Chasing Cars

Who, being in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the form of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

-Philippians 2:6-7 (NIV)

Moreover, it appears that the meaning of "being in the form of God" may have been presumed as apparent and known to the intended readers, for the text does virtually nothing to explain this interesting phrase.

Larry W. Hurtado
Chapter 3: A "Case Study" in Early Christian Devotion to Jesus
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

This is probably premature and I'm sure I have no business posting this opinion on the web without a lot more study to back it up, but it's what's on my mind just now, so here it is. As many of you who read this blog regularly know, I'm pursuing, among other things, some sort of understanding of the deity of Jesus. Just how is Jesus God the Son and how is God the Father also God? Is there a way to understand the "mechanism" of this process and particularly, how early in "the church" it became apparent that Jesus was (and is) divine?

I'm not going to render a detailed analysis of these questions but I've been wrestling with a few thoughts lately.

Ever since reading "The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah, the Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14 from the Complete Jewish Bible translated by David H. Stern) some years ago, I've tried to imagine the connection between the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as it descended upon the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and the living, breathing, human Messiah:

And he set up the enclosure around the Tabernacle and the altar, and put up the screen for the gate of the enclosure. When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time as it did lift. For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys. -Exodus 40:33-38 (JPS Tanakh)

This passage, and the analogous event in Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), indicates that the Shechinah is not just a cloud of fog and a fancy lights show, but that it is the physical manifestation of God in our world. It isn't the totality of God, however:

Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest? -Isaiah 66:1

If God can't (or won't) squeeze His total "self" into the Mishkan or Temple, what was in Solomon's Temple and where was the totality of the God of the Universe? Are we talking about two Gods here or different manifestations of God's nature?

Ever since I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I have been approaching a closer understanding of the Jewish Messiah as, somehow, mystically, metaphysically, a "container" or "expression-in-flesh" of God's Shechinah (which is considered a feminine aspect of the Divine, making things all the more interesting). Looking at the JewishEncyclopedia.com definition under "In the Targumim":

The majestic presence or manifestation of God which has descended to "dwell" among men. Like Memra (= "word"; "logos") and "Yeḳara" (i.e., "Kabod" = "glory"), the term was used by the Rabbis in place of "God" where the anthropomorphic expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper. The word itself is taken from such passages as speak of God dwelling either in the Tabernacle or among the people of Israel...

No, this doesn't get any easier and in fact, it gets even more off the beaten path (at least my beaten path). I think the reason the whole "deity" issue is so hard to grasp is that, in Christian circles, we tend to try and understand it all through completely rational, intellectual means, or just abandon all hope of coming to any understanding at all. Engaging in a mystic understanding is pretty tough for most believers to accept.

Now let's compare the Shechinah to another concept, this time from Kabbalah as described at AynSof.com:

Ayn Sof (sometimes transliterated as Ein Sof) refers to the infinite Divine (or G_d). In Hebrew Ayn Sof means "Boundlessness", but is usually translated as "Without End." Often it is referred to as the "Infinite No-Thingness." It should be understood that this does NOT mean that Ayn Sof is "nothing" for It is NOT a THING, but is a "somethingness" that we cannot define in human terms. Ayn Sof, in the Kabbalistic tradition, is the ultimate source of all creation or existence!

Ayn Sof, at least as far as my limited understanding can describe it, is the infinite, invisible, unknowable, non-object object, non-entity entity, ultimate creative force, God (God the Father?).

I hate to reduce these concepts down and make them too simple, but would I be so far out of the ballpark to suggest that there is an infinite, invisible, non-corporeal, God, and then suggest there is some part of Him that He can shrink, humble, extend, and intersect with the created Universe; a part of Him that He can allow us to see, touch and some part of Him with which we can interact? Can I then apply that part of Him with which we can interact, that part we saw in the Tabernacle and in Solomon's Temple to the existence and being of the Messiah?

I don't propose this as an answer but suggest it as a possibility. I'll probably be pursuing this for years. I'm sure I'll write more about this. Yes, I'm an unqualified amateur. I'm like this guy:

You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.
The Joker (played by Heath Ledger)
The Dark Knight (2008)

I'm a dog chasing cars. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with one if I ever caught it, but I just can't help chasing cars.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Who to Believe?

In this New York Times bestseller, leading Bible expert Bart Ehrman skillfully demonstrates that the New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. Ehrman reveals that many of the books were written in the names of the apostles by Christians living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were the inventions of still later theologians. Although this has been the standard and widespread view of scholars for two centuries, most people have never learned of it.

Amazon.com product description of
Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman

In "How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?" Larry Hurtado investigates the keen devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. Directed at readers across religious lines, this book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject at least deserves serious historical consideration.

Amazon.com product description of
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God by Larry W. Hurtado

I've just started reading Hurtado's book, but I'm already impressed with both his scholarship and humility. I've already read and reviewed Ehrman's book and although I don't agree with all of his conclusions, he too makes a compelling case. And thereby lies my problem.

I've been turning this issue over in the back of my mind for awhile, but reading Hurtado yesterday forced the issue to the surface, something like an eruption at Old Faithful. It wasn't the only catalyst, but I'll explain the rest in a moment.

I've been reading books written by all of these scholars, theologians, and Bible experts and trying to put everything they're telling me into some kind of framework that makes sense and helps me sort out my faith. The problem is, most of them make a sort of sense and I can see all of their points of view. They're well educated and they know their stuff. The problem is, they don't all agree with each other. The real problem is, I don't operate at anywhere near their level of intelligence or education. How am I supposed to critique and evaluate one view vs. the other? How am I supposed to read all these books and say "this one's right and that one's wrong?"

This isn't just a matter of deciding between Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who is an agnostic and most assuredly doesn't believe in the deity of Jesus, and Hurtado, a Professor of New Testament Language and theology at the University of Edinburgh, who certainly does make a case for the deity of Christ, but all of the other learned teachers who have published their opinions and understandings.

For instance, Hurtado mentions Maurice Casey and his book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, which I also reviewed and found convincing, and refutes Casey's conclusions that the church arrived at the decision to "make" Jesus a God centuries after the resurrection and ascension. Hurtado makes a pretty good point about the early adoption of the worship of Jesus, but I either have to take his word for it that Casey is wrong or somehow replicate Hurtado's and Casey's research and see for myself, which is beyond my cognitive and educational abilities.

It's not just the big time experts either. I happened to mention (and I've been mentioning this a lot), that I find Paul Philip Levertoff's perspective on the Gospels to be particularly convincing, largely because Levertoff seems to solve many of my personal problems with the traditional Christian viewpoint on Christ. However, there are other opinions that oppose my personal judgment:

Let us stop to consider what you are arguing here: you are arguing that a first-century Jewish teacher is better understood in the context of eighteenth-century Jewish mysticism from Poland derived primarily from a thirteenth-century work of Jewish mysticism from Spain than in the context of his students' (John) students' (Polycarp) students (Iraneus) ninety years later.

