How we see God is sometimes through a distorted lense of what we've come to know through our personal upbringing and the lives we have lived.
Its hard to see him as a Good Father when what you know of a Father or a mother doesn't line up to what some tell you he is. I've walked that journey. Trying to find the Good Father in the middle of what I saw as rules and regulations, standards to live up to. Needing to do the right thing for approval, self preservation and the fear of being struck down or punished for not making him happy all the time.
So reading Leviticus through that lens can be hard. It distorts the message. It's hard to see the Love of a Father teaching obedience when all I know is something else. A Father who leaves, a Father who let's you down, a Father who is always angry.
When things go wrong in my life my first thought is rarely, "Well, this is just life."
It’s usually, "What did I do wrong now "
Did I miss God? Did I disobey? Did I say something wrong? Is He correcting me? Is this punishment?
And I don’t even realize I'm thinking that way sometimes. It's automatic. It's the old wiring.
So when I read Leviticus 16 and 17 all the blood, all the instructions, the Day of Atonement, the one time a year access, if I'm not careful, I read it through that same lens.
A God who is hard to approach.
A God who must be kept happy.
A God who you better not disappoint.
And if you grew up feeling like approval had to be earned, Leviticus can feel like proofnof that.
I know what it's like to grow up knowing all the right verses but still feeling like you're one wrong move away from being too much. I know what it's like to confuse obedience with survival. To do the right thing because it keeps you safe. So of course my brain sometimes reads hard seasons as discipline.
If something breaks...
If ministry feels heavy...
If someone walks away...
If I feel unseen or misunderstood...
There's this little voice that says, "Well, you must deserve this."
That's not theology.
That's trauma!
Because when I actually sit and read Leviticus 16 now, I see something different.
The Day of Atonement wasn't God reacting in anger. It was God planning ahead in his grace and mercy. Before the people even failed, there was already a system in place to restore them. God wasn't surprised by their sin. He wasn't stressed out trying to figure out what to do. He had already made provision.
He wasn't saying, "If you mess up, I'm out."
He was saying, "When you mess up, I've already made a way for you to find your way back to me"
That's a different Father than the one my fear imagines.
And the scapegoat, That image has helped me so much. Their sin wasn't kept filed away somewhere just in case. It wasn't brought back up next year in an argument. It was carried away.
Carried away.
Not weaponized.
Not held over their heads.
And Leviticus 17 talks about blood being sacred. Life is in the blood. Life matters. They mattered. God wasn't obsessed with control. He was protecting what was holy.
But when you've grown up feeling like love can disappear at a moments notice depending on what you did or didnt do,you read everything as a test. And when hard times come, it's hard not to think....
"This must be because I didn't measure up somehow."
That's the lens I'm asking God to heal still inside of me. I still struggle with falling back on my old way of seeing things sometimes.
But sometimes hard things happen and it's not punishment. It's not anger. It's not God crossing His arms in disappointment looking down on me.
Sometimes it's just life. And sometimes obedience actually puts you in uncomfortable places.
Leviticus doesn't show us a Father looking for reasons to strike His children down.It shows a Father created a detailed plan for our restoration.
That's what I'm learning as we read through Leviticus and really this Journey we have begun through the Old Testament.
We don't have to brace ourselves every time life gets hard. We don’t have to assume our suffering is always punishment. We don't have to clean oursleves up before we come to Him.
We don't have to walk on eggshells with God.
We're walking with a Father who already knew our weakness and still chose us.
And that's what healing looks like.
Not pretending we don"t struggle.
But letting Scripture slowly reteach us who He actually is. That's what Leviticus has begun doing in me. I'm seeing the Good Father.
Love Pastor Mandy
Ark of Hope Ministry
Daily Reading Leviticus 16-17
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