Dust and Genesis

To those who curse me, let my soul be silent; and let my soul be like dust to everyone.

Those words are part of the final paragraph an individual says at the end of the Shemoneh Esrei prayers as found in the Artscroll Siddur: Nusach Sefard. They speak of a deep humility, not only in the presence of God but in the presence of all other human beings. I suppose by virtue of the fact that I'm blogging here, I'm not allowing my soul to be silent and in expressing opinions, can I, or any other blogger in the realm of faith, be said to have our souls be like dust to everyone?

Probably not. And yet, something inside of me won't let me be silent. Vanity? Ego? The American need to "have my say?" I can't dismiss those possibilities and remain honest with myself, with anyone who may stumble across this blog, or with God. Therefore, I'll continue to chronicle my personal journey on the path, looking for illumination, and trust that there's a higher purpose for the words I'm posting to the web. I can't promise that everyone will agree with what I say here or that I'll completely avoid offending someone, however this blog isn't an exercise in political correctness. Remember, you were warned.

I suppose I should say here that there are those who may consider it inappropriate for me as a Gentile to quote from or reference in any way a Jewish siddur. I am sorry if this disturbs anyone, but despite the fact that I’m not Jewish, I find myself drawn to the beauty of these prayers.

I also need to say that I'm not writing the blog "at" anyone, although I do admit that recent conversations with members of particular factions within the Messianic Jewish movement have inspired my personal re-evaluation of my faith and how it's expressed. At the risk of sounding egotistical, this really is about me, however, I suspect, it's also about a lot of other non-Jews who are trying to find answers to the questions I'm posing here. In other words, try not to take anything I say personally.

Now let's continue.

I'm taking this opportunity to re-examine my faith beginning at a fundamental level. To turn a phrase, I'm taking it "back to formula". I'm not quite going to the basement level though. I'm willing to keep a few assumptions.

I'll assume that the Bible containing the Old and New Testament texts (or Tanakh and Apostolic Scriptures, if you prefer) is indeed the inspired Word of God and that, as it was originally given, those texts were and are the documented history of God in relation to people.

I'll also accept from those texts, that the Jewish people, the nation of Israel collectively and individually, are the chosen people of God and that they have a unique, covenental relationship with God that is not shared by the rest of humanity. This relationship is well documented in the Bible and in fact, the vast majority of the Bible speaks to the relationship between God and the Jewish people.

For me then, the question is, do non-Jewish people have a relationship with God or can we in some sense, request such a relationship, albeit one that is outside the covenant between God and Israel? More basically, does God only care about what happens to people who are Jewish or does he care about humanity as a whole as well? More personally, do I matter to God in even the smallest degree?

Let's look at some details. Has God ever had a relationship of any sort with people who aren't Jewish? If you go far enough back in the Bible, the answer is "yes".

No one will argue that the oldest members of Judaism are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There were no Jews before them. That means the first people God created, Adam and Eve, weren't Jewish. This is important because God had a personal relationship with Adam and Eve. They talked to God and God talked back...one to one.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." -Genesis 3:8-12

While this passage from Genesis doesn't describe the highest point in the lives of Adam and Eve, it certainly shows that a direct conversation was taking place between God and Adam and further more, that it mattered to God what Adam and Eve did and didn't do. They weren't irrelevant to God as living beings and in fact, they were special among all of the other living creations of God. Only human beings could disobey God and disappoint God.

I know what you're thinking. Things didn't work out so well for the non-Jewish creations of God prior to the days of Abraham and in fact, God brought a flood to the earth to destroy all living beings because their sin was so great. Only Noah and a few others were spared, along with just enough animals to repopulate the planet once the flood subsided. But let's consider Noah for a moment.

This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. -Genesis 6:9

Noah was a righteous man. By definition, he wasn't Jewish. God talked to him and he talked to God. He obeyed God and in that obedience, he was responsible for all living land and air creatures (as far as I'm aware, he didn't have huge aquarium on board the Ark) surviving the flood.

