Fractured

James, also - I am good friends with many Gentile Christians. Just talked to a pastor friend the other day about his plans to plant a new church, and me and my wife are meeting with our close friends, a Christian couple for dinner next week. What they all have in common is that none of them have any desire to be part of a Jewish congregation (yes, they came to visit) but all of them are VERY supportive of the work G-d is doing among Jewish believers.

I would like to add that Gentiles in "Messianic Movement" should first reconcile with their Christian Gentile brothers BEFORE they take on any issues they see with lack of unity with their Jewish brothers.

-Gene Shlomovich

Gene made these rather pointed statements on my blog post Messianic Principles of Faith. For the past six months, I've been attempting to find a middle ground between Jews and non-Jews in the Messianic movement, but in one way or another, I've been told that not only don't non-Jews belong in "the movement", but that it's impossible for us to call ourselves "Messianic". The most recent round of conversations I've tried to record in what I call my Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series has continued to build on a chain of thoughts leading to a single conclusion. I'll tell you what that conclusion is by the end of this post.

Bilateral Ecclesiology Supposition

Jews in the Messianic movement who support the concept and "theology" of Bilateral Ecclesiology state, in part, that Messianic Jews and Christian Gentiles can only have "unity" (or stand along side each other, but I'm not sure that is "unity"), if each group occupies separate and distinct faith, worship, and educational communities that support their unique identities. Messianic Jews must exist in a synagogue environment consistent with the other Judaisms currently in existence, and be allowed to have alignment and community with all other Jews and with Israel as Jewish covenant members. In order to accomplish this, few, if any, non-Jews would be welcome to participate on any level within a Messianic Jewish group except in the role of occasional visitor. The only viable exception would be if a non-Jew were married to a Jew and, for the sake of the Jewish member of the Messianic group, the non-Jew spouse would be allowed to attend.

In short, Bilateral Ecclesiology states that Jews must live as Jews and Gentiles must live as Gentiles. God planned for Gentiles to develop the Christian church system as defined by the past 2,000 years of church history. Regardless of the dissonance between Jews and Christians that history creates, the church as the only Christian worship venue for non-Jews must be maintained for the sake of Jewish distinctiveness in the Messianic movement. There are no other options.

Disclaimers

Before I go on, I want to say that nothing I'm writing here means that I don't have high regard for my fellow believers in the Christian church in my local community and all over the world. In my teaching and other interactions within my current congregation, I have defended the church and traditional Christianity. Some non-Jewish "One Law" believers tend to have a chip on their collective shoulder when it comes to the church and, while no worship community is perfect and without flaws, I have attempted to dispel poor attitudes towards the church in general and to encourage fellowship.

I also want to say that I hold Gene Shlomovich in high regard and I even thought we could have a friendship as time passed. I know it looks like I'm picking on him, but he's really representing a large organizational opinion that is gathering momentum in the Messianic movement, particularly with the Jewish members who have been raised in a religious and ethnic Jewish home and who, from childhood, have self-identified as Jews (there are exceptions, but this is the general trend as I see it). While there are Jewish people in "the movement" who are more accepting of non-Jewish members, it seems clear that a significant population of Jewish people in the Messianic world are unable to tolerate the presence of non-Jews as members of their communities. Their heartfelt desire is to establish and continue fellowship with their non-Jewish counterparts but only if the non-Jews are aligned and affiliated with the Christian church. From their perspective, no relationship can possibly exist with a Christian if that Christian desires entrance into a Jewish worship venue or for any reason whatsoever, does not desire to attend a church.

Response

Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, I want to proceed to the response. This is part of why, despite the requirements of Bilateral Ecclesiology and Messianic Judaism, I cannot return nor would I be welcome in a church setting. Some of the following content was previously posted in the blog Forked.