While I think you can make a case that the unique perspectives of a Chasidic Jewish scholar who lived less than 100 years ago might say more about the ancient Jewish teachings of Jesus than Gentiles who lived much closer to the time of Christ, I'm hardly an expert and after all, I can be wrong. The young man who made this comment on one of my recent blog posts is intelligent and certainly better educated in both Christian and Jewish theologies than I am. In trying to understand, explain, and defend my evolving comprehension of who Jesus is and what he taught, I'm barely able to keep my head above water.

How do people do it? How do people seem so completely sure of what they believe, not just in general, but down to the most minute details?

I do have one answer. I noticed something when I was reading Hurtado's book. I bought a used copy from Amazon and the book has various highlights and underlines (apparently made by the original owner of the book) pointing out specific parts of the text. So far, I've noticed that the passages treated thus all support the deity of Jesus and the idea that worship of Jesus as God occurred almost immediately after the ascension and certainly within the first 30 years after the ascension of the Jewish Messiah to the right hand of God the Father.

I think people read books that support the positions they already hold. I previously made the point that I thought Bowman's and Komoszewski's book Putting Jesus in His Place seemed specifically written for an audience that already believed the book's central assumptions (and the book is written as a teaching aid for Bible studies to present the conclusions of the authors).

I suppose only reading books that support your already held beliefs works in a sense, but what about people like me who are trying to get a wider perspective? Are we just supposed to take an expert's or a group of experts' word that they are right and everyone else is wrong? Which expert or experts are we supposed to believe? On what basis do we choose to believe one scholar and not the other? I want to be a good "Berean", but apparently they were a lot smarter than I am.

I can see agnostics and atheists believing Ehrman because his viewpoint supports their own. I can see evangelical Christians believing Bowman and Komoszewski because the points they make in their book support the evangelical view of Jesus. I can see more scholarly Christians who support the deity of Christ going for Hurtado's book because that's what he presents. I can see people like me, who need to believe that Christianity isn't totally and completely divorced from a Jewish conceptualization (Jewish Messiah teaching Jewish disciples, revealing mysteries in a Jewish mystic context in first century Judea...seems like there ought to be a Jewish interpretation being employed to me) gravitating toward people like Levertoff, who see the Gospels as closely mapping to Chasidic mystical teachings.

But are we supposed to make these sort of conclusions based on what seems or feels right to us? Is there nothing objective to our understanding of God? In the final analysis, are we just letting our personalities determine what is right and what is wrong as far as how we understand our faith in Jesus?

If anyone's got an answer to these questions, I'm all ears.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: Yeshua in Context

The stories of Yeshua demand a response. The normal order of meaning, the rules of the game called life, are changed in his stories. We are each confronted with the problem of meaning, the possible ways his story intersects our story.

In a number of his sayings, Yeshua says something about himself or about a way of life that calls for action. He implies that when we have encountered him (in our case, through story and not in person), we will understand something about the realm above, about a deeper life, about a breakthrough from the present world to the world to come.

Derek Leman in the final chapter of his book
Yeshua in Context: The Life and Times of Yeshua the Messiah

Yeshua in Context is a book about stories. You might say that, from Leman's perspective, the writers of the Gospels are storytellers rather than reporters. Leman, a theologian who earned his Master's degree in Hebrew Bible studies from Emory University, and who is a Rabbi at Tikvat David Messianic Synagogue, addresses what many New Testament scholars view as inconsistencies in the Gospels, by presenting them as differences of intent in what the writers were trying to communicate about the Jewish Messiah.

Leman is also a storyteller. By writing this book, he's sharing with his audience his own perspective; his own story, about who the Jewish Messiah is to him and what Yeshua means in Leman's life. Leman tells us a story that is largely scholarly and somewhat personal, with just a hint of the mystic.

Yeshua in Context is also about giving the reader access to the story. At only 154 pages long and presenting no lengthy set of footnotes, no extensive bibliography, and not even a single appendix, Leman constructs a text that takes the complexity of the life of Yeshua (Jesus), his teachings, his 1st century Jewish context, and his Messianic identity, and opens them up to the rest of us with deceptive ease.

I say "deceptive" because there's a great deal of density contained just beneath the surface of each page in the book. For instance, Leman takes the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and tells the reader something about Yeshua's role as a prophet as it relates to the prophetic tales of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He takes the much discussed and interpreted Beatitudes and presents his own story about the coming Kingdom of God. He engages the parable of the wicked tenants (Mark 12:1-12) and discusses the mystery of why a father would send a beloved son on an assuredly fatal mission.

He even says something about a topic near and dear to me; the divine nature of the Messiah as related to the Shechinah and seen through a Kabbalistic lens:

The Aramaic paraphrases of Yeshua's day, the Targums, said about this story that the Israelites looked for healing to the Memra of God, the Word of God, the manifestation of God on earth...This is exactly who Yeshua is claiming to be: the one with all the nature of God manifested on earth, the radiation of God's being, his Word or Presence. In kabbalistic terminology (from later Judaism), Yeshua is the sum of all sefirot (emanations) and the Father is the Ein Sof (the One without End, the unseeable One...).

I said before that there were no lengthy collection of footnotes in this book, but a brief Bibliography is offered right before Chapter 1, and in the body of each chapter, any of the works cited are referenced by the author's last name and page number. As teacher and student, the writer adequately points back to his research, albeit in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of his narrative.

When I write reviews for technical books, I usually include a mention of any book-associated websites and the value added to the book by on line material. In this case, Leman has created a website (thanks to the power of WordPress) dedicated to continuing for the reader, the education found in his book. In a sense, it's a very large extension to what, on the surface, seems like a relatively short discussion.

One of the reasons I asked to review this book was because of my personal attempt to reconcile the internal discrepancies of the Gospels with the authority of the Bible. How can the holy writings of Christianity be authoritative if they don't perfectly and completely "line up", so to speak? Is the source material of Christianity flawed and, if so, how can we depend upon it as an accurate rendition of the author of our faith?

I'm not sure I found the whole answer in Leman's book, but I think I found some of the answer as related to other books and, more to the point, other perspectives. I'm coming to an understanding of the discrepancies recorded in the Gospels, in terms of what traditional Jewish scholars would view when reading the differences between Talmudic and Midrashic versions of the same story. From a modern, western point of view, we struggle with inconsistent reports from two or more witnesses of the same event, and attempt to harmonize the various iterations. From the Jewish student's vantage point however, no problem exists. Each "story" is accepted on its own merit without the need to have it completely make sense with other stories. The reader gleans the important elements from the story without trying to make it match up with what others have written about the same anecdote.

This is where, in my opinion anyway, the authority of the Bible can be discovered. Not in viewing it as a comprehensive report on testimony delivered in a court case, but as a collection of holy writings by righteous men (tzaddikim) who want us to experience the most righteous one of God through a series of mystic tales.