God can have a relationship with non-Jews. Non-Jews can be righteous. Non-Jews can obey God and walk with God. As it says in Genesis 6:22, Noah did everything just as God commanded him. After the flood subsided and Noah, his family, and all living things could come out of the Ark again, Noah did something interesting.

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. -Genesis 8:20-21

Noah built an altar and sacrificed clean animals and birds as burnt offerings on it. We usually associate that sort of behavior with the Children of Israel in the days of the Tabernacle and later the First and Second Temples. Interesting.

This isn't the first time the Bible records non-Jewish people offering sacrifices to God. Genesis 4:1-4 describes the sacrifices offered by Adam and Eve's sons Cain and Abel (and subsequently, the world's first murder, unfortunately). Thus Gentiles were able to talk to God, have God talk back to them, listen to God, obey God, be considered righteous by God, and to offer animal sacrifices to God which God could then accept or reject, depending on the motivation of the person offering the sacrifice.

In other words, Gentiles, before and at least right after the flood, had a relationship with God...at least some Gentiles did. This means that Gentiles who choose to listen to God and obey God are not insignificant to God and in fact are noticed and may even be considered important to God. Certainly the sins of Gentiles were significant to God since they resulted in the flooding of the whole Earth (or just the populated areas of the Earth, depending on whose theology you consider).

So far, so good. If God can have a relationship with Adam and Noah, maybe He'll be willing to have a relationship with Gentiles today, too, including me.

Looks like God is even willing to bless Gentiles:

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. -Genesis 9:1-3

It was from Noah's immediate family that the human population of the Earth was restored. Among Noah's children, Shem would be the ancestor of the Semitic peoples including the Jews. All the peoples of the Earth would come from Noah's line.

God "chose" Adam in the sense that He created Him. I don't know the process God used to create human life and if God "chose" Adam as a personality or if Adam was a generic "anyman". God did choose Noah specifically in response to Noah's righteous walk with God. Now God chooses Abram.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. -Genesis 12:6-7

This is the first time God makes a promise that will ultimately result in the Land of Canaan being the sacred inheritance of the Children of Israel (Abram's offspring through Isaac). Remember, Abram who subsequently is called Abraham by God, did not start out life as a Jew nor were all of his children considered Jewish. Yet he did establish a relationship with God as the One God of the Universe. He's also a model, like Noah, of righteousness through faith.

Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. -Genesis 15:4-6

Paul references this moment in Abraham's life in Romans 4:3 to illustrate that man is justified by faith, not by actions. Of course, Paul also referred to Abraham as "our forefather", so was he only talking to a Jewish audience and not including the Gentile believers? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Or am I?

Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. -Romans 4:9-12

There's at least a hint here that justification by faith is available to both Jewish and Gentile believers, according to Paul. To recap, up until the time of Abraham, it was possible for non-Jewish people to have a relationship, even a relatively close relationship with God. Did that change with the ascent of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jacob's children? Did God so love the Jewish nation that He stopped considering everyone else? Were the Gentile nations relegated to being only "the bad guys" in the larger Biblical saga?

I don't believe so, but I'm forced to follow the Biblical narrative, step by step, tracing the lives of the Jews and Gentiles recorded there, trying to see where the relationship of Gentiles with God came from and what eventually happened to it. Did the covenant promises of God to the Jewish nation result in only Jews being loved, considered, and cared for by God? Is the rest of humanity just an exceptionally large field of dry grass that will eventually be thrown on the fire as the Jews enter the life of the world to come when Messiah returns?

So far, there are indications that it doesn't have to be this way particularly if you consider Paul's words in Romans, but I don't want my first "dusty" article on this topic to be overly long. I'll end my own narrative and analysis here at Genesis 15 and at Romans 4, but there's more to come. I hope to understand that the existence of non-Jewish humanity isn't completely irrelevant to God and that my own existence in the world and my worship of God isn't in vain. Will I succeed and can I find evidence for this in the Bible? We'll see shortly.

Stay tuned.