By Diana Holbourn
During Becky's Last Term at University, she Takes Interest in Controversial Debates Between an Atheist and a Christian she Knows
Book five of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 1.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
The girls having the ongoing discussion about the Bible met up at the priest's house early on the Sunday evening of the following week to have another conversation about it.
They chatted amiably for a little while.
One of them said, "I had a bit of a joke about being old on an Internet forum not long ago. This man started a thread wishing me a happy birthday. It wasn't quite my birthday yet, but nearly.
"I joked, 'Oh, thank you very much. My birthday's actually in a couple of days' time. I congratulate you on your brilliant foresight that enabled you to spot it ahead of time. I'm 702 years old. I tend to keep that a secret, since if I told people, I would become a thing of novelty and curiosity, so interesting and distracting that no thread would ever get very far without people wanting to drop the subject it was supposed to be about and ask me about it. That might upset the ones who started the threads.
"'I can see why people would be fascinated. I mean, when I was born, there were no cars or trains; no computers; there was no electricity; no hot water on tap in people's homes; and most people worked in the fields. I remember it well! I lived through national disasters like disease epidemics. I lived through mass migration to America. In fact, I was the one who caused the discovery of America. I was nearly 200 years old at the time. Christopher Columbus was my boyfriend, and we were thinking of getting married. But one night, we had a massive row, and he stormed out of the house! As he was leaving, he said he was never coming back, and that I'd made him so upset and angry that he wanted to get as far away from me as possible. I thought he'd probably change his mind the next day. But he didn't. In fact, so seriously did he mean it that he got himself a ship, and sailed across the ocean! So the discovery of America is really all my fault.'
"The man I said that to replied, 'Speaking of Columbus, do you know what his friends did when he told them he was going to discover America? They laughed. Yes, really! They laughed. And look how silly he made them feel.'
"I joked, 'Ah, but they only laughed at him because in Columbus' time, to "discover America" was slang for to do something extremely risky, like ironing on a steep mountain slope or on a slippery rock in the middle of a deep fast-flowing river. All the boys would have been bound to have laughed at Columbus wanting to do some ironing.'
"Another joke I made about being old was when someone said some early homo sapiens were found in some caves in the Middle East who were between twenty and forty thousand years old. Perhaps he didn't mean to quite phrase it like that.
"I joked, 'How did they know they were that old? Were you one of them? Wow, so if you were, can you remember that far back then? Was it you who told them how old you all were? I knew you were old, but I didn't realise you're an ancient historical artefact from the caves of the Middle East! Hey, tell us what it was like.'"
The girls laughed.
Not long after that, the conversation became serious, and a bit controversial, when Deborah said, "You know, I reckon that if a lot of Christians thought more deeply about some of the things Jesus said, they wouldn't be so keen to follow him! Either that, or they'd get a bit worried!
"I mean, take some of the things he's supposed to have said in that Sermon on the Mount, and in a similar sermon in Luke's Gospel. I heard an atheist say to a Christian that he thinks the Sermon on the Mount was the best moral lesson ever given, and that it's a pity Christians don't live up to it. I disagreed with him about it being the best moral lesson around. I mean, I think there's way better moral teaching than that, such as in self-help books about controlling anger. Jesus said people who were angry with someone without a cause would be in danger of going to hell; but he didn't give any practical lessons on how to control anger, like some self-help books do; so they're a lot better at helping people actually be more moral! And I actually think some of the things in those sermons Jesus gave sound like toxic irresponsible advice that would just make people worse off if they followed it!"
Sandra joked, "You don't mince your words, do you! Is there a bit in the Sermon on the Mount I can't remember about how Jesus told new mothers to leave their babies out in the cold for the good of their health or something?"
Deborah said, "No! Nothing that bad! I'm thinking of passages like that bit about how if someone takes something from you, you shouldn't ask for it back. Well, I think that's in the sermon in Luke's Gospel. I'm a bit vague on the details, because obviously reading the Bible isn't my thing; but I seem to remember that sermon also says people should be willing to lend things to others, not expecting anything back, and they should give to anyone who asks them for something. That seems to me to be a good incentive not to become a Christian. I mean, if some random stranger, say, asks me if they can borrow or have my laptop, it's nice to think I can feel free to tell them to bog off if I want to, instead of thinking I have to give it to them because Jesus said so. ... Well, I suppose whether I told them to 'bog off' or not would depend partly on how big and tough they looked; but you know what I mean.
"But that thing about not trying to get back what's taken from you sounds like a burglars' charter to me! I mean, imagine a burglar stealing stuff from you, and then telling you that since you're an obedient Christian, you shouldn't try to get it back!
"There's actually a Christian on my corridor who had a dilemma because of that command. That's what made me take notice of it. She put some stuff in the fridge in our kitchen, and someone on our corridor nicked it. And then it happened again! It happened a few times. We actually know who it was who took it! But she wondered if she ought to complain to him about it, just because of that command Jesus gave about not asking for stuff back if someone takes it! So much for Christianity! I suggested she try atheism instead; but she didn't fancy the idea, for some reason! She decided she would ask the food thief in the end if he'd taken it, and he admitted to it, saying he didn't think she'd mind. As if! But she didn't ask him to get her any replacements or anything, just because of that command! She wasn't sure if she should. She did at least ask him not to do it any more though, and he said he wouldn't. But what kind of leader tells his followers to do things like let thieves get away with things!
