I’m not Moses

I get asked questions a lot about what people should do, according to the Torah, in certain situations and more often than not I just can’t tell them.

I can tell you what is written, and what is not written – but what I cannot do is sit face to face with God like Moses did. Moses and the Israelites found themselves in a situation very much like ours. They had lived among pagans for hundreds of years and, at the very least, the mixed multitude had never known a lifestyle that wasn’t intimately steeped in pagan idolatry. I mean – even Aaron knew how to make a golden calf! The Word (in Exodus 18) says that Moses sat and judged the people from morning to night and I don’t think he spent all that time settling disputes between people

Ex 18:15-16 And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to inquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.

I think that he was mostly answering questions – because that is oftentimes what people want me to do, not because I am like Moses but because we find ourselves in the same predicament. We are trying to leave lives steeped in sin and idolatry and it isn’t easy. The big questions aren’t about lying, murdering, stealing and adultery – they are about, “What do I do now?”

“I have a job on the Sabbath, what do I do now?”

“We thought we weren’t supposed to circumcise our young sons because we were taught Galatians incorrectly, what do we do now about Passover?”

“My wife thinks I have fallen from grace and won’t give up Christmas and Easter and pork – what do I do now?”

“I own a business that is open on Saturdays and if I close that day it’s going to hurt my employees – what do I do now?”

You see, if all I had to do was go by the letter of the Law, then all this would be very simple. No mercy, no time to transition, no recognition that we are in exile and that exile really complicates our lives. The Torah is the constitution of the Kingdom of God, of which we are all citizens, but it was never written in such a way as to easily operate within the midst of pagan communities. In many ways, we are very much still the exiles of Babylon and that would be true no matter what country on earth we live in. On top of that, we made decisions in ignorance long ago that complicate our lives now. We didn’t have rebellion in our hearts – we genuinely thought we were doing the right thing. But doing what ended up being the wrong thing made consequences that we are only now coming to fully appreciate.

And so we come into the area of “what is the higher law?” Love God and love our neighbors – those are the highest, they guide our interpretations of the others. We cannot use the excuse of feelings to eradicate a law, but we can acknowledge mitigating circumstances that actually cannot, at this time, be overcome. One cannot force a spouse, who is not on board, into Torah obedience and expect to maintain that marital relationship. Divorce will be the most likely outcome and then we will have children living in a broken home and the marriage covenant (that they made before God) in shambles. The husband or wife who resists Torah is simply guilty of being that exact same person to whom eternal vows were made – they didn’t change, and nothing in the vows said that they had to.

Out of the questions presented above – that’s the one I feel most comfortable about answering because it is clearly covenantal. The others are tough, and I can’t make personal decisions for other people. I can tell you what the Word says and what the Word does not say – but I can’t tell you what to do. If I were Moses, face to face with YHVH every day, then I could ask those hard questions and get absolute answers. When someone asked Moses, they were really asking God – but when you ask me, you have to know that you are really just asking Tyler. I am not an elder in the Body, nor am I one who is wise enough or knowledgeable enough to tell people in the Body definitively how they should walk this mess of an exile out. Someday it will be so easy, when Messiah comes, and we won’t face the tough questions anymore – or have to hope that the people giving answers are correct. No one will have to say “Know YHVH” for all will know Him. In the meantime, our lives are a mess and that is mostly incurable as we cannot fix the world that we live in.

If we believe in the mercy and compassion of God, then we can live in the midst of this mess and keep trying – but if we do not believe it, we will fall into despair and drag others along with us. The Law is good and holy and perfect, and for those living in Israel in ages past, they had the opportunity to keep it fairly easily. It’s hard for us, and there are landmines everywhere – but can you imagine, for a moment, how much it must please Him that we try so hard even in the midst of such difficulties? And even more, that we trust in His faithfulness in the areas where we are pretty much stuck? Is anything hidden from Him? He knows when we can and cannot adhere to the letter of the Kingdom laws, and when we simply don’t want to. He knows. What is key is the renewal of our minds and the ending of our hostilities towards His righteous commands – and it is vital that we patiently bear with those who are learning and struggling in the areas that we believe we have mastery over (until of course, we are faced with trials and then sometimes we learn that we are not quite the masters we think we are). We must recognize the journey in ourselves and others – focus on the progress and growth, not on the failings. After all, unless the failings are truly egregious, they are probably just a matter of opportunity and awareness. Adultery is something that should never be tolerated, but a man working a Saturday job to support his family while trying to get enough seniority or a better position where he no longer has to work it – we have to take exile into account. Exile does not effect murder, adultery, stealing, lying or coveting – but it seriously effects how we eat (no matter how hard we try), and the Sabbaths.

