Pouring Alcohol on a Rock

In Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth speaks of the move of the Enlightenment philosophers as they attempted to replace a culture built around “a sacred order.” When we lose a Higher meaning to life it becomes impossible to agree on virtue and suddenly what was once taboo is accepted.

Suddenly society asks questions that were never asked, or even considered, in previous generations. “Why should a man not marry a man? W/hy should a man not become a woman? Why should a child not have three fathers, or be born form a uterus transplanted into a man’s body?” My grandparents never dreamed of such questions…I’m just shy of 60 and as a child we never heard anything like this. That which was taboo has become common.

When I think of the word taboo, my mind goes back to one of my favorite mission trips I’ve ever taken. I joined three men in our church, and we went to Madagascar to help our denomination’s mission board conduct some surveys. We got off an old train in the middle of nowhere and backpacked into four different villages.

When we arrived, we would meet the village elders and ask for permission to camp outside of their village and to visit the homes there with a series of questions. One of the questions was “Do you have any taboos here?”

That was always answered with a “Yes.” You couldn’t eat pig, you couldn’t, I’m not making this up, urinate in certain places, or you couldn’t contact pig’s blood…things like that. That question was followed up with another question, if you break the taboo, how can you get forgiveness?

The point was to understand their view of atonement, but the answers were astonishing. Some said, “No, if you break the taboo, you can never get forgiveness,” but others said yes and demonstrated how it was possible.

I’ll never forget one of the ways to get forgiveness. “You have to pour alcohol on the ancestorial rock.” The man saw my interest and said, “Would you like to see the rock?” Or course I wanted to see the rock. He took us down to a small body of water and there was a rock sticking out of the water…he pointed to the rock and said it was the ancestorial rock.

I asked, “Why do you pour alcohol on that rock?” He said, “Because it is holy.” I asked, “Why is that rock holy?” He said, “Because the water is holy.” I asked, “What makes that water holy?” He said, “Because the rock is there.” Well, how do you argue with that?!

We were able to share the Gospel there and explain what the Bible teaches about forgiveness and how Jesus atones for our sin, but we were only planting seeds and trusting the Holy Spirit to cause them to grow.

As I think about our own culture taboos and how they are changing, I find myself often at Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones. When we turn our eyes off of God, off of His Word, and to our own understanding and what we need is for the Spirit to blow so that our dead bodies can live!

There is a God in Heaven and He has given us His book, His expectations are clear, but obediences is dependent upon the empowering work of His Holy Spirit. Forgiveness is available, but not by pouring alcohol on a rock…it comes from the One who died on the Cross.

(The picture is not the rock we visited, but it was something very similar!)