WHY I AM A CHRISTIAN AND NOT A “MESSIANIC JEW”

A name is more than just a name. It represents a commitment, an identity, and a focus. Yes, Messianic Jews are Christians. They believe in the atoning work of Jesus and in the entire biblical revelation including the New Testament.

Why then do I not call myself a “Messianic Jew?” Before Christ came into my life, I had been an ardent Zionist and had lived in Israel for two years with no intention of ever returning to the States. These were my people and Israel was my nation. In the States, I had also experienced a surplus of anti-Semitism and hated everything to do with Christianity.

If anyone should resonate with Paul Liberman’s new book, Don’t Call Me Christian, it should be me! The Jews for Jesus highlights this book in their Issues magazine (Vol. 21-2) and quote Liberman:

• By the early 1970’s, a number of us young Jewish believers… refused to identify ourselves as all as “Christian” or even “Hebrew Christian.” My personal conviction was that to do so would be the same as taking out an ad in the Jerusalem Post: “Paul Liberman is no longer Jewish! He is now a Gentile.” (p. 222-23) 

Perplexing? Yes and no! Wouldn’t the term “Hebrew Christian” make it clear that Liberman was not rejecting his Jewish heritage? It should have! However, when you grow up thinking that Christians are your enemies, it becomes hard to identify with the Gentile Church. I had experienced so much anti-Semitism, that, without distinguishing between the true believers in Christ from the nominal, I began to hate all Christians. In fact, my hatred became so deep that I actually felt that Christians had a nauseating odor.

Liberman had “a great aversion to stepping into a church.” I can certainly identify. The idea of walking into a church filled me with nausea. It was opposed to everything with which I identified. Entering a church was like bowing down before my enemy, even like repudiating myself.

In an interview within the same magazine, Liberman helps to clarify his rationale:

• “We’re not just Jews for evangelism; we’re Jewish people because we are glad to have a relationship with the God of Israel. We tell people, ‘Look, it is possible, even today, to have a personal relationship with God the way Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did.’” 

While these Patriarchs did have a personal relationship with God, their relationship with God does not rival what we have received through the Messiah:

• How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance--now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (Hebrews 9:14-15)

• Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22)

While Liberman does well to emphasize our identification with the Patriarchs, he should instead be stressing our identification with Jesus the Christ. Instead, he is placing an unbiblical emphasis upon actively retaining our Jewish identity, something that bypasses our New Testament calling (Gal. 3:28):

• “Inwardly, there is a God-instilled desire to be Jewish no matter what. Now sometimes Jewish people will squelch it and just go off and be in a church and become a classical Christian. But even then, it’s a troubling thing, very often, what to do with this sense of Jewishness. It’s an inner resolve that seems to be implanted there by God.”

Admittedly, I retain a very strong Jewish identity. I cannot watch a documentary about Israel without being reduced to a fit of tears. Even the word “Israel” breaks me up. However, my Jewishness is not anything that I pursue. It’s just something that I am! Consequently, I am not trying to become more Jewish or to retain my Jewish identity. It’s just part of me! Instead, I hunger and thirst after Jesus and to become conformable unto Him, not to the Patriarchs.

Jesus had taught His disciples:

• "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35) 

I fear that underlying some segments of Messianism is a desire to remain apart from the rest of the Church. Such separatism violates Jesus’ command to “Love one another.” It also divides the Body of Christ against our Savior’s teachings.

Instead, we are to maintain the unity of the Spirit:

• Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:2-6) 

There is no theological basis for maintaining a Messianic apartness. Paul explicitly instructs us:

• There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

I therefore advise my Jewish believing friends to not introduce me as a “Messianic Jew.” This is conveying the wrong message. Instead, I refer to myself as a Christian – a follower of Christ. I want to be at one with the entire Body of Christ, as Jesus had prayed:

• "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Jesus calls upon us to show the world our oneness, our love for one another across racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic lines. It is through this demonstration “that the world may believe” and “know.” Sadly, this has been lacking.

I wasn’t always this way. It required much time and great suffering for the Lord to burn out of me the Jewish pride that I had been trying to retain. It had been a drug that enabled to get up in the morning. I had used it to remind me that I was a member of a great people – a chosen race – that had produced that greatest of the world’s geniuses and 30% of the Nobel Prize winners. The drug had served to compensate for the bad feelings I had carried about myself, and I clung to it with my life. Consequently, I couldn’t consider anything that might sever me from this connection.

Yes, I am still Jewish, but I am now buried with Christ:

• I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

This identity is of surpassing value. In comparison, I consider everything else as manure:

• What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. (Philippians 3:8-9)

THE BURDENSOME RESTRICTIONS OF SCRIPTURE

Many are unwilling to be bound be the dictates of Scripture. One “Christian” stated that, for him, the Spirit working in His life trumped Scripture. However, nothing must trump Scripture:

• Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one SPEAKING THE VERY WORDS OF GOD. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

If we wish to praise and glorify God, we must bring our words into conformity with His  Words of truth. Otherwise, we are not serving Him. Even Jesus boasted that His words were not His own but the very words of the Father.

