Tag Archives: Hebrew Roots

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The Problem with Religious People

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rob-bellThe former pastor and founder of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., made the comment during a guest appearance this past Sunday at The Forum at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to discuss his new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

Grace Cathedral is the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of California and describes itself as “an iconic house of prayer for all” and is home to an “inclusive congregation.” The congregation’s dean, the Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw, moderated The Forum discussion before a live audience.

When asked by Shaw if he was in favor of “marriage equality,” the politically-charged term used by some who want “marriage” redefined, Bell said:

“Yes, I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think that the church needs to just … this is the world that we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

-Nichola Menzie
“Rob Bell Supports Same-Sex Marriage, Says He Is for ‘Fidelity and Love'”
March 18, 2013 | 2:42 pm
ChristianPost.com

As for Acts 15, this is not a set of different instructions for Gentiles. But salvation is by faith, for Jew and Gentile alike. We believe they will be saved the same way we will be saved. The Torah is not the yoke that we nor our fathers have been able to bear, but rather, specifically, the Torah “according the custom of Moshe.” So it is that Paul recalls his words to Peter in Galatians, that Peter did not live “like a Jew.” The followers of Messiah Yeshua inherently cannot submit to all of the traditions of Judaism. To do so would be to disobey the Master and the Commandment of God. In separating himself from the Gentiles, Peter was submitting to Jewish halachic rulings that are not in step with the gospel, and requiring Gentiles to do likewise. Gentiles should start with the four prohibitions in Acts 15—which people are cut off from Israel for breaking—so that they can join the assembly and learn the Commandment of God, which is read in every city every Sabbath. They do not need to become Jewish and submit to the Oral Torah, they simply need to have faith in God and His Mashiach and let obedience to the Commandment working through love be the expression of that faith.

-Charles commenting on my blog post
Moshiach Rabbeinu

Why is everyone trying to change my mind?

I saw the news item about Rob Bell a few days ago. The link was posted by a Facebook “friend” (I put “friend” in quotes since I’ve never met the individual and know him solely through Facebook). It wasn’t directed specifically at me, though I did comment about it a few times on Facebook and then dropped the issue.

But Charles came to me or more accurately, to my blog to comment on his views and to disagree with mine. He seems like a nice guy. I don’t doubt that he’s sincere. But in reading my blog, he should have known from the start that we were coming from two different points of view.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect to be universally accepted, agreed with, or liked. Especially in the world of religion, it’s almost a given that if you’re outspoken at all, people are going to “hunt you down like a duck” (to quote Buford Tanner from the third Back to the Future movie) from the four corners of the earth just to tell you that you’re not only wrong, but a total blockhead (with apologies to Charlie Brown, who’s been called a blockhead more times than I can count).

But it occurred to me to ask, and especially in the context of Charles and people like him, people who don’t know me or have any particular reason to read, let alone comment on my blog, why do they care what I think, say, and believe?

I mean, the Internet is full of bloggers. According to dazeinfo.com, by the end of 2011, there were 181 million blogs on the Internet. That was well over a year ago, and I’m sure there must be even more by now (jeffbullas.com has some interesting info on the nature of the blogosphere in 2012, but nothing relevant to the religious blog space).

So why me? Do I comment on your blogs? No, and in fact, I’ve deliberately stopped commenting on blogs where I know my opinions will cause a small and virtual riot just because I’m sick and tired of all the arguments. Discussions? OK. But why charge down my throat just because you know you can?

And it’s not just the blogosphere anymore.

a-j-jacobsMy Pastor recently loaned me a copy of A.J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically. I’ve just started reading it and so far, find it entertaining and humorous. Jacobs is Jewish and not religious in the slightest, but he was determined, for the sake of writing a book, to live as close to a literally Biblical life as possible for an entire year.

I might have taken some sort of offense to his approach, but apparently this is the type of book Jacobs writes. He immerses himself in a subject for a significant period of time in order to learn, often with amusing results, records his experiences, and then turns all that into a book.

But then I had a thought. Is it possible that Pastor gave me this book to read for a specific reason, one particularly related to whether or not the Torah is possible to observe by Jews in today’s world? I’ll have to ask him, but I don’t see him until tonight.

I can understand why Pastor would want to instruct me, enlighten me, edify me, since we have a one-on-one, face-to-face relationship and I attend his church, but why does the Internet care?

Even the people I agree with theologically have some sort of interest in maintaining my current belief system which dovetails into their’s. I’ve made a paradigm shift before. What if I do so again? Who will be affected? How will they react? How much of other people’s emotions and interests are tied to what should be a single individual’s personal understanding of God and faith?

And then there’s political correctness to consider. Atheists and the socially and politically liberal religious individuals and movements are interested in convincing me (well, maybe not me personally, but everyone like me) that not only “gay is good” but that being gay is biblical and that I should not only adopt that belief as a matter of religion but as a matter of politics, carrying it all the way to the ballot box.

Does my personal opinion about how “marriage equality” factors into my understanding of the Bible have anything to do with anybody else? It’s not like I’m protesting at gay weddings or writing letters to the editor. I’m not even vocal about the issue except when my hand is forced. I live in a nation of laws and when (I don’t doubt that it will happen, it’s just a matter of time) marriage between same-sex couples becomes legal nationally, I won’t say “boo” about it. Actually, it’s not a law I could break, even if I wanted to, since I’m in no position to affect such a law one way or another.

But some people want or need me to agree with them anyway. Go figure.

After finishing Jacobs’ book, I plan to start reading Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. No, I don’t plan to adopt it as my model for a personal spiritual journey, but Castaneda’s books are considered classics in their genre and I’ve been meaning to read at least a few of them for the past thirty years or so. I just never got around to it before.

