Y Not I

As this blog matures, I am searching for what will be the ultimate direction of the site. A site devoted to computer HOWTO’s and discussions about Torah, plus things about politics, music, sports, etc. is quite broad, and possibly too broad to support regular readers. So I search for other sites for inspiration and material, since so many blogs are based upon comments of things seen at other sites. I found an interesting tool for keeping track of the sites that I am finding the most helpful, so I shall start with the technology portion of this post.

There are many RSS feed readers out there, from Google and others to your mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) to the browsers themselves. There is also personalized homepages like those from Google and Yahoo that add content, RSS feeds, plus extra modules to add other features in order to make this page a destination that has the most important things to you right at your fingertips. I never found any of them that good, or at least worked well enough for me to use. Then I found Netvibes, and have found a place to make my homepage for my browsers. Netvibes makes it easy to add feeds, to add special modules for weather, for checking your email (web-based, IMAP and POP3), and a host of other things that may be of interest to you. It is easy to create a new tab, for more content. Moving the content around is just drag and drop. You can add icons to your tabs, to make them stand out a bit. I have tabs for my different interest, one for political sites/blogs, etc., one for tech sites, one for sites on faith, plus the main tab I have as kind of my headline page, the sites and tools I would want to see first are there, so the news site I like the best, the sports, the faith, weather, email, etc. For me it worked and a great way to access a broad spectrum of information from many different sites. Give it a try.

Next I was searching out sites to add to my Netvibes page and the different tabs. I have found a few very excellent sites that I have been very blessed to find. From some of my earlier posts you could pick up the theme that I have a great deal of trouble with Christian thought, although I can accept the basic idea of salvation through the blood of Jesus, to use the Christian terms. Being a Messianic Jew, I term things a bit differently, but major ideas of the faith are the same. I was once taught in a church membership class that there are certain things that we must believe in and then there are things we can agree to disagree on. Things like how to achieve salvation are cut and dry, salvation is from the blood through faith and not by any work. Other things, speaking in tongues, etc. can be discussed and disagreed on, without breaking the unity we have as fellow believers, brothers in faith.

However as I study and learn more in Messianic Judaism I find that many Christians have problems with some of my beliefs. They seem to doubt my salvation because I do Jewish things. We tried to get our kids into one Christian school. The school was called a covenant school as it was sort of a blend of private school and home school. The parents were very involved with the school, teaching the classes at times, so there was a very rigorous process of getting into the school, which I can understand. We had to read a book, watch a video, listen to a series of CD messages, all teaching about the philosophy of the school, how they taught, etc. After we completed this we needed to be interviewed by some of the parents that made up their board, so we met with two parents. We discuss the different things about the school, the commitment we needed to make as parents, what was to be expected from the kids, how discipline was handled, etc. We also had a time to ask our own questions and this is when the problems arose. We asked about things like the kids getting off for Biblical Holidays. This raised up some questions in especially one parents mind. We also asked a little bit about the church and the beliefs, especially concerning Israel, for there is so much replacement theology out there and we were concerned for our children being taught that the church has replaced Israel, which is something of course they we cannot see in Scripture, especially when you look at things like Romans 11, which makes no sense if the church is now Israel, then who is the grafted in branches?

Anyway, once we raised these questions it appeared the one parent all of a sudden was doubting our faith. After the meeting the next thing that came back from the school was that they wanted us to attend a series of teaching about the basics of the Christian faith, a class that was listed on their website as one for those seeking and interested in what Christianity is all about. This tells me that they doubted our faith, because we were Jewish and didn’t want to stop being Jewish. All of a sudden circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, changed to circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is everything. We decided against that school and found a school that fit us much better.

So it appears to be difficult these days to find Christians that understand a Messianic Jewish viewpoint, especially when it comes to Torah. Some are OK with a Passover Seder, and sometimes some of the Jewish things are kind of a passing fad, however what I am speaking of with Torah, is not Jewish things, but G-d things. Moses did not go up to G-d and say, “hey, we want to be different, so I was talking with Aaron and some of the others and here is what we want to do”.

I have though found some sites with people and churches that do get it. They read the Scripture without seeing what Martin Luther, John Calvin or Greg Koukl or whoever say about it, but just looking at what the Scripture says. They are able to expand their thought beyond the common perceptions and concepts to be open to what Scripture might say, even if it might be uncomfortable to them, even if it might show Christians throughout history to be just as human as the Israelites were in Scripture.

Here are some of the sites I found so far. I will continue to search:

• Calvary Christian Fellowship - Check out the mp3s of messages. I have been listening to the series on Galatians and it is so right on, like I have never heard from a Christian before. If you replaced the Christ with Messiah and Jesus with Yeshua, it would be a straight up Messianic Jewish service message. The Pastor also has a blog:
• You’ve Heard it Said - Excellent resource with very thoughtful and insightful posts.
• Yeshua’s Word - What Does Scripture Really Say? - Banner Kidd seems to work with Pastor Ron, so the thoughts are along the same line of thinking.
• Walking With Yeshua - Life as a Messianic Believer - More straight up Messianic, but interesting topic nevertheless.
• Someone named Jesse and His MySpace page - especially check out these two blog entries about Torah, A Case for Torah, and A Case for Torah: The Contemporaries

I am still searching and finding other. I will keep you informed of interesting sites I find. I am especially blessed to see Christians coming to better understanding of Scripture and how Torah fits in, instead of just throwing that part away or using it as a way to look at the foolishness of Israel. Maybe this is the direction my site is going towards, to speak more about these things. Ic ertainly hope and pray that more believers can better understand G-d’s Word and not be lazy and rely only upon what others teach them the words mean. That was the situation in Messiah’s day and it seems to be similar today. Where this site goes to ,may it be for the glory of G-d.