"And what about this silly command to love your enemies! That's even worse! What if this country was being invaded? If someone tried to kill your family, what would Jesus want you to do, hug them for it?
"And what about this 'turn the other cheek' thing? I actually heard about something bad that happened to a famous man in the 19th century, Doctor Barnardo, I think it was. I heard that one day, he went into a pub, or somewhere like that, and a group of thugs attacked him and beat him up badly; and people urged him to report it to whatever kind of police force they had in those days, but he refused, saying it would be against the gospel to do that. He must have been thinking of those commands Jesus supposedly gave in the Sermon on the Mount, like the ones to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. Why would Jesus want his followers to be passive victims, trying their best to love people who did them harm? What would be the point? It doesn't sound very loving of him to have given commands like that! I bet most of Jesus' followers don't even know he said those things!"
Judith gave a long sigh. She wondered if it had really been a good idea to try to evangelise Deborah. She said, "I'm just going to go and get another drink."
The others chuckled, and Tracy joked, "Now Deborah's driving Judith to drink!"
Judith smiled, but protested, "No, I'm going to get a soft drink! I want to still be thinking clearly by the end of it, so I can answer the questions properly! I just need a bit of refreshment, and I need to spend a couple of minutes thinking about how to answer what Deborah said before I try to. I'll be back!"
When she'd had her drink, she said, "OK, as for that loving enemies thing, the word translated as love in the original language doesn't mean a sentimental mushy kind of emotional love, but a practical concern and willingness to help people. So, for example, Jesus could say harsh things to people who were doing wrong that would sound unloving because they were so critical, but if, say, one of them fell over and broke their leg, and he healed them, he'd be showing love to them, even though he might carry on criticising them when they were better.
"There are passages in the Old Testament that illustrate the principle of loving enemies, like one where it says that God told the Israelites that if they saw their enemy's ox or donkey fallen down under a load, they ought to help them help it up, and if they saw it escaped and on the loose, they should return it to them.
"It's actually possible to make enemies less hostile to you by doing kind things for them, at least sometimes. I read about a man who said that when he was a boy, he got teased and called names at school after one of his parents walked out on the family and then the other died, and he got taken in by a poor family. I don't know why the kids in his class at school bullied him; maybe a lot of them had richer parents so they could afford nicer things and they thought he looked shabby or something; or maybe they somehow thought having no parents would be fun to mock him about, for some reason; I dunno.
"But one day, his new mother suggested he try to make the bullies like him by helping them out with things and getting interested in them. He gave it a try, helping people with their schoolwork if they were struggling with it. He really got into helping people, even helping the widows of a few men who'd died with some heavy work on their farms on his way to and from school. And the bullying stopped, and his fellow pupils started thinking of him as a friend. And when he met his old schoolmates later in life, a lot of them thanked him for what he'd done at school.
"I'm not saying that would always work. But it seems it can sometimes. And I heard about a prisoner of war in a German prison camp in the Second World War who said one of the guards was nice to them, and he said it was because he himself had been a prisoner of war in a British prisoner of war camp in the First World war, and he'd been treated with respect, so he felt like returning the favour, or had good feelings towards the people of the country where he'd been taken captive. Not that that kind of thing would always happen. But it's worth bearing in mind that being respectful to people you don't really feel like being respectful towards can be worthwhile. And it can help keep you out of trouble too, since being unkind to people who don't like you can just make them want to do worse things.
"But when it comes to fighting in a war, or working towards putting a criminal behind bars, and that kind of thing, it's a question of priorities; showing love to the greatest number of people, or the innocent as opposed to the guilty, would be doing the better thing. Sometimes it's impossible to treat both sides well at the same time. I very much doubt Jesus would want anyone to suffer for the sake of allowing enemies to do what they felt like.
"As for this command about giving to anyone who asks and not trying to get back what's taken from you, the kind of society the command - or recommendation - was given in matters. In those days, there wasn't a sophisticated police force like there is now, and trying to get things back from some people would likely have led to conflict or even violence. I mean, it still can today, if the person who's taken something from you's nasty, which there's a pretty high chance they will be. And since there wasn't sophisticated healthcare in Jesus' day either, you might have ended up worse off than you were after they'd taken your things because of that. I mean, you still could today. And the word 'ask' carries more the idea of demanding in the original language, or so I've read.
"It's the same with what Jesus said about turning the other cheek. The idea was that conflict shouldn't be escalated if you could help it.
"But it never said people shouldn't defend themselves against serious violence. Jesus was talking about getting a slap on the cheek when he said turn the other one, which is very different from if someone tries to beat you up. That man in the 19th century you mentioned might actually have been doing society a favour if he'd reported what happened to the police, and the thugs were arrested and put in prison where the rest of society would be protected from them.
"Another thing is that when Jesus said don't refuse to let people borrow things, he was talking to a society where there were people in so much need that they might need to borrow or ask people for things like food to survive. The command's basically saying be generous and caring to people.
"But Jesus was talking about how people shouldn't think of themselves as having a right to get revenge when he said those things. The passage pretty much starts with him saying, 'Do not resist evil', which was apparently a well-known Jewish proverb that really had the meaning of not trying to outdo people in doing evil when they did something wrong to you. That's what I've read. It seems that there was a well-known saying at the time that went, 'Love your friends and hate your enemies'. Jesus quoted it and was just illustrating how far from that principle people should really be living. He was probably exaggerating a bit to make the point, since after all, just about ten verses before he said that thing about loving enemies, he said things about how if your eye leads you to sin because you see things that tempt you to do bad things, like chase after other people's wives because you're physically attracted to them, you ought to gouge it out and throw it away, which he almost certainly didn't mean literally.
