March 27

OT – Deuteronomy 7:1-8:20
When I was a teenager, my dad had several ‘conversations’ that went like this. Don’t date anyone you wouldn’t marry. Don’t date someone your parents don’t like. But the best one was:
Don’t marry someone who is not Southern, Protestant, Middle Class, White, or has less education than you have.
At the time, I thought my dad was a bigot.
No, I was sure he was a bigot.
I have to say, I did not follow my dad’s advice about dating. Many awful boyfriends later, I met and married Don. He fit most of my dad’s requirements. The one he missed was that he was, in the words of my grandmother, A Yankee. Forgivable, I guess.
I had my own list and it did not match my dad’s. Mine was 1. Not married 2. If divorced, no children. 3. Have a job.
Now, 20 years later this coming June, I see that my dad was not really a bigot. He was and is a realist. Marriage is damn hard enough without adding the stressors and strains of different to it.
I have lots of friends in ‘mixed’ marriages. Everything from race to religion to class warfare. It is always the different that causes the arguments. Oh, not at first. But after the ‘glow’ is vanished, there is always some compromising to be done and that is where the rubber hits the road.
In Moses’ defense, he was also being a realist. If you want your faith to stay pure, the mamas have to be Jewish. They are the first and the best teachers for the children. If the girls marry Gentiles, the children ‘should’ be Jewish but the Gentile father will lead them to his gods and his way of doing things. You’ve lost those children. And if a Jewish boy marries a Gentile girl, well, those children are automatically not Jewish. Jewish comes through the mother.
Moses needed the Children of Israel not to assimilate. Set apart. And while Shakespeare had not been born nor had Romeo and Juliet, the world’s worst play been written, Moses knew all about the boy in the next tent who is not like the little Jewish girl. Some stories have no beginning and continue to repeat themselves over and over and over again. Thus the admonition to destroy everyone else in Canaan.

Psalm 69:1-18
Love the imagery in this psalm. Up to his neck in deep water, the author calls out again and again for God to save him. So many things threaten to overwhelm him. God knows what he did wrong and he is asking for forgiveness. Also, and this is the first time I have noticed this, he is asking that his folly not reflect on others who believe in God. I hope that whatever the problem the psalmist faced, God delivered him from it.