PERVERSIONS

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TOP TEN - PERVERSIONS
CHILD SACRIFICE WORSHIP OF FALSE GODS HOMOSEXUALITY SOCIAL INJUSTICE SEX WITH ANIMALS INCEST MAGIC AND SORCERY JUDICIAL CORRUPTION LIES BLASPHEMY	BIBLE REFERENCE	COMMENT
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	CHILD SACRIFICE Leviticus 18:21: You shall not give any of your children to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.	Children were the most precious thing a person had. In sacrifices to the gods, one gave the greatest gift one could. So giving a child, especially an eldest male child, was certainly the greatest gift you could offer. But did it happen? There is no real archaeological evidence to prove that child sacrifice was actually practised, but it was certainly feared and talked about by ancient people. No society ever admitted that they did it. They only ever accused their mortal enemies of the practice. As evidence, therefore, it is suspect. Containers of the ashes of children, found at ancient Carthage, were probably only the cremated remains of children who had died a natural death. The story of Abraham and his attempted sacrifice of Isaac is no proof that child sacrifice was a common practice among the Hebrews - rather the opposite, since God commands Abraham not to practice child sacrifice. On the other hand - the Bible only ever forbids something that is already happening.....
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	WORSHIP OF FALSE GODS 1 Kings 14:22: Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their ancestors had done. For they built for themselves high places, pillars, and sacred poles (Asherim) on every high hill and under every green tree; there were also male temple prostitutes in the land.	The Bible would like us to think that worship of the agricultural gods of fertility was something that happened occasionally, and then only with a few deviants. Archaeological evidence suggests that this was not so. Agriculture was the source of people's survival. In good years they prospered, in bad years (droughts, mice and insect plagues, etc.) people would simply die - first the old and the very young, then mature adults, then the young and strong. Think of the emaciated faces when there is a famine in Africa, and you will get some idea of why ancient people were so anxious about climate cycles. Certainly they laid in stores of grain against bad years - the story of Joseph and his brothers illustrates this point. But stores do not last forever. So one of their major preoccupations was how to control the weather and the fertility of their crops. The religious rituals they developed were meant to predict the weather (think of Stonehenge and its purpose) and cajole Nature into being kind to them. The Jahwist priesthood constantly tried to overcome the common people's idea of Divinity as something that was split into many different and competing forces. They proposed instead that God was One.
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	HOMOSEXUALITY Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. Romans 1:26-7: God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.	This law was written at a time when the Hebrews were in a perilous situation. They were trying to gain a foothold in the new land of Canaan, which they had entered when they fled from Egypt. But all the arable land in Canaan was already taken up, and the Hebrews could only perch precariously on the arid hillsides. They were constantly harried by the Canaanite soldiers and people, and their survival was very much at risk. They fought back of course - heroes like Samson and Deborah are examples of their struggle for survival. But they also had another strategy - producing as many children as they could. Every man and every woman was expected to put their shoulders to the wheel, so to speak. Every man had to be a father and a soldier; every woman a mother. Children, and lots of them, were essential. Homosexuality could not be tolerated.
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	SOCIAL INJUSTICE Ecclesiastes 5:8: If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and violent perversion of justice and judgment, do not be amazed at the matter; for he that is higher than the highest is watching.	The plight of the poor and oppressed is a recurring theme in the Bible. The emphasis on social justice has shaped Western civilization more than most people today seem to realize. Social justice is one of the main preoccupations of Judaism and of Christianity. Jesus' second Great Commandment 'Love your neighbor as yourself' reiterates this theme.
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	SEX WITH ANIMALS Leviticus 18:23: You shall not have sexual relations with any animal and defile yourself with it, nor shall any woman give herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it: it is perversion.	Pity the poor animals....
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	INCEST Leviticus 18:6 None of you shall approach anyone near of kin to uncover nakedness: I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born abroad. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or our daughter's daughter......You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter; it is depravity. You shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.	Ancient people (not just the Hebrews by any means) seem to have realized quite early that sexual relations between closely related people would probably result in biologically flawed offspring. Modern science tells us that children of too-closely related people have, among other things, defective immune systems. All ancient tribal groups have strict laws about who one can and cannot mate with. These are built into tribal law, usually by a system of taboos. The passage in Leviticus is a warning and a statement of taboo.
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	MAGIC AND SORCERY Deuteronomy 13:1-5: If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, “Let us follow other gods and let us serve them”, you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you. Those prophets or those who divine by dreams shall be put to death for having spoken treason against the Lord your God, who brought you of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery.	This is an injunction against superstitious belief in the power of magic, incantations and even lucky charms. It also condemns those people who promote superstition in any of its various forms. Magic was very popular in the ancient world - then as now it gave people a sense of control over events that were in fact out of their control. It may seem harmless, but belief in magic means that we hand control of our decisions and free will over to someone or something else. The commandment against false prophecy tells us to take responsibility for ourselves.
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	JUDICIAL CORRUPTION Chronicles 19:7: Jehoshaphat resided at Jerusalem; then he went out again among the people and brought them back to the Lord. He appointed judges in the land in all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city, and said to the judges “Consider what you are doing, for you judge not on behalf of human being but on the Lord’s behalf. Take care what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God, or partiality, or taking of bribes.”	A message to judges: model yourselves on the impartiality and wisdom of God.
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	LIES Psalms 5:9: For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; Evil will not sojourn with you. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful…. Make your way straight before me For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves; they flatter with their tongues.	The message pulls no punches: a person who tells lies is like an open grave, full of death and rottenness.
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	BLASPHEMY Jeremiah 28:16: Thus says the Lord: I am going to send you off the face of the earth. Within this year you will be dead, because you have spoken perversion against the Lord.	Blasphemy is not just using the name of God in a contemptuous way - though 'Jesus Christ' as an expletive seems to be acceptable now in films and on TV. Blasphemy is doing something in God's name that God would never countenance or accept. People who use the mask of religion for their own corrupt ends fall into this category.