"So it seems that what he said about not asking for what's taken from you back doesn't have to be thought of as an absolute command, but a guideline about how people should have a mind to be generous, and to try to resolve things peacefully as far as possible, or to let things go if it's not important."
Deborah said, "That's an awkward one though. The command's still open to abuse. I've heard about people who employed cleaners, who they thought had started stealing little things, like food items, but they didn't say anything, just letting it go, because they thought it wasn't all that important; but then bigger items started going missing. I heard that thieves can get bolder and bolder the more they think they can get away with, because when they're not being caught for stealing little things, they think they may as well try stealing more; and when they still don't get caught, they try stealing bigger things, and so on."
Judith said, "Yeah, well people can probably feel free to use their own judgment about that kind of thing. After all, you can sack people diplomatically before things get too bad, instead of laying down the law in an abusive way. I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't have wanted what he said to be thought of as a licence to steal. After all, it would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments.
"There are other commands in the Bible that aren't meant to be taken literally by Christians today, but what really counts is the principle of them, like the ones about loving enemies. Did I say something about the principle of some commands being the important thing before? I can't remember now, ... and I haven't even been drinking. Well, not alcohol anyway! But the Sermon on the Mount was contrasting the conventional thinking around in those days and the kinds of things the religious leaders of the day taught with the ideals Jesus' followers ought to try to live up to. I don't suppose Jesus intended his sermon to be the 'best moral lesson ever given'.
"I'll tell you a story to illustrate what I've been saying, about a book I read by a vicar's wife about her life. One thing she said was that the milk the milkman put outside her house for her early in the morning started disappearing, and she thought someone must be stealing it, so she decided to get up really early one morning and try to catch them at it, and give them a peace of her mind! So she waited for them one morning, and she saw it was a young woman. She chased after her, meaning to yell at her, and almost caught up with her, but I think the woman managed to get away. She didn't steal her milk after that though.
"But I thought, 'That's not really the way a vicar's wife ought to behave! If the woman has to even steal milk, maybe it means she's a single parent in severe financial hardship, and she needs some advice about what benefits she could claim or something. You could have pinned a note to something near where the milkman put your milk, saying something like, "To the person who keeps stealing my milk, you must be poor if you even have to steal milk! Come and visit me one day and we can talk about what benefits you might be entitled to from the government that you're not getting, or try the local citizens' advice bureau."' She could have written down the address of it. Or she could have advised the person to go to her church and speak to her husband the vicar about it.
"I'm not saying I think people ought to be lenient to all criminals. I mean, some atheist once told me there are criminals in America who pretend to have been converted to Christianity and inspired to be better people because of it, because they know some parole boards will be impressed by that and think they must have given up being criminals, so they're more likely to agree to them being released from prison early. I think parole boards ought to be pretty careful about whose release they agree to, since so many offenders re-offend after they've left prison.
"But there are some crimes that seem as if they've got a higher chance than average of being acts of desperation instead of nastiness, so I think starting out by having a mind to be merciful in cases like that will be in line with Christian teaching."
The food that a group of students had cooked for the people at the party was ready, and they all felt like getting some.
While they were eating, one of the girls smiled and said, "You know, talking of stealing, I post on an Internet forum, and when I first went there, I put quite a few jokes in the humour section that I'd found on the Internet. I actually said they were from the Internet; I didn't claim I'd made them up myself. I did put quite a few there that I did make up myself.
"But one day I was in an argument, and someone who claimed to be a security guard in real life accused me of only arguing with the man I was arguing with because I didn't like him; and then he accused me of stealing all the ideas for jokes I put on the board, saying he used to think they were all mine, but then he decided he reckoned I nicked them.
"I said I'd never even claimed most of them were mine, and then joked, 'You're quick to jump to conclusions, aren't you. I wonder if that says anything about the way you do your security guard job, if you really are one: Maybe you might tackle a person to the ground when you discover him in the building you're guarding, and later say to a policeman, "Sorry sir, I assumed he was coming to steal the silver; it just didn't occur to me that he might be the owner of this place!"'
"And there was this man on the forum I used to joke around with, who came from a hot sunny country a long way away. We used to tease each other. One day, I teased him by saying,
"'I heard something about your country recently. Is it true that the weather's so lovely there that everyone lives outside? There are no buildings at all there? I heard that everyone does everything they need to do outdoors. There are little family plots of ground that families live on, where they keep their stuff.
"'I heard that used to work nicely, but nowadays, when people have more valuable stuff, there's more of a risk of people stealing things. So each family appoints one of their number as a security guard who stands and keeps watch all day. That's also useful for when any of the family wants to do something private. Every time they catch someone looking at their stuff with envy, or every time anyone in the family wants to do something in private, the security guard starts up a noisy and elaborate acrobatic war dance, both to scare wannabe thieves away, and also as a diversion to stop people looking at the private things going on.
"'One problem used to be that when anyone saw anyone doing that complex dance, they knew instantly that something interesting might be going on, so they'd watch specially. So the dances got more noisy and aggressive to scare people off looking, as well as to be a diversion.
