A Call to Christian Action
When we ask, Jesus tells us, we will receive. When we seek, we will find. When we knock, the door will open. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
The history of the early Christian church is crystal clear on the subject of circumcision. Jesus' original Jewish apostles and disciples, at the Council in Jerusalem reported on in Acts 15, with the guidance, they said, of God the Holy Spirit, rejected circumcision of the body completely (Acts 15). Circumcision is not a Christian act and never has been. I believe Jesus himself said so in John 7.
Let's look carefully at these and other New Testament passages, in order to shine the holy, healing light of Christian scripture into the dense and damaging darkness that still today rules the majority of homes - including Christian homes - in America, the last country in the world to abandon the harmful, sinful practice of erroneously medicalized infant male circumcision.
Christian priests, ministers, and educators during the circumcision holocaust in America over the last 130 years have been tragically ignorant and negligent of their responsibility to understand and preach the Good News on this important subject. Jesus, the Jew from Bethlehem and Nazareth, and his Jewish followers saw through the fraudulent sham of infant circumcision at the very beginning of Christianity. The Good News for all Christians is that God - through the Jewish Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus' Jewish apostles - freed Christians from this harmful "Jewish myth" (Titus 1:14) for all time.
There is now a worldwide movement, Christian and otherwise, in favor of genital integrity for minors, seeking to abolish involuntary, medically unnecessary genital mutilations of them. Now is the time to point out to everyone who will listen that Jesus and the early Christian church clearly perceived - and the New Testament clearly declares - God to be a loving opponent, not an evil perpetrator of infant circumcision.
I am admonished by Jesus and the Holy Spirit to bring my prayerful concerns to His Church, and I do so now.
I ask Christians to pray about it, and to read the holy New Testament scriptures on this ancient subject, a subject that might be difficult for us were it not for the clear guidance provided to us in John 7, Acts 15, 1 Corinthians, Galatians 2, 5, and 6, Philippians 3, Titus 1, and other New Testament passages. Please study and pray, for yourselves, for me, and for our sinful and sexually mutilated country and world.
The group with the largest number of sexually mutilated men in the world is the Muslims. Second in numbers come the Americans. And in a distant third place come the Jews. We all are in dire need of repentance and forgiveness for our sins against our brothers and sisters, stemming from our puzzling and sometimes deliberate blindness and ignorance on this matter, so important to the early church and to us as present-day Christians and human beings, God's children all.
This is especially true of us Christians who have the advantage of being taught in our own Holy Scriptures that circumcising is evil. We have not been paying attention. We do not want to know. But Jesus tells us we WILL know the truth and the truth WILL set us free.
"Father please forgive us, for we know not what we do."
But we do know that He will forgive us if we ask Him to. If we ask, we will receive the truth, if we seek, we will find the truth, if we knock, the door to the truth will be opened to us, whether we like it or not. When the door opens, God will let us slam it shut again if we want to, but the price of rejecting the truth is the loss of the freedom God intends for us, and the visiting of the sins of the fathers onto the sons to the third and fourth generation.
The early Christian church split with Judaism over mutilating the genitals of the Gentiles.
Listen to St. Paul's plain words in Titus: [My added words are the ones inserted in square brackets. After much painful experience, study, and prayer on the subject, this is how I hear St. Paul's meaning in this New Testament passage:]
Titus 1:10 For there are many rebellious people, idle-talkers, and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, 1:11 who must be silenced because they mislead whole families by teaching for dishonest gain what ought not to be taught.
[The New International Version says they are "ruining whole households" merely for the "dishonest gain" sought; in fact, for money, the love of which - when it takes precedence over the love for our brothers, sisters, and God - is, as we know from the words of St. Paul, the root of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Two thousand years later ignorant circumcisers are still ruining whole families, Christian and otherwise, for dishonest gain, for filthy lucre, for mere money. Beware of them! They "must be silenced", says St. Paul. Why? Because they are leading Christians astray from the word and will of God and harming God's children in the process. Paul continues:]
1:12 A certain one of them, in fact, one of their own prophets, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons." 1:13 Such testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply that they may be healthy in the faith 1:14 and not pay attention to Jewish myths
[including the "Jewish myth" that God requires genital mutilation of male babies]
and commands of people who reject the truth.
