What am I doing here?

My wife forwarded an email to me that was sent to her by a Christian friend. The original author of the email was inviting a group of folks to an Erev Shabbat service at an (apparently) One Law gathering in the town I live in tomorrow night. It referenced an OL group that meets in LaGrande, Oregon and mentioned a "Rabbi" from Oregon who would be in attendance.

The email addresses of all the recipients were visible and a few of the names seemed familiar, but I couldn't place them exactly. It reminded me of a somewhat similar email I received last week from a fellow I know, forwarding a message about Boaz Michael being in my area next Monday night to do a teaching. I recognized a lot more of the names in the email recipients, but none of them currently attend my congregation.

It's moments like these that I realize just how fragmented "the movement" is in my little corner of the world. While we all generally operate under the same "label", because of the various theological and personal differences involved, we don't worship together, except perhaps at special events, and even then, we might not see each other for years at a time.

It's times like these (and especially lately) that I ask myself, why am I doing this? What am I doing here? Is there any meaning to what I'm looking for, or am I just spinning my wheels?

Then I look at the various comments in this and other similar blogs and my sense of fragmentation of "the community" is enhanced. We all operate within our own little bubbles, telling ourselves our own little stories about who we are, who God is, and especially, why the "other guy" is "wrong". If I were to even casually analyze the different articles I've written, the ones that have garnered the most comments have been the ones where people were arguing the most.

Is this really the united body of Messiah, coming together as one, encouraging each other, loving each other, and worshiping the One God, in fellowship?

I know, I know. I could let the proponents of MJ/BE chase me back into "the church" so I'd never be seen or heard from again, but it's not the warm, comfy cocoon for me that it is to other people. I've already explained in my previous article Forked and elsewhere why returning to the church would be a bad fit for me. I sometimes wonder why returning to a church setting seems like it would be so attractive a destination for a Gentile believer from a Jewish MJ/BE point of view. That I don't find it attractive, lets them accuse me of being both a "Christian hater" and a "Jew hater". Strange thought, that.

Maybe if I'd been "raised in the church", I'd have the necessary nostalgic feelings that would draw be back into the comfort of meeting on Sundays, sitting in a pew and singing "Onward Christian Soldier", and enjoying a good, ham brunch after services. Oh, my parents did take me to a Lutheran church when I was in Junior High. I think it was largely so I'd get a moral and religious education (my father wasn't a believer then but would come to faith after I reached adulthood and left home). The only thing I discovered is that I was either bored in the services or generally hassled by the other kids in Catechism class (I was never a popular teenager). No, nothing nostalgic there. When I was old enough, I told my parents I was never going back, and I didn't.

When I finally came to faith as an adult in my early 40s, at first, I was clueless. Injected into church life, I had no idea what to do there. It took time, but I started to make a few friends, went to Bible classes, and various other events. I was even asked to be an usher, which kind of surprised me, because I didn't think I had any role in that context.

I also discovered that Christians, at least in the church I was attending, were just as human as anybody else. There were church politics, cliques, in-groups, out-groups, agendas, and so forth. Growing the church was a big agenda item, but as far as I could tell, it wasn't motivated so much from the desire to bring the "unsaved" through our doors as to increase the esteem and reputation of the church in the community by making it bigger and bigger. I read a statistic once that said churches get bigger, not so much because unbelievers find faith and enter a particular church but because people who are already believers cycle between this church and that, looking for "programs" that fit their needs.

A lot of the questions I had about Christianity, didn't seem to have answers. I assumed it was because I was so young in my faith that I just didn't have the experience and spiritual maturity to glean these hidden gems.

Eventually (a long story) I entered the "Messianic" or "One Law" movement in a local congregation and thought I had found the answers I was looking for, or at least was on the road to discovering them. Although I found a core group of people who I could relate to and worship in brothership with, I found that people were people and, in some ways, the divisions, cliques, politics, and other separators were more intense than in the church.

Nevertheless, I'd found a niche (not all at once, but that's another long story), a way to participate, to use my skill sets, and to serve others the way I thought God wanted me to.

So here I am ten years down the road, looking at all the broken pieces of glass representing the different shards of the MJ and OL communities, like so many pieces of a broken window pane glittering in the Sun.

Like humpty dumpty, they seem impossible to join together again, but unlike that famous fairy tale egg, I don't know if they were ever in one piece to begin with.