"'They do have some strange habits in your country, don't they.'
"The man joked that they only really start living outside when they hear an emergency announcement that a certain other member of the forum - someone neither of us liked - has boarded a flight and is on the way there, since they want to protect all the nice things on the island from theft and vandalism."
The girls grinned.
Then Deborah smiled and said, "Hey, since we're supposed to be talking about religion today, here's a religion joke. I don't expect you to mind me telling it. Well, I hope you won't. I read it on the Internet:
"A man who smelled like a distillery lurched drunkenly onto a train and sat down next to a priest. He had lipstick smudged across his face, and half a bottle of gin sticking out of his coat pocket.
"He was engrossed in reading a paper for a while. Then he looked up and asked the priest, 'Hey, father, what causes arthritis?'
"The priest didn't know, but he thought it would be a good opportunity to teach the drunkard a lesson, and said, 'It's caused by drunkenness, and getting down and dirty with promiscuous women, and treating people badly.'
"The drunkard got back to reading his paper, muttering, 'Well I'll be darned!'
"A minute later, the priest thought he might have been a bit uncaring, so he nudged the drunkard and said, 'Hey, I'm sorry if I was a bit abrupt there. How long have you had arthritis?'
"The drunkard replied, 'Oh, I haven't got arthritis myself. I've just been reading an article that says the pope's got it.'"
The others chuckled.
Then one said, "Actually, that reminds me of something that I heard happened in real life. There was a taxi driver in New York, and he used to quite often see drunken tramps begging by the side of the road. One day, he decided to try to teach one of them a lesson, to see if he could start him thinking about the wrong turns he'd made in life, in the hope that he'd do a bit of soul-searching and decide to change for the better. So he stopped the next time he saw one of them, opened his window, and said to him, 'How do you like the idea of me asking you one question, and if you get it right, I'll give you a dollar?'
"The drunk man loved the idea. The taxi driver asked him the question, 'Who is responsible for making the decisions that made your life turn out the way it has?'
"To his surprise, the drunken man jumped up with glee, and with a broad smile, declared, 'I am!'
"The taxi driver thought, 'So much for my ability to teach people lessons!'"
The girls giggled.
Not long afterwards, the conversation turned serious again, as Judith said, "Anyway, if you really want to get back to talking about religion, Deborah, we were talking about the Sermon on the Mount, weren't we. I know you said you don't like it. But I reckon you might like it better if you knew more about it. I mean, I'm not saying I know all that much about it myself. But there are some things I do know that I reckon you might find interesting, that might make you change your opinion about it. Well, hopefully.
"One thing is that in a lot of it, Jesus was comparing some things the Law of Moses said people should do with ideal standards of behaviour, making the point that rather than strictly obeying the laws but with a hard-hearted attitude, like it seems some of the religious leaders of the day did, who condemned people who didn't obey them, it was important to be caring and kind and considerate.
"It wasn't just the laws of Moses the religious leaders insisted people should obey. There were loads of little rules and regulations invented by other religious leaders nearer the time of Jesus, intended to prevent people from breaking the Law of Moses by accident, by forbidding all kinds of things that might cause people to do that. But some of them put a real burden on people. Actually, Judaism's still like that today.
"To give an example of the little rules, there's one about how meat and milk should never be eaten in the same meal, I think, because Moses taught that people should never boil a kid in its mother's milk, and some religious leaders thought there would always be the possibility that any meat someone ate would just happen to contain goat meat, and that any milk they drank with it might have been boiled and just happen to contain milk from the goat's mother. I think that's the reason for it anyway.
"I don't know what the original law was really for; but I would imagine it might have been to do with not treating animals callously; or I read that the verse that says, 'Never boil a kid in its mother's milk' might have been an idiom that was understood by the people at the time, but it fell out of use, so later generations thought the verse was a command that was meant to be taken literally.
"The command appears three times, and at all those times, it's next to one about how the people of Israel had to tithe the best of their new crops, to provide food for the priests and poor people. It would probably have been a temptation for them to mix old wheat and other crops left over from the year before with the new food they were tithing, so it would look as if they were giving a lot, but they could keep more of the new food for themselves, especially since there might not have been that much of it to go around sometimes. So it's possible that the verses about not boiling a kid in its mother's milk were using an idiom of the day that meant don't mix the produce of an older generation with the newest, or something like that. I'm not sure about that. But it seems possible.
"But anyway, another example of lots of little rules being invented to stop people breaking a biblical law is that one law of Moses says people shouldn't work on the Sabbath, and a long time later, lots of little regulations were brought in to try to prevent people from accidentally breaking the law by doing things that could be classified as work. Orthodox Jews today have to obey a whole load of little rules that forbid them from doing even little things; and it seems the list has been updated by rabbis when new technologies have come along that they think might cause people to accidentally break a law, and there have sometimes been disputes among them about whether to bring a new one in, such as one that even forbids Jews from using water filters on the Sabbath, because some rabbis interpret the Old Testament law about how people shouldn't work on the Sabbath so strictly that it seems they somehow even apply it to inanimate objects, and consider the work of water filters to be sifting clean water from less clean water, which is work. Something like that anyway.
"It seems that some Jews in New York were worried about annoying God by disobeying that, or worried about what other people would think of them, so they resorted to buying bottled water, so they could drink that on the Sabbath instead of drinking filtered water.
