Unintended Goodness

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. -Matthew 7:9-12

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. -James 4:3

Sometimes it happens that you set out to do something with the best of intentions - and you end up with what appears the opposite.

Know with absolute certainty - because this is a tradition of our sages - that if your true intent is good, then from it only good can emerge.

Perhaps not the good you intended - or care for - but good nevertheless.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
from "Detoured Good"
Chabad.org

I read Rabbi Freeman's words yesterday, which I quoted above, and thought about my own situation. I've recently commented on both Judah Himango's and Derek Leman's blogs regarding my intention to formally leave the world of "Messianic" worship, and specifically the "One Law" branch of this movement. I no longer believe that God intends for Gentiles and Jews to live absolutely identical lifestyles, with Christians performing all of the mitzvot in every detail, precisely like their Jewish brothers and sisters, thus obliterating any covenant difference between Jew and Christian.

My intent, among other things, is to do good. My purpose, or at least one of them, is to honor the chosen people of God (not that we all can't be chosen in our own ways); the Children of Israel. My motivation is not just Jews in general but my Jewish wife in specific. She has been very patient with me, but I can only imagine how she sees me, her Christian husband, when I go to worship with my congregation on Shabbat, knowing that I will be praying with a tallit, using a siddur, and reciting the Shema.

My intention is to do good in the action of leaving my congregation, but Rabbi Freeman makes me wonder. If my intention is good, can only truly good things result? After all, we have a common saying that goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" (thought to have originated with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote, "L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs" or "hell is full of good wishes and desires").

Could bad things come from good intent? They probably do all of the time, but if Rabbi Freeman and the Lubavitcher Rebbe are right, I can hope for a good, but not necessarily expected outcome from my intentions and actions. I sometimes think of prayer that way. I'd like to think that my intentions in prayer are always good ,but as James (Jacob), the brother of the Master, says, I can mess that one up, too.

However Jesus (Yeshua) also seems to say something we find echoed in Rabbi Freeman's teaching. Even though we are evil, we know how to give good gifts. If prayer is like an incense offering; a gift to God (Psalm 141:2, Revelation 5:8, Revelation 8:4), then maybe even my attempt to extend myself outside of my own skin and my own thoughts and to connect, however tenuously, with God, will yield something of His goodness, even though I can't anticipate the exact result of my "offering".

I haven't tendered my resignation to my congregation yet, but the time is coming all too soon. We are small and our resources are limited. I'm a significant resource for my community, not only as a teacher, but as a blog writer, and the person who maintains our website. In soothing my conscience and attempting to reconcile the faith portion of my relationship with my wife, what do I do to the congregation?

Another saying we have is "He who hesitates is lost". I can't simply do nothing, continue on with the status quo, and hope for the best. I've been praying and waiting for an answer to this puzzle for almost two years and I'm still waiting. While God can provide miracles completely outside of human actions, I know we aren't supposed to depend on God doing so. With all this going on, what does God want and what will He do?

Today, my email quote from Rabbi Freeman contained the following:

Every moment,
every human activity
is an opportunity to connect with the Infinite.

Every act can be an uplifting of the soul.

It is only your will that may stand in the way.

But as soon as you wish,
you are connected.

In seeking God and His will, I'm like a blind man trying to find a sunny patch of ground on which to stand. The weather is partly cloudy, and I only have a feeble sense of warm or cold to tell me if I've reached my goal. Rabbi Freeman says that any time I truly wish to be connected to God, I am, but like that blind man, I can't always tell if I'm already standing in the light of day. Like a man driving his car on a lonely stretch of freeway in the middle of the desert at night, I can only see as far as my headlights can pierce the darkness. In order to reach my destination, I must continue driving through the vast obsidian wastes and hope for the dawn.

A rebuke impresses a discerning person more than a hundred lashes a fool. -Proverbs 17:10

Polar Ecclesiology

Some scholars have thought that the Ebionites may have held views very much like those of the first followers of Jesus, such as his brother James or his disciple Peter, both leaders of the church in Jerusalem in the years after Jesus' death. James in particular appears to have held to the ongoing validity of Jewish law for all followers of Jesus. His view, and evidently that of the Ebionites later, was that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law. Therefore, anyone who wanted to follow Jesus had to be Jewish. If a gentile man converted to the faith, he had to be circumcised, since circumcision always had been the requirement of a male to become a follower of the God of Israel, as God himself demanded in the law (Genesis 17:10-14).

Jesus Interrupted
Chapter Six: How We Got the Bible
by Bart D Ehrman

Apparently Dr. Ehrman didn't take the Acts 15 letter into account when he wrote his opinion about James, the brother of the Master and head of the Jerusalem Council. Otherwise, he's almost describing a group who I would term as "proto-Messianic Jewish". These are Jews who believed that Jesus (Yeshua) was the prophesied Messiah and that the Messiah taught nothing that was inconsistent with Jewish cultural and religious practice and lifestyle. Dr. Ehrman further states that the:

...Ebionites were strict Jewish monotheists. As such, they did not think that Jesus was himself divine. There could be only one God. Instead, Jesus was the human appointed by God to be Messiah. He was not born of a virgin: his parents were Joseph and Mary, and he was a very righteous man whom God had adopted to be his son and to whom he had given a mission of dying on the Cross to atone for the sins of others.

OK, I don't know of any Messianic Jewish groups who publicly identify with the description of the Ebionites given by Dr. Ehrman, but it is interesting that this New Testament scholar and rather prolific writer does describe a group of early "Jewish Christians" who hold a set of beliefs and an "identity" substantially similar to modern Messianic Jews. Of course, their theology, according to Ehrman at least, is not consistent with Bilateral Ecclesiology in that they did not believe Gentiles could be disciples of the Jewish Messiah without becoming circumcised; that is, without converting to Judaism.

Interestingly enough, Ehrman says that Paul disagreed with the Ebionites and insisted...that the God of Jesus was the God of all people and that gentiles did not have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. Ehrman goes on to say that Paul believed that faith in the death and resurrection is what allowed a person to have right standing with God, not keeping the law, but that Paul believed this true for Jews and Gentiles alike. His writing paints a picture of two different viewpoints in the early Church (and there were many more, according to Christian scholars), one adhered to by the Jewish Ebionites who held to a very Torah-based, Jewish view of Jesus as Messiah, and the other by Paul and his followers, who believed (again, according to what is in Ehrman's book) that the law was no longer relevant to either Jewish or Gentile followers of Jesus.

Modern Messianic Judaism splits the difference by saying Paul believed (more or less) like the Ebionites as far as Jesus being the Messiah and that Jews should continue to live by the Torah, but that the Torah was not applicable or relevant to non-Jewish believers.

I don't want to get much more involved in the details since to do so would be to write a blog post as long as Ehrman's book. However, it is interesting to take a look at the New Testament through the eyes of a Gentile (and formerly Christian) New Testament scholar and see his take on those bits and pieces of information Messianic Judaism reorganizes as Bilateral Ecclesiology. Ehrman describes more of a "polar (opposite) ecclesiology" represented as two competing groups of Christians. In fact, based on the various writings and perspectives of the different "Christianities" existing in the first and into the second century C.E., there were a number of different theologies running around out there, some stating that Jesus was divine and others saying not.