I’m beginning to get disgusted again with all the little games that people play in the religious blogosphere. I’m really getting tired of all of the “I’m right and you’re wrong” pettiness that is going on out there. If it stayed “out there” it would be easy to ignore, but it’s invading my space. I’m not here to be a target. I want to be free of your chains. But it seems the only way to do that is to abandon contact with religious people and pursue God independently. Yes, that’s full of pitfalls and I returned to church just because of those pitfalls.

But I’m having second thoughts. If God wants me, He’s got me, but that doesn’t mean I have to join your particular club just because it makes you feel better to drag in more members, be ye “One Law,” Two House,” “Hebrew Roots” or any other “label” that comes with a dogma on a leash.

burning-the-sacredI can sort of see why Jacob Nordby wrote his book (which I’ll review shortly) The Divine Arsonist, since it’s the latest in a long line of attempts by people to reinvent God and religion in our own personal image. I can understand why concepts such as free range humans are coming to the surface. People want control of their lives and they’re tired of the environment defining the parameters by which we must live. That includes the parameters by which we must believe and have faith.

Christians like to say “God is in control” but when it comes to faith, it’s more like the religions and the people occupying their favorite religions that want to take control…of me.

OK, I’m exaggerating. I’m not that important to anyone, at least to anyone on the web. I could disappear tomorrow and probably not inspire so much as a raised eyebrow. Which makes it all the more mysterious to me why people want to control what I say, think, and believe.

If I don’t believe the same things as you and through my beliefs, I’m not harming you (I don’t visit you, yell at you, try to change your life, picket your weddings and funerals, pollute your holy water, or otherwise interfere in your life and the practice of whatever faith to which you’re attached), then why do you care about my religious convictions? Honestly, if I believe that God really doesn’t expect me to wear a tallit gadol when praying, doesn’t expect me to not mow the lawn on Saturday morning, doesn’t expect me to not eat a cheeseburger, how does that impact you even slightly?

Yes, I’m ranting. It’s my blogspot and I’m entitled to rant here. Tomorrow, I may wake up and feel better but right now, I’m a little tired of “religion” (and please, don’t drop by and tell me that Christianity “is a relationship, not a religion,” trust me, it’s a religion).

If you want to ask me a question, fine. If you want to deliver a polite and civil comment, fine. Even if you disagree with me and want to tell me why you do what you do, fine. Just don’t feel like you can tell me what I can, should, must do just because you’ve made those decisions for you.

When I refrain from eating bacon or sausage for breakfast, I’m not doing it because I think God will fry me in pork fat if I do. I’m making a personal decision based on my own convictions. Please feel free to enjoy a good pork chop or a steaming hot bowl of shrimp scampi. I won’t mind. If you’re a gay guy and want to marry your partner, fine. If you’re a through and through Gentile without a drop of Jewish blood in your veins and you feel you must pray in Hebrew facing toward Jerusalem and calling Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob your “fathers,” go for it.

But I’m not going to pretend they’re my fathers just because you want me to. My relationship with God is my relationship with God. I blog about it. So what? Deal with it. If you don’t like what I say, don’t come to my blog. I promise, I’ll never come to your blogs and I absolutely promise I’ll never comment on any of them.

I write because that’s what I do. I’m a writer. I write for my job. I write to process information. I write for fun. Maybe someday you’ll succeed in chasing me out of the blogosphere, but I don’t know what would compel me to shut up. On the other hand, there are days like today when I could happily pull the plug and just read and study by myself, no other human beings required.

Got it?

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Sharing the Birthday Boy’s Chair

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boys-fightingSupersessionism is when a Theology attempts to push Jews out of their seat. Inclusionist Messianic Judaism (i.e. One Law) says that Jews remain Jews and remain obligated to the Sinaitic Covenant. Thus, it can’t be considered supersessionist–because Jews keep their seat. They remain the older brother–and that means being a role model and also teaching the younger, adopted brother (Gentiles) how to understand and practice Torah.

-Commentary from a Hebrew Roots blog post

OK, I’ll bite. I know I shouldn’t, but I will. Like the politically correct pundits and visionaries popular in the mainstream media, the term “inclusionist” seems all nice and cozy, but it doesn’t always fit well when translated into other venues.

Do I believe in “inclusionism?” First, we need a definition of “inclusion.”

  1. The act of including or the state of being included.
  2. Something included.

There were also entries for how inclusion is used in Geology, Biology, Computer Science, and Mathematics, but they didn’t seem particularly relevant to the conversation.

Of course, I support inclusion as applied to equal access to resources in society such as education, jobs, housing, and the “pursuit of happiness,” but that has to be filtered through a few things such as “citizenship.” If you’re a citizen in this country, you have rights, such as the right to vote, for example. If you aren’t a citizen, your rights aren’t the same and sometimes you don’t have access to the identical resources in society as do citizens.

With that in mind, let’s return to the specifics of the subject at hand.

Bob (Craig T. Nelson): You need an invitation?
Lucius (Samuel L. Jackson): I’d like one, yes.

-from the film The Incredibles (2004)

I’ve written about supersessionism or replacement theology many, many times before, including in a four-part series in Messiah Journal last year. As a Christian husband married to a Jewish wife, I am very sensitive (some might say, “overly sensitive”) to the basic tenet that has been supported in the majority of the history of the church that Christianity has replaced Judaism in all of the covenant promises God made to Israel. In essence, the church is supposed to be the “New Israel” and Judaism and the Jewish people are now “has beens” relegated by God to the backwaters of eternity.

However, according to the person I quoted above, supersessionism is “solved” when Christians don’t try to push Jews “out of their seat” but rather, try to crowd into the same seat with them. Does that work? I don’t think so.

I’ve blogged and blogged about how this doesn’t work in so many different ways that you’d think one of them would “stick” by now, but as Rabbi Dr. Michael Schiffman recently said, maybe the person commenting or I or both of us are “addicted to negativity.” I hope not, but there’s something about misinformation and disinformation that gets under my skin.

