(June 10, 2024 at 12:03 pm)Questor Wrote: I do not need to read up on it, although I thank you for the suggestion.
I am quite aware that Jews who do not accept Yeshua as their Messiah think quite sincerely that I have converted to xtianity, and have become an idol worshiper. Not being an xtian, and not accepting the xtian idea of a trinity, as it is in direct contradiction to Torah, I do not even have a picture in my mind to supposedly be worshiping. How does one picture a Creator whose essence is spiritual, no matter how easily said Creator can take on a physical form when he wishes to, and in my belief, has. He can do what he pleases, as he is the Creator.
All Jews will, of course, should I recant, accept me back into the fold, so long as I observe their particular halacha, and the more strictly Orthodox, the better. Odd that, since one can be Jewish, secular in one's halacha, and a Buddhist, and not be considered to have converted to another religion, despite the fat little idol in the house. Or the tendency for some Jews to value the writings of the Sages above the accepted word of YHWH.
One distant relative of mine is an anti-missionary, and we had to cease contact, since he was bound inside his thoretical Talmudic box, and would not consider any other information, historical or theological, that contradicted it. He won't pick up a book that is not approved in his Shul. Poor man, he had, as he put it, 'converted' to some pentacostal variety of xtianity, and when he came up for air, completely freaked out, and reverted to the strictist Judaic beliefs that he could find. Yet even he did not think me any the less Jewish for my beliefs. He thought me misguided, and in the wrong, and in need of his help to identify every error in the Apostolic writings so that I could reject them, but would not accept the errors in the Tanakh, or even that there were any. He merely changed the subject, and went back to his initial claims, and discussed my foolishness earnestly at his Shul. (I know, because he told me so.)
One is either Jewish, or one is not, and it is a both a physical attribute, and a cultural one, being derived from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with the teachings that are passed down from the patriarchs via one's family. My family tried to shed both, and in the end, it just leaked out everywhere.
I cannot escape my family, nor despite their efforts, were my parents able to escape it either. It slipped out in word and deed when they were least expecting it to.
I was raised as a United Pentecostal. They also don't believe in the trinity. Are they culturally Jewish and just don't know it?
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.