So maybe we should all cool our jets and keep in mind that law-keeping is only as good as we are in our hearts. A cruel person who keeps the Law is a poorer neighbor than a kind person who struggles with their Law-keeping. If I play loud music until 9:59 PM every night, walk my dog on a leash to your yard everyday so that her urine burns your grass instead of mine, or never rake my leaves and allow them to blow onto your lawn year around, when I am healthy and able to do so – I am not breaking any civil laws, but I am not being a good neighbor either. Law-keeping is not everything, and we have to stop pretending like it is. We must have balance, or we will demand unbalanced lives from others. And so, in all things – when I don’t have a good answer, I caution patience and balance.

Do not break the Laws of God in order to do anything that you don’t absolutely have to do. That’s the best advice I can give. Even the Rabbis recognize the importance of the preservation of life as being above all laws except those pertaining to actual literal idolatry, sexual perversions and murder. But most of the Laws that we break are not in service to the lives of others – we break them because we are either ignorant of them or do not want to keep them or don’t yet understand how to keep them. Those are the laws that we need to focus on – the ones that we can do something about, not the ones that we can’t do anything about yet. I would never instruct anyone to break a Law, but I do tell people to work towards observance.

Shabbat Shalom brothers and sisters. Peace be upon your homes and your lives.

Developing Godly Character Pt 10: Relying on the Body

This is difficult for me to even write, because this is an area where my character is anything but godly. That I can recognize and communicate the truth, does not mean that I have implemented it in my own life.

Here’s the deal. A lot of believers fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. Familial abuse, resulting in not being able to rely on one’s own family.

2. Religious abuse, resulting in an inability to rely on the Body of Messiah.

3. Societal abuse, resulting in general isolation.

All three of these foster an attitude of never wanting to entrust to others what one can do themselves. It seems virtuous. and courageous, and strong, but it generally amounts to selfishness, fearfulness and weakness. We are never what we could be because we are alone, even in the midst of relatives. We are never able to fulfill our highest callings because we settle only for what we can do on our own. We live our lives unable to trust because we resent those we could not trust, projecting their crimes on the rest of the world. We are often one strand cords even though we are successfully married, have successful businesses, and are branded as over-achievers and perfectionists.

But our perfectionism isn’t always about desiring to be perfect (although those brought up in harshly critical environments often do feel that way), sometimes it is just an extension of the ego that does not want to admit that we need anyone else.

So we handle our own problems, because we have been trained through experience to believe that no one will care enough to help us. Furthermore, we are afraid to be indebted to our helpers, terrified that it will be used against us as leverage. We might put on a brave face and project spiritual perfection, because we are afraid of not being perceived as enough. We try to look and sound tough, so that no one will get too close and see our vulnerability.

So many of us dealt with abuse in the church that I am shocked anyone is still left in it. And I am not just talking about sexual abuse, I am talking about the type of abuse that twists and misrepresents the character of our God and King so terribly that there is literally no one on earth or in Heaven who we would ever want to rely on. And that scares us. So we go it alone. We can go it alone at home or in the midst of a mega-church, it works either way. One way just looks more righteous than the other.

The sad thing is that it is preventing us from becoming the Body. We watch people get abused and we don’t get involved. We let teachers and preachers and prophets and apostles slide on sin while we come down hard on the world. The Body is full of bullies who are actively training people to run from community.

But like it or not, community is what we are called to be. Ten years ago I went through a terrible persecution in my own home church at the hands of a pastor who took it upon himself to lie about me behind the scenes to the rest of the congregation based on something he wrongly thought I said, never once asking if I had said it. And the Body stood by and did nothing. I didn’t even know exactly what was going on because no one would talk to me. I found out months later, after I finally left. What hurt the worst was not not the betrayal of one man and his wife, who I loved, but the refusal of the Body to stand up. The words of Messiah were preached to them, Leviticus 19:18 — “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHVH.” But they were not willing to love me as themselves, unless they wanted to be preached against and gossiped about by a man who didn’t even fact check.

This morning I started teaching my children in earnest about the greatest commandments, and how the Body of Messiah is failing in both. Hillel I, when challenged by a Gentile to preach the entire Torah standing on one foot, stood on one foot and said, “Anything that is hateful to you, do not do to others.”