"The reason they wanted to filter their water in the first place was because of a new rule some rabbis had brought in not long before, or had thought ought to be brought in. A lot of Jews in New York started buying water filters, after it was discovered that there were teeny tiny crustaceans in the water supply - which have similarities to the shellfish the Old Testament Law says are unclean and shouldn't be eaten. A lot of them could only be seen under a microscope, and others could only be seen as tiny white specks. But it was no wonder people wanted to filter their water after finding out they were in the water supply, whether they were Jews or not! But apparently they're in some water supplies all over the world. Yuck! Mind you, I suppose we eat animal life all the time without being yucked out by it - or at least some of us do.
"But some Jews in New York started worrying that they'd be eating things God forbade if they drank water with those things in, so God might be angry, or their rabbis would be or something. There were differences of opinion among the rabbis about whether microscopic or near-microscopic creatures counted, and whether water filters should really be banned on the Sabbath; so a lot of Jews were confused about what to do. Some rabbis said there was no need to ban the consumption of tiny little things that couldn't even be seen except under a microscope, which would mean there's no way they could have been seen when the Law of Moses was given, so they wouldn't have been banned in those days.
"After all, the reason ordinary shellfish are banned under Jewish law is probably because they can often contain toxins; I read that they can eat parasites and the dead skin of other fish. And I read that they can't expel waste as effectively as more sophisticated organisms can, so they might contain sand and bodily waste, unless they've had their innards removed. And I read that if they're not fresh, they can be contaminated with bacteria like salmonella and E. coli that can cause food poisoning. So it's no wonder the Old Testament says they're unclean and should be avoided. But the tiny little things found in New York's water might have been different altogether. So it seems they should really have been judged on their merits, not on their similarities to the shellfish the Old Testament was referring to."
Judith continued, "There are lots of animals the Old Testament Law said were unclean and shouldn't be eaten, and the laws do make sense. Most of those animals are things people in this country wouldn't want to eat anyway, like vultures and hawks, and owls and rats and bats. And I think all of the animals the Old Testament said people shouldn't eat are bad for you. Some of them are scavengers that'll eat anything, including sewage and dead animals.
"Pigs are one of the things the Old Testament says are unclean. Pork does contain good supplies of some vitamins and minerals and a lot of protein, so it can be healthy to eat in moderation, as long as it's properly cooked.
"Eating under-cooked pork can be risky though, especially because there's a risk of picking up parasites from pork if it's not cooked properly. I think there are quite a few different kinds of parasites that pigs can end up being infected with, because they're happy to eat things like scraps of leftover meat that have been thrown out that turn out to have been infected with them, and then the parasites can be passed on to humans when they eat parts of the pigs, although infection with them's way way more common in the developing world than it is here, partly because precautions are taken to get rid of them here, such as that I read that pork tends to be frozen for some time, which kills them.
"But I think one of the most common kinds of parasites people in some parts of the world sometimes catch from pork is a worm that causes an illness called trichinosis, which sometimes causes things like vomiting and diarrhoea and fatigue, and then goes on in some people to cause muscle aches and joint pains and itching and chills. And people can develop stomach cramps and swelling around the eyes. In a small minority of cases, people can get more serious problems. It's rare for anyone to get it in the Western world nowadays, because there are probably safety measures in place to stop outbreaks from happening; but in the olden days it was probably a whole lot more common, and there might have been quite a lot of it about in countries near ancient Israel. A lot of cases are really mild, but they can be more severe, depending on how many of the parasites a person's eaten.
"And there are other diseases people can get from pork if it isn't prepared well. I read that there's one called cysticercosis, caused by a tapeworm, which is thought to affect about 50 million people a year in developing countries, and can cause epilepsy.
"So that was probably a risk in ancient times too.
"Mind you, I think all kinds of meat can cause food poisoning if it isn't cooked properly.
"But anyway, about shellfish: They can sometimes cause illnesses too, partly because if they live in polluted water, they'll pick up a lot of contamination from it, so humans will get it in their systems if they eat them.
"I read that if you collect shellfish in the wild and then don't cook them properly, you'll be at a high risk of poisoning from whatever viruses or bacteria they're contaminated with, as well as from heavy metals and industrial chemicals that they might have picked up, and sometimes other things. But in countries like this one, I think a lot of shellfish are farmed in waters specially set aside for them, and they're often checked to make sure they're not contaminated, and if they are, they're purified in some way, unless the contamination's so bad they have to be just abandoned.
"There are quite a few different kinds of shellfish poisoning that people can get from shellfish caught in polluted water though, especially if it isn't cooked well, although I read that quite a few of the toxins that cause the poisoning don't get destroyed even after cooking.
"I found out that one of the worst can even make people paralysed for a few days. Another kind of shellfish poisoning makes people's throats and tongues and lips feel numb, and then the numbness spreads to other parts of the body, and they get diarrhoea and vomiting and stomach cramps and dizziness and muscle aches, and other things. I'm not sure how long it lasts. People with asthma and lung diseases who get it can suffer shortness of breath and coughing along with the other symptoms.
"There's another kind of shellfish poisoning that can even cause confusion and memory loss, along with headaches and even seizures, as well as vomiting and diarrhoea and stomach cramps.
"And there's a milder form of shellfish poisoning that just causes vomiting and diarrhoea and stomach pain, and doesn't last long.
