The Distinctiveness of Christianity

Chrisitianity is not distinct in it's faith in a god-man who died for people's sins, and rose again. In fact, around the time of Christianity's beginnning, there were dozens of legends very similar to the early apostles story that was spread around the known world in the first century. And this story was not unfamiliar to the people Paul took this story to. What was really unique about Paul's message was not that a man who was God rose from the dead, but that this particular man was the promised messiah for the children of Israel. This Messiah did not only come to save the children of Israel, as they were accustomed to thinking. This Messiah came to save the whole world by his death and resurrection. In summation the crux of Christian faith goes beyond the mere acceptance of the historical actuality of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century. The crux of the Christian faith is found in the distinct belief that the Jesus was the promised one to Israel, the culmination of the Jewish faith, and as such Christiany takes on the distinctly Jewish understanding of a directly ruled universe in which a personal but all-knowing and all-powerful God makes a people with whom he has a personal relationship.

Christianty is not Christianity if it does not first hold the basic tenants of a Jewish worldview. The Pauline heresy, (as Jews might refer to it) or Christianity, (as modern Christians might call it) is that all of the promises given to Isreal, the history of Israel, the Torah of Israel, the prophets, the poems, and all of the literature, point to and find there meaning in Jesus of Nazareth. Also, true Israel is not the genetic descendants of Abraham. True Israel is the people that "struggle" with God. The word Israel itself means "struggles with God". True Israel deals with God very differently than do the pagan religions, other organized relgions, or the religions of the east. They do not deal with God in terms of human promises, or human rituals, or rites of passage, but they struggle with God personally, and eventually succumb to his will. In the Old Testament we see God choosing a specific race for himself, a race to whom he would entrust his eternal wisdom. But ultimately, as is revealed in the New Testament by Jesus embodied, and Paul in writing, true Israel is the people who have a relationship with God. And according to Paul, the only way in our day and age to have a relationship with God is through faith in the Messiahship of Jesus, the suffering servant, who paid for his people's sins by his death, and made way for his people's life by his resurrection. This is why it is important for Christians to understand and and find their roots in the foundations of the Jewish worldview; because essentially, the worldview of the Jews is really the thing that is distinct.

The Jewish God, like Allah, is personal and all-knowing, but Allah gives us doubts about how personal he really is. When we read the Koran we realize that Allah does not pursue Muslims in any way. He simply requires their servanthood and worship through rituals. But he doesn't wrestle with them, struggle with them, plead with them, wait for them, or save them like the God of the Bible does for his people. Their salvation is up to them in the end. The Jewish God, like the deities of the East, is spiritual, mysterious, and omnipresent, but unlike these gods is still personal and transcendant. Unlike the pagan deities, the Jewish God is one, and is not pleased by sacrifices and offerings, and although willing to listen to his people's cries, is not coerced by their rituals. Unlike the Catholic God, the Jewish God is unseen, and no attempt is ever to be made to give him an image. Unlike the Catholic God, the Jewish God will not tolerate prayers made to anyone not him, including ancestors. Unlike the protestant God, the Jewish God transcends even his own law and retains his mysterious nature. The Jewish God, and therefore the Christian God, is distinct in that He is one, transcendant, but personal, not concerned with rituals, but aggressively in pursuit of a relationship with people.

The difference between Christianty and Judaism lies not at the base of the two worldviews, but on the fringes. As Christians, we believe as Jewish people do that God is one, personal, transcendant, mysterious, and merciful. We differ in that we believe that true Israel are the people that God has a relationship with whether Jew or Gentile, and that Jesus of Nazareth is these people's Messiah, and that faith in him alone makes them the people of God.

But if we continue to move Christianity towards the philosophy of the day, further and further away from it's worldview grounded in Jewish thought, we will not be really Christian, although the label might stick. In some sense we are already seriously out of touch with who we are because we have lost touch with our Jewish heritage. It is important that we regain an understanding of the Jewish religion so that we can find ourselves again, and thus find ourselves not wrestling with ideas, theologies, and God's creation, but God himself. And just as was the case with Jacob, when he wrestled with God, God will break us and change our names. Israel was originally a name given to an individual. That individual's name beforehand was the aforementioned Jacob. But God changed his name from "uprooter"/"wrestles with earth"/"struggles with man" to "struggles with God". Do not forget that Jacob did not know it was God with whom he wrestled until it was over. And do not forget that Jacob walked away with a limp. And do not forget that at the same time, Jacob walked away,with a truly life-giving and meaningful experience. He literally wrestled with God.

The Bible says that Jacob "wrestled with God and man and overcame". May we the former Jacob's, the former uprooters, be able to say that we are now Israel, the people who wrestled with God and man and overcame.

I realize that I make a plethora of assertions without references or arguments. I will leave this writing as is for now and will come back to it at another time with all my references, and arguments in order to make a case for what is now, to you the reader, simply an hypothesis. As for now I think it will suffice to present my ideas in this way and allow the ball to start rolling in your minds. Discuss and be merry for tomorrow we might die, or live until Monday. Who knows?