[the circumcisers, who reject the truth that we are saved by the love of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, not by the absurdity of having our sex organs mutilated]
1:15 All is pure to those who are pure.
[including the whole body, including the penis and foreskin, designed and created good by God in the image of his own wise and loving choosing]
But to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, nothing is pure,
[not even the magnificent human body, including the holy sexual handiwork of God Himself]
but both their mind and conscience are corrupted.
[therefore they do not know to leave the body whole as God made it]
1:16 They profess to know God but with their deeds
[of genital mutilation]
they deny him, since they are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.
These quotations from Titus are the words of St. Paul in the New Testament. I did not make them up. Circumcising, according to St. Paul, is the deed of evil, clear evidence of not knowing God's will on this subject, of denying God and of being disobedient to His will. St. Paul tells us here that God's so-called requirement to circumcise the body is a "Jewish myth", not God's will, not a Christian belief, and that it is not a Christian practice. Never has been. Never will be.
Could it be any clearer?
Yes it could. Listen again to St. Paul in Galatians 5.
5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. 5:2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 5:3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 5:4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
[The idea that Christianity requires circumcision is completely wrong, says Paul. Quite the contrary. Christianity requires love and respect for God's creation, including the male and female sex organs. Do not backslide into ancient Jewish errors, he admonishes us. We are people of a NEW covenant of love, not the old one of fear and laws. For Christians there is ONE law: Christly Love. We are to love each other as Christ loved us. The love of Christ - and Christ-like love - cast out fear, including all the fears that drive circumcision.]
5:12 As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
[Here in the New Testament, St. Paul is so enraged at the circumcisionists of his day that he exclaims that he wishes they would cut off their OWN sex organs COMPLETELY, instead of trying to mutilate OTHER people's sex organs. Is there any more graphic way he could tell us that circumcision is wrong, that those who practice it and advocate it are mistaken about God's nature and God's will for our sex organs and our sex lives? Jesus has revealed to us a perfectly loving God, not a murderous, evil God of hatred, revenge, and sexual perversion and mutilation.]
5:15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
[Circumcision is biting and devouring. It is the first step to destruction. Don't take it, St. Paul warns us.]
Could it be any clearer?
Yes, it could. Listen to St. Peter's words at the Council in Jerusalem on circumcision and the rest of the Jewish law at which Christianity formally and officially rejected circumcision of the body forever. A long argument occurs on the subject amongst the apostles and disciples assembled for the specific purpose of settling this vexing question. Then Peter stands and speaks. After reminding them that God initially chose him to carry the Word to the gentiles, and that the gentiles heard and accepted the Word and their hearts were healed and purified by God just as the Jews' had been, God making no difference between Jew and gentile, between circumcised and genitally intact, Peter asks them this crucial question:
Acts 15:10 So now why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?
Here is THE WAY, The Living Bible translation:
Acts 15:10 And now are you going to correct God by burdening the Gentiles with a yoke that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?
[St. Peter is talking to the circumcisionists, and he is calling circumcision a burden that "neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear." That is a far cry from the incorrect idea that circumcision is required, or merely unimportant and irrelevant. Peter says it is an unbearable burden. And he asks them why THEY want to impose this terrible, intolerable burden on the gentiles. It is recorded that the whole company became silent as they looked within their own hearts to answer Peter's very personal question.]