1. Acceptance: The last time I was in a church Sunday school and said I didn't think that the Law died on the cross with Jesus, I received a rather cool (not the good kind) response. My core values include an acceptance of the Torah for Jewish believers and a benefit of Torah study for Christians. In order to be accepted in a Christian church setting, I would have to keep my mouth shut tight except for superficial, polite conversation which is going to kill most opportunities for authentic fellowship, especially if the church is supposed to be where God wants me to be.
2. Education: If I have to go through one more Kay Arthur canned, programmed, "beloved", Bible study, I'm going to puke. I design teachings so people can ask questions, even the hard ones, so that people can really participate and share their perspectives, so that people can disagree and by such debates, explore their assumptions in order to learn and grow, not just so people can agree to the "party line". I'm not saying that Christian education is poor, but there aren't a lot of opportunities to stretch and develop and, as you know, I like questioning assumptions. You cannot seriously question an assumption in Sunday school. I've tried. It doesn't go over well. Again, I'll have to shut up.
3. Ceremony: My family and I gave up Christmas and Easter long ago and we have no regrets. Even if I chose not to "celebrate" those events in my home, as part of a church, I'd be expected to participate in them in corporate worship and to at least fake being excited at the approach of the Christmas play. On a more specific note, a family my wife and I knew at our former church were recently asked to leave said-church. Reason? Like my family, they made a decision not to celebrate Christmas. The husband and wife are intelligent, reasonable people (and not religious wack jobs, as you might be assuming) who made this decision as a matter of conscience. The church chose not to honor their decision and evicted them instead.
4. Food: I keep what the local Chabad Rabbi calls "kosher-style" which amounts to following the Leviticus 11 guidelines for what is and isn't food. It's a personal conviction of mine (and I don't care if you say I don't "have" to or not, I "choose" to), so pretending I'm allergic to all pork, shellfish, and other treif products will be tough over the long haul. On top of that, when the last kid leaves our home, my wife wants to kasher our kitchen and take a more serious approach to kashrut. Since I live with my wife (and I agree with her decision, by the way), I'll also be following that approach. I don't even begin to know how to explain this in a church setting without offending just about everyone.
5. Lying: This actually encompasses all of the points I've already made because I'd have to do a considerable amount of lying to be able to operate within the parameters of what's expected in a church. Even keeping my mouth shut or forcing myself to stuff it with a ham sandwich is a form of lie. Why should I be compelled to lie in the house of God?
6. Hypocrisy and worse: The single thing I can't swallow about the Church is replacement theology. While I've been repeatedly criticized by MJ/BE proponents of supporting replacement theology, that same group says I should attend a religious organization that's almost guaranteed to practice some version of this. I've recently been told by an MJ/BE proponent, that replacement theology or supersessionalism, isn't such a big deal in the church anymore. Maybe that's true in some churches, but my experience is that it's not universally true. I'm not coming home from Sunday school and telling my wife that my teacher says I replaced her in the covenant promises of God.
7. Marriage: My wife is Jewish and even in terms of my current worship, she has to conceal certain items in our home when she has friends from shul over. My association in the "Messianic" world has tainted me as far as sharing any sort of worship with her at the Chabad synagogue. Imagine how much more difficult life would be like for her if I became a regular church attender. Adding to this, my personal "theology" if you will, has a lot of "Jewish elements". While I can never attend any of the Chabad Rabbi's classes, I really enjoy going over my wife's class material with her. It's really expanded my understanding of Judaism, and, in it's own way, my understanding of my wife and God.

There are additional issues. I know a couple (who attend a Messianic group about 25 or 30 miles away from where I live) who are intermarried. Like my family, the husband is a non-Jew and the wife is Jewish. In their case, they are both "Messianic" and in fact, her father is also a Messianic Jew (who lives in another state). Like my wife and I, they previously attended a church (a different one than my wife and I attended) and when the wife started exploring her Judaism more demonstratively (by lighting the Shabbat candles and abstaining from eating pork products), she was told to leave the church because she was "under the law". This was a very painful experience for the couple. They had many friends and strong ties with their church, but in that case, her Jewishness did not mix with their understanding of the love of the Jewish Messiah.

On a more personal level, like in my current worship venue, attending a church means I would be worshiping alone; that is to say, without my wife. We previously worshiped together in a church, a "Messianic" setting, and at the local Reform synagogue, but while I felt I "belonged" with the "Messianic" group, my wife was drawn toward the Chabad. Somewhere along the line, I'm not sure when, she gave up her faith in Yeshua and adopted a traditional Jewish viewpoint of Jesus which she currently maintains. It grieves me that we cannot worship God as a couple, but I can fully understand why she wouldn't step foot in any Messianic congregation, even one that held to the strict interpretation of Bilateral Ecclesiology.

The effect of my being "Messianic", for lack of a better term, is that I can no longer set foot in any Jewish synagogue, at least where people might know I'm "Messianic", not only because of how the Rabbi and congregation would react to me, but because it would damage my wife's relationships. Beyond my congregation there is a much larger, though loosely associated, collection of Gentile "Messianics" in my area who, for some reason or another, attend services and classes at the local synagogues, I can't take the risk of going and being recognized. My wife has gone so far as to say that, even if I were to give up the Messianic congregation, I still shouldn't attend any local Jewish gathering.

Attending a church, in spite of everything I said above, while it wouldn't spark as severe a response from the local synagogues, would still require that my wife and I worship apart. It wouldn't erase my "Messianic" associations, so not only is worshiping at a church "problematic", worshiping in the synagogue with my wife is also not an option.

But there's more.

Assume I attended a church. Sooner or later, people are going to find out I'm married and ask about my wife. I could lie and say she's in a coma and is "unavailable" to attend services with me, but I'd probably tell the truth and say she's Jewish and prefers to worship with other Jews. I don't doubt that, because she's "unsaved", someone out of sincere kindness would say they'd pray for her salvation and return to Jesus.

But she doesn't want them to pray for her and I support my wife in her pursuit of her Jewish identity and relationships. It's just a world I can never share. Kind of like the world of Messianism. How would that go over in a church?

