Reading COG related message groups on Yahoo is never dull. Some of the things you read just boggle your mind. Yahoo is filled with a lot of COG members who have taken legalism to the extreme. Not content with the myriad of laws, rules and regulations that Armstrongism lays down upon them, they have also incorporated the 613 laws of orthodox Judaism into the lives. They are constantly harping about one law after another that Christians are 'required' to keep. There is never a discussion about Jesus, but hundreds and hundreds about the law. If Jesus is brought up it is only to say, "Christ would not approve." Saying the word Jesus is too effeminate or Protestant for most of them.
Anyway, one of the topics today was on levirate marriage. What's a poor woman to do if her young husband is sterile? Take sperm from a brother or the mans father and artificially inseminate? Since the man is not dead the woman cannot marry his brother, so sperm collection seems to be their best choice.
I was thinking about a young friend whose husband became sterile from cancer treatments and it got me thinking that he is "dead" to having the ability to raise up his own house (ben=house or sons)Responses:
For his brother to father him a child would fit in the spirit of levirate.
There was no "marriage" at all at first. Just creating a child. Marriage was added on much later to satisfy some people's problems with it, I suppose.
But I think this would be entirely right while the couple is young since we now have artificial insemination.
Again as I said before this service was only to be performed for the sake of "heaven" and no other reason.
"In this day & age, your friend could surely put some of the brother-in-law's stuff in a turkey baster & avoid the actual sexual relations... And if her husband helped out... well, just sayin' there is more than one way to skin a cat."
"I would think the church would not approve, however."
"I donno why not. Anyway, if it were me, I would not tell the church--why would the church need to know such personal business!"
And to end the discussion the uber-legalist on the board always has this response:
"Christ is the head of the Church and He would certainly know, and He is the only important One!!"
.