Listen to Jesus' brother, St. James's words, following St. Peter's:
Acts 15:13 After they stopped speaking, James replied, "Brothers, listen to me. 15:14 Simeon has explained how God first concerned himself to select from among the Gentiles a people for his name. 15:15 The words of the prophets agree with this, as it is written, 15:16 'After this I will return, and I will rebuild the fallen tent of David; I will rebuild its ruins and restore it, 15:17 so that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord, namely, all the Gentiles I have called to be my own, says the Lord, who makes these things 15:18 known from long ago.' 15:19 Therefore I conclude that we should not cause extra difficulty for those among the Gentiles who are turning to God, ..."
[Listen to the whole Council at Jerusalem's written words, following James's speech, to the church at Antioch conveying the final decision of the Christian Church on this matter. Here are words from that very letter!]
Acts 15:28 "For it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us not to place any greater burden on you than these necessary rules: 15:29 that you abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from doing these things, you will do well. Farewell."
[Circumcision is not on the list! God the Holy Spirit through Jesus' apostles assembled in Jerusalem for the purpose of deciding this fateful issue completely rejected for all time the evil of physical circumcision and liberated Christians and Christianity from it forever. The record is crystal clear in the New Testament itself. Don't take my word for it. Read the Word yourself. Read the Good News yourself in your own Bible. Pray about it. And then rejoice with the church at Antioch and join in their following Christian celebration!]
Acts 15:31 When they read it aloud, the people rejoiced at its encouragement.
[All Christians, I believe, guided by holy scripture and the Holy Spirit, should emulate this Christian celebration and will receive this Christian joy at our liberation by God the Holy Spirit from the ancient misunderstanding and evil of infant circumcision.]
Could it be any clearer?
Yes, it could. Listen especially carefully to Jesus' own words on circumcision in the Gospel of John:
John 7:21 Jesus replied, "I performed one miracle and you are all amazed."
[The complete healing on the Sabbath of the severely crippled man at the well, described in John 5:1-18.]
John 7:22 "However, because Moses gave you the practice of circumcision (not that it came from Moses, but from the forefathers), you circumcise a male child on the Sabbath. 7:23 But if a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?"
[The King James Version says "every whit whole".]
John 7:23 "If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?"
["Every whit whole" means every particle, down to the very last cell. Jesus here contrasts circumcision - which obviously destroys God-created wholeness - with His own holy ministry of making men "every whit whole" again by His complete healing of previously sick, unwhole, man-damaged, sexually mutilated Jewish men.]
7:24 "Do not judge according to external appearance, but judge with proper judgment."
[He instructs us to judge, not by the external appearance of things, not by the surface, not by the look of the penis, not hypocritically as the Jews have judged him in this matter, but in depth, with understanding and wisdom, correctly.]
We have failed to obey His clear instruction on this important matter.
Jesus told us He did not come to the healthy who had no need of him. He is the healer, the good physician who came to the sick, to the Jews, in fact, virtually the only people on Earth at the time mistaken enough - sick enough, lost enough from God - to mutilate the sex organs of their very own infant children and blame their evil actions on God.
I am not saying their intentions toward their children were evil, as I am not saying that today's parents who have mutilated the genitals of their children were evil. That is in every case for Jesus to judge, not me. I am saying that it has been proved scientifically now that the EFFECTS of circumcision are evil, no matter what the INTENTIONS of the mutilators are.
That being the fact, Jesus of course knew that fact.
The Jews were God's chosen people because they were in this way His sickest children on earth and had been for centuries, for millennia. The good shepherd leaves the whole flock to find and bring back and save the one lost sheep, Israel.
Circumcision destroys human wholeness - Jesus restores it.
What could be clearer?
Christians should follow Jesus, concluded the early church, guided by God the Holy Spirit, not ancient and mistaken Hebrew myths requiring sexual child sacrifice and blaming God for it. Jesus knew God better than that. So should we, His followers.