"And some bacteria and viruses often found in shellfish can cause severe symptoms, and in rare cases even death.
"I read that the symptoms of shellfish poisoning don't always come on straightaway; some might come on after a couple of days.
"But anyway, obviously in ancient Israel, they wouldn't have known that shellfish can get really contaminated if they live in polluted water, and that special care needed to be taken of them to make sure they didn't pick up harmful pollutants that could poison people. So maybe it was easier at the time to just forbid people to eat them altogether."
One of the girls smiled and asked, "Do you make a habit of learning loads of gruesome facts about diseases and then regurgitating the information to unsuspecting listeners?"
Judith replied, "No. Anyway, I'm not just doing it for the heck of it. I'm just explaining about how there's a good reason why shellfish were declared unclean under Old Testament law. Christians don't have to obey those laws though.
"Anyway, apart from shellfish poisoning, there's shellfish allergy. I read that as many as about one in fifty people might have some form of that, although it's much more serious in a small minority of people than it is in most people who get it, I think.
"I think I had a touch of that once. I ate a load of prawns with some paella. I'm never eating prawns again if I can help it, although I've eaten just the odd few quite a few times before and never had any problem, so maybe it was the amount I ate that was the problem. Anyway, a couple of hours after I ate them, my lower legs swelled up a fair bit and started hurting. I didn't understand why at the time. But a day or two later I got this itchy rash on my legs, and I started getting twinges of dizziness. And my fingers swelled up a bit and felt a bit painful, and they felt stiff when I bent them. And for a few days I woke up with a nose that needed seriously blowing. I thought it was a bit of a cold at first. But a few days later, I started wondering if I could be having some kind of allergic reaction to the prawns, and looked up allergies to them. Thankfully my symptoms went away before the week was out.
"But I found out that apart from really serious shellfish allergy that can be life-threatening, and that just a small minority of people have, who need to be careful because eating shellfish can do things to them like making their throats swell up so they find it hard to breathe, people with allergies to shellfish can get other more minor symptoms. Actually, I know someone who got serious symptoms of it. She ate some shellfish in a restaurant, and a few minutes later, her mouth felt numb, and her throat really swelled up, and she had to go to hospital. But I don't think it's that bad in most people who've got allergies to it.
"But people can get itching or eczema or hives, and swelling of the lips or tongue or throat or face, or other parts of them, and trouble breathing or a stuffed-up nose, and sometimes stomach pain, and diarrhoea and vomiting or nausea, and sometimes dizziness, light-headedness or fainting.
"I think sometimes people are allergic to just some kinds of shellfish, and other people are allergic to all of them.
"I read that shellfish allergy's often caused by the immune system mistaking certain proteins in shellfish for some kind of germs, and attacking them. I don't know if that could happen with the proteins in those microscopic crustacean things that were found in the water in New York and other places. Hopefully not, or it might mean some people get symptoms of shellfish allergy without understanding what's causing them. But I suppose it's possible that some of those rabbis were onto something when they said people needed to filter them out of their water, if that kind of thing really can happen."
Judith carried on, "But still, it does seem as if there are a whole load of unnecessary burdensome petty little rules that Orthodox Jews have to follow, invented by rabbis. There was a time when they probably thought they had a really good reason to invent them. I was once told that most of them were made up after the people of Israel suffered what Old Testament prophets said was a severe punishment from God for behaving wickedly. The rules were meant to stop people even sinning by accident, so as to reduce the chance that God would get angry again.
"But it seems as if the men who made those rules really missed the point, because instead of trying to encourage their people to be more caring and considerate and so on, it seems they thought the important thing to do was to make laws that were already extreme more extreme still! In the Sermon on the Mount, and in other things he said, Jesus was implying that people should be extreme about them in a different direction - not obeying more and more little rules and regulations that forbade more and more trivial kinds of behaviour, but being much more generous, kind, caring, and less argumentative than even the Law of Moses demanded."
Just then, someone came up to them and said there was still lots of food if they wanted second helpings. Some of the girls got some.
When they'd sat down again, one said, "The other day I came across a couple of articles on the Internet about misheard song lyrics. They were funny.
"My mum likes to listen to the band Queen. You know their song Bohemian Rhapsody? One line says, 'Spare him his life from this monstrosity'. But according to what I read, some people have misheard it as, 'Saving his life from this warm sausage tea'.
"And there was a Joni Mitchell song out in the 1970s called Big Yellow Taxi, and some of the lyrics were about a soulless concrete jungle replacing what was once some beautiful natural place or other, I think; she sings, 'Don't it always get to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone; They paved paradise, put up a parking lot'. I think 'parking lot' is American for car park. Anyway, apparently that lyric's sometimes been misheard as, 'A gay pair of guys put up a parking lot'.
"And there was a Fleetwood Mac song out in the 1970s called Go Your Own Way. I think the chorus goes, 'You can go your own way', and some of their fans thought it was saying, 'You can grow your own weed.'
"There's a Rolling Stones song I've never heard - I think it was out in the 1960s. It says, 'I'll never be your beast of burden'; but some people have misheard it as, 'I'll never leave your pizza burning.'
