Well, nothing that great is happening in my life... I'm waiting for travels to come (May, June, July all look promising at the moment!)
However, I did just read a highly enlightening book entitled 'The Year of Living Biblically' by A.J. Jacobs (i've liked his writing since i read the Know-It-All: his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica), which is about this dude who decides, 'Hey, i'm going to live the Bible as literally as I can for a year'. It's kind of sweet really, he's doing it so that he can have a good moral pillar to raise his son by.
Anyway, it's taught me a whole bunch of obscure rules in the Bible (mostly Old Testament), that are, well, worth reproducing here:
- You shall attach tassles to the corners of your clothes.
- You shall bind money to your wrist and the Bible between your eyes (well, more like a small piece of scripture on your forehead)
- You shall not trim your beard and sideburns.
- You shall not touch any woman who is unclean (time of the month) or come into contact with anything that she has touched [i thought this was kind of sexist]
- You shall not touch any man who is unclean (has released seed in the past day) or come into contact with anything that he has touched [but the Bible is fair]
- You shall not wear mixed fibers (in particular wool + linen. This is called shatnez And there are shatnez-checkers whom you can hire to check your wardrobe and make sure you are not unwittingly sinning)
- You must shower after sex
Well, i'm of the belief that these are all sort of rituals that made sense back in their day. There's a theory that pork is not eaten in Jewish and Muslim cultures because at one point in history, something which is the equivalent of modern day Avian flu must have hit and pork was a 'dirty' meat so it was easier to say 'it is forbidden' rather than explain disinfection to a mostly illiterate society.
Then again, there was that Islamic book i read, '20 most common misunderstandings of Islam' that said there was evidence that eating pork and carnivorous animals in general affected your behaviour and made you more aggressive. I'd go for the former theory.
Anyway, strange as they are, i think there is method to the madness. For example, the whole unclean thing. When it's just women and periods it feels sexist. But when men are included in the equation, i feel a bit more sated. But then the explanation was that it's actually in reverence of life, because everytime a woman menstruates, it's like the loss of a potential life. (And this is millions of potential lives for everytime a man, erm... you know.)
An aside: There is the story of Onan, who was punished by God because he 'let his seed spill on the ground'. Apparently this has been misconceived to mean he was a dirty self-loving man. The story is, he married his brother's widow (as was customary then) and while love-making, he didn't go all the way and instead 'let his seed spill on the ground' - coitus interruptus or the old pull-out-before-you-spill-out tactic. [He had a reason, any child from the union would have been counted as his dead brother's. Complicated old customs...] God was angry because this was disrespectful to the life that had been wasted and to his wife too (wasting her baby-making abilities, i guess). And thence the term onanism was born.
Back to my point. In some strange way, i do have a greater respect for life now. I know this is a disgusting thought, but menstruating just isn't the same anymore. It sort of feels like a little foetus is bleeding out of me for a week. Highly disgusting but also makes you think "Gee... them eggs should be made into babies, not just expiring each month." And how does that make you boys feel when you spank the monkey?
So, the Bible.
I can't agree with everything in it. I mean, a lot of things are open to interpretation and people have been as liberal or as literal as they see fit. (i.e. animal sacrifice. Not practiced anymore because the Bible, or rather the Torah, stipulates that this can only be done in the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Which was destroyed way back when. So can't sacrifice. Oh, convenient!) But there are definitely good points to be taken out of it, as with most if not all religious text, so I say choose that!
And i have also discovered that I am not an atheist, as previously suspected, but more aptly, an Agnostic. (definition from Wiki)
Agnosticism (Greek: α- a-, without + γνώσις gnōsis, knowledge; after Gnosticism) is the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, ghosts, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove.
In short, i dunno whether there is a God/Gods and we may or may not find out so what the heck. Fits in with my indecisive nature perfectly =)
Disclaimer: Info here is patched up bits I remember from the book. Hope i got the facts right!
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