You might not find that all of your questions about the Jewish Messiah are answered in Derek Leman's book, but it's a good place to start.

Yeshua in Context is available for purchase at Mount Olive Press.

Is the Church Even Remotely "Christian"?

Bell correctly notes (many times) that God is love. He also observes that Jesus is Jewish, the resurrection is important, and the phrase “personal relationship with God” is not in the Bible. He usually makes his argument by referencing Scripture. He is easy to read and obviously feels very deeply for those who have been wronged or seem to be on the outside looking in.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung
from his blog post: A Review of "Love Wins"

I read an interview with a scholar recently in which he talked about the patronizing concept of the Jewishness of Jesus. I’m not precisely sure what he had in mind as the interview did not get specific enough on this point and I have not read enough of this scholar’s work to be sure what opinions he holds. I do know one complaint he had: people who say their historical presentation of Jesus is a Jewish Jesus and then proceed to explain how Jesus is radically different from their notion of the Judaism of his time.

Derek Leman
from his blog post: Jewish Jesus.

A few days ago, I posted an article on this blog called Who Gets to Define Christianity?. It was my "rant" about how the argument over Rob Bell's new book Love Wins seems to have given Evangelical Christian pastors a license to define the particulars of the Christian faith for the rest of us, including those of us who aren't specifically attached to evangelicalism. Among other things this morning, I read Derek Leman's blog (one of them anyway...he has many) and started wondering if the actual, lived person we call "Jesus" would recognize anything about how we express our worship of him today?

That question may come as a shock to some of you, while others may just assume that the church today bears little resemblance to what the Jewish Messiah taught his disciples in the ancient Middle East 20 centuries ago.

What is Christianity? That may seem like a question with a simple answer, but it's not really. To answer the question, we have to take what the Jewish Messiah established as an expression of the living essence of God and the Torah, and then filter it through all of the defining acts and events that have occurred since the birth, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Once Jesus handed off the torch to his Jewish disciples, who then brought in just a boatload of non-Jewish disciples, who then established "the church", what has changed?

Not being a historian, I can't answer that question with any sense of authority, but I do know that we don't have an unadulterated and unchanged way of understanding and responding to Jesus from the time of the original Apostles. I know there are movements, such as the Eastern Orthodox Christian church, who believe they represent an unbroken chain of understanding and faith from the days of Peter and Paul, but I don't believe this is true.

If it were true, then Christian worship and belief as expressed in those churches, would look remarkably "Jewish"...and it doesn't.

There's no indication in the Bible (here's where I'm going to get into trouble) that there was a specific understanding of God as a "Trinity", yet the Eastern Orthodox church holds such a doctrine. There is also significant use made of iconic images and objects which, based on the commandment, You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. (Exodus 20:4), would have made all of the original Jewish Apostles bristle. I really think Paul would have told all of the non-Jewish disciples to ditch the statues.

I don't want to hammer the Eastern Orthodox church or any other faith group, but I do want to illustrate that I don't believe any modern church institution can trace their worship and doctrine directly back to Jesus with absolutely no change in form or substance. In fact, I think there have been just a ton of changes.

Without going into a lot of detail, it seems that several centuries after Peter, Paul, and the rest of the Jewish Apostles had shuffled off this mortal coil, a bunch of non-Jewish guys got together and made some rather defining decisions about what Christianity was and wasn't. As early as about 150 C.E., a group of men we call "the church fathers" (Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and so on) generated various teachings and writings designed to "defend the faith" as it were.

Of course, the "biggie" as far as defining Christianity in the early centuries of the Post-Jesus era, are a number of "councils" instituted by the Emperor Constantine, most notably the Council of Nicea, which created the concrete "creeds" of the church. These are the "what we believe" parts of Christianity, much of which we still practice today. In 380 C.E., Emperor Theodosius, by law, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, pretty much sealing the deal, since the Empire (and a bunch of subsequent Empires) and the Holy Roman Catholic church would meld conquest, colonization, and evangelizing into one package and export it to the rest of the world.

OK, I know what you're thinking. What about the Protestant Reformation? True. Much of what we understand Christianity to be today was put into place by Martin Luther in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Like I said. I'm no historian and I don't want to try and list all of the details these various individuals and groups instituted over the long stretch of time, but I do want to make a simple point.

The vast, vast majority of changes made to the original practices and understandings of who God is and who we are as disciples of the Jewish Messiah were made a long time (on the order of centuries) after Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father. The vast, vast majority of these decisions were made by guys who weren't Jewish and who, given the schism that occurred between Gentile Christianity and Judaism, probably didn't even like Jews (Martin Luther for instance, was a rabid anti-semite). Taking all that into consideration, what makes you think that what we have today as Christian worship, theology, and doctrine, even remotely resembles the original intent of the Jewish Messiah for his Jewish and Gentile disciples?

I know this isn't exactly the first time this question has been asked, but given recent developments in modern, American Christianity as far as defending their position and their teachings in relation to, for instance, Rob Bell's book, I think it's a point that needs to be stated again (and again and again).

I don't think we're "getting it".

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Shaking the Apple Cart

When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job. The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls. Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

from the Yahoo News article:
Who's in Hell? Pastor's Book Sparks Eternal Debate

Update, March 25th: I ran across this very brief video where Rob Bell answers the question, What if you're wrong about hell?

A few days ago, I wrote the blog post Who Gets to Define Christianity, which was largely inspired by the debate in the Christian community over Rob Bell's book Love Wins (and I suppose it's ironic that all of the evangelical negative "buzz" about Love Wins will probably make Bell's book a bestseller). Now, it seems, that the controversy over what is "hell" and is it eternal, has made its way to the mainstream news outlets. I wasn't going to spend any more time on Bell's book and how the various aspects and denominations of the Christian world are responding to it, except that I find they're still responding in a very poor manner.

I spend a lot of time in the classes I teach, talking about our responsibility, as believers, to sanctify the Name of God. I describe this as living a lifestyle and generally behaving in a way that honors the Jewish Messiah we serve and that brings glory to the Name of God. As Christians, we have a choice we must make every day; are we going to sanctify His Name or desecrate it?

I've already briefly defined how we sanctify His Name, but the details have to do with our behavior. Whenever we encounter an ethical or moral decision point, what do we do? When we see someone who is hungry, do we feed him? When we know someone is in the hospital, do we visit her? When people see how we live, listen to how we talk, observe how we behave when we're under stress, do they see us actually operating out of the faith we are supposed to cherish? The opposite, desecrating the Name, means behaving in a manner that is inconsistent or opposed to our stated faith and values. It means flipping someone off when they cut us off in traffic. It means cussing someone out when they beat us to the last spot in a crowded parking lot. It means holding a grudge against our next door neighbor who borrowed our favorite power tool six months ago and still hasn't given it back. It might even mean wishing someone ill when they write a book that disagrees with our current understanding of hell.

Living a life that desecrates the Name of God means acting as if we have no faith in Christ at all.

