purity and such

So, last night at jOURney I had a question in my mind that I didn't ask. It probably wouldn't have helped and the conversation went down paths that would made me asking it a step backward.

The text was Acts 10, Peter and Cornelius, being the major people along with God making a couple of appearances as well. Peter is given a vision of all the animals and the like on the sheet and God tells Peter to 'kill and eat.' In essence, destroying the division between Jew and non-Jew; the major differences between the two often boil down to ritual purity and not being ritually pure.

My question?

Why did God create this whole idea of purity? Was it just to show us that the division it causes is dumb after all?

Did people just take it too far? Did it cause division that God never had in mind to start with?

David Crowder suggests in "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die," that it's possible that the Psalms exist because God knew that we'd need songs and other expressions to convey our emotions to God and others. For instance, the Last Supper text says 'after they had sung a hymn,' it's possible that God had ordained that particular hymn or song in order to guide the disciples through that ordeal. In fact, the Passover they were celebrating had prescribed hymns or songs to sing.

So, in that 'vein' is it possible that the issue of purity got so much attention just so God could show us just how selectively we choose to love by destroying our concept of it?

Is this even making sense?

This idea of breaking down the division between Jew and non-Jew was totally revolutionary. But in order for us to get how much God wants unity in the body, did folks (like the Pharisees) have to beat people up with the purity issue?

God continues to be the author of life and love. God continues to push our envelope of love. Notice I didn't say push 'the' envelope, He just pushes ours. My guess is that God's already got in mind the ways He wants us to love. We just have to take baby steps there.

Deciding who's in and who's out doesn't really get us there, so maybe we are all asked to in some way "kill and eat."

So, there's my post service trip thoughts...