I found some of Ehrman's opinions and findings consistent with what I previously read in Richard Rubenstein's When Jesus Became God. Both Ehrman and Rubenstein have concluded that much of what we understand as the theological foundation of the Christian church today, including the issues of Christ's divinity, the Trinity, the meaning of the death and resurrection, and other core beliefs, weren't solidified in the Church until the Nicene Council in the early 4th century C.E. According to both these men, there is no evidence of a widespread worship of Jesus as God prior to this period in history, nor a final selection of canon for the Bible. This allowed Gospels and letters we do not have in our modern Bibles to be considered, at least by some groups, to be just as authoritative as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and the Gospel of John is thought to have been "developed" by a Gentile "johannine community" after the destruction of the Temple, to support a much less Jewish perception of Jesus than seen in the other Gospels).

I'm not saying I buy everything these authors are selling, but I do believe that the Bible is a document that must be read and considered as much through the lens of faith and the Spirit as through the mind and intellect. The value of reading the works of men like Ehrman and Rubenstein is that they have the ability to bend and stretch us in ways we wouldn't be willing to do for ourselves. They also present ideas and opinions you won't typically hear from the pulpit of a Church or the bema of a Messianic Synagogue.

At this point, I've finished Erhman's book and am ready to pursue my next "reading assignment". I consider what Ehrman wrote and what he teaches to be valuable, not because I always agree with his perspective, but because he allows us to remove what you might consider our "rose-colored glasses" so that we can see our Bible with all of its warts, scars, and wrinkles. This is what the Bible looks like when we view it through the lens of historical-critical analysis, which is the method Ehrman and other Bible scholars use to examine the Biblical texts.

Dr. Bart Ehrman and Jesus Interrupted is only one step in my walk of faith, but Ehrman and his writing is an important step. As people of faith, we must confront the teachings and logic of those people who do not share our faith (Dr. Ehrman was previously a Christian but now describes himself as an agnostic) or our view of the Bible. We can learn much from how he sees the Word of God and how he, and scholars like him (and Ehrman readily admits that most of his peers are Christians) explain where the Bible came from and what they think it means.

I will write one more blog dedicated to my experience reading Jesus Interrupted, specifically about Erhman's opinion of whether or not, in light of his understanding of the Bible, a person can continue to have a viable faith. His answer may surprise you.

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

Reading Lamp

Most people do not read the Bible this way. They assume that since all the books in the Bible are found between the same hard covers, every author is basically saying the same thing. They think that Matthew can be used to help understand John, John provides insights into Paul, Paul can help interpret the book of James, and so on. This harmonizing approach to the Bible, which is foundational to much devotional reading, has the advantage of helping readers see the unifying themes of the Bible, but it also has very serious drawbacks, often creating unity of thought and belief where originally there was none. The biblical authors did not agree on everything they discussed; sometimes they had deeply rooted and significant disagreements.

from Jesus, Interrupted
by Bart Ehrman

Does any of this sound or at least feel familiar? It should. Especially the part that says, sometimes they had deeply rooted and significant disagreements. That sounds like us. More accurately, that sounds like the many and varied expressions of what we call "Messianic Judaism" or even "Christianity" (and I suppose all of the mainstream Judaisms, as well). We don't agree. Sometimes that means, we don't get along. But could the cause of our "issues" go back as far as the writers of the New Testament itself?

That's quite a shock. Like many people, I'm used to reading the Bible as a book that, on an ultimate level, is completely internally consistent. However, this isn't the first time I've heard that not all of the NT writers agreed with each other.

I read another Christian scholar (whose name escapes me, but which is enshrined in one of my numerous, previous blog posts), who said that Paul and James disagreed on the fundamental relationship between Gentile and Jewish disciples in the Messianic community (church). Paul tended to grant the Gentile converts greater affinity and identity (according to this scholar, anyway) with the Jewish people than did James and the Jerusalem Council.

I'm currently only on page 64 of Erhman's book, so I don't know where he stands on many issues in detail, but assuming for the moment that it's true that the NT writers did not agree with each other on many theological issues, it makes it difficult for any of us to make a point "because the Bible says so".

For instance, both Messianic Jewish/Bilateral Ecclesiology (MJ/BE) and One Law (OL) groups defend their positions based on various Biblical passages, largely taken from the letters of Paul (and did Paul actually write all of the letters attributed to him?). Discovering the possibility that the Bible contains internally inconsistent and contradictory theologies, how can we make declarations of our various positions based on the Bible with any degree of certainty?

The short answer is "because we have to". Expanding on that a bit, I'll say that people don't do well existing within an extended period of ambiguity. We tend to like "closure", particularly in existential ("who am I?", "what is my purpose in life?") matters. We need to "know" the answer to the meaning of our lives and who we are in God (assuming we believe in God).

Hence we make decisions about what the Bible means and develop theologies, canons, codes, labels, and worship communities (churches, synagogues, whatever) based on those understandings.

But while they're all based on the same essential document (the Bible), all of our beliefs are different...sometimes really different from each other.

One of the points Ehrman goes on to make is that the Bible cannot simply be read, it must be "interpreted". The Bible, according to this book's author, cannot be read and taken at face value. Ironically, Judaism says the same thing about the Torah.

At least from a Chabad point of view, you cannot understand the Torah without an understanding and continual study of the Talmud. Further, the Bible not only requires interpretation (as opposed to a straight reading of the text), but it must be read through the specific lens of tradition. That is, not only must the Torah be interpreted using the Talmud, but there is only one, right way to interpret the Torah/Talmud based on established Rabbinic tradition.

I suppose the correct tradition varies depending on the particular branch of Judaism involved, which is why we see such variability in Jewish religious practice.

Recent write ups in the Messianic blogosphere, such as After Three Days? Third Day? Yeshua and Passover by Derek Leman and Set Your Hope on Moses by Judah Gabriel Himango have contributed to the examination of these issues in our little corner of the web, but my own missives The Deity Problem and An Old Dog Looking for a New Book have added to this discussion as well.

What does it all mean? I don't know.

But if I don't know, how can anyone else say that they do? We have Bible scholars all across the map disagreeing with each other on this bit of minutiae or that, so we can't point in any particular direction and say, the truth is there.

Did I say "truth"?

Wait a minute. Not long ago, I said that I believed (at least as it stands right now) that I see the Bible as God telling us the "truth" about Himself and His interactions with humanity, not the "facts" about Himself. There's a difference:

Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

-Professor Henry (Indiana) Jones Jr. (played by Harrison Ford)
from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Is the search for faith a search of facts, truth, or some combination of both?

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. -John 14:6 (RSV)

It would have been a little ridiculous for Jesus (Yeshua) to say "I am the way, the fact, and the life...", but I hope you take my meaning. I'm not suggesting that we ignore the facts for the sake of our faith, but I am suggesting that we consider that the Bible is not primarily a book written by and for historians, but a document to be read though a "spiritual lens" in addition to the lens of history and fact.