This story about Jesus is much like the story that took place the next morning on the Mount of Olives, reported in John 8:1-11. It is the more familiar story of the adulteress brought to Him by the Jews who asked Him if they should impose the death penalty on her for her sexual sin by stoning her to death, as required in Old Testament law. Jesus had brought up sex the day before when he taught in the Temple about circumcision and healing. Now here is sex rearing its "ugly" head again the very next day.
Jesus didn't say to them, "The Old Testament law on stoning unfaithful wives to death is wrong. Don't pay any attention to that ancient, evil Hebrew myth." They would have stoned Him AND her to death on the spot! His time had not yet come. Instead, He said, "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone.", thereby saving her life, and, for a short time, his own.
In the same way, and for the same reason, I think, Jesus appears not to have said the day before in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, "The Old Testament law on circumcision is wrong. Don't pay any attention to that ancient, evil Hebrew myth." They would have killed Him instantly, and His time had not yet come. Instead, He said, at least as I hear His message across the intervening millennia, something like -
"In obedience to what you mistakenly believe that God commands - this so-called 'command' to mutilate babies' genitals comes not from God but from man, from your forefathers, not even from Moses - you sometimes circumcise a baby boy on the Sabbath. It appears that through me, God sometimes chooses to heal a man completely on the Sabbath, every last part, including his penis, and his God-created foreskin. Who are we to question how and when and who and through whom God chooses to heal, to make men every whit whole again? Shouldn't we just rejoice when He heals, with the faithful one who is healed? Can't we all just get along?"
The underlying message, though, the contradiction that Jesus showed the Jewish authorities in the Temple in Jerusalem - in the very heart of the inconceivably arrogant circumcisionist blasphemy and circumcisionist heresy - that absolute contradiction between God's healing love and power on the one hand, and their own infant circumcising on the other, was just too clear and too strong. We may not understand Jesus' clear words and meaning in John 7 today, but THEY sure got him loud and clear in person back then! They were incensed with Jesus' teaching - in the very temple itself! - against the ancient evil of infant circumcision. They said and believed that the circumcision madness came from God. Jesus knew better. He knew and said that it did not. What they idolized and many still do today - sexual sacrifice of infants, infant sexual child abuse and mutilation in the name of God - Jesus proclaimed as evil. Simply because it is evil. At least doubly so. It is not just mutilation. It is mutilation in God's name. It is blasphemy against God and his goodness.
John 7:7 "The world cannot hate you", Jesus said to his disciples, "but it hates me, because I am testifying about it that its deeds are evil."
Those committing this evil very soon demanded that the Romans crucify Him for telling them the truth. Jesus died for advocating and for bringing truth and human wholeness on every level, including the sexual.
Jesus preferred and brought human wholeness wherever He went, but we sinful humans prefer human brokenness, in ourselves and in others, so much so that we even break our brand new babies, and blame our blatantly obvious sexual sin and heinous sex crime on God, and when God tries to heal us of our brokenness and our breaking, we kill Him for it.
"Crucify him! Crucify him!"
Jesus was already aware that they wanted to kill Him even before he gave this important, radical teaching in the Temple. Here is the whole fateful, holy passage from the Gospel of John:
John 7:1 After this Jesus traveled throughout Galilee. He stayed out of Judea because the Jewish authorities wanted to kill him. 7:2 Now the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near. 7:3 So Jesus' brothers advised him, "Leave here and go to Judea so your disciples may see your miracles that you are performing. 7:4 For no one who seeks to make a reputation for himself does anything in secret. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world." 7:5 (For not even his own brothers believed in him.)
7:6 So Jesus replied, "My time has not yet arrived, but you are ready at any opportunity. 7:7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me, because I am testifying about it that its deeds are evil."
