those we once saw as enemies. 

It has been commanded of us to do so.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Bereshit: First Crime, First Punishment
Ki Tetze: The Bird's Nest and the World Trade Center

This week's Torah portion (Ki Tetze) begins with a continuation of last week's laws for going to war. It does not sound very lofty or high-minded when the Torah tells us about how one may acquire a woman captured in battle as a bride. The literal meaning of the text may not inspire our best wishes for ourselves.

Yet, Jewish commentators have interpreted the opening verses as a metaphor for something different. They read the words, "When you go out to battle against your enemy and Adonai your God delivers it into your power" (Deuteronomy 21:10), as a reference to that great war we fight within against our own baser selves. They notice that the verb, teitzei, "you will go out," is in the singular, suggesting that it is not addressed to an army. Rather, it is addressed to one person—to you in your own, personal battle.

Rabbi Moses ben Samuel Schreiber, the 19th-century authority better known as the Chatam Sofer, wrote that we must understand how our impulse toward evil—the yetzer hara—does not overtake us all at once. Rather, it takes control of us in small increments:

One day, it comes at you saying, “do this,” and tomorrow saying, “do that.” So, if you wish to be victorious over it, do not try to do it in great leaps. Rather, go from from one small step to the next small step. 

The Chatam Sofer advises us to use the yetzer hara's own weapons against it. Just as we fall into bad habits gradually, we should gradually develop good habits, one step at a time. Do not expect yourself to transform your behavior overnight. Rather, select one small change to make your own—such as expressing gratitude before eating, putting a coin in a tzedakah box every day, or taking a deep breath before speaking in anger—and allow the new habit to take hold before taking the next step.

There is great wisdom in this suggestion. Too often, I see people who make resolutions for themselves that are too big to keep. If you swear up and down that you will change your eating habits and lose twenty pounds by next month, you are certain to give up in despair the next time you catch yourself eating that second helping of dessert. Real change does not work that way.

All personal growth is like this. When we set goals that are unrealistic and unobtainable, the result is often worse than not setting any goal at all. It is far better to start small, grow in confidence and in success, and then to go further.

Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the 18th-century founder of chasidism known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, had a similar teaching. He said, "Every single Jew has no greater enemy than the yetzer hara. But, if you go out to war against it, 'Adonai your God will deliver it into your power.' The Torah promises that you will be victorious over it."

There is reassurance here that the only thing necessary to overcome our baser instincts is to take up the battle. The war is won in the moment that we decide to become the champions of our own lives. 

When we recognize and confront our proclivity to anger, arrogance, hard-heartedness, dependency or greed—and decide that those impulses within us are actually our enemy—then we already have won. You turn the yetzer hara's own weapons around and, in the Ba'al Shem Tov's words, "Use against it all the agility, exertion and determination that it will use against you."


Other Posts on This Topic:
New Year Resolutions
Noah: The Redemption of God

This week's Torah portion (Ki Tetze) includes a simple mitzvah that prompted the rabbis of the Talmud to ask these very questions. The mitzvah states:

If you should come upon a bird’s nest while traveling, in a tree or on the ground, and there are chicks or eggs with the mother bird sitting on the chicks or eggs, you shall not take the mother from the children. You certainly must send away the mother and take for yourself only the children, so that it will go well for you and you will lengthen your days. (Deuteronomy 22:6-7)

It really is a lovely mitzvah. While we require food to live, we must do so in a way that is considerate of all life, even the life of a bird. We must not take the mother along with her children.

It is the second part of the mitzvah that was challenging to the rabbis—the part in which the Torah promises, as a reward, that "it will go well for you and you will lengthen your days." The rabbis, who knew about life's tragedies and unfairness, ask the question: Is it really so? 

They raise a hypothetical question (B. Chullin 142a): "Suppose a father says to his son, 'Climb up that tower and fetch me some chicks.' The boy climbs up, sends away the mother bird, takes the children, but on the way down he falls and dies. Where is the 'lengthening of his days'?  Where is the 'going well' for him?"

And then, just to raise the stakes, the rabbis claim that this really did happen once. The Talmud states: "Rabbi Jacob saw it happen."

What then? Does God not care? Do those who observe God's laws, who respect life and act decently, have nothing better to hope for than broken promises?

The rabbis answer this profound question enigmatically. They say, "There is no mitzvah in the Torah with a stated reward that is not connected with the resurrection of the dead." All the promises of good rewards for acts of goodness are fulfilled, but not in this world, the rabbis tell us. It all must be understood as being part of the world beyond this.

The rabbis go on to explain that, rather than expecting a reward in this world, we should understand that “lengthen your days” refers to a world in which everything reaches its ideal length, and “it will go well for you” refers to a world in which everything is well.

Now, before you reject this as a theological cop-out—an empty promise of "pie in the sky when you die"—let us consider what the rabbis are really saying here. They are admitting that there is no promise of material reward for the righteous. The righteous suffer and know pain just the same as everyone else. The Talmud says flatly, "There is no  reward in this world for a mitzvah." That's a gutsy statement for people who believe profoundly in a just and good God.

What the rabbis do promise is hard to pin down. They promise "olam ha-ba," usually translated as "the world to come," but with deeper resonance than we usually think. The word "olam" in Hebrew does mean "world" or "universe," but it also means more. "Olam" is also the "forever" in "l'olam va'ed," meaning "forever and ever." The word "olam" means both "all of space" and also "all of time." It is the ancient Hebrew equivalent of "the space-time continuum." In short, it is another word for "reality."

Taken this way, we can understand the promise of a reward in "olam ha-ba" as a reward in "another reality." But what reality is that? It is the reality of our hopes and dreams. It is the reality we experience when we know that real happiness does not depend on physical comfort and material plenty. 

Our good actions receive reward in the reality we experience when we feel ourselves to be part of something beyond ourselves. It is not in a time far away in the future or up in heaven, rather, it is the reality we can experience any time we wish by entering into awareness of the divine in each moment.

The section of the Talmud that discusses the bird's nest ends with the introduction of another character. It says that Elisha ben Avuyah, the great rabbi who left Judaism and gave up the ways of the Torah, may have committed his apostasy after seeing "this very thing"—a boy falling to his death after sending away the mother bird. We can imagine Elisha, who knew the reward associated with this mitzvah, deciding when he saw this horror that the Torah was all lies and broken promises.

And the Talmud adds that, according to others, Elisha ben Avuyah left Judaism when he saw how the Romans murdered the sages of his generation and left their bodies to rot on dung heaps. 

Can we blame him? Don't we also feel tempted to dismiss God and the Torah as a bunch of fairy tales when we remember images of innocent men and women leaping to their deaths from the World Trade Center? Where is God and where is God's promised reward?

The answer can only be that there is no reward in the reality that only knows material pleasure and physical comfort. There is no balm for the righteous to be found there. Our truest and deepest joy in life is to be found in another reality. The reward for our soul is in the reality where we know ourselves to be part of God. 

If you know people who have really known profound suffering, and yet experience joy, then you know that this reality is real. Olam ha-ba is the place where pain and deprivation do not matter because we are in tune with the miracle of just being alive in a world that was given to us without our asking. That is our reward. That is the source of all true joy.