Isaiah made a similar claim:

• When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! IF THEY DO NOT SPEAK ACCORDING TO THIS WORD, THEY HAVE NO LIGHT OF DAWN. (Isaiah 8:19-20)

Consequently, no one would be justified in claiming:

• I have the Spirit or God leading me, and this takes precedence over the Scriptures.

In fact, Scripture never affirms such a queer notion. Why not? Because the Spirit is the author of Scripture:

• Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but MEN SPOKE FROM GOD AS THEY WERE CARRIED ALONG BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. (2 Peter 1:20-21)

Therefore, we have no basis to separate God from His Word and charge us with bibliolatry – the worship of the Bible.  

How then does this “Christian” know that he is being led by the Spirit if the Word is just a secondary artifact for him! Perhaps he is being led by a deceiving spirit. Instead, the way we love God is by keeping His Word:

• Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him… If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” (John 14:21-24)

Consequently, a Christian is one who obeys the Word.

Responding to Hatred: Loving the Unlovable

Recently, I received these responses to my essay, Homosexuality: The Costs:

• OH YOU ARE A GIANT DOUCHE FAGGOT, YOU ARE A FAGGY QUEENY DOUCHE, YOU NEED TO GO FUCK YOURSELF, CAUSE NO ONE ELSE TOUCHES YOU!

• Oh eat a bag of cock, go devour a pound of shit, you judgmental homophobic redneck cunt. I hope you sit on a cactus.

Here is my response:

I’m truly sorry that you feel this way. I can’t begin to understand the torment you’ve experienced.

Please know that, as a Christian, I don’t look down on you. I have plenty of my own struggles and weaknesses. In fact, just in case we are tempted to cop a self-righteous, haughty attitude, our Scriptures always remind us from where we have come. Morally speaking, many of us had been the worst of the worst (1 Cor. 1:26-29).

Even now, I find that I need to continually confess my sins and my less-than-loving attitudes. In this, I find great comfort and healing. If I care about you, I will also recommend that you too confess your sins, turn from them, and trust in our Savior.

Please don’t think that I mean to minimize the great sacrifice that you will be making. However, it is worth it. There is something far greater to be had. In many ways, our Lord encourages us to simply try Him out:

• Psalm 34:8-9 Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.

• John 7:17 If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.

However, we all must make sacrifices for His sake and, ultimately, our own. I find that I have been so liberated and healed by following Him.

I would consider it a great honor to be able to answer any of your questions and even to be your friend.

(There is truly a great sense of peace and liberation in following our Lord in loving others, even the undeserving. This doesn’t mean that we cease being a light for His truth, but it does mean that any political or public activity that we pursue must not be at the expense of love.)

A Letter to a Moral Relativist

Thanks for your thoughtful response. You are correct that we Christians also place a very high regard on human “well-being,” but ultimately, because our Lord does. Yes, we too are wired for empathy, but we regard empathy, not as a freak of evolution, but as a gift that God has placed within us to guide us fruitfully in love. However, if we thought that empathy was nothing more than a bio-chemical reaction, we might be inclined to ignore it or drug it out.

However, you too seem to regard empathy as more than a chemical reaction. You seem to have established “well-being” as a non-negotiable objective absolute. We certainly do (with various qualifiers, of course). We embrace the golden rule as more than just a feeling or a reaction but as truth, God’s truth.

However, it puzzles me as to why you’d take this principle as objective truth, especially in light of many other alternatives that, without God, seem to be equally defensible:

1. Survival of the fittest – “I’m #1!”
2. The equal value of all living things, including roaches, viruses, the bubonic plague and bacteria.
3. Or suicide to rid the planet of our destructive influence.

You cannot disqualify these three other views without appealing to a higher absolute moral authority, which your atheism prevents you from doing. Instead, you have made “well-being” into your final authority without any rational or authoritative basis to do so. Without a higher authority – court of last resort - your position is merely a dogmatic one. Consequently, you can have nothing of any substance to say to a Hitler who feels that the greatest good is to genetically program the human race, eliminating those people regarded as sub-human.

Meanwhile, the Christian can make an authoritative case from conscience, because the conscience isn’t a biological accident but the wisdom of God. Admittedly, this case might not be persuasive to the atheist, but it is logically coherent.

This is more than just an academic question. At the heart of it lies our very rationale for being moral and living meaningfully. If your concept of “well-being” is no more than something that feels good to you and provides some pragmatic value, then you will find that there is no sufficient reason to live accordingly once your feelings change and you find it more pragmatic to cheat or join in with the gang.

Also, I think that you will find that history informs us that successful cultures have been those who have believed in a right and wrong that is embedded within the texture of reality and not just in our own feelings. Can you cite any such culture that has denied that transcendent truths are foundational to morality and yet has prospered?

Genocide, Moderate Islam and Western Silence

The gunman, with reported ties to al Qaeda, and suspected of killing seven people, including three children at a Jewish school, has seemingly confessed to the shootings. Understandably,

·        Dalil Boubakeur at the main mosque in Paris told Europe 1 radio that no one should link the Toulouse events and the Muslim religion, which is "99 percent peaceful, responsible, non-violent and well-integrated into the country".

