A reflection revisited

This is something I wrote some years back. It still seems pertinent. 

Whatever.
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In the early days of Christianity, when all Christians were Jews, the community was divided over whether or not to accept Gentile believers into the church. If you think this was easily resolved, I suggest you read Acts 10-11; 15; 21-23 and the entire letter to the Galatians. It was not completely settled during Paul's lifetime, so you might want to pick up a decent history of the early church and learn what was going on.

Why could good Jewish Christians (many of whom had actually known Jesus face to face) not see what seems so obvious today to most Christians -- most of whom are descendants of Gentiles, of course?

Gentiles were impure.

It wasn't just that they did not have the same faith. After all, they were willing to embrace the teachings of Jesus. But they ate disgusting things, put filth in their mouths: pork, shellfish, rattlesnake meat, and other Levitican abominations. (See Leviticus 11 for examples.)

It was not a rational reaction, it was a gut reaction. These people were filthy! Their very lifestyle -- which they did not seem inclined to change, since they were not willing to be circumcised and accept the Mosaic law -- was terrible! How could they be welcomed into the church of God?

They were an abomination to the Lord.

It didn't matter if you liked them, or if they were perfectly nice people who maintained their house and ran an honest business. This had nothing to do with that. It was God's word that had to be obeyed!

Yet somehow Gentiles were allowed in. Our ancestors were, yours and mine. Those impure people with their unspeakable habits were welcomed in. And they kept eating pork and shrimp. They kept wearing clothes that mixed two kinds of fabric (that cotton and polyester blend you are wearing is forbidden by Leviticus 1:19); they sowed corn and wheat alongside one another (also forbidden by the same chapter); they bred hybrid cattle (another no-no). They ate cheeseburgers -- the poster food for treif.

It seems to me that the church (today, sadly, we must say churches) was never all that welcoming, left to its own devices. It has always had to learn. It still does.