Throughout my days studying Christianity I didn’t understand how to put my faith into action. I wanted to understand that there is something more fundamental to living a life for God than just being religious. In my experience Christianity seemed to suggest that they don’t have a religious outline, but I think they do. They too are a group and if you are outside that group, then you are outside, and fail to understand God the correct way… according to them.
I always knew I was missing something, a part of me, and I didn’t know how to be comfortable in my own skin, and how to be my own person. Since I have been going to a synagogue, many of my Christian friends feel I have fallen off the deep end and am in desperate need of some serious, spiritual, intervention. They passively try to get me to go to church or subtly preach to me about seeing the way again, or rather seeing their way again. I don’t believe in this effort to convert, and never did. I don’t believe this is the message of God or Jesus since I simply just don’t read it that way.
It is obvious to me now that God can be found even if you are not Christian. How I see it is that Jesus has influenced every culture and every religion in every nation for the last 2000 years. Let’s face it, we all know Jesus in some way and have been influenced by him whether we like it or not or whether we admit it or not. How much we understand him and his role is really up to how much we want to learn about it truthfully outside the box of religion. Whether we want or say we believe in him is besides the point since we reveal what we believe with our actions, our actions that can resemble Jesus no matter who we are. Whatever religion we come from we are all influenced by Jesus in some way. I often wonder if we are at that time of the time of the Gentiles that is complete (Luke 21:24)? We all need God and truth whoever we are or whatever group we stand with whether Muslim, Christian, or Jewish etc. We all don’t know God perfectly, so not one is righteous (Romans 3:10-12; Psalm 14:1-3; Psalm 53:1-3), and like sheep we have all gone astray (Isaiah 53:6). We are all in ignorance of the perfect God, so we really just need to accept one another for who we are and try to love one another by God’s commandments.
I say we are all being influenced by Jesus’ teaching. I say that he is the key to understanding God in complete since he revealed what love is and he was against organized man-made religion. Maybe you don’t agree with me, but who cares. I believe it is up to the Spirit of God to reveal God as it is promised that He will be. As we seek, we can express truthfully what is in our hearts and how or if we understand the role of Jesus in our lives to ourselves. It is not up to anyone to make choices for others of what is right. We all have choice. Our responsibility is to ourselves, to love God, to make sure that we individually make the right choices for God as we actively seek Him. We are all entitled to our own place, and, so, not everyone believes in God of Israel or acknowledge Jesus’ teaching of God is love . We are all in learning mode as we all experience life, so we are all on that same journey to understand the depth of its meaning if we want to. Not one of us is any better than the next. Some may have made their own gods or made themselves their own god for selfish reasons and control. It is not our place to understand what place everyone else is at and what choices they are making. We can only live what we know.
Since we are all in a different place and time and our learning paths are different, how can Christianity say that just because you don’t believe in Jesus then you are not saved? Because of this idea about Jesus in Christianity it seems that Christianity puts too much effort into trying to make sure others believe in Jesus (the Christian Jesus) instead of practising what he taught for themselves and to understand who he was as a Jew and not a gentile. A commitment to doing good and helping one another in a non-selfish way is far more impressive and admired and reveals that path of knowing God in truth because it touches people and means something. It is from the inside and from the heart. Controlling Christian’s feel it more important and right to make it their life’s mission to preach to everyone that you need Jesus to be saved. Is this idea not religious? Isn’t this the same idea of the heresies and the very people Jesus was so angry with all the time?? God does not want us to control and manipulate people. Jesus’ role was to be an example of his Father, and to continue to reveal God in himself to the people around him. He wanted us to see that we can have God inside us too! This is the role of God’s people. When God’s people were going off the path of the truth of God and being more “religious”, in came Jesus to set people on track again, to understand that God is love from the inside and that His people will be revealed to the outside since they know love and how to love one another.
Another thing too, is that these past few years that I have been understanding God from the root, through the Jewish people, my love and passion for Israel has developed into something that I never expected. I am not sure why this surprises me though since Israel is God’s home on earth. I see it as that place that needs to look like God the most, just like your own home has your own flavour and design. God needed a place and a people to reveal Him. God’s people are Israel.
Let us know God on the inside and be so alive with love for one another that the world will see us on the outside.
Let us be a alive to a dying world.
Let us be Israel!
Shannie Alvarez 