[Can you imagine a young, untutored man testifying in the presence of the Jewish authorities - the oldest and wisest that Judaism had to offer at the time, in the very Temple in Jerusalem itself - that their "holy" circumcision genital mutilation rite, instituted by "God" through Father Abraham, is - EVIL? Get ready! Here it comes, from the very heart and mouth of Jesus! Jesus is calling infant circumcision evil. I hear it clearly. I believe it. The man was a Jewish revolutionary, primarily a revolutionary in his understanding of the goodness and love of God for us, just as Abraham was when he understood that God did not want him to kill Isaac. And Jesus met the fate of many revolutionaries who try to help us heal our brokenness. The list is very long and there are many familiar names on it, but the name above all others is Jesus.]
7:8 "You go up to the feast yourselves. I am not going up to this feast yet, because my time has not yet fully arrived." 7:9 When he had said this, he remained in Galilee. 7:10 But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then Jesus himself also went up, not openly but in secret. 7:11 So the Jewish authorities were looking for him at the feast, asking, "Where is he?" 7:12 There was a lot of grumbling about him among the crowds. Some were saying, "He is a good man," but others, "He deceives the common people." 7:13 However, no one spoke openly about him for fear of the Jewish authorities.
[Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear of the Jewish authorities! Is it any different today? Where is the Christian love to cast out this killing fear? Ask for it, and you will receive it! Pray for it and it will come! Love enough will come even for your enemies! Even for terrorists. Even for circumcisers who claim, falsely - against the testimony of Jesus, His apostles, and the Holy Spirit - that God requires this evil terror of genital mutilation. It is now wrecking and ruining not just whole individual households, but whole nations and our whole world. Look around.]
Teaching in the Temple
7:14 When the feast was half over, Jesus went up to the temple and began to teach. 7:15 Then the Jewish authorities were astonished and said, "How does this man know so much when he has never had formal instruction?"
["How could he know so much? He hasn't studied with US! And WE know EVERYTHING! We know ESPECIALLY how holy CIRCUMCISION is! He doesn't even have a college degree or a teacher's certificate! Where did he learn all this stuff he's spouting?"
Christians believe - because Jesus said so - that he learned it straight from God.]
7:16 So Jesus replied, "My teaching is not from me, but from the one who sent me. 7:17 If anyone wants to do God's will, he will know about my teaching, whether it is from God or whether I speak from my own authority.
7:18 The person who speaks on his own authority desires to receive honor for himself; the one who desires the honor of the one who sent him is a man of integrity, and there is no unrighteousness in him. 7:19 Hasn't Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law! Why do you want to kill me?"
7:20 The crowd answered, "You're possessed by a demon! Who is trying to kill you?"
["You're paranoid!" we would say. "You're crazy! Nobody wants to kill you!" A short time later he was dead, killed at the insistence of the very people he said wanted to, who had lied - probably even to themselves - and denied that they did.]
7:21 Jesus replied, "I performed one miracle and you are all amazed."
[The healing of the invalid at the well on the Sabbath. John 5:1-18.]
7:22 "However, because Moses gave you the practice of circumcision (not that it came from Moses, but from the forefathers), you circumcise a male child on the Sabbath. 7:23 But if a male child is circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses is not broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath? 7:24 Do not judge according to external appearance, but judge with proper judgment."
The fact that the healing occurred on the Sabbath was their technical, legalistic EXCUSE for their anger, the excuse with which they tried to dress up and disguise in religious terms and hide - from everyone, including themselves - and justify their evil, murderous feelings toward Jesus. Jesus showed them that His healing on the Sabbath is not the real reason for their anger at him. After all, they practiced circumcising on the Sabbath. What could possibly be wrong in God's eyes, then, with HEALING on the Sabbath. There is a deeper, more insidious reason for their anger, an evil reason, which they try to disguise with religious law.
'...are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole...?"
(King James version.)
THAT is the deep, penetrating question Jesus asks them. Jesus was healing people right and left, making them "every whit whole" again, restoring their whole bodies and minds - including their sexual bodies and minds - to health and happiness and God-intended human wholeness. (Practicing medicine without a license! How DARE He!) And those left out of his healing were furious! Enraged! MURDEROUSLY so! HATED being left out. And so they hated and blamed Christ the inclusive healer for their own sickness.
