Messianic Quintet

Christianity had its origins with a Jewish teacher (Jesus) who some considered to be the long prophesied Jewish Messiah. His first followers were all Jews and for many years their thousands of converts were all Jewish.

Even when the first non-Jews (or gentiles) began to believe in Jesus, they heard about Him from Jewish preachers and they were instructed by Jewish teachers.

Then after time, the balance shifted. Gentiles began to outnumber Jews and the church moved away from its Jewish roots. More detailed thoughts about all of this can be found on my other blog through the links at the end of this article

I’ve called this review/article “A Messianic Quintet” because I recently read five books addressing various aspects of the relationship between the church and Jews. Three of them are autobiographical, dealing with the experiences of Jews turning to faith in their Messiah Yeshua (Jesus). Another is written by a Jewish believer about how “Greek thinking” has replaced the original Hebraic understanding of the Bible and how it has affected what the church believes and how it behaves. The last is an overview, written by a non-Jew, of how Jews have been returning to faith in their Messiah since the late 1960s, and where this renewed interest is leading.

In its early years, before the term “Christianity” was coined, belief in Jesus was known as “the Way”. Steve Maltz plays with this phrase in the title of his book How the Church Lost the Way. Maltz shows how Greek Philosophy started to take over from Hebraic thinking as the number of gentile believers overtook the number of Jewish believers. This growing disparity eventually found the Jews being pushed out all together and a new, more Greek way of understanding changed “The Way” significantly. Maltz looks at how and when this all happened, and makes suggestions about reversing the situation.

Stan Telchin’s book Betrayed gives us an example of the effects of the church’s historical changes. Telchin, a Jew, is horrified when his daughter reveals she has turned to faith in Jesus after being convinced that He is the Jewish messiah. Fighting his strong disappointment, he decides to handle the situation calmly and logically. To help convince his daughter of her error, he and his wife undertake their own study of both Jewish and Christian scriptures to find enough evidence to change her mind. Their discoveries lead them in a direction they didn’t expect.

Yohanna Cheronoff writes about her family’s experience as pioneers in Messianic Judaism in Born a Jew...Die a Jew. Her husband Marty grew up in a Jewish family, came to faith in Jesus and set out to share the gospel with other Jews. Through a series of visions over many years, Marty saw that an increasing number of Jews would discover that Jesus is their Messiah. The Chernoffs were concerned that Jews coming to faith in Jesus were usually encouraged to turn away from their cultural heritage, basically losing their distinctive Jewishness. After some time trying to work with traditional Christian groups, it was seen necessary to start something new in which Jews could worship their messiah while still remaining true to their Jewish heritage. This new thing became known as Messianic Judaism, through which more Jews than at any other time in history have come to faith in Yeshua.

The success of this movement began in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Some people see this timing was not coincidental. It started around the same time that the nation of Israel won Jerusalem back during the Six Day war in 1967. This was a victory against impossible odds with most of the Arab world against them. This return of Jerusalem to Jewish control ended almost 2000 years of exile from the city and by some was seen to be the end of the time of the gentiles, a period mentioned in the Bible. In his letter to the church at Rome, the apostle Paul revealed that Israel’s hardening against the gospel of Jesus would last until the “full number of the gentiles has come in” and then “All Israel will be saved.”

The increase in Jews turning to Jesus coinciding with Israel regaining Jerusalem is therefore seen by some as the beginning of prophecy being fulfilled. Don Finto takes this view in God’s Promise and the Future of Israel. This book is a compelling overview of the history of conflict between Jews and the church. While Steve Maltz addresses the effects of changing philosophy upon the church, Finto looks from a more prophetic and political viewpoint.

The last book in my quintet is Ben Israel, Art Katz’s account of his search for meaning, which he finally found through Jesus. At one time a Marxist and an atheist, Katz starts his story at the Dachau death camp. He visited this site of incredible atrocity while serving in the US army after World War II. The book, based on his diaries, moves between different times and places as he tries to find direction and purpose. He comes to understand that his journey has been orchestrated and he is being pointed towards the God of his people and specifically towards Jesus, the Messiah most Jews still failed to recognise.

Katz is by far the most “literary” and intellectual of the quintet authors and his was the only book that didn’t keep me interested all the way through. I persevered with it because of my familiarity with Katz’s later Christian ministry which focused strongly on the continuing role of Israel in God’s purposes.

I could not hope to give each of the books adequate coverage in this one article, but it was not my intention to make any individual book the focus of what I have written. I am more interested in the overall interaction between Jewish experience and the biblical theology of Israel’s relationship to God and the Jewish Messiah. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, I have written more about this topic on one of my other blogs. (links below)


Hijacking Messiah.html

Reclaiming Messiah.html


For more on How the Church Lost the Way see here:
How the Church Lost the Way, Steve Maltz/

Like Me, Chely Wright

Celebrity autobiographies are often a sanitised exercise in self-promotion. If that is what I was expecting from Chely Wright’s Like Me, it’s not surprising its first pages left me in shock.

I’ve been a Chely Wright fan for around ten years, since I discovered her album Single White Female. At the time my wife liked Faith Hill and pop influenced Country music and I was on the lookout for similar artists who might interest her. I found SWF at an HMV store in Sydney, listened to it, and bought it for myself. After that I tracked down all of her earlier albums, even the almost impossible to find first album Woman in the Moon.