Let’s accept the existing metaphor used by my source, that supersessionism is the pushing of Jews (presumably by Christians) out of their seat, or their accepted identity and role as defined by the Bible and God. What does it do to push the Jews out of their seat and to sit in it instead as usurpers?

Usurp, as a transitive verb is:

    1. to seize and hold (as office, place, or powers) in possession by force or without right (usurp a throne)
    2. to take or make use of without right (usurped the rights to her life story)
  2. to take the place of by or as if by force : supplant (must not let stock responses based on inherited prejudice usurp careful judgment)

Used as an intransitive verb:

  1. to seize or exercise authority or possession wrongfully

Boiling it all down, it would be as if I lead a political coup in a nation, kicked the King off the throne and replaced the King as ruler of the nation.

OK, I get that and I agree. I have no right to replace the King. The metaphor seems to hold up pretty well when compared to what we understand about supersessionism.

But what about sharing the throne? What if I lead a political coup and demand that the King share the throne with me? I’m not kicking him out of his chair, so to speak, but I’m demanding that he share the throne with me, insisting that I have rights to sit in his chair, too. Do I really have a right to do that? Not if I don’t have legitimate claim to royal authority. If I do, then either I’m the rightful King and the person now on the throne is a pretender, or I am in line for the throne once it becomes available.

boys-birthday-partyNeither of those metaphors works very well when we apply them to the covenant relationship Judaism enjoys relative to God. In fact, as Gentiles “grafted in” to the Jewish olive tree, we don’t suddenly become Jewish and thus have rights to “share the throne” in the manner of those who were born as “Princes.” If Christians aren’t Jews, then no matter how much we share access to God and to salvation and a place in the world to come, we don’t actually become Jewish and thus, hold an identity and responsibilities exactly equal to those who originally came to be a light to the world.

Let’s change the picture a little bit. There’s a children’s birthday party. Naturally the “birthday boy” gets the seat at the head of the table and is served a double portion of ice cream and cake because, after all, he’s the birthday boy, this is his home, and it’s his special time.

Now let’s say that one of the other kids gets jealous. Maybe his birthday has come and gone and he didn’t get such a nice party or maybe he just sees all the attention the birthday boy is getting and he wants it, too. He can push the birthday boy out of his chair and try to take the double portion of ice cream and cake, but as we see from our above metaphors, we know it’s wrong to do so. Let’s say the jealous birthday boy knows it’s wrong, too.

But, hey! What if we “share?”

So the jealous boy goes to sit in the same chair as the birthday boy, “shoehorning” himself into a very limited space meant to be occupied only by one person. He brings his own spoon and insists that the birthday boy share his seat, his cake, his ice cream, and his presents.

Does that seem right to you?

No, of course not. Only the birthday boy is the birthday boy. Even if the jealous boy was born on the same day (and he probably wasn’t), it’s still not his party, his cake, his ice cream, or his presents. He gets his own seat, his own cake, and his own ice cream because he’s an invited guest. Maybe he’s even a special guest because he’s the birthday boy’s best friend (think David and Jonathan). Maybe after the party is over, the birthday boy will share all his gifts and play with him. All the jealous boy has to do is accept who he is, where he’s seated, and be kind and patient. All the jealous boy has to do is realize that it’s the birthday boy’s day, not his own.

That’s what happens at most birthday parties for children. We teach children who is the special person who is having the birthday and who are the guests. We teach them that only special friends and relatives are invited to be guests at the banquet. There are other kids who don’t know the birthday boy who don’t get invited and don’t get ice cream, cake, and a door prize.

If the jealous boy realizes all that, then he realizes that even though he’s not the birthday boy, he’s special too, and he has no reason at all to be jealous. By being rude and trying to “share” something that clearly doesn’t belong to him, he risks losing everything. By understanding that he is special and a friend and a guest, he will someday gain everything.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

–Luke 14:7-11 (ESV)

Now, was that so hard to understand? Even a little child can get it.

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Separate Paths

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SeparatedHowever, after a few years these same mission organizations started putting other books at the top of the bags of Bibles. These were books about one particular denomination’s theology, or teaching that focused on certain aspects of God’s Word.

This, I believe, was the start of disunity among many of China’s house churches.

These booklets told us we must worship in a certain way, or that we must speak in tongues to be a true believer, or that only if we were baptized in Jesus’ name (instead of in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) could we be saved. Other teachings focused on extreme faith, still others argued for or against the role of women in the church.

We read all these booklets and soon we were confused! The churches started to split into groups that believed one thing against groups that believed another. Instead of only speaking for Jesus, we also started speaking against other believers who didn’t conform to our views.

-Brother Yun (with Paul Hattaway)
Chapter 20: “The Road to Unity” pg 233
The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun

“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

-Thomas Gray
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1742)

Any of this sound familiar?

Brother Yun (Liu Zhenying) is describing a situation that occurred with the Christian communities of China in 1994. Various Christian missionary organizations from other nations wanted to help the isolated and often persecuted church in China. When China’s borders started to open up in the 1980s, these missionaries took the opportunity to engage representatives of the church in China, which was broken up in to thousands of house churches for the purposes of security and anonymity in relation to a hostile government, and try to provide for the Chinese Christians’ needs. They needed Bibles…lots and lots of Bibles.

After foreign Christian missionaries were expelled from China after the advent of the communist revolution in 1948-1950, the body of Chinese believers were pretty much on their own. Only a handful of Christians possessed Bibles, including Brother Yun, and almost nothing was known about “Christian theology” except what was revealed by the Bible itself and the Holy Spirit as it was manifested in the lives of the faithful, particularly Pastors and teachers like Brother Yun. Although there were very rare encounters with a few Chinese people who self-identified as Catholic, Christianity in China had no denominational identity of any sort. The focus of Christians in China was to covertly study the Bible, covertly meet in small house churches, covertly travel to preach the Gospel where it was unknown in China, and if captured, imprisoned, and tortured, covertly teach the Gospel to other prisoners and on occasion, even to sympathetic prison guards.

