Church & Christ

Chris and I took the kids to a Messianic Jewish church yesterday with our friends. It was a, dare I say, life changing and transformational experience. It was like the curtain to the stage of my mind was pulled back just a little and the exposure of sheer ignorance shown brightly in front of the stage lights.

One paradigm that continues to be exposed is how I import, or maybe transport, my 21st Western thinking into first century middle Eastern characters and culture. I realized my thoughts of Jesus were a person born in Iowa or Nebraska or Pennsylvania; He's just some good ole boy from a small-town farm. Born in the 20's or 30's. He's obviously passed away and in heaven but his upbringing was so familiar to mine He's not that much different. As I sat in the service it blasted me, Jesus is Jewish. He's not part Jewish and part Nebraskan. He is ALL Jewish. And in order to understand Him, to truly know Him, I need to know something about what it means to be Jewish. To know the Christ of the New Testament, it is imperative to know the Old Testament.

I was so impacted from the service and this realization that I am changing about the order of my studies. Instead of taking Greek this next fall, I'm going to study Hebrew. And instead of pursuing any more New Testament classes I am going to take Old Testament classes first. I want to study in the order of the History of the Bible and the culture of the Bible in order to understand the Bible more fully.