But we treat Messiah unlovingly when we consort with those who once knew Him and now actively slander Him. I know that if someone made or posted a picture of me as a zombie with the caption, “He was dead but now he’s alive and he wants your soul,” and my friends turned a blind eye, I would not believe them if they claimed to love me. And I haven’t even died for any of my friends, so how much more loyalty should there be for the one who did?

And we treat each other unlovingly when we don’t question those who post vitriolic accusations online, when we simply take their word for it. If by our actions we are doing what would be hateful if it was done to us, then we are not operating in love or mercy, or kindness or goodness. When we stand by and watch well-meaning people whose only crime is that their eyes have not been opened called idiotic, rebellious pagans — we ought to consider if that is a tactic that would draw us in or drive us away. The people that Messiah insulted — they weren’t the people who were genuinely trying, they were the people buying the priesthood, who were murdering their political/religious opponents, who were in the pocket of Rome. They were the destroyers of community, and sometimes we act just like them, on our own limited scale. We need to think before we post, and before we respond. We must ask, “Would this be hateful to me.” And then we have to be really honest, and we have to ask the Father to reveal the truth to us that we so oftentimes hide from ourselves.

When we start being the Body, people are going to get healed, people are going to come to the assembly the way they did in the early church, in droves. Why would anyone want to face persecution in order to fellowship with the Body the way it is now? But if we start loving, if we cease to do what is hateful, if we stop making excuse after excuse for our behavior, pretending like flesh is Spirit, then we will do greater things than Yeshua ever did. Yeshua never changed the world, He changed a group of good men and women and then they changed the world through the power of His resurrection.

I feel it, I feel it in my bones, that it is time. Even we introverts are feeling the call to community. It has been haunting my dreams lately. It’s time to be loving. We have no more excuses and no more time. We can’t wait for someone else to take the first step.

So I am here saying that I am willing to be willing to put my life in your hands (I needed two willings in there because I am still working on it). I am willing to be step up and become reliable, to stop jumping to conclusions, to stop jumping on the bandwagon, to stop jumping on my brothers and sisters. I am willing to let you help me, and I am willing to admit that I need you because I can’t do community without you. I can’t fulfill a lot of the commandments unless I have you in my life. And there are commandments you can’t fulfill if I am not willing to receive from you. This is probably the most terrifying things I have ever written. I am willing to have you potentially betray me in hopes of coming together in community. I am willing to risk you letting me down and to risk watching you stand by while people hurt me. I am willing to admit that there is a piece of me missing that I can’t fill for myself, even though every time I contemplate that fact (and I know it is a fact), my mind wants to push it aside and deny it. I pray you are willing to risk the same things too. I will try to hold up my end of the bargain.

We have to start relying on each other and we need to start being reliable. It’s potentially the most important character issue of all.

Remembering God

We are called, as the created, to conform to the image of the Creator.

This has always been so and always will be. From Genesis to Revelation, the call has always been to become more and more like our Heavenly Father as exemplified in Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. We are commanded to conform our minds, our flesh, our very being into vessels of love towards both Him as well as our neighbors. To love Him is to obey Him, therefore to love Him is to love others.

Lev 19:18 And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am YHVH.

Over the millennia, people have struggled to define for themselves what that love should look like. But we were never called to define it for ourselves, it is too great a burden. The Bible defines it for us, from the first word to the last word. That very character of God Himself defines what love looks like. And that is what I am exploring this year, day by day, striving and straining and pressing forward so that I become more and more like Him — not just in what I write, but in what I do, and even in how I respond when I fail.

We are called, more than anything else in our lives, to love God. And we love Him best by how we represent Him to the world. We can either cause people to glorify Him or curse Him, we can be a helping hand or a stumbling block. We owe it to our beloved and blessed Creator to represent His character as perfectly as we possibly can, by turning our backs on our own flesh, our own agendas, our own character flaws — on the things which cause the people around us to hate Him, not for His sake, but for our sake.

Things are serious. We have come to a point in history where we are not hated for the sake of the gospel, the gospel is hated for the sake of a church that has not gotten to know the character of the Father or His Messiah well enough to represent it.

I want to change that in my own life. This blog will be a year long exploration of the revealed character of God, with an emphasis on how I think it should change my behavior, my attitude, my everything. I want this blog to be about glorifying His character, so maybe we can all represent Him as He deserves to be represented, that perhaps we can become the faithful ambassadors we were always called to be.