No one was thinking about denominationalism and anyone who was a Christian was a brother and sister to everyone else who was a Christian. They shared the same passion for Christ, the same fear of the government, the same pattern of concealing themselves to avoid detection and arrest, and the same risk of being tried, jailed, tortured, and executed by the anti-church state.

That changed in the early 1990s, and with the knowledge that there were different theologies, different doctrines, different denominations, and different identities, all calling themselves “Christian” but sometimes differing radically from one another, the once unified church of China became fragmented and fractured, just like Christianity in the rest of the world.

We arranged for Zhang Rongliang and the leaders of this Fangcheng Church to meet with us. This was a big step because of the tension that had existed between his group and Brother Xu’s group for many years. The day before Zhang arrived we had a time for prayer. Brother Fan said, “Brother Xu, I believe the Lord has given me a word for you, but I’m not sure you can accept it.”

He continued, “I feel that when Zhang Rongliang and his leaders arrive you shouldn’t sit down with them and talk straight away. You shouldn’t even pray with them at first. When they arrive you should immediately get on your knees and wash their feet one by one.”

Brother Xu, who leads millions of believers across China, immediately responded, “I accept this as a word from the Lord. I’ll certainly wash their feet.”

Yun/Hattaway, pp 236-7

I’ve spent this past week addressing the struggle between Messianic Judaism and Hebrew Roots Christianity in terms of community identity and whether or not we can consider our two groups (and the multiple sub-groups contained within) at all part of the same “body of Christ.”

There are days when I have my doubts.

This isn’t quite what Brother Yun is describing, but it is related. At one point, the Chinese Christians conceptualized their identities as Christians in fundamentally the same way. They just didn’t know any better. Then, with the awareness of denominationalism, split after split occurred, and the only way to even begin the healing was through an act of humility, much as what the Master performed upon his own disciples shortly before his crucifixion and death.

washing-feetIn the case of Brother Xu and Zhang Rongliang, it almost didn’t work. When the different groups of Chinese Christian leaders got together in the same room, discussions degraded and old arguments resurfaced. Zhang flew into a rage and almost stormed out before Brother Fan pushed Brother Xu into hurriedly getting some water and kneeling in front of Zhang to wash his feet. It took years to unify most of China’s churches again but the effort wasn’t totally successful, at least in the short run. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, most of China’s estimated 58 million Christians were unified as brothers and sisters, averting the disaster that came about with the knowledge of “differences.”

But the problem isn’t the same in the Messianic Jewish/Hebrew Roots Christianity space. Jews are different by design…God’s design. Finding a way to integrate Gentiles into a Jewish religious movement and yet have the Gentiles retain their identity, not requiring that they convert to Judaism, was and is something of a chore. I personally don’t believe it was ever completely accomplished in Paul’s lifetime, and not that soon afterward, the whole thing disintegrated (though it took a few centuries to finish it off) into a Jewish religion that did not believe the Messiah had yet come, and a Christian religion that believed the Jewish Messiah came, rejected the Jews for rejecting him, and took upon himself the Gentiles instead. When the Christ returns, it is generally believed he will reward his faithful Gentile Christians and judge the unbelieving Jews.

What a mess.

I still don’t have an answer but I have a vague sense of an ideal. The ideal is that somehow, in some way, the Jewish sheep and the Gentile sheep will be able to enter the same room and without too much discord, be able to have a conversation. In some way, we’ll be able to discuss what we have in common and not just what makes us different (and was drives us apart). In some way, we will all seek to encounter God and we will all seek joy in Him in a way that is universal.

Imagine what it would be like to speak to the wisest, most powerful being in the universe.

Realize that when you pray, you are doing just that. As you talk in prayer, nothing else in the world exists for you but Him and you. Talk to Him with the ease you talk with your father. At the same time, maintain complete awe and respect.

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Proper Prayer

When you personally are happy, it doesn’t make any difference what others have. So the way to counteract envy is to increase your own level of joy.

By mastering joy, you will become free from envy.

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
Joy Removes Envy Of Others

I believe fear of assimilation and marginalization within the Messianic movement drives Messianic Judaism to strive with great effort to preserve their Jewish identity. The history of the church has certainly shown us that such Jewish fear is well founded and that supersessionism, otherwise known as replacement theology or completion theology, is something, in all its forms, to be resisted, battled, and defeated.

I believe that a lack of recognition of the Jewish source of Christian faith, and frankly, envy of Jewish “chosenness” has led some factions within Hebrew Roots to claim the full Torah mitzvot for themselves. Even if these factions deny attempting to usurp an actual Jewish identity, modeling your life on modern Jewish synagogue worship practices and recognizing zero differentiation between Gentile and Jewish believers within the body of Messiah amounts to taking away another kid’s toys just because that kid has them and you want them.

OK, both of those examples were of extremist positions but things can be pretty “extreme” in the world of religion. The Chinese Christians had nothing to fight about until the very concept of differences and distinctions within Christianity was introduced from outside of China. You might think that Hebrew Roots has the right idea from that example and say that the “cure” for the Messianic Judaism/Hebrew Roots conflict is also to eliminate distinctions, form a unity movement, and to start washing each other’s feet (washing away uniqueness and identity along with the dust of the road).

But as far as I can tell, there were no Jewish believers in China. Brother Yun’s book doesn’t address the issue. The problems and the practice of Christianity in China over the forty or so years his book covers had wholly different priorities.

But it also presents a kernel of truth. Distinctions being what they are, we all either need to find some common ground upon which to walk and talk with each other, or we might as well accept the denomination solution that has been alive and well within both Christianity and Judaism for many centuries and agree to disagree, form our own groups, and be happy inside of them.