As I continue with my reading and the exploration of the basis of my faith, I'll post more on these topics, but for now, I just want to say that when you make a declaration about what you believe, and what the Bible tells you about who you are and who others are in relation to you (of particular interest to Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic world), you are making declarations of faith...not necessarily fact.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. -Psalm 119:105

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark. But is the Word a light of fact or of truth?

Jews, Christians, and Marital Metaphors

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. -Ephesians 5:22-33

As mentioned, things were somewhat different for Jewish women. Traditionally, women and men were seen as equals, but with different responsibilities and obligations. Thanks to God's revelations to Moses at Mt. Sinai, the Jews even had laws in place that governed the intricacies of marriage and divorce, as well as laws that specify what is to happen to a woman suspected of adultery.
Rabbi Aaron Parry
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Talmud

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

I've been using marital metaphors in previous blog posts Bilateral Living and The One Who is Two to try and illustrate how it might be possible, based on scripture, to support at least some portion of Mark Kinzer's suggestions in relation to "Bilatereal Ecclesiology" as chronicled in his book Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People (2005). Keep in mind, I'm not completely sold on each and every point Kinzer makes in PMJ. I believe that the suggestions contained therein need a lot of work before they could be made a viable model to be pursued by Messianic Judaism and the Christian church as a "partnership plan". Nevertheless, the idea requires further investigation, particularly as it maps (or fails to map) to the Apostolic Scriptures, which is what I'm doing here.

Laugh if you must, but in trying to get a ground-level beginner's handle on even what the Talmud is, I've been reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Talmud, which by the way, is a very good starter's primer. I decided to spend a small part of my Sunday afternoon reading the chapter "All About the Women" which addresses Nashim (Women), the third order of the Talmud. I barely got a few pages in when inspiration struck.

I was taken by how some of the descriptions regarding women and marriage not only seem to match up to the teachings of Yeshua and Paul, but how they could be applied to the "bilateral" relationship between Messianic Jews and non-Jewish Christians (and yes, there is and must be a relationship, otherwise, the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Jewish Messiah was in vain). What first struck me was Rabbi Parry's words, ...women and men were seen as equals, but with different responsibilities and obligations. That's more or less how the concept of Bilateral Ecclesiology describes the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in the believing realm, both in the time of Paul and today.

I had previously read Rabbi Judith Z Abrams's book The Talmud for Beginners: Volume I Prayer and she describes how, while women are not forbidden the commandments that men obey (except those that are obviously gender specific), some obligations, such as those that are time-bound, are not required. This includes praying the Shema twice per day, since the timing may interfere with a woman's duties and responsibilities in the home and to her children (and the feminists reading this right now must be pretty much outraged).

This sugya deals with a different kind of interference that prevents one from reciting the Shema with the required intention. In the rabbis' view, being a woman interfered with one's ability to relate to God. They assumed that a woman was responsible for the demanding, and time-consuming, tasks of raising children and managing a household and therefore could not be held responsible for performing positive, time-bound commandments...

Rabbi Abrams also states:

There are many exceptions to the rule of this system. Women are, in fact, obligated to perform some positive commandments, such as lighting the candles on Hannukah. Women are not forbidden to perform positive time-bound commandments; they are simply not obligated to do most of them...They may perform these mitzvot voluntarily if they wish to do so.

Because women are not obligated to do these mitzvot, the rabbis ruled that women cannot have the same intention and sense of responsibility regarding the mitzvot as men do...

I previously recorded these quotes and a more detailed account of Rabbi Abrams's book in my blog post The Right Question, but the content fits right in with what I've been writing about more recently, so I'm repeating it in this post.

It makes me wonder about God's plan in first, establishing His covenants with the Children of Israel, and making them His "treasured splendorous people" (Exodus 19:5) and then commanding the Israelites to be a "light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6). It also makes me wonder about this:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. -1 Peter 2:9-10

Of course, Peter was the "emissary to the circumcised", so you could say he was writing to an exclusively Jewish audience, except in verses 11 and 12, he says, Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

If he were talking to Jews; people who were already members of the covenant, why would he call them foreigners and exiles, since they clearly weren't such a thing. Yes, in verse 12 he tells his audience to live such good lives among the pagans, but as Messianic disciples, the Gentile believers in the audience would no longer be pagans. Also, in the original quote, Peter refers to his audience as Once you were not a people which makes absolutely no sense if his audience were Jewish covenant members.

Don't worry. I'm not saying that believing Gentiles are equal to believe Jews, except to the degree, as Rabbi Parry states, that Jewish men and Jewish women are equal, but with different obligations and responsibilities. To extend the metaphor though, if Gentiles and Jews are equal but different in the manner that the Talmud describes Jewish men and women to be, then can we say, like Jewish women, that Torah obedience is not specifically forbidden to Gentile Messianics (i.e. Christians) but is allowed on a voluntary basis?

I know some of you are thinking that there are sections of the Talmud that specifically forbid Torah observance by Gentiles or sections that praise Gentile obedience to the commandments, with the understanding that those mitzvot are limited to the Noahide laws, but wait.

Remember that the Talmudic sages, probably down to a man, would not have considered the status of Gentile disciples of Yeshua (Jesus) as relevant to their opinions, particularly because Jews and Christians were very much at odds while the Oral Laws were being documented and certainly during the time when the sages were writing their Gemara on the Oral traditions.

This is a limitation, perhaps a necessary one, that restricts some of the application of the Talmud to the current argument, but not completely.

Daniel on his blog "Christian for Moses" has illustrated that there is Talmudic precedent for non-Jews to perform the mitzvot, though with different motivation, and I've blogged on similar topics and presented further quotes of the sages in the opinions of Rabbi Mayer Twersky and my review of FFOZ's tefillin booklet.

If you start putting all of the pieces together, the picture of the jigsaw puzzle begins to become recognizable. Getting back to something I said earlier, perhaps it was God's plan all along, to create a "nation of priests" of the Children of Israel, and then to use them as a "light to the nations" to, in effect, "marry" the groom to the bride, creating "one flesh" or "one new man" out of the two "individuals", each being equal or co-heirs and co-citizens to one another, but with different responsibilities and obligations to God, the Torah, and each other, much as what you would find in almost any marriage. I liked what Rabbi Parry said here:

According to Jewish thought, marriage is considered one of life's greatest treasures. What's more, it's believed that the relationship that most closely parallels the relationship between man and God is the marital union between a man and a woman.

Both the Tanakh and the Apostolic Scriptures use marital metaphors to describe the relationship between the Children of Israel and God as well as the union between the Jewish and Gentile Messianic community and the Jewish Messiah.