Miraculous healings! Stunning healings! Frightening, TERRIFYING healings, to those who didn't understand them and couldn't accept them as the miraculous will and work of God. Those left out of the real healing and love of God by their OWN choice, not by God's choice, were furious, MURDEROUSLY FURIOUS - with God. For this, Jesus was crucified and killed by the mistaken, fearful, circumcising, sick and sickening, sexually mutilating religious culture of the Jews of the day.
Judaism, I believe, is fundamentally about justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God, not about unjustly, unmercifully, arrogantly chopping up babies' penises, sexually butchering and mutilating men for life. I believe that Judaism is changing, too, now, going back at last to its fundamental foundations: Justice, Mercy, and Humility in the presence of a loving and merciful God.
If God does not want us chopping up our babies' sex organs, did Jesus know it 2000 years ago? For Christians, the answer is obvious: Jesus knew it from before the beginning of the world.
Would such knowledge of God have gotten Jesus into serious trouble with the proud and arrogant Jewish religious authorities of the day? For intactivists, the answer is obvious: Everyone who tries to keep parents from sexually abusing their children gets themselves into serious trouble with the sexually abusing parents. If the parents claim "God" as their co-abuser, and believe their claim, criticism of the abuse can be deadly for the critic.
Do God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit want us to protect our children from this ancient, destructive, mutilative Jewish myth? For intactivist Christians, the answer couldn't be more obvious: Of course!
There have been Jews throughout history who have understood that circumcision is not the will of our loving parent God, who made us correctly in God's own image. Jesus was one of those enlightened Jews. They have not won yet. The majority of Jews, religious and secular, still circumcise their male babies, but Jewish intactivists are winning battles every day and they will win this war, just as they won the war against stoning unfaithful wives to death. I believe the final Jewish victory over mistaken Jewish circumcision will come soon.
And we confused U.S. Christians today - just as sick as the Jews of Jesus' day; sicker; we should know better; we should read our New Testament - we do the same as those Jews of long ago did, with far less excuse, to the loving babies and the loving Jesus. He told us if we do it to them we do it to him (Matthew 25:40). We circumcise them and we kill some of them in the process every year. Crucifixion - murder - by any other name is still just as evil. Calling it "circumcision" doesn't help.
Was the torture, crucifixion, and death of the innocent, powerful, healing, loving Jesus at the hands of crucifixionists the work of evil in the world? If not, there is no such thing as evil.
Is the torture, mutilation, and sometimes death of innocent, powerful, healing, loving little babies at the hands of circumcisionists also the work of the same evil? If not, there is no such thing as evil.
Jesus told us it would be better for us to have a millstone tied around our neck and be thrown into the sea than to offend even one of these little ones of His (Matthew 18:6). Circumcision offends them. You don't have to believe me. Witness one of these ancient, sick sex crimes for yourself. You will see a mortally offended - and properly so - child of God, being butchered alive like an animal.
Look at a "Circumstraint" board, to which babies are strapped down for mutilation, just as Jesus was nailed to the cross for crucifixion. The Circumstraint resembles nothing so much as a little cross for infants. All it needs to make its murderous, spirit-killing mission clear is a slight redesign to hold the arms straight out away from the body instead of slightly curved down at the sides.
As it is, perhaps the Circumstraint resembles more the injection tables used now to strap down and execute people on death row, some of whom have been proved, too late, as innocent of the crimes for which they were murdered as Jesus was innocent of any crime - the New Testament nowhere says that Jesus ever circumcised a baby, for example; can you even imagine him doing such a thing? - as innocent as the babies being brutally and ignorantly mutilated, being rendered sexually dysfunctional for life by primitive and very sick human genital mutilations at the rate of one every 26 seconds in the U.S.A. today.
Some ignorant people even call these ancient sex crimes "Christian". Do not be fooled by them, St. Paul cautions us. Read the Good Book.