This assertion raises several questions:

1. Are "99 percent peaceful, responsible, non-violent?”
2. If this is so, why are religious minorities in all Islamic nations either persecuted and/or diminished by Shariah law?
3. If Islam is a peaceful religion, why is the Islamic world so prone to violence and coercive attempts to impose Shariah?
4. Why aren’t there any examples of Islam coexisting as equals with religious minorities?

Sadly, the French assassin seems to be just one of many instances of Islamic terror. Muslim-turned-atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, reports:

• Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm…In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

• But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

• As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, pointed out in an interview with Newsweek, Christian minorities in many majority-Muslim nations have “lost the protection of their societies.” This is especially so in countries with growing radical Islamist (Salafist) movements. In those nations, vigilantes often feel they can act with impunity—and government inaction often proves them right. The old idea of the Ottoman Turks—that non-Muslims in Muslim societies deserve protection (albeit as second-class citizens)—has all but vanished from wide swaths of the Islamic world, and increasingly the result is bloodshed and oppression.

As an example of what Christians are facing in Islamic territories, the latest issue of World Magazine (March 10) cites the 12 northern provinces of Nigeria, under Sharia law since 2000. Boko Haram, the terror organization, meaning “Western Education is Sinful,” intends to drive Christians out of the north and to impose Sharia on all of Nigeria:

• Christians throughout the Sharia states in the north faced post-election [April 2011] violence. In the Kaduna state [alone], Muslims destroyed 409 churches and pover 2,000 homes, killing 137. In Gombe state, they destroyed 39 churches and 74 homes, killing 20. (54)

• In a Jan. 25 video on YouTube, Boko Haram leader Imam Abubakar Shekau took responsibility for the Jan. 20 attacks and said: “I am not against anyone, but if Allah asks me to kill someone, I will kill him and I will enjoy killing him like I am killing a chicken”…A Boko Haram posting from late last year says…nine…Christian denominations in the north, “must be bombed and leveled.” It also cites eight pastors, most Muslim converts to Christianity, as targets “to be eliminated.” (52)

In light of the fact that the 12 northern districts are already under Sharia and Christians have been made to submit to Sharia, it is hard to understand why the terror would continue. Already:

• In those 12 states authorities prohibit Christians from holding office, discriminate against them in property and business activities, and subject them to Islamic law. Some districts in Kano state have Christian majorities, but district governments are run under the state’s Sharia system. That makes Christians subject to the Islamic court system and requires students to take Islamic courses.

Nevertheless, since the imposition of Sharia in 2000,

• Over 13,000 mostly Christian Nigerians have been killed in religious-related violence, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom…”Boko Haram is not doing anything new,” said Peter Akinola, the retired archbishop of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. “More than terror attacks, this is part of an ongoing attempt to Islamize Nigeria. This country began as a democracy, but now in my own country I cannot live freely.” (52-53)

If world domination is the goal of Islam, perhaps we will soon be saying the same in the West. Even now, those who are doing ministry among the Muslims are facing intimidation and threats of violence. Consequently, if there are peace-loving Muslims who believe in a world where all religions can live at peace in equality, they need to speak up in a meaningful way. It is not enough to merely say, “Well, these terrorists aren’t really Muslim,” especially in light of the Islamic doctrine of “Taquiyya” which authorizes Muslims to lie to the non-believer on behalf of Islam. (See www.koranqa.com, fatwa 59879, where the Muslim can only have contempt for the non-believer). Therefore, we can’t help wondering if the claim to be peace-loving is merely a ploy.

We have not seen where peace-loving Muslims confront the extremists to insist that Sharia should allow religious freedom. Nor have we seen the Mainstream Western Media

confront those committing the atrocities done in the name of Islam. Mark Lipdo, director of the Stefanos Foundation, claims that,

• “They have misrepresented violence as a clash when it was an outright attack from the Muslim minority.” Lipdo himself was on hand in 2010 when Muslim gangs raided three predominantly Christian villages near Jos on March 7, slaughtering hundreds of mostly women, children, and the elderly.

Lipdo claims that the Western media – they derived their information from Muslim sources - has wrongly reported that the various attacks were in reprisal for the killing of 150 Muslims. However, none of the media outlets were “able to provide eyewitness accounts of the attacks that killed 150 Muslims.” Instead, Lipdo reports:

• “We were there when the whole conflict started. We saw the Muslim military commander release people caught carrying out the attacks with their weapons”…Local media reported police on the scene who did nothing to stop the Muslim attackers.” (56)

One victim had commented to the Daily Champion, “As they were killing and burning our homes, they were chanting, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ meaning ‘God is great.’” If this isn’t the real Islam, then the moderates have to publicly reclaim their religion, especially if we are to take them seriously. Likewise, the media, as well as the Western nations, have a responsibility to bring genocide to light. However:

• The reporting slant shows up in the U.S. policy, as well. The 2011 report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom describes “sectarian violence” in Nigeria driven by “religiously motivated actions” without ever saying that the overwhelming number of deaths involve Christians. (56)

If we are really concerned about peace and deeply troubled by genocide, then we have to speak up and shed light on the evil. If we fail to do this, then our silence speaks in favor of approval.