So, how is the evangelical church behaving? I'm not convinced they're acting out of their faith or at least, they're not doing a very good job of expressing their faith (although I have no doubt they think they are). Was firing Chad Holtz out of hand the right thing to do when he started publicly questioning the assumptions the church makes about hell?

For all I know, it was the right decision. I'm only getting this through the news media and I have no illusions about the objectivity, or lack thereof, regarding information they publish. I don't have the inside story. Still, on the surface, it seems rather harsh. I have also heard it said that the church is the only army that shoots its own wounded, and it's quite possible this is a true assessment. More's the pity.

Apparently, a well-known (though I've never heard of the guy) evangelical pastor named John Piper used his twitter account to deliver a very succinct message that summarizes the evangelical opinion of Rob Bell and his book:

"Farewell, Rob Bell."

I wonder if that's the same thing as, "Go to hell, Rob Bell", but I digress.

Not all of the responses in the above-referenced news article were severe or unkind. Some people seemed to generate a more measured reaction and even some Christian concern:

"I just felt like on every page he's trying to say 'It's OK,'" said Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler at a forum last week on Bell's book held at the Louisville institution. "And there's a sense in which we desperately want to say that. But the question becomes, on what basis can we say that?"

Page Brooks, a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks Bell errs in a conception of a loving God that leaves out the divine attributes of justice and holiness. "It's love, but it's a just love," Brooks said. "God is love, but you have to understand you're a sinner and the only way to get around that is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross."

I think Bell has done the Christian community a tremendous favor. As people of faith, we need to evaluate, re-evaluate, and constantly challenge our theological beliefs and what we understand. That's how we grow. I created this blog last summer to chronicle my personal exploration into this realm and anyone who's been following me since the beginning knows that, at times, it's been very painful and distressing. Of course, it hasn't affected me to the point of losing my livelihood, as it did Reverend Holtz, but asking such questions takes a person's faith and strips it down, exposing the bone and nerves of what you know...and what you suddenly realize you don't know.

However, my experience with many other people of faith is that they never question their assumptions. Once they arrive at a basic theological understanding of God, faith, the Bible, and all of the details held dear by their church and their Pastor (hell, the rapture, Jews, and so on), they stop looking, learning, and developing in any significant manner.Oh sure, they go to Bible studies, but those are the sorts of experiences that have been canned and scripted with the conclusion already in mind, and it's a conclusion that completely agrees with the established doctrine of their church. What's there to learn?

Sometimes it helps if you shake up the apple cart, just to see what falls out.

Is Rob Bell right or wrong about hell? I can't say for certain. I do believe that, beyond a certain point, you don't get to come back to God. I believe there's a line you cross and once you've crossed it, you don't get to reverse your steps. How that all works though, in intimate detail, I don't know for sure. The Bible doesn't provide those details and, as no doubt you understand by now if you've been reading this blog, the Bible isn't the simple, straightforward document we all wish it was.

The point for me, at least in the short run, isn't whether or not Bell is correct or incorrect (or whether he's going to hell or not...people haven't publicly said it in those terms, but I'm sure that's what some of them are thinking), but what the results are of his "apple cart shaking".

Some of the apples have popped out of the cart and frankly, they don't look so polished.

Dear evangelical Christianity. You have a choice to make today. You have a choice to make every day. It's the same choice I make every day, and it's the same choice all people of faith make, whether they're aware of it or not. Here's the choice. Are you going to sanctify God by your actions or desecrate Him? Before opening your mouth and uttering your answer, would you think about it...please?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Review: Love and the Messianic Age

Kabbalistic literature is, generally speaking, comparable to a large, sprawling city with many treacherous back-alleys, dangerous neighborhoods, and sudden, unexpected dead-ends. Even with a good map and a good sense for direction, the visitor is likely to find himself lost and confused and may easily stray into a bad part of town. Rather than trying to find your way through this maze-like metropolis on your own, we recommend you follow a reliable guide. Paul Philip Levertoff is just such a guide.

Boaz Michael from the Foreward to the
Love and the Messianic Age Commentary

I love this description of navigating the mystic Jewish writings. I feel as if, opening the pages to Paul Philip Levertoff's Love and the Messianic Age, that I'm an American tourist on his first visit to Constantinople. The year is 1923, and I've been suddenly diverted from my innocent vacation plans into adventure and intrigue, thrown in with Kasper Gutman and a collection of rogues, searching the back alleys of this ancient city for some clue as to the whereabouts of the Maltese Falcon.

While Dashell Hammett's famous detective novel wasn't published until 1930, Levertoff's short but impressive work originally became available in 1923 and now, thanks to First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) and Vine of David, Levertoff's writing, insights, and expression of Jesus the Jewish Messiah, are accessible to us again.

Before continuing with this review, you might want to become briefly acquainted with Levertoff and how a young Chasidic Jew at the end of the 19th Century came to faith in Jesus, by reading my blog post, A Short Lesson from Feivel the Chasid. Levertoff's journey from an Orthodox Jewish student in Orsha, Belarus to an Anglican priest in Wales is fascinating and even amazing. Understanding his journey is the way to understand what he has to say to us.

As Boaz Michael writes in the Foreward to the book's commentary, mysticism isn't for everybody. I didn't think it was for me either, but I was getting "stuck" reading more Christian-oriented inspirational and scholarly works, as a way to find the Jewish Messiah. The vast collection of Gentile Christian commentary has made discovering the "original" Jesus difficult by largely dismissing a Hebraic understanding of the Jewish Messiah, his Jewish disciples, and his teachings as a Jewish Rabbi and Prophet. After briefly being introduced to Levertoff's book and the concept of Jewish mystic writings on Derek Leman's blog, Boaz Michael suggested that I read (and review) Levertoff's book and the accompanying commentary.

I did...and I was hooked.

If you follow my blog, you could probably guess this, as, over the past two weeks, I've posted about 9 or 10 separate "mini-reviews" of different concepts and lessons I've learned while reading Levertoff.

Since last summer, I've been challenging my faith and questioning my basic assumptions about who Jesus is and who I am in him. This investigation intensified at the beginning February when I ran headlong into my ambiguity about the deity of Jesus (is he or is he not literally God?). In reading various Christian texts including Bowman's and Komoszewski's Putting Jesus in His Place, I failed to discover sufficient evidence and information to convince me that the Orthodox Christian viewpoint on Christ's deity and the Trinity held water. Reading Levertoff, I think I've found out why.

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
"Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader"
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

I think Levertoff is right. I don't believe it's really possible to understand what the Jewish Messiah is teaching by taking him out of his context. I think what impressed Levertoff about the Gospels should absolutely amaze us.

In 1887 a nine-year-old Chasidic Jew named Feivel Levertoff was trudging home from cheder (a Jewish day school) when a discarded scrap of paper caught his eye. It was printed with Hebrew text. Supposing it was a leaf from a prayer book or other sacred volume, Feivel picked it out of the snow.