Do Orthodox Jews complain about Reform Jews? Do Protestants complain about Catholics?

separation-east-and-westProbably.

Even if I went around washing everyone’s feet in the blogosphere, I doubt that it would result in the sort of healing that Brother Yun describes in his book. The only healing I know how to accomplish is my own, and even that is a monumental task. Rabbi Pliskin describes how prayer can connect each of us to God and dispel petty bickering, envy, and unhappiness, replacing them with awe, respect, and joy.

I can’t control anyone reading this blog. I can’t stop caring about you and what happens to you, but I can’t affect your lives in any way, shape, or form unless you allow it on some level. I probably shouldn’t even try because trying only contributes to my own lack of peace, blunting my joy in the realization of God.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

–Philippians 4:4-9 (ESV)

“Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.”

-George Weinberg

Walk whichever path that you will. Peace.

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Debate or Beer?

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beerOne of the glories of life in the Messianic Jewish community is the unity of worship and service between its Jewish and Gentile members within a specifically Jewish context. In recent years, however, a trend has developed that challenges the Messianic Jewish community on this very issue. This trend involves various groups and movements that teach that all Jews and Gentiles under the new covenant are called to keep the same Torah in all regards.

In so doing, these One Law movements not only misinterpret a great body of Scripture, but they also miss the unique calling of Jews and Gentiles within the Body of Messiah, robbing both groups of the biblical richness of their identity. They lose the new covenant vision of unity in Messiah between Jews and Gentiles and replace it with a man-made rallying cry, which One Law advocate Tim Hegg has expressed as “One people, One Messiah, One Torah.”

-Daniel Juster and Russ Resnik
“One Law Movements: A Challenge to the Messianic Jewish Community” (January 2005)
As downloaded from Messianic Jewish Musings
Original Source: MJ Studies

This has already started something of a minor “buzz” in the Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots blogospheres. I wasn’t going to write about it, but since a certain amount if misinformation (or disinformation) is already becoming promoted (no, not at Derek’s blog) on the web, I felt it necessary to present a more balanced perspective. Also, since the Juster and Resnik paper significantly mentions Acts 15 and since I’ve already spent a lot of time and effort addressing Acts 15 from the current perspective of First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) as published in D. Thomas Lancaster’s commentary in Torah Club Volume 6, I thought my perspective might provide just a little illumination.

I also want to say that FFOZ is mentioned in the Juster and Resnik paper and not in a complementary fashion. The paper was published in 2005 and references material produced by FFOZ from 2003 which was written by then-contributor Tim Hegg, a well-known Hebrew Roots scholar and proponent of “One Torah.” Since that time, FFOZ has shifted its theological and doctrinal perspective to be quite a bit more like that of Juster and Resnik as documented in their paper. It’s not identical but it’s pretty close. Unfortunately, this dates the Juster/Resnik paper somewhat, but the other content they present is fairly well “spot on.”

A few things.

By the time of Yeshua, an interpretative tradition was developing concerning the requirements for Gentiles. These later became formulated as the Noahide laws, binding on all people and rooted in the covenant with Noah. Already in the first century, Judaism made a distinction between universal requirements and requirements that were the particular responsibility of Jews.

Juster/Resnik, pg 4

This statement could be misconstrued to suggest that Juster and Resnik believe the Acts 15 letter is a reworking of the Noahide Laws and that such laws were the only restrictions incumbent upon the Gentile believers in Christ from the perspective of James and the Jerusalem Council. However, a further reading of the paper reveals this is not entirely true.

As has been noted, these are very similar to the Noahide laws. This does not mean that Gentiles are free to murder, steal, and dishonor their parents. The passage assumes a universal morality, as do Paul, Peter, and James (who were present that day), and John in their writings. As Romans 2 notes, Gentiles can perceive the law of God, even without the revelation of Moses, and are responsible for many standards that are also expressed in the Bible. For example, classic Roman moral law taught the ideals of monogamous marriage, honoring parents, honesty and much more. The essential and unique addition of New Covenant ethics is the sacrificial example of Yeshua.

-ibid

noah-rainbowI disagree that the halachah developed by James for the Gentile believers was a reworking of the Noahide Laws although this is a commonly held belief by many scholars and laypeople. But according to Lancaster, it would make little sense to require the Gentile believers to comply only to the Noahide Laws when in fact all of humanity is accountable to God by those standards. In fact, as I’ve mentioned on one of my blog posts, Lancaster states that James only uses the Noahide Laws as a starter and seems to leverage Leviticus 17 and 18 to forge a distinct Gentile identity in Messiah based, to some degree, on the stranger or “ger” in Israel.

In those chapters, the Torah describes the sins of the Canaanites, warns the people of Israel against imitating their ways, and prescribes four prohibitions which both the Israelite and the stranger who dwells among the nation much keep. “These correspond to the four prohibitions of the apostolic decree, in the order in which they occur in the apostolic letter.” [Richard Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” in “The Book of Acts In Its Palestinian Setting, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 459]

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Torah Club, Volume 6: Chronicles of the Apostles
from First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)
Torah Portion Mishpatim (“Judgments”) (pg 461)
Commentary on Acts 15:20-31

I would also direct the reader to Toby Janicki’s article The Gentile Believer’s Obligation to the Torah of Moses, found in issue 109 of Messiah Journal (Winter 2012), pp 45-62 to understand how the deceptively brief “four prohibitions” are extended to provide a rich and robust Torah observance for the non-Jewish believers that does not intrude on Jewish identity or unique covenant obligation to God.

