Setting the Record Straight About Christianity

How many times am I going to continue to be running in to this?

The notion that Christians serve Satan is grounded in elitism and ignorance –

Christians keep the overwhelming majority of Torah that can be kept, did you know that? 58% cannot be kept without a standing temple, they keep 28% (out of the remaining 42%–so that puts mainstream Christians keeping 67% of what can be kept today) of the Law, and even your most die-hard Messianics ONLY KEEP 8% MORE (and no Messianic or Jew keeps quite the sizable portion of what could conceivably still be kept). They believe that the Bible is true. They believe that YHVH created the world and all that is in it. They believe that the Word of God (regardless of what name they use) became flesh, through a divine birth, lived a perfect life, died, was resurrected, and ascended to the Father. They take care of the weightier matters of Torah that many Messianics completely neglect while they are straining at gnats and clapping themselves on the back for keeping whatever “one true calendar” and “one true pronunciation” they have adopted. Christians care for the widows, orphans, poor, oppressed, sick. They build hospitals, orphanages, adopt special needs and abandoned children, picket abortion clinics, work to change corrupt laws, feed the homeless, work to end the sex trade, spread the gospel, and a whole bunch of other things while their detractors sit on Facebook doing nothing but slandering them for eating pork, not keeping Sabbath and the feasts–conducting their own “ministry” of posting internet memes and insulting remarks for the amusement of people who already agree with them. Well frankly, the overwhelming majority of Christians do what they do out of ignorance because they have been taught since childhood to equate the keeping of the law with falling from grace and not loving Messiah–and that should evoke our compassion and prayers and not our contempt. But what too many Messianics and Hebrew Roots do, as they sit at home and argue and bicker and insult while neglecting the weightier matters of righteousness and justice (which historically were always tied with caring for the “least of these”), just boils down to bad fruit. And I speak as a person who used to do just that but I praise YHVH that He slapped me down hard and changed my heart.

If Torah does not make us more compassionate, less prideful, less divisive and condemning, then we are not “keeping” it–we are looking at it as though it is a mirror and turning our faces away so as to forget what we look like (James 1:23). Like it or not, Christians are our brothers and sisters, in Covenant with YHVH through the blood of Yeshua/Jesus–no different than the Israelites of old. They may be wrong in some areas, but from what I have seen, there is plenty of self-deception and self-righteousness to go around and we are all in the thick of it. Torah didn’t change my heart sixteen years ago–my heavenly Father did, and then He compassionately opened my eyes to Torah when I wasn’t even looking for it. I am no better than any pork and shellfish-eating, Sunday-keeping, Christmas and Easter-observing person, and in fact, I am far worse than many of them. What I am is blessed with the revelation of Torah, which was delivered to me out of pure mercy and compassion when I wasn’t doing anything to deserve it–quite the contrary. I don’t accept Torah because I am more faithful or obedient, I accept it because it was revealed to me. And because of that, I am unable to wag a finger at anyone. It wasn’t my excellence that moved YHVH to bless me with a love of the constitution of His Kingdom, it was the attribute of His mercy poured out into my undeserving mess of a life. But I don’t serve a different God than I did as a Christian, I simply know better how to serve the God I already knew. But if I don’t put it into practice alongside the weightier matters of serving the poor, vulnerable, widowed, orphaned, oppressed, etc–then I am just fooling myself because I have allowed the greatest commandments to fall by the wayside while I just strive to go to all the right parties, stay home from work on the right days, and eat the right things. Yeah, not really all that impressive in comparison, right?

I cited this excellent study by Rabbi Doug Friedman in my book The Bridge, it should cause us all to take down our pride a few notches.  <—-click to read

The sequel that just says no to the idea of the law being done away with–>Setting the Record Straight about the Spirit of the Law