He quickly read the piece of paper. It was a page from a book he had never read before. It told the story of a boy like himself - not much older either - whose parents found him in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, expounding the Scriptures and learning with the great sages of antiquity.

Jorge Quinonez continues this tale of young Feivel by telling us that he had found a Hebrew translation of Luke 2:45-47 and supposed it was part of the Jewish holy writings. Feivel was shocked when he later showed the paper to his father, and his father expressed anger, forbade Feivel from ever again reading "such things", and then watched his father crumple the paper and toss it into the stove.

This was just the beginning of Levertoff's fascination with the Gospels as Feivel (later he chose the name Paul Philip after his formal conversion to Christianity) secretly found opportunities to continue reading the teachings of "Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth". What continued to draw Levertoff along this path (and what should draw us as well), is how the Gospels so seamlessly and thoroughly blended into the Chasidic Jewish mystic writings, teachings, and world view. Seen through the eyes of a teenager who had the benefit of a classical Jewish education and exposure to the esoteric works of the Chasidim, Feivel was puzzled at how Gentile Christianity could ever make heads or tails of Yeshua. By the time Levertoff was 17, he was a devoted Chasid (a "Chasid" is a disciple of a distinguished Rabbi or spiritual leader in a religious community) of the great Rebbe Yeshua.

What Levertoff created in writing Love and the Messianic Age some decades later, and what FFOZ/Vine of David has provided by creating their commentary on Levertoff, is a roadmap that allows us to see the territory of the teachings of Christ through the lens of the Zohar, the Tanya, and the realm of Chasidic Judaism.

Although the world sees Levertoff as a Jewish convert to Christianity, it is more accurate to describe him as a Chasidic disciple of the Jewish Messiah. Levertoff's Jewish understanding of Jesus as the greatest and most unique Prophet, Rabbi, and ultimately, as the Messiah and Son of God, never wavered throughout his lifetime, and by writing Love and the Messianic Age, he granted a larger audience the ability to see through his eyes. By republishing Levertoff's book and writing their own detailed commentary on Levertoff, FFOZ and Vine of David have allowed even generally non-mystic, non-Jewish people like me, the ability to navigate the strange roads Boaz Michael describes, and to finally understand the Lord and Savior of the world as I believe he truly is.

If you're reading my review from a traditional Christian context, you may be having problems understanding what resonates within me when I read Levertoff, but I have found in this book, the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the picture of Jesus. Each writer, each scholar, each believer, has a different way of seeing Jesus. Sometimes the differences are slight, but I've found some of those differences to be profound. I can't say as an absolute fact, that Levertoff's presentation of who Jesus is, and his understanding of what Jesus taught, is the only way or the best way to look at the identity, nature, and character of the Jewish Messiah, but it is the only perspective that has answered questions for me, that no other investigator has truly addressed. How does Christ's deity connect to the Shechinah? How does the Gospel of John line up with the writings in the Zohar? What is the match between the Christian concept of koinonia and achdut or "unity", the highest ideal in Chasidism?

It seems more than astounding that the world of Jewish mysticism and the world of the Gospels so completely map to one another. It's like wandering through a city where the streets have no names, and then finding a guide who tells you how it all makes sense.

You may be thinking that trying to grasp the meaning behind Jesus by using a Chasidic model is too far for you to go. However, there's actually nothing particularly difficult about reading Levertoff or the commentary. The sources being cited may be beyond your experiences (they were for me), but the interface provided by book and by the commentary, make what's being said and the attendant meaning very accessible. For me, beyond accessibility and meaning, I also found illumination.

This isn't the only way to look at and understand Jesus, and it may not be the one you would choose at first, but I highly recommend that you give it a try, especially if how you see the Jewish Messiah right now in your faith, seems a little bit stale or perhaps, is just a picture that hasn't challenged you for a very long time.

Who is Jesus really? What did he teach? Is it possible that what you have been taught; what you think you understand isn't the whole picture? If those are questions you have, I urge you to get a copy of Levertoff's book as well as the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary. Read them slowly. Carefully unfold the map. Discover how the ancient streets and byways of the Holy City begin to open up for you. Faith isn't a vacation; it's an adventure. Let Paul Philip Levertoff be your guide to discovery and treasure.

Who Gets to Define Christianity?

God is retelling each of our stories in Jesus. All of the bad parts and the ugly parts and the parts we want to pretend never happened are redeemed. They seemed pointless and they were painful at the time, but God retells our story and they become the moments when God's grace is most on display. We find ourselves asking, am I really forgiven of that? The fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true. Our choice becomes this: We can trust his retelling of the story, or we can trust our telling of our story. It is a choice we make every day about the reality we are going to live in.

And this reality extends beyond this life.

Heaven is full of forgiven people.

Hell is full of forgiven people.

Heaven is full of people God loves whom Jesus died for.

Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for.

Rob Bell
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

Pastor Bell's description of the inhabitants of heaven and hell are probably a little different than what you've heard of before...unless you've read or heard about his latest book, Love Wins. Love Wins has generated a huge amount of controversy in Christian circles, including the Christian blogosphere, since Bell's presentation of hell is radically different than what we've been taught from the pulpit. But how radical is it?

I can't answer the question directly, since I've not read the book yet, but given Bell's familiarity with some aspects of Judaism and how Jewish thought can be applied to the Christian worship of the Jewish Messiah, maybe I can make a guess or two.

What do Jews believe about sin and hell?

First off, for those readers who may not know, in Judaism, there is a belief in the "afterlife", which is traditionally referred to as "life in the world to come". This isn't "heaven" so much as it is the "Messianic Age", when the Messiah comes and "fixes" the world so that there is universal peace, Israel, the nation and the people, are secure, and everyone worships the God of Jacob.

According to Orthodox Rabbi Shraga Simmons, here is what Jews believe about "hell":

When a person dies and goes to heaven, the judgment is not arbitrary and externally imposed. Rather, the soul is shown two videotapes. The first video is called "This is Your Life!" Every decision and every thought, all the good deeds, and the embarrassing things a person did in private is all replayed without any embellishments. It's fully bared for all to see. That's why the next world is called Olam HaEmet - "the World of Truth," because there we clearly recognize our personal strengths and shortcomings, and the true purpose of life. In short, Hell is not the Devil with a pitchfork stoking the fires.

The second video depicts how a person's life "could have been..." if the right choices had been made, if the opportunities were seized, if the potential was actualized. This video - the pain of squandered potential - is much more difficult to bear. But at the same time it purifies the soul as well. The pain creates regret which removes the barriers and enables the soul to completely connect to God.

Not all souls merit Gehenom. It is for people who have done good but need to be purified. A handful of people are too evil for Gehenom, and they are punished eternally. Pharaoh is one example.