"And there's a song called Bad Moon Rising that I think was around in the 1960s. I've heard it on the radio a few times and I like it. It says, 'There's a bad moon on the rise', but some people have mistaken that for, 'There's a bathroom on the right'. Just why it would sing that at the end of every verse, I don't know. One verse would end, 'Looks like we're in for nasty weather. There's a bathroom on the right.' Maybe that would be so if the wind got up really high and the house started rocking back and forth and they got travel sick, they could go there every time they had an urge to vomit.
"And there are quite a few songs that say the word, 'headlines', and some people have thought they were singing about head lice. And that happens with the word 'headlights' too. Like there's one where Elton John sings, 'counting the headlights on the highway', and some people have thought he sings, 'counting the head lice on the highway.'"
One of the others said, "I heard that there's an Aretha Franklin song that was probably out in the 1960s that says, 'You make me feel like a natural woman', but some people have misheard it as saying, 'You make me feel like a rash on a woman.'
"And there's a nice Madonna song about enjoying a relaxing trip to some tropical island or other, and one of the lines about what it says she likes about it sounds a lot like, 'young girls with eyes like potatoes'. I browsed a website about misheard lyrics that says quite a lot of people mishear it as that. I always thought it said, 'eyes like pesetas' - the Spanish currency - or at least it used to be that, I think. Maybe they dumped it in favour of the euro when the euro came along. But the song does talk about a Spanish lullaby or something after all. But that lyric about eyes looking like pesetas always sounded a bit strange to me; I mean, imagine someone's eyes stamped with a picture of a Spanish monarch and the date when they were minted, if that's what the coins were like.
"But according to this website, the real lyric's something that doesn't actually sound any better. It says it's, 'young girl with eyes like the desert'. I mean, what does that mean? Somewhere most people wouldn't dare go near for very long? Or dry and waterless? So it's someone who doesn't have the ability to cry? I think there's an eye condition where the eye doesn't produce tears. Something like that. I've got a friend who knows someone whose eyes are like that. It's not good, actually, because when dust gets in most people's eyes, they normally produce liquid like tears to help wash it out. I've heard that if they can't do that, the dust stays around in their eyes. So people with that condition can get sore eyes. I can't really imagine Madonna wanting to sing about that in the middle of what's supposed to be a sentimental song about a tropical paradise. I mean, it would be like saying, 'This is such a nice place; the measles grows in profusion all around; it's so romantic!'"
Some of the girls chuckled. One grinned and said, "Somehow I think you're taking the lyrics a bit more seriously and literally than they were meant!"
Then one said, "I post on this Internet forum, where someone's signature at the end of all his messages says something that's probably a quote from some poet or other, that says it's a 'great sorrow that no one can be happy alone', and that people 'always long to be with people they can't have'.
"I thought that sounded a bit too melodramatic and pessimistic, so I joked, 'Surely that can't be true! After all, wasn't Robinson Crusoe on a desert island all alone for decades, and he was perfectly happy on his own? Or was he? The man who wrote that poem your signature quotes from should have been sent out on long marches up mountains with the army in the rain or something; then he'd have been far too concerned about concentrating on taking his next step to be unhappy! And they do say exercise improves the mood. If he started to be unhappy again when he came back, he should have just been made to climb a mountain again. And again. And again. And again."
One of the group chuckled and joked, "Corr, I'm glad you weren't my PE teacher at school! And I'm glad that recommendation isn't part of the Sermon on the Mount or something! Imagine if Jesus had said that God's special recommended cure for depression and loneliness was to climb a mountain again and again and again, and for the rest of your life if necessary! You'd wonder if the reason you'd end up cured was because you'd die of exhaustion! Dying of too much exercise would make your depression go away for sure! I wonder how many people would want to worship God if the Bible said that!"
They giggled.
But then Deborah said seriously, "Actually, Judith, were you going to say more about the Sermon on the Mount?"
Judith said, "Yes, I did have more I was thinking of saying.
"I wanted to say that some of the people the Sermon on the Mount was aimed at were the Pharisees, the religious leaders who thought it was very important to strictly enforce all the little rules that had been made to try to stop people breaking the Law of Moses by accident. Jesus would criticise them a lot, mostly for being hypocrites, since they were enthusiasts for the Law of Moses, for some reason, priding themselves on obeying its commands even to the letter; but Jesus criticised them for ignoring the really important things in life, like being kind and caring. He said some pretty harsh things to them sometimes, like, 'You teachers of the Law of Moses and Pharisees are in for trouble, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, that look nice on the outside, but are full of rotting corpses and dead men's bones on the inside! In the same way, you appear to everyone as good, but the outward appearances hide the fact that in reality you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness.'
"And he said things like, 'How terrible it's going to be for you, teachers of the Law of Moses and Pharisees, because you do things like unfairly evict widows from their homes, and then you go and make a show of appearing to be pious by saying long prayers in public. Your punishment will be all the worse for that!'
"Widows in those days would probably mostly have been among the poorest people in society, because they wouldn't have had as much family support as family units where the wife could look after all the children they would often have had while the husband could be the breadwinner; and there was no support from the state. So evicting them could have meant they would have ended up homeless and really suffered, like going hungry with all their children if people didn't help them.
"Jesus said a lot to criticise rich people who didn't care about helping the poor people around them. And in front of crowds of people, and the religious leaders themselves, he would warn against those religious leaders, saying they were egotistical, and condemning them for making great outward displays of being religious just for show so people would admire them, and taking the best seats at feasts and in the synagogues, because they enjoyed being treated with respect and feeling important so much, while they didn't care about people in need. That kind of thing.
