Soul Eating

Deut 12:23 But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat.

The title today sounds like the title of a horror thriller, doesn’t it. We don’t want other people to even know what is in our innermost being, let alone give someone permission to dig down deep and consume it. For most of us, this is about as bad as it gets.

We so often don’t even take time to examine ourselves. We work our way through life without much direction or purpose. We coast toward the finish line. I don’t want to be that type of person.

So what does this obscure law about eating blood have to do with living life with purpose? Let’s back up a bit in the story to find out.

The Israelites have been in Egypt, a place of promise, of protection. But also a place out of which the promise of the LORD would take them. They are on that journey out of that first place of promise to the Land of Promise.

But, as a friend of mine said, the LORD had to “get Egypt of the Israelites.” They were too much like their captors. And they were going into a land filled with other cultures and practices that would pollute them as the people of God.

So the Law was given as a way to help them see the contrast between the cultures in which they lived and the new culture that the LORD’s covenant people were to create. They were entering a new era and needed a new way to exist with the LORD and with each other. Thus the Law!

We don’t know everything about the cultures of that day, so we often miss some of the meaning for these first hearers. We don’t know the cultural practices around eating meat and blood that were present at that time. But I can bet it wasn’t good!

So the LORD tells this new community to NOT eat the blood with the flesh. And the reason might seem strange to us. The blood was the soul of the animal. When the blood leaves, the soul leaves, the life drains, life itself stops for the animal.

There is a respecting of the gift the animal is giving at that moment. They weren’t to rush into eating. Life is precious, even an animal’s life is precious. Honor that life.

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The body has value, but apart from the soul, it is just a shell. That invisible part of you that won’t go out of existence when your heart stops beating and your brainwaves cease to manifest, that part is priceless.

We are to honor the lives, the souls of those around us. We are to honor and value our own souls. The emphasis on keeping our body healthy and functioning is admirable, but if we spent as much time on our souls, this would be a much better world.

Don’t let the world and its values eat your soul today!