Today's Scripture Reading (January 24, 2022): Deuteronomy 23
Several years ago, I served as a youth worker in a
small church. The youth group needed to raise some money to help fund some of
the more expensive activities it wanted to undertake, and so, among other opportunities, we decided to do
a bottle drive. The church had made a stand against the consumption of liquor,
and as we planned the bottle drive, they decided to extend the ban on alcohol to the collection of bottles that once held the liquor. The problem was that the lion's share of the money collected from a bottle drive
was gained from beer and other liquor bottles. I admit that I didn't understand the
prohibition at the time, but we followed the directions we had received from
church leaders anyway.
The same denomination had also banned gambling in any
form, including lotteries. And along with the prohibition on buying a lottery
ticket, it also prohibited accepting any government grants funded by lottery sales. And again, lottery sales
were the foundation of most of the fundings available to non-profit organizations, so member churches were unable
to take advantage of these funds.
I admit that I have not always agreed with these
stands on morality, but I understand them more now than in years past. The response is ingrained in the
Mosaic Law. Moses reminds the people that they were not to act as a "shrine prostitute." According to the Law, that action was morally
beneath them. They were created with a higher purpose in mind. But, if they did
work as a prostitute, then any proceeds raised through the endeavor could not
be used to pay for the Temple tax or any
other Temple-directed activities. The principle is straightforward;
if an action was declared to be immoral, then the proceeds that might be obtained through
these actions must be immoral as well.
Anglican and Puritan biblical commentator, John
Trapp, writing in the middle years of the seventeenth century (the 1600s), accused the Roman Catholic Church of
violating this precedent. And his issue was not a peripheral
cultural interpretation of the law. He accused the Pope of not just turning a blind eye to
the profits that were gained through prostitution but of being the pimps who
recruited and turned the prostitutes out. In 1659 Trapp wrote:
And what a stinking shame is that,
that stews and brothel houses are licensed by the Pope, who reaps no small
profit by them? The Papists themselves write with detestation, that at Rome a
Jewish maid might not be admitted into the stews of whoredom, unless she would
be first baptized.
Truth?
Unfortunately, yes. Stories abound of corruption inside the highest levels of
the Christian Church. Standing among the worst was Pope Alexander VI, who led
the Roman Catholic Church from 1492 until he died in 1503. Alexander VI has
been described as a thoroughly secular Pope and is remembered as one of the
most corrupt Popes in the church's history. Alexander VI entered into a scheme
to sell his daughter into marriage to wealthy merchants, only to annul the wedding
as soon as the dowry was paid so that he could sell her again to the next wealthy
merchant that happened by. He also was known for instituting the Banquet of the
Chestnuts. At a gathering for church leaders, he hired fifty prostitutes to attend
the conference. The prostitutes entered the room with baskets of chestnuts. Once
they had taken their places in the center of the men, they threw their
chestnuts onto the floor, and the gathered leaders auctioned to buy the
prostitute's clothes. Once the clothing had been sold, and the prostitutes were
standing naked in the room, the girls were ordered to pick up the chestnuts. (And,
somehow, collecting beer bottles seems to be mild in comparison.) It probably
isn't hard to imagine what happened next. John Trapp's condemnation was well
deserved.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 24
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