"The religious leaders Jesus criticised looked down on people in society who were publicly known as sinners, like prostitutes, and actually treated them and other people as outcasts. But some people who'd been rejected as outcasts came to Jesus, some of them really wanting to turn their lives around and live better lives from then on, giving up their sinful ways.
"It seems from the Bible that The Pharisees didn't try to find out why they were with Jesus, but just looked down on him for associating with them, saying he couldn't possibly have been sent from God if he did that; but Jesus tried to teach them again and again that what God would think of as the really important thing was that those people wanted to change, not who they were, and that people like them were people he cared about. He would say there was more rejoicing in heaven over one 'sinner' who gave up their sinful ways than over ninety-nine respectable people who didn't need to do that. So he was saying the Pharisees really ought to give people a chance, instead of just judgmentally rejecting them out of hand the way they did.
"Don't get me wrong: That doesn't mean it's God's will that everyone who claims they want to change ought to be trusted to mean what they say about being better people from then on, since abusive people can promise to change just to manipulate people into giving them what they want, like wife beaters promising to change to manipulate their wives into staying with them. But it does show that whole categories of people shouldn't automatically be treated as outcasts because of what they've done, the way the Pharisees treated them, or some of the Pharisees anyway.
"Actually, people who've studied that time in history say there were two parties of Pharisees, one a bit more liberal than the other, who would be more likely to be merciful to people, like overlooking little breeches in the Law of Moses if people had mitigating circumstances, and that kind of thing. I don't know much about it really. Mind you, the Bible doesn't ever say there were disputes between the Pharisees at the feasts Jesus went to or at any other time about whether he should be associating with people they thought of as outcasts from society like prostitutes; it just says all the Pharisees who were there looked down on him for it.
"But anyway, that's the kind of environment Jesus gave the sermon on the Mount in. He would have been talking to the religious leaders, as well as to crowds of people who might have falsely believed that the religious leaders knew best.
"I think in some of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was contrasting the things the Pharisees and the official teachers of the Law of Moses did and taught other people to do with the genuine decent behaviour he said God requires of people. He even said people wouldn't make it to heaven unless their goodness was of a higher standard than the standard of those people, who thought they were so much better than everyone else, because they thought they were more obedient to the old laws than the general public were, but they weren't really better than other people when it came to the things that count most, like being caring and so on."
Just then, the priest came up and said hello. They chatted for a couple of minutes, and then he moved on.
Deborah said, "The priest seems caring. ... Or maybe it's just the fact that he has these party-type things every week where he lets us have food and drink for free that's making me think that."
The others smiled. Then one said, "Someone on a forum I post on thought some of us were arguing too much not long ago, and it seems he thought we might all be stressed and needed soothing, because he started a caring-sounding thread where he asked each one of us if we'd like a hug. I didn't fancy the idea. I joked,
"'I don't think a hug would help. If you think I'm argumentative, you should see my older sister! She's a lot worse than me, but she can get hugs from her funeral director boyfriend whenever she asks. But perhaps there's something about the quality of a funeral director's hugs that make them less soothing than the hugs of, say, an ice-cream man or a sweetshop owner. Do you think it might work like that? Could hugs have different effects according to who's doing the hugging? So perhaps:
"'The hugs of a horror film script writer might scare you.
The hugs of a tabloid journalist might give you a sensational sensation that feels pretty worrying.
The hugs of a stockbroker might send you into a great depression, since you might think they were only in it for what they could get.
The hugs of an environmental health inspector might just make you feel dirty.
The hugs of a politician might make you want to keep side-stepping them.
But the hugs of an electrician might make you feel quite animated.'"
They smiled, and one said, "Talking of politicians, I teased someone on a forum once by saying, 'I'm going to cast a spell on you that makes you believe the president of America's a potato, and that you have to keep writing letters to the Whitehouse, warning them to remove him from office, saying America just can't go on having a potato in place of a president!'
"And then I teased someone else by joking, "'I'm going to cast a spell on you that makes you believe everyone from the town you live in is made of cardboard except you, so whenever you see any of them out in the rain, you feel compelled to run out and warn them urgently to go indoors quickly, telling them that otherwise they'll go soggy and fall to bits.
"'And then I'm going to make you believe the town you live in is really an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. In fact, I'll make you believe it's moving around like a big ship, and that you're responsible for steering it out of harm's way so it doesn't get hit by icebergs and doesn't crash into other ships. You'll take your responsibility for steering it so seriously that before you go to bed at night, you'll always contact someone you believe to be a responsible person and ask them to take over the steering of it for you for a while because you need a few hours' rest. You'll get upset if they refuse.
"'You'll talk to people about how although they might have always believed the town you live in is just part of the land, it's actually an island being steered around the Atlantic ocean; and you'll tell them all about the mermaids and dolphins and huge icebergs you've seen while you've been steering it. You'll get annoyed if they don't believe you.
"'If there's anyone else from your hometown currently on this forum, I'll also make them believe it's a huge moving island being powered around the Atlantic ocean by huge engines. Or maybe I'll make you all believe it's powered by huge sails instead. But they'll believe it so firmly that they'll offer to share the steering with you so you don't have to do it all yourself. Well that's something, isn't it. Don't say I never do you any favours!'"
The girls laughed, and one said good-naturedly, "You nutter! It's a good thing people can't really cast spells!"
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