“WHO AM I?” AND WHY THIS QUESTION MATTERS

Who am I? We want to be authentic and self-accepting, so we ask this question. We also want to know how to navigate this vessel we call “self,” and navigation requires accurate knowledge. However, we have become so intent about trying to be the person who others will love and respect, that we have attempted to become someone different that the person who we really are and have lost track of ourselves.

On top of that, we endlessly try to build our self-esteem, changing the way we see ourselves, see that we can feel okay and prove to others that we are okay. However, this endeavor takes us even further away from ourselves, in an attempt to be something else – something that will earn the esteem of others.

Meanwhile, we desperately want to return to ourselves, no matter what others might think. However, in our vain attempt to find authenticity, we identify ourselves with our desires, especially those that yell the loudest. Food yells loudly to me. However, does my love to stuff myself define who I am? Am I no more than a collection of my desires and needs?

Many erroneously define themselves in terms of their sexual desires. However, CNN reports:

• “More often than not, non-monogamy leads to the demise of relationships,” said Karen Ruskin, a Boston-area psychotherapist with more than two decades of experience in couples counseling. Instead of focusing on the primary relationship, partners are turning to others for fulfillment.

• "Even if non-monogamy is consensual, it's still a distraction from dealing with each other," said Ruskin, author of "Dr. Karen's Marriage Manual."

• "It all goes back to choice. Non-monogamy is choosing to be with someone else instead of being attentive to your spouse when the relationship is troubled."

According to Ruskin, non-monogamy (polyamory), rather than reflecting who we are at our most basic level, represents an escape from ourselves.

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) doesn’t seem to be much help. Psychologist Miriam Grossman writes:

• “According to the AAP, a teen boy who thinks he’s a girl and wants his genitalia removed is ‘normal,’ just different.” But, Grossman asks, what if an African American teen is convinced she’s really Caucasian? “Should her pediatrician affirm her belief, and support her wish for facial surgery and skin bleaching?” The AAP also supports finding an affirming therapist for a boy who believes he is a girl. Grossman notes. “But if my son is attracted to boys, and his urges feel foreign and distressing, you [AAP] advise me to find a therapist who will tell him ‘This is who you are, accept it.’ However, does that make sense?” (Salvo, Fall 2013, 32)

Are we our desires and our choices? When we embrace our greatest desires as who we really are, are we embracing ourselves or what our society now wants us to affirm about ourselves. Is the real me polyamorous or adulterous? Must I now live in this manner to be fully me or is there a more authentic me lurking beneath the fading sexual desires?

Is there any real answer to the question, “Who am I?” Is there a truth that transcends the changing social fashions and definitions?

How might we answer these questions? Well, how might we know whether we have put our jigsaw puzzle together correctly? If the pieces and the patterns all fit together! After following Jesus for 40 years, I find that the puzzle of my life has been harmonized. With the assurance of His love and forgiveness, I have been enabled to face myself, my failures and inadequacies, and to accept myself, and that hasn’t been easy. For years, I had fled from the ugly things I had seen in myself. Instead, I built my self-esteem, convincing myself that I was a good person, denying the bad.

Consequently, I was never able to resolve conflicts with others. Resolution requires two people to talk about the same conflict, the same two people and their behaviors. However, if we cannot or won’t see these warring elements, it will be hard to reach any satisfying agreement about our roles in the conflict. My puzzle remained fractured. After all, I had convinced myself that I was right and, therefore, could no longer see my own culpability.

How do we know when the puzzle of the real-me fits? When our mind is at rest! When we no longer obsess, trying to fit pieces into slots where they do not belong.

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)

Christ, Racism, Hatred, Persecution, and Messianic Judaism

I know something about racism and its twisted fruit. As a youth, I couldn’t hide being Jewish. Our public school would make embarrassing announcements for the Jews, who had to catch the bus to Hebrew school, to line up in the hall. Hostile snickers would inevitably follow. What did the other Jews feel? I don’t know. They never mentioned it. Instead, they acted as if they never heard anything. But for me, this was nothing less than a reenactment of the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, I stood there as at a firing squad, vacillating between shame and murderous rage. This was compounded as I was regularly pushed in the hallway and called “Jew bastard.” I was amazed that some Jews were able to simply laugh it off. Sometimes, I would explode and fight. Other times, I cowered in shame.

Going to school was fearful.  Even my Gentile friends distanced themselves from me when the anti-Jewish taunts would begin. I became convinced that they too secretly despised me.