I suppose the reference to "videotapes" is figurative, but look at what Rabbi Simmons is saying. His description of the Jewish view of "hell" or rather Gehenom, isn't that different from Bell's. For most people deserving "hell", what they get instead, is exposure to situations that cause them pain (such as looking at their video of how they screwed up their lives) with the goal not being punishment, but rather, purification. Only very, very few truly evil human beings are consigned to eternal punishment. Pharaoh is given as an example by Simmons, but it's a safe bet that Hitler is in the same fire pit.

What Rabbi Simmons describes, shows us that Bell didn't simply make up his understanding or belief regarding hell, but that he's relying heavily on Orthodox Jewish thought to form his opinion. The quote from his book Velvet Elvis, published in 2005, shows us that Bell's beliefs about hell aren't brand new and that he was thinking in this direction at least five or six years ago (and probably longer).

I think the worst you can say about Bell's opinions regarding hell (and again, I haven't read the book) is that they more line up with Orthodox Judaism than Orthodox Christianity. Going public with this belief would be a rather bold step for most Pastors, but Bell seems to have a track record of marching to a different drummer.

Collective Christianity and particularly the Evangelical world, has generated a major power surge of outrage in response to Bell's book. About a week ago, I read an amazingly lengthy (21 pages) review written by Pastor Kevin DeYoung of the University Reformed Church in East Lansing Michigan. I won't attempt to recount the review here (unlike DeYoung, I neither have the time nor the inclination to write 21 pages in blog form), and you can certainly read what he has to say at your leisure, but I did want to point out a few things DeYoung wrote:

At the very heart of this controversy, and one of the reasons the blogosphere exploded over this book, is that we really do have two different Gods. The stakes are that high. If Bell is right, then historic orthodoxy is toxic and terrible. But if the traditional view of heaven and hell are right, Bell is blaspheming. I do not use the word lightly, just like Bell probably chose “toxic” quite deliberately. Both sides cannot be right. As much as some voices in evangelicalism will suggest that we should all get along and learn from each other and listen for the Spirit speaking in our midst, the fact is we have two irreconcilable views of God.

No doubt, Rob Bell writes as a pastor who wants to care for people struggling with the doctrine of hell. I too write as a pastor. And as a pastor I know that Love Wins means God’s people lose. In the world of Love Wins, my congregation should not sing “In Christ Alone” because they cannot not believe, “There on the cross where Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” They would not belt out “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.” No place for “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” with its confession, “the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that Justice gave.” The jubilation of “No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in him, is mine!” is muted in Love Wins. The bad news of our wrath-deserving wretchedness is so absent that the good news of God’s wrath-bearing Substitute cannot sing in our hearts. When God is shrunk down to fit our cultural constraints, the cross is diminished. And whenever the cross is diminished we pain the hearts of God’s people and rob them of their joy.

I tried to pick out some of the sections in DeYoung's review that, for me, encapsulated why he had enough of an issue with Bell's book, that he found it necessary, as a busy Senior Pastor (at this point, I have to admit, that I prefer my "senior" Pastors to have at least a few gray hairs on their head, and both Bell and DeYoung seem a little young for an older, "gray hair" like me) of a rather large church, to write a detailed analysis of Love Wins. What is most dismaying about what DeYoung writes isn't that he disagrees with Bell, which is just fine and dandy, but that he disagrees with Bell because Bell does not present the view of hell that is espoused by Evangelical Christianity. Further, DeYoung offers Evangelical Christianity (of all of the "Christianities" available in the early 21st century) as the normative Christian expression on the planet (in other words, none of the other Christian denominations are "true" Christians). From DeYoung's perspective, only Evangelical Christianity has the corner market on defining and presenting God, Jesus, Heaven, and Hell.

Yeah, that last sentence seems kind of heavy handed, even to me, but that's certainly the flavor I came away with after reading DeYoung's review.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post called Seeing Jesus Through Different Windows in which I tried to summarize my investigation up to this point, on what I've learned about Jesus the Jewish Messiah and how to understand his mission, message, and identity. As you can see from that blog post and previous book reviews I've written, there is more than one way to understand Jesus and more than one way to interpret his message. Pastor DeYoung and Evangelical Christianity may be a voice in the world of "Christiandom" but they are not, as DeYoung seems to believe, the only voice.

When I reviewed Bowman's and Komoszewski's book Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, Robert Bowman wrote a comment on the blog post of my review stating that "We do assume that the New Testament is the proper source of Christian doctrine." and "Your review amounts to saying that your real problem with our book is that you lack confidence in the reliability of the NT writings."

I have to disagree with Bowman in that modern Christian doctrine is or should be the only lens by which we can view the Jewish Messiah and in fact, I think that artificially imposing a modern Evangelical understanding on the Jewish Messiah as he lived among men in the 1st Century C.E. in ancient Israel, automatically introduces many barriers to our getting at what the Messiah was teaching. Further, isolating Jesus the Jewish Messiah from the Old Testament (Tanakh) and every act of God that came before Matthew 1:1, makes it almost impossible to truly grasp what the author of the Christian faith was and is really trying to tell us. While Bowman told me that the "book does not presuppose the inerrancy of Scripture", in fact, if the book doesn't depend upon the inerrancy of the NT scriptures, how can it say that the NT writings unequivocally support the book's conclusions?

I know it seems like I'm picking on Evangelicals, but in some sense, both Bowman's and DeYoung's comments amount to a throwing down of the gauntlet. It's one thing for an Evangelical Pastor to preach what he believes and base his opinion on Christian doctrine, but it's another thing entirely to say that his viewpoint is the only way to see the Bible and Jesus in an absolute manner.

At whatever point I get around to reading Bell's latest book, I may conclude that I don't agree with him either, but that doesn't automatically make me right and Bell wrong. The best I can say is that we have a difference of opinion and to state my rationale for why I disagree with him. The readers can make up their own minds.

OK, I can accept that people like Bowman and DeYoung aren't injecting their perspectives into the world just because they need the exercise, and I am willing to believe they are sincerely concerned about the faithful being lead down a path to heresy and apostasy. If they really believe that Bell's book and my review (and I'm sure I'm small potatoes to guys like these...Bell, on the other hand, has a more far-reaching "voice") are dangerous to Christians, then they have a duty to speak out. I get that.

My big issue is with them acting like their perspective is the only perspective, is that they behave as if God had given only Evangelical Christians the secret password to the cryptic knowledge of the Bible and that we, the uninformed of the world, must believe them, rather than studying, looking at different understandings of our faith, praying, and coming to a more Berean-like conclusion.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Seeing Jesus Through Different Windows

There are even methods to help decipher all the hidden meanings in the text. One is called the principle of first mention. Whenever you come across a significant word in the passage, find out where this word first appears in the Bible. John does this in his gospel. This first mention of the word love in 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." We then discover that love is first mentioned in Genesis 22 when God tells Abraham to take "your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love" and offer him as a sacrifice. John is doing something intentional in his gospel: He wants his readers to see a connection between Abraham and his son, and God and God's son. John's readers who know the Torah would have seen the parallels right away.