It had been a few years since Chely’s last album but I remained in touch with her career through regular email newsletters. I pre-ordered both her new album and her book as soon as they were announced earlier this year and wondered what insights the book would give into her life and her career. I definitely was not prepared for what I read in the first sentence and later on the first page:

“Dear God, please don’t let me be gay.”

And

“I’m a proud Kansan, a loving daughter, sister, friend, a child of God and a lesbian.”

Those statements contain most of the elements of the book that have had me wrestling emotionally, intellectually and spiritually since I started reading her story.

The revelation that she is gay was completely unexpected. I was not exaggerating when I said earlier that I was left in shock. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been throughout her life, working in an industry she loved, knowing that she could lose everything she had worked for if the news of her homosexuality got out. And she went to great lengths to keep it secret, at times straining friendships and business relationships. The fear of being exposed could not be ignored. She particularly notes how the conservative nature of the members of her industry, and their idea of God’s view of homosexuality contributed to her fear.

On the other hand Chely developed an understanding of God that allowed her to accept who she is, even when she was not ready to share that fact with those around her. Adapting God to suit our own particular situation is perhaps a common survival move, allowing us to come to terms with who we are and what we are and at the same time maintain a sense of acceptance from the Divinity we choose to follow. Such a practice can be a strong comfort as we try to come to terms with those parts of our lives that may cause others offence.

The weakness with that strategy is that we ourselves can create and trust a Divinity based on our own subjective needs instead of trusting a real God with a firm and objective foundation. Needs-based faith is a growing reality within a society where each person determines what is truth for themselves, not requiring a standard outside of their own experience and desires to give their “truth” a secure foundation. The irony of this is that the initial idea of God has usually come from an outside source – whether it is from a church, from the bible, or from a cultural viewpoint; but that initial idea is merely used as a starting point for something that suits us personally: a God that can be shaped and moulded to suit our own requirements. The source of that initial awareness of God can be abandoned for something more suitable to our human need, taking us away from a God who has his own demands and expectations.

But can such a God give any genuine security beyond providing a temporary sense of self-justification? What lasting value is a God who can be changed according to our own whim? More than once Chely states that God made her the way she is. Is God so contrary? Or is it more likely to be our human nature that is fickle, wanting to cling to both God and those things He (according to the Bible) is said to abhor.

Chely refers to several occasions where discussions in her presence were focused on God’s condemnation of homosexuality. Homosexuality seems to be a favoured target when the sins of society are being addressed by professed, bible believing Christians, and while the bible does condemn it, surprisingly it gets far fewer mentions than more common, accepted and even popular behaviours. Maybe there is more than a little hypocrisy at play when a person’s sexuality is condemned by someone who has a serious problem with greed. There are for more condemnatory references to covetousness and the love of money than there are to homosexuality. It is all too easy for the “straight” but greedy Christian to point at a gay individual and “thank God that I am not like that person”. (seeLuke 18:11).

I accept that Chely has every right to reveal whatever she chooses of her own life, opening herself up to scrutiny, but I felt she overstepped the mark in making revelations about others. While expressing contrition over the way she treated fellow country singer Brad Paisley with whom she had a relationship for a time; exposing the fact that the relationship included a sexual element perhaps showed a continued lack of respect for Paisley’s feelings and privacy. Kiss and tell confessions where participants are named may give some gratification to the reader and writer, but they demonstrate little concern for the other party involved. Wasn’t it bad enough to involve Paisley in such a relationship when it was known that his strong feelings could never be reciprocated, without later publicly spilling those intimate details?

While a lot of the book deals with the struggle she faced over her sexuality, to me some of the more interesting parts of the book were those that describe her trips to entertain troops in places like Iraq. She experienced situations that brought the reality and tragedy of war to life. From meeting and finding common ground with a soldier merely days before he is killed, to being transported on an HR (human remains) flight with the coffin of another casualty at her feet, her trips were far from the glamour usually associated with show business.

I had seen some of the events she describes in a DVD of "home movies" that came with one of her CDs. The book helped to give a clearer perspective of some of the footage of a performance for thousands of troops in Baghdad where she and Kid Rock shared vocal duties.

This book is a very personal opening of the heart from a person who through fear hid the truth for most of her life. Most of us could never understand what it is like to live such a life where secrecy and half truths seem mandatory. How can a person have dreams and the ability to achieve them when such a central aspect of their life is condemned or made the subject of jokes by the majority of those around them?

I was saddened by the struggle she experienced. I think I’ve been made a little more aware of the difficulties faced by people like Chely who not only have to cope with the way society perceives them, but also with the desire for normality. To be accepted for who they are. Not wanting to stand out and be perceived as different in a negative way.
This story is one of an individual person struggling to be accepted, and to accept herself, as she is. But to me the real sadness relates to the way ideas about God are manipulated to support a human agenda. How He is used to justify both bigotry and human desire. In all of this HIS desires and HIS demands get pushed aside and He is made a tool to suit OUR needs.

Whatever happened to the Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth who was once feared and respected as well as loved?
We didn’t like that kind of God so we replaced Him with another who is cuddlier and more likely to bend His ways to suit us.