My alarm went off. I rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and plodded into the kitchen. Switching the kettle on, while rubbing my bleary eyes, I gathered the necessary coffee-making implements and waited patiently for the water to boil. After preparing my locally-produced coffee, and waiting the perfect 3 minutes (no arguing!) for it to brew, I finally poured the dark “wake-up juice” into the marbled-blue mug that our teammates had picked out for us before we arrived in country. At last, I had smelt with the smelling of the nose, but now I would taste with my own tongue. I reached out, laid my hand on the mug of long-awaited coffee, poised to raise it to my lips… and stopped. Something was wrong. My mind instinctively knew what short-circuit was happening at that early hour of the day before consciousness had fully taken control; I was holding it in my left hand.
Having been living in a Muslim-dominated society for the previous few months, I was by this stage used to constantly grappling with cultural obligations, the rewiring of the brain and of three decades of learned motor memory. One of the biggest and most obvious ones: Don’t use your left hand.*
From the day we landed here, and I accidentally gave some money to a shopkeeper with my left hand, a longer-term teammate gently reminded me to watch out for it. We daily have locals in our house, usually eating with us, or at the very least drinking some water in their presence. So always the mind is on high alert to override learned patterns and attempt to establish new ones.
So, as I, in the privacy of my kitchen, lifted my cup to drink with my left hand, I had been so well conditioned that even though there were no peering eyes, watching to see how I acted, nonetheless, it just felt wrong. I quickly put down the mug, spun the handle around, and lifted it with my right hand, breathing in its lovely aroma, and sipping peacefully on my morning brew. All was right again.
But this (oft repeated) event opened my eyes to a Biblical reality that we all need. As one reads through Leviticus, there are two major sections focussed on many purity laws, and about delineating between clean and unclean animals, and what to do in X situation, or if Y animal dies and falls into a pot, etc. In fact, it’s for this very reason that one perhaps does not read through Leviticus, but rather duly abandons their yearly reading plan, or at the very least might be tempted to skip over it altogether. It seems so foreign, it seems so weird. And it certainly doesn’t seem to translate into 21st Century living for most people in the West.
What we fail to realise is the catechetical nature of the book of Leviticus. As the centre point (and, I would argue, climax) of the Torah or Teaching, its goal is not to simply lay down a law to live by, or to provide fodder for debates over what verses we use. The goal of Leviticus is teaching. And it is hands on teaching much like that of a missionary landing in foreign culture. It’s the kind of teaching that rewires the brain, not intending that we try to dot every i and cross every t, but that rather that it would be so engrained in us, like me eating with my right hand, that we form a discerning mind. That even at 5 o’ clock in the morning, we can somehow instinctively know, “something is wrong”.
Leviticus begins with a call and a provision to draw near, but then narrates the story of two priests who are completely undiscerning (perhaps even drunk), and waltz into God’s presence on their own terms, not by the means he has provided. And judgement falls.
The message is clear. Yes, there is the wonderful heartbeat of God that bids men to draw near, and intensely desires them to do so, and then he himself provides the means for that fellowship to take place. But it is a dangerous thing to draw near to the living God. And it is one thing to have the means to draw near in the first place, but how shall one maintain that relationship that has been opened with this One who is a consuming fire? By holiness.
And so, Leviticus quickly moves to the first section of holiness laws, that are intended as a teaching device to rewire the heart and the mind, to create a discerning character within a man or woman, that they may maintain a proximity to the God who bids them come.
The lists are surely not exhaustive, nor are they intended to be. Rather, they are intended to discipline the body, that the mind may follow, and that everywhere the Israelite looks, they would see things through the lens of “clean” and “unclean”. Or “that which keeps me close to God” and “that which will force me from his presence”. And with trained minds, and hands, the heart would ideally follow suit and desire to “be holy, for I am holy”. This was the explicit command given to Aaron and his remaining sons, as the prototypical priests for the nation that was designed to become a kingdom of priests.
“You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel…”
– Leviticus 10:10-11
So, what about us. It is easy to look at places like that in which we live, or to look at Old Testament laws as merely some sort of legalistic framework, designed to trip us up. But even if we don’t inhabit those worlds, we need to ask ourselves, am I being formed to distinguish between what is holy and what is unholy? Am I growing in discernment as to what is good and draws me closer to Christ, and that which would draw me away.
In an age where lines are getting ever more blurred, the need for this kind of formation is an imperative. Believers can no longer just rely on the legal system, or society’s approval for discerning moral issues. Everywhere we turn, good is being called evil, and evil good. Rather, we need people who are trained so well in distinguishing good from evil, that even when there is no explicit command available to them, they instinctively know what is unholy and what is holy.
The systems of this world are not intended to draw us nearer to God, but to draw us away from him. Not holy, but unholy. And they will not do so by trying to force us to do evil, so much as by simply numbing us to any sort of distinction at all. We will go about our day not really caring about whether or not the choices we make, the things we do, are bringing us closer or further from God’s presence.
We need eyes that truly see the world for what it is. That truly notice the all-pervading, ever-present reality of sin in this world. It permeates every single aspect of life, just as Leviticus demonstrates in a practical way. We need know how to deal with it when it sticks to us and makes us unclean. We need people who know the Scriptures, who spend time in God’s presence, who actively seek to view the world through God’s eyes. We need those who teach others, as Leviticus was intended to do, in order that right discernment be formed in us.
And ultimately, we need a longing after God’s presence. We need to hear the call to draw near, and actually desire to do so. For that is the true motivation for holiness. To be holy and dwell with the holy one. And without discerning hearts, that sort of fellowship will be impossible. And when we fall, we still have that desire in our hearts to draw near, so we remember his provision in the offering, and we seek fellowship again.
May God grant each one of us to walk the path of holiness. And in the words of one poet:
“If I stand, let me stand on the promise, that you will pull me through. And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you.“
*For the uninitiated, in many countries of the world, the use of the left hand for most things is considered taboo. Often things like eating are done with the hand rather than utensils, and there’s just generally a lot more physical interaction than in the West where we tap cards on machines instead of passing cash etc. And so, the left hand is reserved for one particular duty… especially in regions of the world like our own, where toilet paper is something normally only Westerners use. Hence, everything from eating, to giving something to another person, is done with the right hand.
Imitators of Those 
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