Acts 15:28ff
[i][color=000066]28 For it seemed good [b]to the Holy Spirit, and to us[/b], to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual 1immorality.[/color][/i]
Mmmm, So the Holy Spirit Himself endorsed these few rules. The ban on immorality and on idol worship is obvious, but why things strangled, and blood?
This was a law from before Moses, or even before Abraham, from the time that Noah was given permission to eat meat after the Flood. There was a ban on eating blood, and anything with the blood remaining (as with a creature that had been strangled).
But what are the present day implications for us? For example, does that mean that we are not to eat black pudding (A kind of sausage made with blood)? Some African tribes live mostly on milk and blood serum from their cattle, mixed together to make a kind of porridge. Is that wrong?
How far does this go? Is it because the drinking of blood was a pagan practice in the society of the day? In that case, it was what the blood [i][u]represented[/u][/i] that would be forbidden, rather than the blood itself as such?
I don't fancy black pudding anyway, and have never eaten it, but would it be sin if I did?
Or what if I cut my finger and licked some blood from the cut, (saliva has some soothing and antiseptic properties, and it's natural to lick a wound)?
Or was this particular rule only for that day and age? To most of us, the thought of drinking blood, (or eating black pudding) doesn't have any pagan connotations, and wouldn't tempt us into idol worship, but maybe it would have in those days. What about strangulation, was that a practice in pagan sacrifices too?...
More questions than answers!
Thanks for bringing this up.
Jeannette