For me, the world only had two kinds of people – Jew and Gentile, one a friend and the other a menacing enemy. History taught me that the Gentile would either kill me or try to change or convert me into something less detestable to them. And I hated them back. I couldn’t fight all of my classmates, but I could hate them and look down on them. I grew to love everything Jewish and to hate everything Christian.

When I heard that a Jewish family in my neighborhood had converted to Christianity, I was disgusted to the point of nausea. Nothing could be so shameful, not even if they were caught selling child porn.

My hatred of Gentiles – and I regarded Gentiles as Christian, since they all seemed to have Christmas trees – became more intense. I was convinced that they had a stench. It was difficult for me to get into an elevator with too many of them at the same time.

Eventually, I became a Zionist, convinced that Israel was the only place that Jews could live. I thought I’d be happy there. In some ways, it felt like home. I had family there and the streets were not named after Gentiles – no “Lincoln Rd.” or “Washington Ave.” – but they had sweet-smelling and familiar Jewish names. However, the happiness, community, and an all-encompassing meaning for life evaded me.

I reluctantly returned to the States several years later with a wife and child, yet still convinced that everyone was a secret anti-Semite. However, years later, I had a horrific chainsaw injury. In the midst of a pool of blood, I had a miraculous encounter with my Savior Jesus.

I knew that I had to go to church, but that lingering sense of nausea returned.

After taking a series of baby-steps, I succeeded in entering a church. While the congregants greeted me in a friendly manner, I was still convinced that they had a dagger under their belt that read “kill the Jew.” My feelings were so strong that they took captive all of my other perceptions of the lovely Christians I had encountered. Perhaps they didn’t stink, but I was sure that, at their core, they were the worst hypocrites.

Thankfully, there were no Messianic congregations in traveling distance, so fortunately, I had to tough-it-out in the exclusive company of Gentile believers, but the Word had begun its work within me.

As I began to grow in Christ, I also began to appreciate His surpassing value, a value that takes precedence over all of my other loyalties and identities. Along with this, I began to slowly esteem my new brethren.

While Jesus was talking to His followers, someone announced that His brothers and mother were waiting and wanting to speak with Him. However, Jesus’ response showed that His familial priorities:

• He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50)

Jesus’ response reflected the fact that, in Him, we have a new family and new family responsibilities, and we must embrace this new reality. Somehow, we are now so interconnected that when “one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26). Consequently, we grow together, rejoice together, and bleed together (Eph. 4:15). In Him, we even share the same value and essence:

•  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)

When we fail to acknowledge this connection, the unity that we share in the Body of Christ, we bring judgment upon ourselves (1 Cor. 11:27-31). When we maintain this unity through love, we show the world the reality of Christ in our midst. Jesus therefore 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—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23) 

Are we narrow and chauvinistic to love the Body of Christ before all else? No? The best way to love the world is to love our brethren. Nothing else will communicate the reality of Christ and His salvation like the love we have for the brethren.

Will the elimination of differences build a better world? No! It is only the love of Christ that will overcome the barriers.

No matter many differences are eliminated, there will still be republicans and democrats, conservatives and progressives, blacks and whites, rich and poor. Instead, we have to learn to love in spite of the differences!

For 25 years, I have been trying to make my wife to become like me. I like the windows closed, she likes them open. I like my meat medium; she likes hers rare. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to change her. However, through Christ I have learned to love her, and that’s made all the difference.

I have learned that I am no longer my own. I have become one spirit with Christ (1 Cor. 6:17) and with His family. I have also died with Christ that I might live in glory with Him (Gal. 2:20).

Yes, I am still Jewish. I identify with my history and culture. I am a product of my parents and their parents, but, before all else, I am a child of the One who died for me – Jesus the Messiah. Consequently, when my Jewish brethren introduce me as a Messianic Jew, I laugh and gently correct them:

• I am a Christian. Christ overshadows everything else, and I want the world to know it!

And when Christ is #1, changes begin to take place. My wife and I recently took a trip to Eastern Europe, where so many of my family had been butchered. I hadn't wanted to go, but I am so glad that I did. Christ has given me such a love for the peoples I had once hated. He has freed me!

All of us must regard our Savior as superior to everything else in our lives, even our family. We must realize that to seek Him first is life itself (Matthew 6:33) This is my prayer for all persecuted people struggling to find their identity in Christ alone. To Him be all the glory!