-Rob Bell
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

I don't know if Bell is completely accurate in what he says in his book (Pastors of "megachurches" aren't necessarily also scholars or researchers), but it is a compelling image. Many scholars and even "ordinary" believers, have a tendency to read the Bible from a purely literal and historical vantage point. In extreme cases, people read the Bible in English and believe that the surface meaning is the meaning of what the author (and God) is trying to say (and here, we aren't even sure that the author of John's Gospel was the "John the Apostle" who walked with Jesus...in fact, it probably wasn't).

Derek Leman in his book Yeshua in Context, paints a picture of the Gospels as "stories" which communicate something about the Jewish Messiah that the Gospel writers wanted their audience to especially understand. These are viewpoints, perspectives, and interpretations about the Messiah that are being presented, rather than literal facts and events you'd expect in history books or (presumably) as reported on CNN (and I've just started Leman's book yesterday, so a full review will be forthcoming).

I'm tempted to say that Paul Philip Levertoff in his book Love and the Messianic Age, takes his interpretation one step further, but Levertoff's step is more sideways and represents a difference not so much in degree as in identity.

One of the things that's been impressed upon me as I've read these (and other) different authors, is how they each see Jesus (Yeshua), his context, his lived experience, and what we are supposed to understand about him, in almost fundamentally dissimilar ways. Sure, there's some overlap, but when reading all of the different books on the issues of Christ's deity, mission, and teachings, it's like I'm reading about different people rather than a single individual.

So far, I've been most impressed with Levertoff's perspective (and a full review of his book and the Vine of David commentary on Levertoff is also forthcoming) on the Jewish Messiah and the writings that describe him and what he did (and does).

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
"Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader"
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

We all interpret Jesus from our own perspective; not just our educational or even our own faith perspectives, but from who we are as childhoods, personalities, and lived experiences. It's always bothered me that most of the people writing about the Jewish Messiah aren't Jewish and particularly, they aren't people who have the benefit of a completely lived Jewish identity, background, and education starting from childhood (there are a few exceptions). Even Christians who are well educated NT scholars, come from an essentially Gentile background and they are people who were born, raised, and who identify with a non-Jewish world view; people who did not take upon themselves an educational experience that included the Jewish writings until adulthood.

Even many Jews in the Messianic movement, previously identified with Christianity and worshiped in a church context before shifting into a Messianic Jewish worship style and becoming educated in a Jewish faith perspective (which includes Talmud study, among other things).

Levertoff, having been born, raised, and educated in a Chasidic Jewish environment and context from childhood, applies a seamless Jewish experience across the entire Bible, looking at the Gospels from a Talmudic and Chasidic vantage point, and is able to see what most of us would miss. This isn't just a viewpoint that illustrates heretofore "hidden" messages in the text, but a fundamental shift in understanding that allows us to read the Gospels in the tradition of mystic Jewish writings rather than history, literature, or "the Christian sayings of Jesus".

I'm not denigrating any of these other assessments or studies, but I do believe they all lack something critical that, in its absence, leaves us with questions that Levertoff's Chasidic presentation are more equipped to answer.

As I mentioned, I'll write individual book reviews (in the case of Bowman's and Komoszewski's evangelical view of Putting Jesus in His Place, I already have) on each of the works I've cited, but I had the need this morning, to write a sort of summary of my investigations into the deity of Jesus and how my journey of exploration into an understanding of the Jewish Messiah has been proceeding.

I must say that my level of "anxiety" over my faith and understanding has been reduced significantly, I'm learning a lot of things that were simply invisible to me before this...

...and I'm having fun.

Chag Sameach Purim.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Freeing Sparks

From this life and light proceeds the divine "spark" which is hidden in every soul. Not all men succeed in rising to this close union with God at prayer, because this spark is imprisoned in them. "Yea, even the Shechinah herself is imprisoned in us, for the spark is the Shechinah in our souls.
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.
-Psalm 27:8

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls...
-Psalm 42:7

There's something of God in each of us. I don't mean the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit", but after all, every person was created in God's image. We each have a soul...something of the divine in every person. In Judaism, it's thought that man has two spirits: the nephesh and the ruach. The nephesh is our "animal" soul or the type of spirit any living creature possesses; our "personality". The ruach is a "spark" of the divine within each person and is only possessed by human beings.

When we die, it's believed that our nephesh goes with our bodies into the ground and perishes with us. Our ruach, on the other hand, rises up, like sparks from a fire, seeking to return to the source; to God.

When we pray, we have the potential of connecting the spark of holiness within us directly to God, but this doesn't always happen. As Levertoff has already said, we can imprison our spark, the living Shechinah, within us. The Vine of David commentary on this passage explains more:

Although every man has the divine potential of a godly soul planted within him, this is not a guarantee that every man will enter into a relationship with HaShem or even that every soul will be redeemed. Instead, the soul is separated from God by a wall of partition - sin and guilt. HaShem removes the wall of partition between man and Himself through the work of the Messiah. When the wall is removed, then the soul can connect with HaShem. Then He can "use it for the gathering of these 'sparks'."

Through sincere and heartfelt prayer, we can breakdown the wall separating us from God and let our spark connect to the flame of God, but it is our faith in the Messiah that provides the conduit for our prayer. I wonder if the Vine of David commentary has given us the true meaning of the following event?

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” -Matthew 27:50-54

This passage is often quoted by traditional Christianity as "proof" that, with the death of the Messiah, that the Jewish sacrificial system was destroyed, that the Law was replaced by grace, and that Judaism was replaced by Christianity. Given Levertoff's point of view on Jesus, prayer, and the divine, perhaps what was really torn down was not what God had instituted, for after all, God established His Temple (and will do so again as recorded in Ezekiel chapters 40-48), but rather, the barriers that all men create between themselves and God. Through the Messiah, humanity has been given a unique opportunity to connect to God in a way we never had before. We can set our sparks free.

However, the process isn't completed automatically. The removal of the wall is like opening a door. Entry is now available, but we still must walk through to the other side.

God is waiting for us to have faith and to pray; to release the sparks trapped within us, so that they can rise up again and be gathered by God.

Is that joy?

Good Shabbos.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Proceeding Hopefully

I was having lunch with a guy who was telling me about a struggle he had been having for a while. He said he knew he was a sinner and that he was fallen and that he would keep committing this one sin, and he knew he was going to keep committing this one sins because he was a sinner and his nature was evil and there was nothing he could do about it because of what a sinner he was...

Do I have to go on?

I was so depressed I wanted to bang my head on the table. His question was basically, why do we struggle like this?
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith
by Rob Bell

If we have no joy in our hearts, we deny the love of God. We should not say, "Our heart is a dwelling place of lust, jealousy, anger; there is no hope for us." Let us realize that we have another guest in us who desires to give us life and joy, notwithstanding our sin. Even if we are disturbed by worldly thoughts during our most intimate converse with God, we should not lose courage and joy.
Love and the Messianic Age
by Paul Philip Levertoff

Jacob wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32:22-32) and we wrestle with what it means, especially to us. We wrestle with our sin and we wonder if God even hears us sometimes. We behave as if we're our own worst enemy and yet we're commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:31, Leviticus 19:18).

