Don’t Forget Your Tassels
Numbers 15, the Power of Memory, and the Catastrophic Result of Forgetting
I have two wedding rings. One is a normal, metallic wedding ring. The other is a silicon ring. I predominantly wore the silicon one. The reason is simple: it reminds me that I am a married man committed to my wife and committed to my health (when working out, it is far better to wear the silicon ring). It may sound silly, but it is a necessary reminder of who I am and who I aspire to be as long as I live: the husband of Laura who takes his health seriously (obviously, with my wife as the far greater priority). There have been times when I have desired to skip my afternoon workout. But, in looking at the silicon ring, I am reminded of my commitment to health in addition to my marriage.
We all have things in our lives—clothing, items, rituals—that remind us who we are and where we belong. The workplace key fob is a reminder of one’s place of employment and the unique access that brings. The uniform a student wears for her sport signifies belonging to a team. The toddler’s bedtime ritual is a daily reminder of one’s parental vocation. These items, articles of clothing, and rituals call to mind who we are and who we belong to.
Tale-Telling Tassels
The Hebrew people in the Old Testament had numerous rituals, items, and pieces of clothing that reminded them of their identity, purpose, and shared story. Circumcision, for example, was a reminder of their distinctness as God’s chosen people and the covenant God made with their ancestors.
Recently, in my morning time of Scripture reading and prayer, I began slowly reading through the fourth book of Torah—Numbers. In Numbers 15:37-41, God gives Moses a fascinating directive for Israel.
37 The Lord said to Moses: 38 Speak to the Israelites, and tell them to make fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a blue cord on the fringe at each corner. 39 You have the fringe so that, when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes. 40 So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and you shall be holy to your God. 41 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God.1
These fringes are tassels at the four corners of an outer garment that they wore around their shoulders, like a thin blanket. The color of the cord on these fringes was “blue,” but this can also be translated as “purple.” This was a color of royalty. This item of clothing was meant to be a physical reminder. One’s eyes would look at the tassels and the cords and remember the commands of the Lord, their identity and vocation (as a royal priesthood, per Exodus 19:6), and their shared story of liberation (“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God”).2 Interestingly, these garments signifying royalty and the call to holiness—to be set apart and thus reflect YHWH accurately to the nations—were not exclusively for men.3
The Cost of Forgetting
The recollection of their story, identity, and vocation was a preventative measure. If they forgot who they are and the commandments of God, their hearts were bound to wander from God toward idolatry. This is our story too. The instinctual desires within us pull us toward all kinds of cravings. Like an anchorless ship with no direction, we are tossed to and fro by the uncontrollable winds of competing affections. Unless we are anchored in a shared story, identity, and vocation, we are like “waterless clouds, swept along by the winds.”4 There is a word for those who cannot perpetually surrender to their cravings: toddlers. Maturity entails developing the discipline to control one’s cravings. Addiction is a surrender of the reins of control—the executive function of their brain responsible for making decisions—to the instant gratification of the addictive behavior. To grow into maturity is to strengthen the ability to say no to fleeting desires that are not good for one’s health, relationships, and soul—to be in control of one’s desires, and not controlled by them. By reminding the Israelites of their identity, vocation, and shared story, the tassels served as a safeguard against their wandering hearts.
We live in an age in which there are countless competing stories vying for one’s belief, behavior, and allegiance. Pluralism, the societal air we breathe in which we can live amicably (usually) among one another despite differing worldviews, is not new.5 But, amid the plethora of possibilities—plausability structures, as sociologist Peter Berger defines it—for the individual, “[a]ll of life becomes an interminable process of redefining who [one] is in the context of the seemingly endless possibilities presented by modernity.”6 The freedom and limitless possibilities to define oneself, uprooted from a community with a shared story, identity, and vocation, sounds like freedom. The freedom of individualized self-definition is the lure of the age. But the result is an anchorless life, void of meaning. The enticing desire for limitless freedom and autonomy is the enemy of the soul’s deeper desire.
The result is a pervasive anxiety.7 The replacement of the disciplinary society—a given structure of identity and behavior embedded in community—with a self-directed achievement society is, according to the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, the reason for the chronic anxiety of the age.8 I would argue that in addition to achievement, the limitless options of identity-construction opens to door to anxiety. “Who do I want to be? What if I regret the decision on who I want to be?” With identity as self-discovered rather than given, fluid rather than solid, and one’s life story dislodged from a shared communal story, the modern individual journeys alone in the land of isolation and meaninglessness.
Don’t Forget Your Tassel
For the Hebrew people, tassels were more than fringes on an item of clothing that they perpetually wore around their shoulders. The tassels sparked a shared memory of one’s story of liberation, identity as God’s chosen people, and communal vocation to represent God accurately to the nations via obedience to God’s commands. They, like us, had hearts that easily wandered from sole, focused allegiance to God. They had forgetful and distractible minds. The tassels were not just helpful reminders. They were necessary. The tassels, according to Jacob Milgrom, invite three necessary movements: look at the tassel, remember what the tassel represents, and live out the reminder of the tassel.9
Wearing a silicon ring reminds me that I am committed to my wife and to my health. But since my heart easily wanders from God—even as a pastor—I may need to find some tassels.
Friends, don’t forget your story in Jesus. Don’t forget your identity in Jesus. Don’t forget your mission in Jesus.
Don’t forget your tassels.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Numbers 15:37–41.
Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 127, 412-413.
Ibid., 412.
Jude 12, ESV.
Peter L. Berger, The Many Altars of Modernity: Towards a Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age (Boston, MA; Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter, 2014) 1, 5.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 9.
See The Burnout Society (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 2015). I found this in Joshua Ryam Butler, The Party Crasher: How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems our Partisan Divide (Multnomah, 2024), 195.
Milgrom, Numbers, 413.