“Return, faithless people,” declares the LORD, “for I am your husband. I will choose you—one from a town and two from a clan—and bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding. In those days, when your numbers have increased greatly in the land,” declares the LORD, “people will no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD.’ It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made. At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the LORD, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the LORD. No longer will they follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts. In those days the people of Judah will join the people of Israel, and together they will come from a northern land to the land I gave your ancestors as an inheritance. -Jeremiah 3:14-18

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. -Ephesians 5:24

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. -2 Corinthians 11:2

Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.) Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’ ” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” -Revelation 19:7-9

I don't think Kinzer's book is the final word on how this "mixed marriage" or rather God's plan for a "mixed marriage" between Christians and Jews is ultimately supposed to work out. Also, the One Law movement is very good about describing the "equality" between the "husband" and "wife" but not so good about describing the inherent differences in responsibilities and obligations that must exist, even between two people made into "one flesh" or two people groups made into "one new man". Clearly, no one has a "lock" on understanding how Jewish and Gentile Messianic relationships are supposed to operate.

I don't know how it works either, or rather, how it will work. I do think that we'll keep struggling with our relationship until the Jewish Messiah returns and straightens us all out. Then, we will all take our places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven together (Matthew 8:11).

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

The One Who Is Two

Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. -Ephesians 3:2-6

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

I have to admit, in examining my understanding of non-Jews vs. Jewish distinction in the Messianic community, I hit speed bumps. The Apostolic Scriptures can seem pretty ambiguous as to whether or not Gentiles and Jews who have come to faith in the Jewish Messiah remain two separate things or, based on Ephesians 3:2-6 among other verses, we have become "one new man". The latter would be the argument, both of the traditional church and of the One Law movement within the Messianic realm, but it strikes a rather sour chord with those Jews who believe that, to be Jews in Messianism, they must retain a specific cultural and ceremonial distinction from their Gentile Christian brothers and sisters.

Ephesians 2:12-13 says:

...remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

This seems to say that both Gentile Christians and Messianic Jews are citizens, as well as co-heirs in Israel. Usually, if you are made a naturalized citizen of a nation in which you were not born, once citizenship is conferred, you have the same rights and responsibilities as any citizen born in that country. That again, is the rationalization both for the Christian church and One Law movements in saying that they are "Israel". The church says they're "Israel" and have taken the place of the Jews, and One Law says they are "Israel" and are identical to Jews in form, function, and identity. The former says that the Jews have been "unchosen" and that God subsequently "chose" the church. The latter says that God created a new, really big bucket called "chosen" and dumped all Jews and Messianic Gentiles into the bucket so that they're all the same anyway.

But is that what really happened?

I have to admit, when I reviewed an article written by Nazarene Pastor Jirair Tashjian called Did Christ Abolish the Law?, he used scripture to represent his position reasonably well (not that I agree and you can see my review for the details).

Then, in my review, I said the following, which momentarily surprised me as I realized the implications of my statement:

Yes, Paul said neither Jew nor Greek, but he also said neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28) and the last time I looked at my wife, I noticed that we were different in form, function, and role…yet we are “one flesh” (Matthew 19:5-6).

In Ephesians 2:15, it says Yeshua's (Jesus's) purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, which really bothers me. It seems to very much support the supersessionist position of the church and the position of One Law in joining Jews and Gentile Messianics as one unified and amorphous object, rather than two distinct objects encased in a single container (black and white sheep in a flock). How can this be reconciled? Is the Bilateral Ecclesiology faction of Messianic Judaism in error? What can they say to get past what Paul has recorded?

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. -Genesis 2:24

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” -Mark 10:5-9

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. -Galatians 3:26-28

Follow the logic here.

An individual man and an individual woman are made into "one flesh". This is what happened "in the beginning" and it is confirmed by Yeshua in his teaching on divorce and marriage. Paul writes that there is no Jew or Greek and no male or female. But does a man and a woman really become one, homogeneous, androgynous being?

No, of course not. Anyone who is married knows that a husband and wife remain very much individual, distinct human beings from one another. They take on a singularity of purpose in a family, especially as parents, and they surrender some of their individual freedoms for the sake of the relationship and both must work to nurture and grow the relationship, but they don't surrender everything about themselves.

In other words "one flesh" isn't literal in an absolute sense. It describes a special sense of intimacy (in a marital relationship, this includes physical intimacy), but they don't morph into one, new flesh, leaving everything about who they once were behind. In fact, it's everything that they are as individuals that each marital partner "brings to the table", so to speak, that makes the marriage strong and thriving. And as most married people know, we don't marry our opposite sex clones.

Now let's take all that and apply it to "one new man". I'm going to assume (yes, this is my interpretation) that we can compare the "one flesh" and "one man" analogies. I'm going to pretend that we can look at them as functioning in pretty much the same way. If two different human beings can be "one flesh" (in purpose) in a family and yet retain their individual forms, functions, and roles, why can't Jews and Gentiles as "one man" also retain their individual forms, functions, and roles?

See where I'm going?

I'm not about to attempt to expand this metaphor into every practice and procedure used in Christian vs. Messianic worship at the moment (so this blog post doesn't become 20 pages long). I just want to show how it's possible, based on scripture, for Christians and (Messianic) Jews to be "one new man" and still be two separate and distinct entities. The "container" (whether marriage or the Messianic "flock") does change something about the individuals within the container, but it doesn't alter them or change them into something completely different on a fundamental, behavioral, and structural level. Married men are still men and married woman are still women. Messianic Gentile disciples are still Gentile and Messianic Jewish disciples are still Jewish.

Thoughts?

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Bilateral Living

Even if I could guide my congregation into a viewpoint more like my personal stance, I don’t think I could stay. The dissonance between that lifestyle and living with a Jewish wife isn’t something I can resolve over the long haul. If I’m going to be considered a Christian in relation to her being a Jew, I might as well try to own the label and see what our lives together are going to be like as we both continue to travel down our paths together (and that’s an odd image to visualize…two people traveling two separate paths together…I wonder if that’s “Bilateral Ecclesiology?”).
-My comment on the Daily Minyan blog post:
Bilateral Ecclesiology: Infrequently Answered Questions

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I'm not 100% sold on everything proposed by "Bilateral Ecclesiology" (BE) as presented in Mark Kinzer's book Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People. I understand and even support the need of the Jewish community contained within the Messianic movement to establish and maintain a uniquely Jewish identity and practice rather than assimilating into the Christian culture. However, I believe that BE may actually  be working against one of it's stated goals; to promote "unity" between the Messianic synagogue and the Christian church. Often, the blogosphere discussion revolving around BE seems to build a brick wall between Jews and Christians, rather than encourage an open exchange.

While Gene Shlomovich makes a compelling case for Bilateral Ecclesiology in his latest blog post, I still think the ideal has a long way to go before it can be effectively and practically implemented in a manner that doesn't automatically reject most churches and the vast majority of Gentiles who, in one fashion or another, have attached themselves to Messianic or Messianic-like groups.

That said, a rather odd thought occurred to me the other day, but you'll need a little background about me first.