Having read one staunch critic of the paper as well as Leman this morning, I agree that the Noahide Laws cannot be applied to the “fourfold decree” of the apostles, but that doesn’t shoot down the foundation of Juster’s and Resnik’s argument opposing the position of “grafted in” Gentile believers and Jewish believers forming a fused and completely uniform corporate identity. The so-called “One Law/One Torah” position by necessity, essentially eliminates the Jewish people in Messiah and replaces them with “One Torah” cookie cutter produced humanity. This may be inadvertent replacement theology on the part of One Law/One Torah advocates, but it is replacement theology nonetheless.

As far as I can tell, the criticism of the Juster/Resnik paper I read this morning is based on only a single element and since the Juster/Resnik position, as we see in Lancaster, is otherwise well supported, then the basic assumption of the paper remains valid.

Acts 15 specifically declares that nothing should be required of the Gentiles but four laws, three of them related to blood. Galatians 5 warns Gentiles not to receive circumcision or they will be required to keep the whole Torah. The clear implication here is that without circumcision, Gentiles are not required to keep the whole Torah. Colossians 2 warns that no one is to judge the Colossians with regard to Sabbath, New Moons or festivals. These are a shadow; the substance is Messiah. In Galatians 4:10 Paul writes that he fears that he labored over the Galatian Gentile congregations in vain because they were now observing “special days, months, seasons and years.”

Juster/Resnik, pg 2

This is probably one of the more devastating portions of their argument since the statement emphasized in the quote above plainly illustrates that the non-Jewish believers could not be obligated to keep the Torah mitzvot in the manner of the Jews unless they were circumcised (i.e. converted to Judaism).

line-in-the-sandOne of the comments I made on Leman’s blog was that Juster and Resnik seem to draw a hard and clear line in the sand between Jewish and Gentile Torah observance, especially in their belief of how Paul saw the matter, while the Lancaster commentary appears to allow for more leeway, providing a sort of “permission” for Gentiles to extend themselves into more of the mitzvot without an implicit or explicit command to be obligated to full Torah observance over some undefined period of time.

One of the things I liked about the Juster/Resnik paper is that it was very clear in showing what Paul, or James for that matter, didn’t say (I apologize in advance for the length of this quote):

One Law teachers make a big point of James’s statement that “Moses has been read every week in the Synagogue” (Acts 15:21). This is taken to imply that Gentile believers will, in the normal course of their new life, attend synagogue and adopt more and more of the whole Torah. Since Torah life is good and beautiful, why wouldn’t he? On this basis, the verse is taken as an exhortation to further learning and the adoption of the whole Torah. Thus, One Law teachers transform an ambiguous statement into a strong and unambiguous exhortation.

They apparently overlook, however, the fact that these words spoken in the council were not included in the apostolic letter that was circulated among the congregations. If this were such a crucial exhortation to Gentiles, it is amazing indeed that the apostles, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, did not think it important enough to put in their letter!

It is most telling that in all the epistles to congregations there is not a single word commanding Gentiles to adopt the whole Torah, and no direct statement of hope that they will eventually adopt a fully Torah- keeping life in the same way as the Jews. There is no word of such an exhortation or even mild encouragement throughout the whole book of Acts, which is written in part to show the relationship of Jewish-Gentile fellowship!

Even were we to say that Gentiles are free to embrace Torah, the calendar of Israel, and more, there is no word that there is any covenant responsibility for Gentiles to do so. Acts 21 reinforces this impression. Here James tells Paul of the rumor that he teaches Jews who embrace Yeshua to forsake Torah. This of course is not true. So, Paul demonstrates this to be a false rumor by his Temple involvement. James reminds Paul that Gentiles were freed from responsibility for the full weight of Torah. Neither Paul nor James gives the slightest hint that they were encouraging full Torah observance among Gentiles. Paul could have said, “Not only do I not teach Jews to forsake Moses, but I even encourage Gentiles to embrace more and more of the Torah as they come to understand and appreciate it.” This is the emphasis of the One Law teachers, but there is not one word in the New Testament that explicitly encourages Gentiles to grow in keeping the whole Torah.

Galatians 5 is a watershed passage. Here Paul in the strongest terms exhorts Gentiles not to receive circumcision. Some One Law teachers want to allow a legitimate option of circumcision, so they add the proviso that it should not be done for the wrong reasons. Yet, this is not in the text. The New Covenant offers the fullness of God’s blessing upon Gentiles without the necessity of circumcision. This was not the case in the Mosaic order.

ibid, pg 5

white-pigeon-kotelI think when added to the body of work produced by Lancaster, we find ample support for the Juster/Resnik position. I mentioned on Leman’s blog that I hope, given the age of the paper, the authors would be willing at some point to update and expand the document to reflect changes that have occurred in the movement and in research over the past eight years.

But given my numerous blog posts of this week, lest you think I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, I also said this on Leman’s blog:

My blog post tomorrow is my tying up all the loose ends of my “rant” for this week regarding these sorts of debates. One of the problems I have with some of our discussions is they tend to overlook the fact that, even though we disagree, we *all* still are part of the body of Messiah. I believe it is important to point out error and to support a more correct interpretation of the Bible, but how do we balance that against the need to bring organization and some manner of unity to *all* of the members of the body of Yeshua, Jewish and Gentile alike?

Rob Roy, a One Law supporter, said on the same blog post:

Probably a sign that folks are growing tired of this debate.

I’m getting tired of it, too. But my question to Derek stands. In spite of the radical differences in perspective, theology, and theory between Messianic Judaism and certain expressions of Hebrew Roots, we are all disciples of the same Master and members of the body of Messiah. If the internal organs of a person’s body fought each other as much as we do, the person would die. What’s going to happen to the body of Messiah because of us and because of the much wider “battle” of body parts we find in the various Christianites of the modern era?

My appeal to “come together” will be published in tomorrow’s morning meditation. In the meantime, we still have to talk and we’ll still disagree. May God have mercy on our limitations and particularly on our foolishness in presuming we know more than our Master.

