All it takes is one kid to make the diagnosis. Not sure what training that child receives to recognize the symptoms of cooties, but once someone is marked as having cooties, playground rules kick in.
The other little kids on the playground point and run. They laugh and squeal as only little kids can. A few cover their faces to avoid contamination and tip-toe-hop backwards as though even the ground around the accused cootie-carrier is tainted. If the accused rolls a ball toward the crowd, the gathered kids part and let it roll past, because “If you touch what someone with cooties has touched, then you get cooties, too.”
In the center of all this is a child—. Alone. Abandoned even by her best-friends-for-life., she cries. She pleads. She raves.
“Stop it! I don’t have cooties! Come on. Play with me……please!”
But no one will. No one will roll the ball back to her. No one will hold her hand when the teacher tells them to line up so they can walk back to class. She’s got cooties. She is untouchable.
It’s a sad but common scene on the playground. It’s even sadder and more common in the adult world.
Like thoughtless children, we adults, including we church folks, point out certain people around us, squeal, “Ewwww!” and mark them as untouchable.
In contemporary America, our untouchables include prostitutes, drug addicts, the mentally ill, AIDS patients, homosexuals, the homeless, and all those whose sins are obvious to the public. These people are the modern version the original untouchables--- those people the Bible called lepers.
Lepers suffer from the disease of leprosy. In the Bible lepers represented the epitome of uncleanness. In the books of Numbers and Leviticus, God directed His people to exile anyone found to be a leper. Even the things the leper touched were considered contaminated. If someone touched the cloth a leper had touched, he/she was quarantined and considered unclean for a week. Lepers were completely “untouchable.”
Today we understand that leprosy (aslso known as Hansen’s disease) is caused by a bacteria (Mycobacterium lepromatosis). The germs attacks the peripheral nerves, mucous membranes, and upper respiratory tract. Sores, boils, and skin lesions are the primary external symptoms. Left untreated, the disease can cause permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs, and eyes, leading to disfigurement, blindness, and death.
Though lepers have been around for over 4,000 years, no effective treatments were available until the 1930’s. Before that, if you were a leper, you died from the disease or you died with the disease.
In other words, if you were a leper, you were doomed to be forever untouchable.
By the Mosaic law, leprous untouchables lost all benefits connected with being a child of Israel. The king and his armies did not protect them. They could not share in the material prosperity of the people living in the cities of Israel. They could not even participate in the sacrifices of the tabernacle or temple. Therefore lepers could not receive atonement for their sins.
Leprosy then represents unforgiven sin and unrepentant sinful lifestyles, because our sinfulness separates us from God and disqualifies us from all of His benefits. In this sense, though we mark certain people as untouchable, our sins render all of us spiritually untouchable to God.
Isaiah 64: 6 But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away.
We are all unclean before God, and nothing in our exiled state can atone for our sins. Our untouchable condition is as incurable as a leper’s condition in ancient Israel.
And nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear you diagnose them as “a sinner.” Nobody want to hear that he/she is doomed to death (Ezekiel 18: 20a) and exile from God (2 Thessalonians 1: 8, 9; Revelations 22: 11, 12).
But, if we understand how the lepers of the Bible dealt with their condition, we can understand some things about ourselves and the untouchables around us.
How did/ do lepers typically react to their diagnosis? Generally in one of 3 ways:
1. We ignore our condition.
2. We manage our disease.
3. Or we deny the diagnosis.
Read 2 Kings 7: 3-10.
Next post: IGNORING THE DIAGNOSIS
No comments:
Post a Comment