My wife is Jewish. More accurately, her mother was Jewish (my mother-in-law passed away many years ago) and her father was a Gentile (which still makes my wife halachically Jewish). My mother-in-law became estranged from her Jewish family in Boston decades ago and my wife was raised without any awareness that she was Jewish. She knew she had Jewish aunts, uncles, and cousins living in Southern California where she was raised, but she didn't make the connection back to her mother and then back to her.

When my wife began attending university in San Francisco, her dorm roommate was Jewish. As they started to get to know each other, they talked about their families, and it was my wife's roommate who put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out my wife was Jewish. On a school break, my wife went home and confronted her mother and it was confirmed. My wife discovered her Judaism. She has since gone through the local Chabad Rabbi and had her background looked into and found that all of her mother's deceased relatives are buried in Jewish cemeteries.

You'll need to know all this to understand what I'm going to say later on.

When my wife and I married, neither of us had a religious faith. My wife was even more vehemently opposed to religion and religious people than I was. By that time, she knew she was Jewish, but it didn't make any particular impact on her life. I spent a lot of my history having secular Jewish friends (including other Jewish girlfriends before my wife), so I was "familiar" with Judaism, but only within that context. I never met any of my wife's Jewish relatives from back east and I only met one Jewish cousin from California, and his lifestyle was completely secular (and by the way, when he passed away, we went to the funeral and he was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles).

In other words, as "intermarrieds", we had virtually none of the issues you'd expect in a Jewish interfaith marriage.

Time passed.

Long story short, we both came to faith in Jesus Christ in our early 40s and started attending a church. As "new believers" we had lots of questions but the church didn't seem to have lots of answers. Also, the "cliquishness" of the various "in groups" in the church gave us a very poor impression of Christianity, although we met many wonderful people who epitomized the grace and compassion of Jesus (I still miss Pastor Jerry).

My wife, by "accident" (if you believe in random events occurring within a created and purposeful universe) came into contact with our local "Messianic" (One Law) congregation and she was instantly hooked. I was finally finding a role in our church and it took some time for me to transition but eventually, I adopted a traditional early First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) One Law perspective on Jews, Gentiles, the Torah, and God. I never looked back.

Another long story short, I stayed with the "Messianic movement" as my preferred worship and faith lifestyle, while my wife shot out the other end, through conservative and reform Judaism (for decades, the only synagogue in Southwestern Idaho was comprised of a reform group and a conservative group which had merged to create a viable, single membership) and into the Chabad, where she studies and worships today (though she still has strong ties and friendships in the reform/conservative community).

Welcome to my Jewish interfaith marriage.

Now for the "odd thought".

I'm not telling you all of this because I think my life and marriage are generally fascinating to the blogosphere, but because I realized when I wrote the words on Gene's blog which I quoted above, that my life and the proposal of BE have something in common. Let's take a look at the core of my realization again. I'll edit my original comments to provide clarity:

I'm a Christian man married to and living with a Jewish woman. Our lives are like two people who are traveling down two separate paths together. How can two people travel down two separate paths and, at the same time, be side-by-side, sharing the same lives and even to some degree, the same lifestyles, but being two separate and unique beings?

It's an odd image, but maybe not as odd as you might think:

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. -Genesis 2:24

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. -Mark 10:7-9

Anybody who's been married knows that men and women seem to be so different from each other, it's as if we were originally supposed to live on different planets. We conceptualize our environments in fundamentally different ways. We use radically different neural brain paths to process the same information. Men tend to be linear thinkers and are task-oriented, while women tend to be global thinkers and are relationship-oriented.

There are days when my wife just about drives me nuts...and I'm sure the reverse is true.

But what's all this got to do with Bilateral Ecclesiology? Plenty.

Despite all our differences based on being a man and woman, our different cultural backgrounds, differences in where we were raised, how we were raised, and now, differences in how we conceptualize God, the Bible, and faith, it's amazing we can live in the same house and still have a civil conversation.

But we love each other.

We share three grown children and one adorable grandchild. We live together, talk together, argue together, laugh together, cry together, drive each other crazy together, eat together, and we are married together...in spite of those things, including our interfaith marriage.

We are what God joined together.

As they set out from their place above, each soul is male and female as one. Only as they descend to this world do they part, each to its own side. And then it is the One Above who unites them again. This is His exclusive domain, for He alone knows which soul belongs to which and how they must reunite.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (2nd century CE)
Zohar, Book I, 85b

Now imagine that the Christian church and Messianic Judaism are married. I know. What a shock. I've probably just offended every Messianic Jew/Bilateral Ecclesiologist on the Internet. I hope I didn't, because this is the vision I have that, if such a thing is possible, would make the Bilateral Ecclesiology vision (I won't even call it a model because it's not that far along in its developmental process as yet) work. Read what I said again but in the current context:

I'm a Christian man living with a Jewish woman. Our lives are like two people who are traveling down two separate paths together. How can two people travel down two separate paths and, at the same time, be side-by-side, sharing the same lives and even to some degree, the same lifestyles, but being two separate and unique beings?

Two peoples progressing together like a man and a woman who are traveling down two separate paths but who are together.

I don't know how it will work, but I do know my marriage works. No, I don't have a "perfect" marriage. It has plenty of warts, bruises, and scars. But it also has the advantage of enduring for almost 28 years through terrific stresses and trials, and also through terrific joys and celebrations. If you can answer the question about what keeps a marriage together under far less than optimal and problem-free circumstances, you'll probably have the answer to what has to happen to make BE work.

A word of caution. My daughter told me something this morning. We aren't out of the woods by a long shot. Here's why.

A friend of ours (a Gentile Christian woman married to a Jewish man and who attends the Chabad shul together) was "babysitting" for the Rabbi's six kids (yeah, that's a lot for a father and mother to have who are both under the age of 30). She took the kids to the main branch of our local library and they spent time looking through the children's books. At one point, one of the kids realized she was looking at a book about Christmas. Suddenly, as if the book had just burst into flames, she threw it out of her hands and cried out, "It's goyishe!"

She didn't mean it as a complement.

This is my "concern" about Bilateral Ecclesiology. I don't know exactly how the Chabad community views things that are Gentile and people who are Gentile, but this child's reaction seems to indicate that she was taught that "goyishe" things are "bad"...really "bad". Kind of like picking up what you think is a pretty flower only to realize its what the dog left on the lawn. Yuk!

If any expression of BE depicts things that are not Jewish (and people who are not Jewish) as "yukky Goyishe" and behaves as if even touching them is disguisting, we are going to have a problem. This was the problem that Peter had to confront:

About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” -Acts 10:9-15

We can have a beautiful marriage together. Yes, it will be full of all of the special challenges and difficulties that any interfaith marriage faces, but with a lot of work, patience, and understanding, we can overcome those obstacles and be what God wanted us to be when He put us together.

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. -Ephesians 3:6 (ESV)

Are we going to stay married honey, or are you going to ask (God) for a divorce? Your choice.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

What is the Halachah for Gentile Disciples?