There are days when I ask myself, what am I doing here? What's the point? Am I really doing any good? Why bother arguing and fussing with all these other folks? Everybody seems to feel as if they have an ownership over what decision I'm supposed to make about my relationship with God and particularly how I'm supposed to worship him. Is God really that overwhelmingly concerned whether I pray to him in English or in Hebrew, or does that only offend other human beings? I know that all men have sinned and have fallen short of God's expectations for us, but I also know that if I'm sincere in my heart and in my actions, repent, and cry out to Him, He will not abandon me. Neither will He denigrate me, call me names, accuse me of being a bigot, a supersessionalist, a replacement theologist, or a racist. He will accept that I'm not perfect and that my worship form isn't perfect. It's what's in the heart, not the "ceremony" that's most important to Him.

While it might be a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God, it's also the only place where I can be truly safe. Human beings, as the Bible says from time to time, aren't reliable.

There are days when I feel like saying "to heck with it". There are days when I say to myself, "This isn't worth it". It would be easier just to walk way from the blogs, from the community, and from everyone's ideas, prejudices, biases, and opinions and never look back. There are days when I want to say, "You want this mess? You can have it".

If I'm so offensive, so racist, so evil, so unacceptable, and such a threat, then I can only make you feel better by taking myself out of the picture. If I choose to stay in my home on Shabbat, read the Bible, and pray, how does that hurt you? If I choose to remove myself from the endless stream of arguing and discontent, how am I being disrespectful of you?

I don't think God wants me to do that, but there are days when the temptation is enormous. But if I don't take myself out of the stream of arguing, accusations, theological attacks, personal attacks, what else is there? What can I do instead?

Yes, we all feel safe within our little bubbles. I don't doubt that each of you feel safe in your own "bubble" synagogues, churches, and faith communities. If you didn't, why would you be there? The community of faith is the only place where we, as believers, are supposed to be safe from the dangers of the fallen world. Who ever would have guessed that the community of believers...at least in it's larger context, would be just as dangerous.

As a result of all these conversations plus my inquiries and research, I have become open to change as far as who I am and what my role is as a Gentile worshiper of the Jewish Messiah. The problem is, I don't necessarily believe that any one of you and your groups is 100% correct in your beliefs and assumptions. You all incorporate a specific collection of interpretations based as much (or more) on traditions that make you feel good about yourselves as on what it actually says in the Bible.

If it were within my power, I would strip away all of that and reduce the Word and Will of God down to its bare, naked components, then reapply them to humanity, "first to the Jew, and then to the Gentile", and eliminate ambiguity, ambition, and ego from the equation. I'd also remove the sense of fear, threat, and need for control that drives most of these blog comments and that would herd me into a church I have no essential connection to, just to make other people feel safe, regardless of what it would to do me. I would distill the Word and Will of God down to its original form and we would all conform to His will and not our own will and we would know, this is what God wants. Of course, it's not up to me.

I can only make you feel safe by either removing myself from your awareness or complying with your directives. I can only make myself feel safe by remaining within my current worship context or removing myself from all faith communities and out of the stream of Internet conversation.

Is this what God wants? Notice, I'm not asking you what you want. I'm not even asking me what I want. What does God want? Another way of asking "what am I doing here?" is to ask "why did God put me here?" There are times when I think I know. There are times when someone tells me they liked my teaching and I think that's why God put me here. There are times when I have a conversation and feel very connected to the other person through the power of God and I think that's why God put me here.There are times when I see a dirty floor in the kitchen at the place where we worship and I clean up the mess and I think that's why God put me here.

But for every one positive, loving, and compassionate contact I have with a human being and every small act of kindness I manage to accomplish, I can find ten other conversations with other believers that do not communicate the love of God for the rest of us or for humanity. This isn't God's fault, it's ours. Why do we argue with each other all the time? Is God that difficult to figure out? Why aren't we looking for the healing and connecting points between our groups? I've been looking for them. Where I can, I try to make them and build a small bridge. But the blowtorch of religious opinion and attitude is hotter than I and my bridges are fireproof. I can't do this forever. I'm burning alive in the midst of everyone's fear and anger and need and desire for them to be always "right" and everyone else to always be "wrong".

C'mon, God. Some of your people are really scary. Some of your people are really opinionated. Some of your people are more motivated by their fear than by Your love. Some of your people burn more bridges than they build and call incinerating relationships "fellowship". C'mon God. Let me know. What am I doing here?

Afterword: Yes, this is a rant. I get frustrated sometimes. I'll get over it.