Now can we all go out for a beer or two and loosen up or are we going to just fragment the body some more?

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Sharing God

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awesome_desert_landscapeWe all have moments of being struck by the awesomeness of life – whether the birth of a baby, a canopy of stars above, a piece of majestic music, or a breathtaking sunset.

These experiences are both energizing and calming at the same time. They enable us to break beyond our own limitations and to merge our (relatively) tiny, insignificant selves with the greater infinite unity. If God’s creation can have such an impact on us, how much more would an experience with the Creator Himself.

Consider someone travelling the world seeking exciting experiences. Now tell him: “In the next room, you can sit down and speak to God Almighty Himself for an entire hour.”

Wouldn’t that be the ultimate experience?

-Rabbi Noah Weinberg
“Way #31: Seek The Ultimate Pleasure”
Aish.com

I’m continuing to read comments on Derek Leman’s blog post The Sabbath is Between God and the Jewish People. Frankly, I’m beginning to see why the Gentile Christians and Jewish disciples started going their separate ways early on, that is, if they faced the same situations that are evident in the accumulating comments on Derek’s blog. I mentioned in my previous meditation (and in an extra meditation) that I’m getting a little frustrated with the whole “jockeying for position” activity going on between what we refer to as Messianic Judaism and the Christians in various expressions of the Hebrew Roots movement. Rabbi Weinberg talks about the ultimate pleasure of encountering God. Do we ever encounter God in these blog discussions?

Next to love of God, all other pleasures are insignificant. We can have delicious pizza, lots of money, love and power. But humans yearn to transcend the mundane side of daily life. That’s why mystery, magic and miracles capture our imaginations.

When all is said and done, no human being can be truly satisfied unless he reaches out and connects with the infinite transcendent dimension. We all seek to connect with that which encompasses all pleasures. Because nothing finite, nothing bound up in this world, can compare to the infinite.

Um…hello, religious blogosphere? Do you think you might be missing something?

I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the best pieces of advice I have received recently comes from a friend of mine. Seeing past all of the “stuff” we tend to argue about, he told me to not seek “Christianity” and to not seek “Judaism” but to seek an encounter with God.

In his article, Rabbi Weinberg describes ways that people can develop a love for God. You can click the link I provided above and read this entire write-up, but in general, he suggests learning to love God through nature, through history, and through Torah.

Oops! Well, as Meat Loaf has famously sung, two out of three ain’t bad. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating. As I’ve also said before, a significantly large portion of the Torah is immediately available to any Christian, whether we choose to call it “Torah” or not. In fact, one of the people commenting on Derek’s blog unexpectedly said this:

Besides, the fact that Christianity doesn’t keep the external commandments of the Torah, doesn’t mean that Christians don’t keep a *lot* of the Torah’s commands. In fact, many Christian groups keep a lot more of the Torah’s commands than a lot of the more liberal Jewish groups. So I don’t put too much stock in what these other groups do or don’t look like.

i-choose-loveSo even Christians can love God in the manner that Rabbi Weinberg suggests with only a few small adjustments (it’s unlikely that most Christians will choose to express love for God by laying tefillin or fasting on Yom Kippur nor, as we see in Acts 15, is it required) but those adjustments are probably less significant than you might imagine. But what Rabbi Weinberg says next is very illuminating.

One important manifestation of loving God is the desire to share it.

When you love God and you see other people getting caught up in all sorts of trivialities, it hurts. Why? Because it pains you to see a fellow human being missing out on such an awesome pleasure. So when you’re filled with enthusiasm about being close to God, you want all of humanity to have that relationship, too.

This is not like human beings who become jealous when the attention of their beloved is directed elsewhere. When it comes to God, there’s no jealousy when other people have a relationship with Him. Because God is infinite.

Wow! Let’s go over that again and apply it to the theme of today’s missive:

When you love God and you see other people getting caught up in all sorts of trivialities, it hurts. Why? Because it pains you to see a fellow human being missing out on such an awesome pleasure.

My point exactly!

The rest of what he says sounds almost “Christian.” I mean after all, what are we urged to do as part of our Christian faith but to share the Gospel with everyone we meet. The church I attend has a strong missionary component. The head Pastor was a missionary and is the son of missionaries. The church supports numerous missionaries all over the world. Pastor Randy encourages us often from the pulpit to share our faith, to be active, to be vocal, to live holy lives.

When it comes to God, there’s no jealousy when other people have a relationship with Him. Because God is infinite.

God is infinite. His love, mercy, grace, compassion, and kindness are infinite. He provides for us in unlimited amounts. We cannot exhaust His supply of His gifts for humanity by sharing them with too many people. We are commanded to share. We are commanded to love.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

–Matthew 22:34-40 (ESV)

sharing-christIn my previous meditations, I compared some of the mitzvot to “toys” and painted a picture of how children are usually taught to share what they have. It doesn’t mean they’re surrendering a thing, it just means they’re sharing something pleasurable with a friend or even with a stranger. Children will start playing with a kid they don’t know faster than any adult will begin a conversation with a lonely stranger.

Again, I’m not trying to convince Jewish people to violate their sense of covenant identity by agreeing to a “one size fits all” philosophy regarding Torah, but I am saying that Paul didn’t seem to have a problem with the Gentiles meeting in a synagogue with Jews on Shabbat. Peter ate with Gentiles. It’s likely Cornelius davened at the set times for the prayers. This didn’t make Gentiles “Jewish” or “Israel,” but it did allow them to worship God using the only model they had available.

And style and lifestyle aside, isn’t experiencing God the whole point?

We are called “strangers” before we are reconciled to God, but God doesn’t let that stand in His way. He is completely and totally accessible to anyone who wants Him at any time and from any place.

