Deuteronomy 21

I don't have kids yet, but I've worked with my fair share of them. And kids, just like adults, run the gamut from awesome and charming to exasperating and bratty. About a week or so ago, I watched the movie Finding Dory at a theater. And I can't really say that I have an unbiased opinion of the movie because the whole experience was tarnished by this kid who was constantly kicking the back of not only my seat, but also the seat next to me. In addition, he would start whining loudly every 5-10 minutes (because he wanted candy, I think) and, for the last 15 minutes of the movie, started playing some kind of game with himself that involved stomping disruptively on the floor.

But what irritated me far more than this misbehaving kid was his parents' complete and willful obliviousness at how unruly their son was acting. They gave him some halfhearted "sushes," but they really should have taken him out of the theater after the whining became constant. And I don't think I'm being too much of a curmudgeon--the whining was actually loud enough so that I couldn't hear the film's dialogue. (On a side note, I've seen a fair number of Disney and Pixar films that have had a fair number of kids in the audience, and this was my first negative experience. The screening of Big Hero 6 I attended had plenty of laughter, gasps, applause at the end, and even some sad sniffling at one point--which I did not mind at all and, in fact, actually enhanced the communal experience).

Now, I know this is the Bible, but I don't think a rebellious son needs to be stoned to death as verse 21 of this chapter states. And as much as that kid in the movie theater irked me, he certainly didn't deserve a stoning--just some tough love from his overly lenient parents. Sometimes, one can blame misbehaving kids on poor parenting, but sometimes, it just seems like the kid is a bad seed. The Bible itself is rife with such examples, from King David to Eli the priest. Again, I don't have any kids of my own yet, so I'm going to cop out from postulating any more harebrained theories on this matter.

Just as stoning a rebellious son to death is no longer relevant or acceptable today, the laws about marrying captive women also wouldn't sit well in today's society. Israelite men were permitted to marry captive women if they thought they were foxy, but the women had to shave their heads (like Sinead O'Connor, as Deadpool might say) and cut their nails (and how did people cut their nails before nail clippers? With scissors? Teeth?) Seems like a sucky situation for the wife--though admittedly better than getting killed by your captors--but the good news was that if the man was "not pleased with" the woman, he had to let her go wherever she wanted. He could not make her a slave (verse 14). I'm aware that many marriages before modern times weren't made primarily because of love (though a loving relationship sometimes did develop), so I'm pleasantly surprised to learn that women--and foreign women at that--were afforded at least some rights in this situation.