Most of the other stuff you listed is not forbidden halachically as far as I know – reading from siddur is certainly not forbidden neither is praying together (you do this when visiting a synagogue anyway), observing Shabbat in the manner that you do (since it’s safe to assume that you are not observing it in a strict manner, therefor you would not be considered (by traditional authorities at least) as observing it JEWISHLY (which technically means – again, from traditional point of view – that you are NOT observing it at all!), lighting candles, etc. Speaking about lighting candles – a Jew must light Shabbat candles for him/herself – that is if circumstances allow to light them in the first place. If he/she can’t or missed the time to light them, there’s always next Shabbat. So, technically speaking you lighting them is for your personal benefit – it doesn’t fulfil the commandment (from a halachic point of view).

So, aside from tefillin, I don’t remember reading about any of this as being forbidden to non-Jews.

Gene Shlomovich from his comments on
Book Review: Tefillin, A Study of the Commandment of Tefillin

The link I just posted above leads not only to Gene's comments, but to a book review I just wrote about a new First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) booklet about the history and commandments involving the use of Tefillin in Jewish (and possibly Gentile) prayer (and please feel free to read the review and comment about it on my other blog).

Gene's comments started me wondering about a subject that sometimes occurs to me when we have these conversations. Messianic Judaism, and particularly that expression that takes to heart the concept of Bilateral Ecclesiology (BE), tends to believe that the specific roles and responses of Jewish and Gentile disciples of the Messiah are different based on having a different status before God. From that perspective, authoritative rulings are not only rendered in the written Torah, but also in the Oral tradition and judgments of the learned Jewish sages. Halachah, as Gene mentions, is considered applicable to define both Jewish and Gentile responsibilities (or lack thereof) relative to what we think of as traditional Jewish religious practice.

One of the criticisms that Messianic Judaism has of the One Law and Two-House movements, is that these groups only consider the written Bible (Torah, Prophets, Writings, and Apostolic Scriptures) as authoritative and relegate the Oral law and rulings of the sages to the status of "opinions", which are then easily dismissed. This is why, for example, that a One Law practitioner can say they are keeping a type of kosher by only eating beef, chicken, and vegetables purchased at their local supermarket, while a Messianic Jew whose practice is more "rabbinically" centered, would require that their kosher meat be certified as such under rabbinic supervision, prepare their food in a kosher kitchen, not mix meat and dairy products, and so forth. Hamburger from Safeway or Albertsons just wouldn't do and a cheeseburger is out of the question.

As Gene formerly pointed out in the book review and as other comments there illustrate, the majority Jewish opinion would forbid a non-Jew from observing the Sabbath "Jewishly" and would forbid men from, among other things, praying while wearing a tallit and tefillin. While the rabbinic rulings are not unanimous, if a non-Jew were to walk into their local (non-Messianic) synagogue and ask the Rabbi what he or she thought of Christians wearing tzitzit and laying tefillin, it is very likely the Rabbi wouldn't support such activities.

But they don't believe that Yeshua is the Messiah either, and thus don't consider any of his teachings authoritative. Neither did any of the Jewish sages including Rambam, whose statements quoted in my book review could be interpreted as supporting Gentiles obeying more than the Seven Noahide Laws.

Halachah, in part, must make the assumption that all non-Jews are obligated only to the Noahide Laws, and a Gentile's responsibilities to God are contained within those limitations (and keep in mind that the seven laws can be further subdivided into multiple, specific behaviors).

Are non-Jewish people who have come to faith in the Jewish Messiah and who have become the Messiah's disciples (you can't get around Matthew 28:19-20) considered absolutely equivalent to Noahides? Is the Jerusalem letter (Acts 15) considered to be a specific and limiting container for Gentile Messianic disciples in precisely the same way as the Noahide Laws recorded in Genesis 9?

I've previously blogged that I don't believe the Acts 15 letter describes an absolute limit for Gentile Messianics, since Yeshua's teachings that we Gentiles are required to obey extend beyond the borders of the letter and into many principles directly drawn from the Torah mitzvot (visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, remaining faithful to one's spouse, not murdering, and so forth).

Everything hinges on the difference (assuming there is one) between the status of a Gentile Noahide and a Gentile Messianic disciple before God. The "requirements" are different for both groups and at least from what I can see. Gentile Messianic disciples are allowed, and perhaps required, based on the two greatest commandments  from Matthew 22:37-40 (which are derived from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18) to have a love for God not suggested by the Noahide commandments. I've never gotten the impression that Noahides would ever have the ability to "approach the Throne of God", at least in the same manner as those of us who are supposed to be fellow heirs (Ephesians 3:6).

I don't have an answer to this next question, but can we totally accept all of the halachah regarding Gentile religious practice, when every single ruling was written specifically for Gentiles who were either Noahides or pagans?

Wait! What did I say?

Gentiles have two classes...or three?

Consider this. We non-Jews in the movement are disciples of the Jewish Messiah, AKA "Christians". A concept and status not taken into account (for the most part) in halachah (and when it is taken into account, the "account" is usually not favorable, given the historic relationship between Christians and Jews). However, does any of the rabbinic judgments consider the difference between a "righteous Gentile" and a pagan (a Gentile who does not comply with the Noahide requirements)? They would have to if the status of "Noahide" were to have any meaning. But if Christianity and Messianic Judaism (in all its forms and variations) must accept the fact, based on the Matthew 28, that Gentiles are also able to assume the status as "disciples of the Jewish Messiah" and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29), then there must be a difference between Gentile Messianics and Gentile Noahides. Otherwise, why not just have all Gentiles either convert to Judaism or become Noahides and leave it at that? Heck, Yeshua could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he didn't have to die for the sins of the world (John 3:16).

Like I said before, I don't have the answer to these questions, but these are questions we don't ask very often, if at all. I believe that, in some manner or fashion, we have to consider the possibility that halachah for Gentile Messianic believers may need to be "adjusted" to accommodate a status for us that the sages, by definition, would never have considered.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark, ignoring the light of the world. Look for the lamp who lights your path or you may become lost in the dark forever.

"A Jew never gives up. We're here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less." -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

The Beautiful Girl and Her Very Long List

In every relationship, there's give and take...at least in every healthy relationship. Although for a relationship to succeed over the long term, there must be some overlap of goals, priorities, and interests, each person still remains an individual. Not all of our personality traits and behaviors are going to be acceptable to the other, hence the need for each party to bend a little. It is unreasonable for one person to expect the other to do all the bending. Either the person doing all the bending is a masochist who completely subverts all of his wants and needs for the other, or the relationship unravels pretty quickly.

Let me illustrate.

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

Let's say you are a young, single guy. You aren't too handsome, but you aren't really ugly, either. You don't have a lot of money, but you work hard and are honest. You aren't perfect, but you recognize that fact and you are striving to be better every day.

Then you meet a girl. She's beautiful. She's smart. You're not sure that a relationship will work out between you, but you'd like to at least try a first date and see where it goes.

You finally get up the nerve to introduce yourself and ask her out. Her response is immediate. She hands you a list.

