Of all the ways one can suffer from passing sicknesses, like colds and flu with their stuffy noses, headaches, and sore throats, I think none is so awful as a stomach virus. Its fury is usually brief, but the rage with which it refuses to allow anything to stay in the tummy is truly harrowing! It is no respecter of time or place either. Nothing, it seems, is permitted to stay there for long, regardless of where you happen to be at the moment. It comes upon you violently and there is no stopping it until it has cleaned out everything that was just consumed. Even the word itself – vomit – can induce this retching response. The word reminds us of sights and smells we’ve known before and our stomachs are churned within us. Sorry to be so graphic, but there is a point to this opening. Scripture teaches that a land can have this same reaction to its inhabitants. “Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants.” (Lev. 18:24-25) What does such language teach us about the world in which we live? And what would such an occurrence look like?
Throughout Scripture, creation is described as having many human responses, such as trees rejoicing (Psa. 96:12), mountains and hills breaking into song (Isa. 55:12), rocks and stones crying out (Luke 19:40), rivers clapping their hands (Psa. 98:8), and the whole of creation waiting and groaning with eager expectation (Romans 8:19-22) These and many others are often seen as literary devices, personification for the sake of effect. But I’m convinced they reveal an essential reality about the universe around us; it is made and maintained by the one true God, and as such, bears His ethical nature. Matter is moral. Now, I’m not talking about pantheism, where god is creation or panentheism where god is found in nature and beyond it. No, in both of those systems nature is in some way deified. What I’m talking about is what the Bible presents as the nature of nature. It is good. It is not morally neutral and malleable, just a pile of raw material given to the whims of fallen man. No, when man twists nature he is not distorting a blank slate, he’s damaging something that was designed for God’s glory and testimony. The fact that so many good things can be done with the stuff of heaven and earth is just another example of the bounty of God!
The warning cited above from Leviticus came just as Israel was preparing to enter Canaan. The nations they were going in to dispossess had dwelt long in the land and throughout their time there they had perpetrated a litany of heinous acts, including all manner of sexual perversions and child sacrifice. And note, that while these nations had not been given the written law, as Israel had, they were still guilty of violating them, for they had been etched on their stony hearts, as a witness and testimony y against them. Romans 1:21 tells us that “although they knew God, they did not glorify Him, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Committing these evil deeds had defiled not just themselves but the very soil upon which they lived. These defilements, God was warning, would be like a stomach virus to the land into which they were going in to possess, should Israel do the same. They would nauseate the land and be hurled out just as the nations before them were about to be. God shows no partiality, nor does His creation.
But what does the regurgitation of a nation look like? Well, what does throw-up always look like? It looks like whatever had peacefully passed over the teeth and tongue just moments before, only jumbled up and distorted now, and stewing in a hot and smelly mess. Our society has fed off the dwindling scraps of a godlier era for decades now, so it’s not surprising to find bits and pieces of more traditional things in all our spew. We still hear words like “man” and “woman” but they are floating now in an acidic and pagan bile of “gender.” Marriages still go on, but Obergefell has caused an upchuck of what they will look like going forward. Children are still being born, but are increasingly having their bodies mutilated by their parents, intent on altering the image of God they bear. And even as we stand on the edge of the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade, certain states have codified a mother’s right to kill her baby, even days after birth! Molech’s hunger is truly insatiable!
These are the things that make a land gag, not climate change and fracking. These convulsions will continue to occur because the land is always on God’s side. Woven into every square inch of creation is the fingerprint of its Creator. The need of the hour is not more “Pepto Bismal” logic, which seeks to coat the lining of our moral consciousness and quell the rising repulsive reflexes. No, vomit reminds us that some things will never belong in the belly. May we join the land it rejecting everything within ourselves and without that is contrary to the laws of God!
