WE'D BETTER WAKE UP, BEFORE WE BLOW UP! -- Devotional for May 28, from "Good Seeds"

When the men of the land have done all these abominations, the land will have become defiled. (Leviticus 18:27)

The book of Leviticus surely stands out as among the least underlined, least understood, least appreciated, least read and least popular books of the Bible. Some may wonder why or how it found its way into the canon of Scripture. The fact that it doesn’t stand alone, but takes its place among the five books of Moses, still doesn’t endear it to the average reader. It drones on and on in vivid, livid – almost lurid – detail describing and proscribing the depths of moral degradation men and women, even men and women of the faith, can stoop. It contains the moral code to which God holds all nations if they want to thrive, or even survive. You need not even go so far as Leviticus – just look at history, and you’ll see that when a civilization slips into depravity it is only a matter of time before it disappears into obscurity. Still considered one of the greatest civilizations of all time, the Roman Empire never was conquered from without, but gradually imploded and finally died – by a slow, sickening suicide! It’s not widely known that it was not just the epicurean spirit of “eat, drink and be merry” among the rich, and the thirst for blood in entertainment and sporting events for the masses, that did them in, but also and primarily the perversion of sex to such extremes that eventually no act, no matter how vile, was prohibited or condemned. Wait a minute – what culture are we talking about here, Roman, or American? And who are we talking about, Hugh Hefner, or Solomon? That’s right, that erstwhile godly king took the blessings of riches and fame and wisdom endowed by his Creator and turned them into playthings to placate his lusts and stimulate his pleasures. He testifies to this in Ecclesiastes 2:10, “I did not refuse myself anything my eyes desired, nor did I withhold my heart from any pleasure.” (But keep reading: a decade or two later – a verse or two in the Bible – Solomon admits how this very lifestyle left him so sick in soul, and so sick of life: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”). If God did not spare the noble Romans – nor even His Chosen People – from destruction when they toyed with the most sacred gift given to humankind, defiling the marriage bed by taking sex far beyond it, how can we possibly expect Him to wink at America and other modern nations for very much longer? A few verses earlier Moses got quite specific: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female – it is an abomination.” Nowadays the only abomination seems to be to call this an abomination. Time to wake up before we blow up – from within!