So for those of us who (in theory) are reconciled with God, who know Him, who walk in the footsteps of our Master, why should we be afraid to share our pleasure in Him rather than continually drawing lines in the sand and saying which toys are “obligated” to the grafted in branches vs. which toys only belong to the natural branches? If someone who is unfamiliar with these sorts of debates is trying to make up his or her mind about whether or not to devote themselves to God, what are they going to learn when they visit your blog or mine? Are we sanctifying His Name or desecrating it, even inadvertently?

God is infinite beauty, grace, power, wisdom and meaning. What have you done to share that with someone today? What have I done?

Tomorrow, a more optimistic view.

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The Fragmented Body

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fragmented-bodyPaul’s two epistles to the Corinthians grant us an up-close and personal portrait of the Corinthian community he was leaving behind. They were a diverse community of Jewish believers, God-fearing Gentiles, and recently converted pagans. They were not perfect people.

They struggled to maintain cohesion after Paul left. They often differed in their opinions and practices regarding such matters as gender roles, sexuality, use of spiritual gifts, and the doctrine of the resurrection. Some found it difficult to adapt to Judaism’s strict standards of modesty in dress and conduct. Sexual immorality was a problem. The Corinthian leadership struggled with censuring members who were engaged in immorality. A lack of qualified leaders to serve as judges in civil suits encouraged the community to use secular courts. The Corinthian believers misused ecstatic utterances and allowed charismatic antics to disrupt worship services. Philosophical monotheists among the Corinthians chafed at the prohibition on things sacrificed to idols and struggled with the concept of a literal resurrection of the dead. Visits from other apostles led to factionalism. Some among the Corinthians began to question Paul’s authority and apostleship. In his letters, Paul addresses these issues and several other problems with genuine pastoral concern.

-D. Thomas Lancaster
Ki Tisa (“When you take”)
Commentary on Acts 18:11-23, pg 538
Torah Club Volume 6
First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ)

Sound familiar? No? Consider a recent discussion in the comments section of Derek Leman’s blog. Although the topics and themes aren’t really the same (no apparent problem of sexual immorality, for example) the dynamics and the diversity of populations and opinions on all things spiritual and philosophical is very much in evidence. You have the same mix of Jewish and non-Jewish believers with a few converts tossed into the mix. That brings in a diversity of background, education, perspective, and identity into a single container which, in both ancient and modern examples, is the community of the Messiah; the body of Christ.

And after 2,000 years, we still are having a tough time getting along.

Not that the Corinthian “church” was completely representative of all believing first century communities, but whenever you involve dissimilar populations in a common group, especially a religious group, you are asking for a few “strongly worded” debates. And that’s what we experience today on the blogosphere when we come together (virtually) to have some of the same interactions that the ancient Corinthians did in the days of Paul.

Actually, there’s quite a time gap between the ancient mixed Jewish/Gentile “church” and the modern one. After the schism between Judaism and Christianity, each religion, for they became separate religions, went their own way, only getting together for a pogrom or an inquisition every now and again. The problems of the Corinthian religious congregation faded away into history…until quite recently.

Now that we’re trying to put our theological humpty dumpty back together again, we’re finding out that it would be easier to take an omelet and put it back into the broken egg-shell than it is getting different factions of Messianic Judaism, Hebrew Roots Christianity (and it’s variants), and more traditional Christianity (or Christianities) to come to any sort of agreement.

I know I’ve written about this before and used Lancaster’s Torah Club commentaries to do it, but in reading this past week’s Torah club chapter right on the heels of Derek’s blog post, the similarities jumped out at me again.

Doesn’t anyone else out there see it?

Was there ever a peace between the Jewish and the Gentile believers? We see strife looming largely in the Messianic world right there around 50-53 CE when Paul was the most active in his “missionary travels.” In Acts 18:1-17, Paul experiences a “split” in the synagogue at Corinth and half the Jewish membership follows Messiah right out of the synagogue and into a building next door. There were actually two competing synagogues, one Messianic and the other not, strongly contending with each other. There wasn’t unity over the Messiah in the local Jewish community let alone between Jews and Gentiles.

But then again, not all Jewish communities experienced the message of Messiah the same way.

And they came to Ephesus, and he left them there, but he himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus.

–Acts 18:19-21 (ESV)

FallingApartIt seems the synagogue in Ephesus was much more unified in its reception of Paul’s teaching on the Messiah and I’m sure he would have rather spent more time in this particular setting, but he wanted to get to Jerusalem in time for Sukkot.

I won’t pull any quotes from Derek’s blog (you can click the link and read through the comments yourself) but it seems as if the same old debates are being continually recycled. Things haven’t changed a whole lot in twenty centuries. Human nature after all, is human nature. I guess that’s why the Bible is still relevant after the passage of so much time. We’re still the same old creatures we’ve always been, stirring up the pot and making a mess out of the message of the good news.

The Messiah came and then he left. And after he left, his apostles and disciples struggled to keep the new Jewish sect of “the Way” afloat while integrating a large Gentile population in the diaspora along with whoever among the Jews would accept that Yeshua (Jesus) was Moshiach. In the end, it fell apart and all of the broken pieces have been shattered and scattered across the landscape for almost 2,000 years. Recently, we’ve been trying to put them back together again with limited success. We’re encountering pretty much the same barriers that Paul did in his “mixed population churches.” Maybe the “bilateral ecclesiology” people are on to something after all. No mix, no mixed up community.

But I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work out, at least not in an extreme and absolute segregationist sense. Paul didn’t seem to demand that the Gentiles form their own churches, although that’s how things ended up. Here we are, trying to forge new or renewed relationships to pave the way for Messiah’s return. But it seems that it will take the Messiah to teach us to get along, share our toys, and play well together.

We live in a broken world. There are religious Jews who cry out, “Moshiach now!” Given the sorry state of affairs in his “Messianic community,” maybe we should be shouting the same thing. Nothing else we are doing seems to be working out.