Confessions of a former youth pastor

Deuteronomy 23:1 - 26:19

We used to do an annual breakfast event with our youth groups, just kind of a family time to talk about the year gone by and the year to come.

As part of that event I would give kids seemingly random scripture references, have them look up the passage, read aloud, and provide interpretation of what they'd read. Several of the verses in this section of Deuteronomy were amongst my favorites. Imagine a middle school kid asked to read out loud and then provide the meaning of the following:

Deut 23:1
No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Deut 23:10-11
If one of your men is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he is to go outside the camp and stay there. But as evening approaches he is to wash himself, and at sunset he may return to the camp.

Deut 23:12-14
Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As a part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you...
(I had a kid once say, "This means God doesn't want to step in your poop.")

Deut 25:9-10
...his brothers widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, "This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line." That man's line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.

Deut 25:11
If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes up to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

I suppose if I believed in purgatory I would have earned several extra years there...but it did have the effect of making the kids more interested in reading the old testament!!