For all their religious rhetoric and pious attitude towards non-believers, Christians today know very little about their own bibles. Strangely, this does not seem to bother them as much as it should, given their propensity for telling others that they should live more like the bible tells them to. One of the prime examples of the lack of knowledge Christians have about their holy book is found in the common misconception that they are no longer under the Law of the Old Testament. Do you know many Christians who obey the kosher food law or the law that forbids them to work on the Sabbath? How many Christians do you know who have actually even read all the books of the Law and know what God expected from their ancestors under the "old covenant"?

However, it may be that Christians do indeed read their bibles, but they simply miss the critical passages written about the Law. As we will see, the rejection of Old Testament Law is not merely an issue of modern day laziness, but was probably introduced into Christian thinking by the apostle Paul, which seems to indicate that Paul also had a poor understanding of the scriptures. "Why does any of this matter," you might ask. Aside from being a blatant example of the hypocrisy and ignorance that dwells among the proselytizers, it also disperses the idea that God is an all-loving deity who only wants you to believe in him. To best explain the significance of this misconception, we must start with the basics.

I. The Eternal Covenant

Initially, God gave something called "the Law" to man, which was a set of rules and decrees supposedly bestowed upon Moses at Mount Sinai. It includes the Ten Commandments and several other minor laws written in the first five books of the bible (which are known as the Pentateuch). Then under the New Testament, God's covenant with his chosen people is replaced by a new covenant, which is enacted by a bastard carpenter who claims to be Yahweh in the flesh, and is crucified as a sacrifice for all peoples. When you consider how Christianity has hijacked much of Judaism, it becomes interesting to notice how Christians often ignore or demean the Old Testament, despite the fact that it is the basis of their own faith. Of course, God is allowed to change the rules if he wants to, but the problem is that the old covenant was established to last forever, and this is mentioned numerous times by God and the "prophets" of God.

There is no shortage of Old Testament verses that affirm the everlasting and perfect nature of God's covenant and Law. Where do Christians get this idea of a new covenant from, if the Mosaic Law is eternal, unalterable, and flawless? Mostly from the New Testament and the teachings of Paul, though there are a few verses in the Old Testament regarding a "new" covenant.

II. The "New" Covenant

This "new" covenant is depicted as a renewal of the terms or laws of the old covenant under a new contract. Nowhere is a human sacrifice or anything like the doctrine of Christian salvation discussed, nor is there any mention of the old covenant or Mosaic Law being replaced or eliminated. But as we have known for centuries, Christians are very good at reading between the lines - often so good that they come up with ideas that are not actually supported anywhere in the text. The apostle Paul was possibly the first to do this, as he twisted Old Testament scripture to fit with the concept of salvation via Jesus Christ. A shining example of this can be found in Romans 10:11, where Paul convienently misquotes Isaiah 28:16.

Paul makes it very clear in his epistles that he despises the Law of the Old Testament, calling it a "curse" (Galatians 3:13), a "ministry of death" (2 Corinthians 3:7), and saying that it "condemns men" (2 Corin. 3:9). He also taught against the food law (Romans 14:14), the seventh day Sabbath law (Colossians 2:16), and the circumcision law (Galatians 6:15), just to name a few instances. Paul obviously wanted to replace the Law and the original covenant with one that would be easier to follow and would not be exclusively for the Jews [For more on Paul, check out the article Paul: Christianity's Contemptible Founder]. He lays out his agenda in crystal clear fashion in Romans 10:4...

III. What About Jesus?

Some Christians are more aware of the theological difficulties that are present in the flat-out rejection of the old covenant that Paul advocates, and so they like to claim that the Law was never replaced or abandoned... but there is a new covenant in town. One of the favorite verses of these types of Christians is Matthew 5:17, which states in Jesus' own words that he came to "fulfill" the Law, not to abolish it. Yet they seem to ignore verses 18 and 19 of the same chapter, in which Jesus reaffirms the everlasting nature of God's Law and decrees that anyone who breaks a single statute in it, and teaches others to do so too, will be called least in heaven.

Despite Christ's apparent adherence to the Mosaic Law, his actions in the bible rarely supported his words. Jesus acted against the food law in Mark 7:18-19, violated the Sabbath in Matthew 12:1-8, and dishonored his mother in Matthew 12:46-50. For someone who was claiming to be the fulfillment of the old covenant, Jesus failed miserably at upholding the Law on more than one occasion. Even if a Christian tries to assert that Paul was the one who hijacked Christianity, the evidence still shows that Christ was not well versed in Mosaic customs either, or he intentionally disregarded them.

IV. Why the Mosaic Covenant Threatens Christianity

If God's covenant with the Jews is truly eternal, perfect, and unchanging, as the Old Testament confirms, then Christianity's "new" covenant cannot be from the same God who is also allegedly eternal, perfect, and unchanging. Christians tend to focus on the glory and mercy of the new covenant, how superior it is to the Mosaic Law, and I might tend to agree with them. A system of strangely arbitrary (and often barbaric) rules is understandably less desirable than one which only asks for your belief in a few central doctrines. But such a realization hardly means one is any more probable than the other, and for Christianity - which already accepts the preceeding Law and all of the Old Testament in their history - it looks like their new covenant raises a lot of suspicion and questions.

There is, of course, the simple question of why God would wait so many millennia before revealing his "new and improved" covenant. Did he just feel like letting people suffer for a while first? Why wouldn't a loving, compassionate God have introduced the salvation covenant from the beginning? Why would an omniscient, omnipotent deity create a covenant that would need to be amended later on? Would it not have been easier to create an eternal, perfect, and unchanging one, as God claims to have done in the Old Testament?

Even the description of the "new" covenant that is given in the Old Testament demonstrates that God's initial covenant with the Jews would not actually be changed or majorly revised, as Christianity suggests it has been. Jeremiah 31:29-30 says that "everyone will die for his own sin" - a statement that is nearly the opposite of what Christianity teaches, with one man dying for the sins of all humanity. Jeremiah 31:34 indicates that under the new covenant, every believer will know God personally and have no need for an intercessor. Not only could Christ be thought of as an intercessor between God and man, but Romans 8:26 clearly spells out that the Holy Spirit is our intercessor, according to Paul's new covenant.

According to Christian theology, God's new covenant through Jesus Christ essentially canceled his own laws or rendered them obsolete, yet this is contrary to practically every mention of the new covenant that is made in the Old Testament, and it also contradicts the numerous descriptions of God's Law as being everlasting, flawless, and unalterable. If Christians honestly want to be consistent and obedient in their faith, they must observe Mosaic Law. Unfortunately, the Mosaic Law itself certainly does not seem perfect, as it orders for homosexuals to be killed (Leviticus 20:13), for rape victims to marry their rapists and never divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), and for those caught in adultery to be killed (Lev. 20:10), among many other barbarisms. When faced with a choice of disobedience to your God or participation in such horrific, immoral precepts - how will you decide?

Speaking for myself, I might just think that any religion which gives you that kind of a troubling choice is not worth believing in.