Christian history as reported faithfully in the New Testament makes clear that both the torture and crucifixion of Christ at the end of his life and the torture and circumcision of babies at the beginning of theirs are great evils and are not from God. God is liberating us from these ancient and godless evils, through Christ.
But will we arrogant, murderous, evil sinners EVER listen? People HATE Jesus - he said so himself - because he tells us the truth about ourselves, he testifies and shows us that our deeds ARE evil, including our deeds of circumcision. Better to kill Him and be done with Him.
Some Christians say, "Jesus was circumcised, so it must be right!" Jesus was also crucified. Should we crucify our children when they reach the tender age of thirty-three? Just because WE did it to Him - circumcision or crucifixion - that doesn't automatically make it right. We are sinful, remember? He came and suffered circumcision by our hands at the beginning of his life and crucifixion by our hands at the end of it to SHOW us our evil sin, to bring us to repentance, to save us, to heal us, to make us whole again in God's forgiveness and love.
These passages found in the New Testament were very clarifying for me about Jesus, Christian history, Christianity, and circumcision. Please read the whole passages. We need the whole. There is much more to be found in the New Testament on the subject of circumcision. To understand it we must understand clearly this early Christian history and the plain historical fact that Jesus and Christianity at its beginning, rejected circumcision of the penis completely and replaced it with "circumcision of the heart", spiritual circumcision - with baptism, a far gentler rite.
I hope Christians will pray together and study Holy scripture and modern science (which finally now agrees with Christianity that circumcision is backward, damaging, and evil in its effects even when not in its intent), and seek better understanding of all these important matters. They can be very fateful, "ruining whole households", as St. Paul says. Killing whole babies. Circumcision can and does kill babies in this country and around the world every year - many of them, Jewish, Christian, and otherwise - from shock, from bleeding to death, from infection, and all totally unnecessarily. How can Christians be doing this to our babies? How can we? To say the very least, this is not Christ-like love.
Would Jesus have us kill our children? Of course not! Absurd! We Christians are not subject to and slaves of the old Hebrew law, but freed by Jesus and the Holy Spirit into the holy love and eternal salvation of God. Freedom from the ancient evil of circumcision is one crystal clear teaching of Christianity. It is a vital and important part of the Good News and must be preached as such around the world, and especially in America today, the last country in the world still circumcising for non-religious reasons the majority of our infant males.
Part of the ever-lighter burden God has laid on my heart - people don't like me bringing up the subject any more than they liked Jesus bringing it up, but He didn't let people's anger at Him for doing so stop Him, not even in the Temple in Jerusalem! - is the opportunity and the privilege to try my best to be sure these unnecessary and torturous sexual mutilations and completely unnecessary baby killings stop happening in my families, including my biological families, my church families, and my human family around the world.
As Titus, Galatians, Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel of John, and many other passages in the New Testament make perfectly clear for all with eyes to see or ears to hear, circumcision is not a loving, Christian act. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit want us - all of us - whole. That is the way God made us. Destroying God's exquisite, perfect handiwork without just cause is simply blasphemy and heresy against the obvious and miraculous work of God CREATING God's miracle of human wholeness, which reveals the clear will of God FOR God's miracle of human wholeness. We are made in the image of God's own choosing. Redesigning and mutilating the human body to our own perverted liking is clear sin.
Christians! Rejoice in the freedom and love of Jesus Christ and be forever free from the ancient evil of inhuman genital mutilation!
Praise and Glory be to the wise, holy, and loving God who designed and made us all.
Holy Lord God please help us. Holy Lord Jesus Christ please heal us. Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, Holy Comforter, please be with us, now and always.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Van Lewis
P.O. Box 323
Panacea, Florida, 32346
(850) 697-3857
VanLewis@post.Harvard.edu
July 2000.
http://www.cirp.org/pages/cultural/lewis1/