You read the list and it's a set of requirements. The first part of the list describes all of your flaws, even ones you didn't know you had or personal qualities you didn't even know were flaws. The list details the types of changes you have to make to your appearence, your clothing, your grooming, your speech, your eating habits, and everything else about you before she will consent to even a first date.

But there's more.

The rest of the list has to do with your family and friends. They have to change, too and in exactly the same way as you are expected to change. The girl can't have you in association with anyone who doesn't comply to the requirements of the list and you must convince your family and friends to make all of these changes, because this is what the girl needs before she will consent to go out on even one date with you.

There are three possible responses:

Response 1.

She's wonderful. Although the list is challenging, you figure she's worth it. You immediately set out to make the changes in yourself. It requires some effort and an outlay of cash to buy the right clothes, get the right hair cut, change your diet, join a gym, hire a speech tutor, but you make significant strides in accomplishing your goals.

Now for the hard part; your family and friends.

You approach them and explain that you need them to change because you can't date this girl unless they do. You say that, if the relationship works, she'll be an amazing person for them to have as a friend, and they won't regret making the changes in their lives for her sake (and yours).

A few of them, because they love you, say they'd be willing to bend in certain areas but they aren't sure that they want to change themselves so completely, at least not all at once. They ask for some time to consider the items on the list. Of course, your more distant relatives and friends take one look at the list and say it's pretty nerve-y for the girl to have such high expections out of a guy and his family and friends without even dating the guy first. They say that there's no way they're changing anything about themselves because they like themselves just the way they are.

You go back to the girl and ask for more time. You explain the difficulties you've encountered and point out how you have made the vast majority of the changes she's requested. You ask if perhaps you can go on that first date and you'll promise to continue to work with your family and friends to help them see how beneficial making the changes in their lives will be in order to have a relationship with you.

Unfortunately, she's very firm in her requirements and all of the items on the list must be completed. She says that her mother and grandmother put up with guys just like you for a long time and now that she's here, she's going to change all of that. If any guy wants to date her, it has to be completely on her terms or there will be no relationship.

You go back to your family and friends, but they just don't see your point of view and feel the girl is being unreasonable in being so absolute with her requirements for the sake of even one single date. It's not as if you are about to get married or even dating steadily. Then there'd be an expectation that you'd have to do some changing...but then, so would she.

You realize that, no matter how much you want to pursue a relationship with her, starting with a single date, the amount of effort you'd have to generate to change your entire life, including the lives of each and every person you associate with, would be insurmountable. You meet her one last time, sadly return the list, and say you hope she finds the guy she's looking for someday.

You now realize that you really have changed and no longer fit in with your family and friends. Yet you know your own changes will never be enough and you have no future with the girl and her list. No longer having a sense of belonging, you start looking for another place to live and wonder where you'll end up. You still feel like you are someone who could be loved someday, but can't imagine who would have you now.

Response 2.

She's crazy. You take one look at all the items on the list and realize this girl is way too high maintenance. You know you're not perfect and indeed, are far from it, but this is only a first date. It's not like you've asked her to marry you or anything. Even if you were willing to make all these changes for the sake of a single date, it's completely nuts to expect your family and friends to suddenly morph into a different thing, just to see if a relationship is possible. Sure, if there was more of a commitment and if she were willing to bend a little and be patient, it might be different, but if she insists that all of the changes must occur first, there's no way.

You give her back her list, wish her a lot of luck, and return to your regularly scheduled life.

Response 3.

She's looking for a completely different guy. You read the list and realize that it points to how incredibly awful you are as a person, how awful your friends are, and how awful your family is. The girl seems so sure of how perfect she is, how beautiful she is, and you realize you are completely unworthy of her. Unlike a fairy tale, you are a frog who never turns into a prince. You sadly give the list back to the girl, thank her for her time, and walk away.

Yes, these examples are extreme and I'm sure a lot of people out there are going to cry "foul", but these scenarios are meant to illustrate the position, at least as I've been reading it, of certain aspects of Messianic Judaism in relation to both the Christian church and those of us Gentiles who entered into "the movement" originally believing that "One Law" was the appropriate link between believing Jews and Gentiles. Even if someone like me begins to shift perspective and starts making changes, we're also responsible for trying to change our entire world and all of the people in it...at least in the congregation where we attend, before we can even go on a "first date". The girl, for her part, isn't required to do a thing except present the list.

As I've already outlined in an earlier blog post, making those changes isn't easy and it won't be quick. I've tried to explain that a more Hillel-like approach would be beneficial in the long run, but it seems like I keep getting hit with Shammai's measuring rod.

Even if Messianic Judaism is willing to throw all One Law congregations and all One Law associated people under a bus, consider the church, which at least MJ says it wants a relationship with. Are you going to get much of a different response from many Christian churches than the ones I've described?

Read the story of Hillel, Shammai, and the three converts again and ask yourselves which one of the great sages achieved the desired goal. If you conclude it was Shammai, then you'll not only chase away any of the people currently worshiping at One Law congregations who would otherwise have been able to make the changes and been worthy companions and allies, but you'll alienate most Christians and churches as well.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. -Ephesians 2:14-18

I wonder if Paul knew what he was talking about and if, by some miracle of God, that peace he describes existed between the Gentiles and Jews in the "Messianic movement" of his day? I'm having trouble finding it right now.

I've come to realize that this isn't going to work. I don't fit in as a person and certainly my lifestyle doesn't fit in with the requirements of Messianic Judaism. The Messianic movement has also left me in a state to where I can't even join my wife in a Jewish synagogue because I have a "Messianic" reputation. While it's now clear that the dissonance in this situation will require my eventually leaving my current congregation and any form of worship associated with One Law, Messianic Judaism, or a Judaism of any kind, the church is no longer an option for me, either. If I had never left the church, I suppose I'd be there to this day and be happy in the comfort of numbers and legitimacy of a recognized religion. Messianic Judaism would accept or at least tolerate me because I was "in my place".

Of course, that wouldn't work, because it would deny my wife's and childrens's Judaism, and I wouldn't keep them from their heritage for anything at all...so leaving the church, for me and my family, was inevitable. For the sake of my family being Jewish, we needed to leave the church. I believe God wants my wife to experience and live out her Judaism.

So here I am.

It's time to reconsider my options, my theology, and my faith. I've been brought to a point of questioning my few remaining assumptions, which go to the core of what I'm even doing when I have the nerve to pray to the God of Abraham and the Jewish Messiah. According to the Bible, I'm supposed to be welcome in the Kingdom of God. I'm just not welcome among his people.

I'm turning it back over to God. Where does He want me to go and what does He want me to do?

For my part, I have no idea.