Isn't that crazy?

Probably not.

Yesterday, I talked about struggling between despair and joy, experiencing disturbing emotions in the immediate situation and striving to find my joy in God as an enduring state. Where do we find this? How do we do this?

I don't know. It's not easy.

I sometimes get really tired of moral or religious platitudes that we hear from religious leaders who are preaching or writing books, saying that we just need to do "this" in order to achieve "that". It's as if they don't live in the same universe as the rest of us. It's as if they don't have real, personal lives like the rest of us. What the heck are they talking about?

Of course these people have the same struggles as everyone else. Being a Pastor or a Rabbi or a whatever doesn't suddenly mean that you aren't human anymore, or you're not vulnerable to the same human struggles as everyone around you. It sometimes means that religious leaders try and pretend they're not human because they think their "flock" needs a superhuman shepherd.

It's one thing to "suck it up" and put your own concerns to one side when someone else needs a shoulder to cry on, but it's another thing entirely to project your self-expectation of being "perfect" onto the people around you, especially the people who depend on your compassion.

It's OK to want to bang your head on a table sometimes. It's OK if, during prayer, some rotten, guilty little thought creeps in between you and God. That doesn't mean you have to cave in to either temptation, and it doesn't mean you're a horrible person or a failure. However, if we give in to despair and we give up on ourselves, we're also giving up on God.

He's convinced he is a sinner, he's convinced he is going to sin, he has no hope against sin, he believes his basic nature is sin, and then he wonders why he keeps sinning.

Rob Bell pretty much nails it as far as his lunch companion is concerned, and he maps out the danger Levertoff has warned us against (see the quote at the top of the page). While Jesus chided his disciples for their lack of faith, in fact, they had faith. They struggled with faith. They really struggled with faith when their Master was executed by the Romans, and their faith was restored when Jesus was resurrected. Their faith was strengthened and they were empowered when the Spirit came to them on the Festival of Shavuot (Pentecost). They kept their faith. They kept their hope. They were not abandoned. They were sometimes afraid, but they were never alone.

It's not a crime to struggle with faith. It's not a sin to struggle with God. The only real failure you'll face is if you give up on Him...and on you.

Sometimes we get tired and it's tough to get up and walk after a fall.Take it slow. Put your weight on one foot and then the other. Stand up. Then take the first step...

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Failing "Joy 101"

If we have no joy in our hearts, we deny the love of God. We should not say, "Our heart is the dwelling place of lust, jealousy, anger; there is no hope for us." Let us realize that we have another guest in us who desires to give us life and joy, notwithstanding our sin.
-Paul Philip Levertoff
Love and the Messianic Age

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
-1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
-James 1:2-4

As believers, we all want to obey Jesus. We want to do the will of God "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). As human beings we all want to be happy. But I must admit that I have a very difficult time obeying God when He commands me to rejoice.

I don't feel joy, especially on a continual basis.

What?

Wait a minute. First of all, what is "joy?" According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, joy is:

1 a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight
  b: the expression or exhibition of such emotion : gaiety

2: a state of happiness or felicity : bliss

3: a source or cause of delight

Is that what God's talking about?

If it is, then I have a problem and, according to Levertoff's statement, which I quoted above, it's a big problem. If I have no joy, I am denying God. Here's more:

Therefore, first of all, man ought to be happy and joyous at all times, and truly live by his faith in the Lord who animates him and is benignant with him every moment. But he who is grieved and laments makes himself appear as if he has it somewhat bad, and is suffering, and lacking some goodness; he is like a heretic, Heaven forbid. -Igeret HaKodesh 11 (Kehot)

But I'm not "happy and joyous at all times" and in fact, I don't really experience lots and lots of happiness on a more or less frequent basis. Sure, there are times when I'm happy or pleased or amused, but I have other emotions as well. I get angry, I get frustrated, I get sad, I get scared, I get depressed. When I'm experiencing those emotional states, am I denying God? Am I a heretic for not experiencing joy continually?

OK, Levertoff does distinguish between a state of happiness or joy that is situational vs. joy that is always present. He says that happiness is affected by immediate events as opposed to a joy in God that is (or should be) continually available. This seems to mean that I can be situationally angry or sad at the same time I'm experiencing (or should be experiencing) ongoing joy in prayer and worship of God.

The really tricky part is, in the Messianic age, of all the festivals of God, only Sukkot (The Festival of Booths) specifically commands that representatives of all the nations of the earth come to Jerusalem and celebrate before the Lord (Zechariah 14:16-19) and here's something very special about Sukkot:

Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the festival to the LORD your God at the place the LORD will choose. For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. -Deuteronomy 16:13-15

That's right, people celebrating Sukkot are literally commanded to be joyful. It's not an option. No other festival has the specific requirement for people to experience joy. But how is it done?

I know all the platitudes and the Bible verses that are aimed at us and that I am told, when utilized properly, will generate a continual state of joy in the believer, but I'm just not "feeling it." Heck, I still haven't figured out how Paul learned to be "content in all circumstances" (see Philippians 4:11-13), let alone joyful. I'm obviously missing something in my character and my faith. Is it just me, or do other people have this problem, too (and would you admit it if you did)?

What about people who are chronically depressed and even suicidal? According to Levertoff, the commentary on his book, and general Christian belief, they are being sinful. What about kids being sexually abused at home, wives battered by husbands, men who have just lost their wives to cancer, the 12 year old daughter of Udi and Ruth Fogel whose parents and three of her siblings were murdered in their home by Palestinian terrorists last Shabbat? What about all of the men, women, and children who have suffered terribly because of the earthquake, tsunami, and current nuclear radiation threat in Japan?

Where is their joy? Are they denying God and being heretics because they are in anguish? Can you feel joy at the same time as you're feeling anguish?

I know that all of the things I've just described are situational and the joy Levertoff and the Bible (and God) are talking about is a different, more persistent state, but how does that all work? I know there are times when I feel a kind of peace when I'm praying, worshiping, or studying the Bible. Is that joy, though?

I don't want to sin. I'm not trying to sin. Technically, when I feel sad, I should feel guilty for sinning but then, feeling guilty for sinning is a sin, too, isn't it?

I love Levertoff's book and I'm really enjoying the Vine of David commentary that goes along with it. I plan to pursue a modest study of Jewish mysticism at some point in the fairly near future, because I can see that it has very significant applications to understanding the Jewish Messiah and everything he taught.

But all that said, I am really struggling with this part of Levertoff and the whole "joy" thing, and it's only a few pages long. I'm tossing this one out there to everyone who reads this blog because I don't have an answer. What is this "joy" God is talking about? Where is it? How do you find it? How do you keep it? Most importantly, what do you do when you don't have joy?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.