No Disfigured Face, Hunched Back
Or Crushed Testicles Allowed!
(11 August, 2020 meditation on my prescribed morning reading: Lev. 21:20)
That is the word from Moses on physical qualifications for service in the ceremonies for cleansing unto holiness. Now the first two would be off-putting to the participants in public religious procedures. An ugly face and sloppy posture might well be a distraction, but the matter of those presumably covered gonads is another point of interest. It is a curious restriction, indeed! What is the big deal about such a disability of the reproductive essentials? It must surely be the value that is placed upon human reproduction and its sacredness as that realm in which the divine image is re-created in another human person. What potential!
The “image” of God – subsisting in people – is a feature of spiritual status and power for communication with the Holy One. No denigration of this “image” shall be permitted. Symbolically and actually, the spirit of God particularly indwells human beings in contrast from all other animals of His creations. Destabilization or disablement of that “image” is prohibited.
The capacity of human beings to commune with their holy Creator and Savior must be facilitated and maintained. That condition – of communication and fellowship – comes ultimately by the mediatory action of the Savior, Jesus. But in the regular course of our associations with one another, it is preserved at the least by our reverent behavior. We do not abuse the forms, the structures, in which the actions of the Spirit operate. Human beings, those containers of His “witness” and “presence” among His creatures, must be specially hallowed and their reproduction must not be opposed or attenuated. And in their corporate gathering to offer due worship to the Holy One who made them, they are not to allow their representatives to be defective in their reproductive parts.
(I wonder if this speaks to vasectomy and other means of obstructing the procreation of offspring in His image?)
Reproduction of those bearing His image is to be remembered and guarded as a holy endeavor and gift!
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