Israelite Priest: Worst Job Ever

So at the beginning of the year our church decided to read through the Bible together. We all got little bookmarks with day-by-day scripture readings. I have done okay with this, though I am a bit behind. Our schedule has us switching back and forth between the Old Testament and New Testament. However, I went off script and have kept on reading straight through the OT.
No offense to the author (or especially the inspiration), but from about Exodus chapter 21 on through Leviticus and Numbers (and, it looks like, Deuteronomy) it is horribly tedious reading. Whoever wrote this (most likely Moses) desperately needed help punching up the dialouge.
However, there is still a lot of knowledge to be gleaned from these scriptures. One of these tidbits is the fact that being an Israelite priest must have been one of the worst jobs ever. Chapter upon chapter of rules and regulations. No praise teams for the Israelites. No heartwarming Ministry Moments or Birthday Sabbaths. Just lots and lots of sacrifices. And more than just sacrificing the animals, they had to be slaughtered just so, and the blood had to be sprayed on the altar just so, and the remains had to be disposed of just so. Numbers 29 describes the Feast of Tabernacles, where over the course of eight days 71 bulls, 15 rams, 105 lambs, and 8 goats were to be sacrificed, in addition to all the daily animal sacrifices. How did these people have any livestock left? On top of all the bloodletting, being a priest must have been a high stress job, since failure to follow the rules didn't result in a mark on the record or a lousy monthly evaluation. It usually resulted in some sort of death, mostly fire from the sky but there was some stoning for variety.
One of the most interesting verses is in Leviticus 22:19-20, where there is a whole list of body deformities that would prohibit one from approaching the tabernacle to offer sacrifice:

No man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed...hunchbacked or dwarfed, or
has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles.

This implies that someone was needed at a checkpoint to ensure that these regulations were enforced. I would assume that a priest with very low seniority, perhaps a summer intern priest, was assigned to check potential worshippers for running sores or damaged testicles. I can just see the priests coming to work in the morning to check the assignment list, crossing their fingers, thinking: "Please no testicle patrol, anything but testicle patrol..."
If the possibility of testicle patrol is anywhere in your job description, you are a candidate for having the worst job ever.

My Own Private Jihad

If you haven't noticed, there has been quite the brouhaha in the Muslim world of late, all because of a little cartoon published in a Danish newspaper. The story goes that some Danish children's author was writing a book about the Muslim prophet Muhammad, but couldn't find anyone to do any illustrations of him. Seems that Muslim scholars have interpreted their scripture in a way that forbids any pictures of the prophet for fear that one might worship the pictures instead, which would lead of course to idolatry.
Anyway, in a show of free expression, a Danish newspaper named Jyllands-Posten invited drawings of Muhammad and published 12 of them. While some were innocent enough, others were (deliberately) more provocative, including one showing a scowling Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb. Subsequently there have been protests, buildings burned down, people killed, things like that.
A couple of points:
1. Though I can see where the average Muslim might find that cartoon offensive I'm tending to side with the free-expression folks on this one. I am exceedingly grateful to live in a society that lets me worship and say pretty much what I want to. However, the price of that is that everyone else gets to worship and say what they want as well, even when I don't agree with them. I wouldn't want to live in a society that forced Christianity on everyone any more than I would want to live in a society that forced everyone into Islam. There has been a call (mostly in Europe) for new censorship guidelines to confront Islamophobia (not my word, but a fun one nonetheless). The Stranger, a alternative newspaper out of Seattle, published this article, which also contains the offending cartoon. It is a bit disturbing, but explains the politics of the whole deal better than I could. Fortunately, in this country, nobody in the media ever makes fun of Christianity, so I think I'm safe. However, if they ever did, I think my faith would be strong enough to carry me through.
2. It has been interesting to see protests with large groups of people carrying signs that say "Down with Denmark". While it is nice to see a break from all those "Death to America" signs, I do feel sorry for little Denmark. Its hard to think of a more innocuous country (kudos to their PM for not apologizing to the extremists, by the way). Apparently their country has taken a bit of an economic hit since many Middle Eastern countries have boycotted their products. I guess I didn't realize that Denmark actually had that many products. However, here is a common scene played out at breakfast tables across Saudi Arabia:

Rasheed: "Son, what would you like for breakfast?"
Abu: "Could I have a cheese Danish, papa?"
Rasheed: "No Abu, you will not eat the breakfast pastry of the infidels!"
Abu: "Yes, Papa." (Pulls out book and starts to read.)
Rasheed (furious): "Abu! Is that the works of Hans Christian Andersen?"
Abu (starts to cry): "But Papa, I love Thumbelina."
As Rasheed storms off stage right, Abu bows his head in shame as the curtain closes. End scene.

My Travel Wishlist

The other day I was looking on the internet for plane tickets for an upcoming trip to Las Vegas. I was also procrastinating, trying to avoid having to clean my bathroom. During all this, I got to thinking about traveling, and the trips planned for this year, and all of the places I would like to someday go. So I made a mental list of places I'd like to see before I'd die, and came up with the forty or so places listed below. This probably isn't an inclusive list; I know I'm leaving something off. I probably won't make it to every place on the list, but God willing I'll make it to most of them. They are arranged semigeographically, for your convenience.

North America
1. Yosemite National Park
2. Mount Rushmore
3. Key West, Florida
4. Alaska (especially Denali, the Dalton Highway north of Fairbanks, and the Alaska Highway in from Western Canada)
5. The Yukon and the Northwest Territories
6. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (Cape Breton Highlands National Park is supposed to be beautiful)
7. Victoria Island
8. The bottom of the Grand Canyon (also like to raft the Colorado River)
9. Northern Minnesota and upper Michigan (shoreline of Lake Superior is supposed to be spectacular)
10. Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island
11. Baja California
12. Zion/Bryce Canyon National Parks in Utah

South America
1. The Panama Canal
2. Rio de Janeiro
3. The Amazon rainforest
4. Buenos Aires
5. Chile (especially the southern part of Patagonia)

Europe
1. Scandinavia
2. Finland
3. Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia
4. Madrid, Spain
5. Sicily
6. Ireland
7. Scotland
8. Croatia
9. Sardinia
10. The Greek Isles

Africa/The Middle East
1. Morocco
2. South Africa
3. Egypt
4. Israel/Jerusalem
5. Istanbul (not Constantinople)
6. Dubai
7. Any place with a safari
8. Any place with wild monkeys

Asia/The Pacific
1. The Great Wall of China
2. Hawaii
3. Australia
4. New Zealand
5. Nepal (would like to see Everest, don't want to climb it)
6. Antarctica