Overlap, Part 2: The Therapeutic Horse

Let us use the famous story of Shammai, Hillel and the three converts (Shabbos 31) to demonstrate the fusion of Halacha and Aggadah,: A gentile once came to Shammai, and wanted to convert to Judaism. But he insisted on learning the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai rejected him, so he went to Hillel, who taught him: "What you dislike, do not do to your friend. That is the basis of the Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn!" Another gentile who accepted only the Written Torah, came to convert. Shammai refused, so he went to Hillel. The first day, Hillel taught him the correct order of the Hebrew Alphabet. The next day he reversed the letters. The convert was confused:"But yesterday you said the opposite!?" Said Hillel: "You now see that the Written Word alone is insufficient. We need the Oral Tradition to explain G-d's Word." A third gentile wanted to convert so he could become the High Priest, and wear the Priestly garments. Shammai said no, but Hillel accepted him. After studying, he realized that even David, the King of Israel, did not qualify as a cohen, not being a descendant of Aaron...

-Hillel, Shammai and the Three Converts
Saratogachabad.org

Bilateral Ecclesiology and the Gentiles Series

This is probably the story from Talmud that everyone, even many non-Jews, know about Hillel and Shammai and while it paints a rather rosy picture of Hillel in terms of his patience and compassion, it tends to cast Shammai as rather harsh and uncompromising. This commentary gives us more insight into the motives of both men, starting with Shammai:

But Shammai took people at face value. From his perspective, he rightfully rejected them. Shammai's original stern attitude helps us appreciate his statement (1:15): "Welcome everyone with a pleasant face." Shammai honestly conceded that Hillel's approach was proven right by the three converts. Yet, even while changing his personal attitude, Shammai refuses to relax his principles. He insists:"Set yourself a time for Torah study;" i.e. Torah cannot be learned in a rush, while on the run. Do not attempt to learn Torah while standing on one foot.

Shammai is not "bad" in comparison to Hillel's "goodness". Both men represent important aspects of how Jews are to approach God, Torah, and other men, including non-Jews. That said, the important lesson I get from this integral part of the Talmud is that, if you want a person who is sincere but misguided to change, instead of rejecting them out of hand, let them study (under your subtle guidance) until they learn their errors.

So, for proper ongoing dialog to take place and for healthy lasting relationship to be build, just as Christians in churches are expected to deal with their suppersessionism and anti-Judaism, so should Gentiles in congregations under the "Messianic" umbrella be expected to develop respect for the unique nature of Jewish identity and traditional Jewish norms, including appropriateness of appropriation of certain Jewish ritual, garb and life cycle events (like brit-milah and bar-mitzvah). A "Judaicaly informed" congregation should be expected to be informed regarding these things, to understand and respect the Jewish understanding of these Jewish matters.

Gene Shlomovich's comments from my
Overlap blog post.

I hope Gene won't mind me picking on him a little bit, but I'm trying to illustrate some of the difficulties that Messianic Judaism (MJ) is having developing relationships with other believing groups, including the church and particularly "Messianic" One Law congregations, especially as MJ attempts to apply the ideals of Bilateral Ecclesiology (BE). While it's understandable that Jews who were raised in ethnically and religiously observant Jewish homes would find it distressing or offensive to see non-Jews wearing tzitzit, laying tefillin, and speaking Hebrew prayers, is it reasonable to expect such groups to abandon practices they are quite used to in an instant and before establishing relationship with their Jewish "mentors"?

Consider Hillel vs. Shammai again and see the differing results. Each convert, through their own studies, realized their errors and humbled themselves. But what would have happened to these three men if, after Shammai rejected them, they gave up on their desire to convert and went in some other direction? Shabbos 31a records the answer:

One day the three met and said: "The sternness of Shammai sought to drive us from this world [and the world to come], Hillel's humility and gentleness brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence."

Many years ago, when I was in graduate school (I have an M.S. degree in Counseling), one of my classes was studying the therapeutic and hypnosis techniques of pioneer psychotherapist Milton H. Erickson. Erickson had a unique perspective on how to achieve therapeutic change in patients that defies reduction down to a "method" (although my graduate program did a very good job of trying). One story Erickson is said to have told stuck in my mind. I can't quote it verbatim, but I'll do my best to retell it from memory:

You are on the back of a runaway stallion. The horse has been panicked and is galloping out of control. You have the reins in your hands but any attempt to suddenly stop the horse will result in you being violently thrown from his back and with the horse escaping into the unknown distance.

Although you can't stop the horse, you find that if you gently pull the reins, the horse will turn direction slightly. You turn the horse, still at full gallop, first a bit to the left and then a bit to the right. You slowly but persistently continue to turn the speeding steed in one direction or the other, and it becomes a little easier to control your mount each time you gently tug the reins. After much time and patience, you find you can slow the horse down a bit. You allow him to speed up again, then slow him down a bit more. You repeat your actions, gaining an increasing amount of control with each slow, and steady move.

Finally, after many such maneuvers, the horse becomes calmer and responds in greater measure to your directives, finally slowing to a canter and then a slow walk. You can now turn him back to the stables and he acts in full cooperation with you.

I'm sure Erickson could have told the story better, but you get the idea.

Of course, my use of Erickson's metaphor assumes that the Jews in Messianic Judaism are in "the driver's seat" and in control of access to the community of the Messiah, even above the Christian church. While in the time of Paul, Peter, and James, the Jerusalem Council was in direct control of the admission of formerly pagan non-Jews into the community of God, nearly 2,000 years of relational division have broken that tie. While Gentiles who align themselves with the Messinaic movement are more "dependent" on their Jewish counterparts than the church, a direct mentor-disciple relationship between the two groups doesn't exist and thus, Messianic Judaism isn't positioned to "drive the horse" to any destination they desire, at least not in any abrupt or "parental" manner. Like Shammai, all they'll accomplish is to chase us away with a stick.

Like Hillel, the observant Jews in Messianic Judaism, in order to achieve their goals, must understand the different groups of people in which they are in relation, and allow those groups who are willing (and not all groups will be), to discover their own answers, while learning under the "Messianic umbrella". This is what Hillel understood and the rest of us need to learn to achieve. From the Saratogachabad.org commentary:

The convert was not just acting silly by standing on one foot; he was actually symbolizing his quest for true unity. This gentile had left behind a confusing plethora of pagan gods and multiple deities. He searched and finally found Monotheism, One Torah and One G-d, wanting to live by a single unifying principle, the 'one foot' on which all else stands. Hillel taught him that the underlying principle that unites all is Jewish Love. The second convert, had rejected the other man-made religions as human concoctions, was attracted to the Divine Torah, which consisted solely of G-d's word. He was shocked to find that we follow a Rabbinical tradition. He wasn't being rebellious, but sincerely asking a valid question; "I wish to observe G-d's word alone, not any human additions." Hillel creatively showed him that the two Torahs are not two separate systems, but are one and the same. The written word and the oral traditions complement each other. It is as basic as the Aleph Bais, where you can't have one without the other. Indeed, the Torah itself bids us to follow the enactments of the sages. The third convert, disillusioned with pagan shallowness, aimed for a higher meaning to life. He yearned to reach the highest level, assuming that being a High Priest is the ultimate spiritual fulfillment.

How can we deny anyone from coming into acceptance under the wings of the Divine Presence and drive them from unity with the larger body of the Messiah? The horse must be willing, but the guidance must be humble and gentle.