For over ten years, I thought I'd found a "spiritual home", but now that has been put in a state of uncertainty. I have to either determine that I should stay where I am "because it's where I've been planted" and to tell the Messianic Jewish world to go take a flying leap, or, out of respect, I can leave my current congregation and exit all of the conversations in the Messianic blogosphere.

Gene suggested that I read a blog written by FFOZ founder Boaz Michael called Respect the Work that God is Doing. I did. The blog post is made up significantly of quotes from a Pastor Boaz knows who, in addition to being aligned with the goals of Messianic Judaism and not being supersessionalist, believes his work as a Pastor is in the church. I think Gene was telling me that the church isn't all that bad, some churches have goals and perspectives that generally align with Messianism, and that I am being unfair to churches by holding the attitudes and experiences I've talked about earlier in this article.

I don't have an issue with what the Pastor said on Boaz's blog. I believe that many, perhaps most, Christians are supposed to be in a church setting. I don't have a problem with anyone who feels this way. I can only say that I don't feel like I'm supposed to be in a church setting. However, that attitude usually gets me branded as a malcontent or otherwise as a person hostile to Christianity, regardless of how untrue it happens to be. Here's an example from Boaz's blog quoting the Pastor that makes a special point:

There is a story about Ghandi that says one day while he was reading the gospels he was intrigued by Jesus, So he decided to check him out. So on a Sunday he went to a Church in South Africa where he was living at the time and was stopped at the door. He was told that this church was only for white, English people and if he wanted a "black" church there was one a mile down the road. Ghandi wrote, "I would be a Christian today, if it were not for the Christians." I am beginning to feel that way about those in the Hebrew roots movement.

In essence, based on that story and particularly the Pastor's last sentence, my personal stance is interpreted as one where I am not acting as the Jewish Messiah would have me act, because I don't feel comfortable in a church setting.

Conclusion

So now what? I don't know...well, yes I do. I just don't want to admit it.

Part of me just wants to cut ties with the Messianic world, both locally with "my" congregation and with the Messianic blogosphere. While I can't comply with the desires of Messianic Judaism and return to a church setting, I will at least be one less splinter in their eye. There are some problems with this decision, however.

Right before Yom Kippur last year (2010/5771), I gave the board of directors at my congregation the opportunity to accept my resignation. Because I was "unequally yoked" and in a position of leadership and authority, I felt "compromised" relative to the Bible's directives regarding leaders in the "church". While the board understood my concerns, because we are a small congregation and resource-limited, and because I provide a significant amount of services to the congregation (teaching, blogging, website creation and management, transportation of the elderly, organization of the food drive, and so forth), they said they really wanted me to stay.

Since I, unlike many Gentile-driven Messianic groups, require that any one leader in our group, especially me, be under the authority of a larger governing body within the congregation, I accepted their decision. I stayed and continued to provide for the congregation in the places where I was needed.

I also promised to teach a class starting at the end of January and going (probably) through May. It should be (just my opinion) an interesting class and a lot of people, in and outside of our congregation are looking forward to it. I don't want to back out at the last second just because of how I feel and how others feel about me.

I didn't anticipate writing this particular blog post for another five or six months, but there seemed to be no other way to adequately respond to Gene's comments.The cat's out of the bag, now.

I want to apologize to those people who may be following this blog and, even though you don't comment, read and are supported by its content. I feel like I've let you down by even writing this post, but one of the things this blog is designed to do is to be my personal reflection and response to issues of faith and relationship. That means, I don't pull punches and I don't cut corners. I'm not here to be "politically correct" and while I've tried to be civil, polite, and respectful, I'm not going to lie. This blog isn't just a series of essays on theological topics, but also a record of my journey along the path and in search of the "light of the world".

I also want to apologize again to anyone reading this who is a Christian and attends a church. It is not my intention to show you, Jesus, or God the Father any disrespect. This missive is completely my responsibility and my expression of the thoughts and challenges I've been facing for the past six months in what I originally called fractured fellowship. As it stands, I'm not the one to build the bridge, apply the super glue, or wrap up the relationship with duct tape. As Gene previously said, I guess I have no right to even address issues of Christian/(Messianic) Jewish relationships if I have no affiliation with a church. That seems to be a condition that keeps hitting me in the face again and again.

Like I said earlier, I was hoping for a miracle to occur within the next five or six months that would somehow resolve the various levels of dissonance I'm experiencing, but I don't know if that miracle will ever occur. Doors are slamming shut all around me but despite that, I'll fulfill  and complete my current commitments. When that's done, I'll look and see if God opened even a single door for me. If there's an opening, I'll go through it and accept the consequences for everything I've done. If not, then I'll follow the exit sign and my relationship with God will become solely between the two of us.

Future Imperfect

Will I continue to blog? Probably, if for no other reason than because this blog is the most direct method I have to express the reflection of my mind, emotions, and spirit in operation.

That's the best I can do for now.