Upholding What Is “Right” !

WED., OCT. 13, 1999, 8:37 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

In the Acts story Paul was certainly a Jew. He declared his right to be called a Jew, a well educated Jew. But on the road to Damascus Paul encountered Me, as both Jesus and Holy Spirit. This meeting changed his life dramatically, but he didn’t realize this immediately. He just assumed that the message he now had – that Jesus, Who he had persecuted, was the Messiah the Jews had looked for and that his fellow Jews would accept this as he had done – would be as wonderfully startling to those who listened to him as it was to him. For a few – Yes. For many – No. Why?

The Jews had a long history… about as long as Christians now have. They had their Scriptures and their well-established traditions… and a good many prohibitions. Yes, one “tradition” was that they looked for a Messiah, but their expectation was that He would be a “deliverer” from political and military bondage. They would again be the “power” that their “history” told them they had been. They were Yahweh’s chosen people, and Yahweh was “their God.”

OK, Jesus was a Jew, and He spoke mostly to Jews, BUT He also related to a Samaritan woman, He did not speak disparagingly of Gentiles, he accepted the feet washing of a known fallen woman, and… He just didn’t act as they expected “their” Messiah to be.

He was not militant, except with money-changers, who were a vital part of the Jewish temple culture. He preached, “Love your enemies… do good to those who hate you.” It had been a long time since the Messiah was promised. I, speaking now as Jesus, just didn’t fit the “constructed picture” of that Savior. And, importantly, I was not acting completely Jewish. The Jews felt they had been persecuted by Gentiles, and I was preaching forgiveness and love, for even Gentiles. The Jews had become a people, stepped in tradition. (Remember Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof!) I was a threat to that tradition. It is often “safer” to expect some “good” than to actually receive or achieve it… when it doesn’t seem as “wonderful” as expected.

In this Acts story Paul, who has known Me only after My crucifixion, as a “re-embodied Spirit,” is the supreme evangelist, encouraging the “ordination” of Little Christs or Christians. It pains him to acknowledge that only a few Jews accept his testimony, but Gentiles are responding to it. He is, in effect, forming a “new religion.”

And, as you know, Christianity, in its several forms, is the major world religion. And… the Jews, in several forms, still cling to their heritage, still awaiting “their true Messiah.” Did I know this would happen? Well, just hear that I was not surprised. My Jewish servants are holding to what is “right,” by the tradition I gave to them. They tend not to be evangelical, leery that “converts” may try to “change things.” And I am proud of them for this.

And now well established Christians tend to act in similar ways. Everyone should, finally, be Christian, with certain accepted, “ordained” worship practices. Yet those who are Orthodox and Catholic are not in agreement with Pentecostals, and both of these are critical of Methodists and Presbyterians… and certainly of Unitarians. (Or should I even mention Unitarians?)

Oh, I admit that the “God Who was in Christ” is more open to diversity, but there is that tendency, which I also value, for those who are dominant to hold to what is “right!” and to bring others to that “rightness!,” for their own good. I see it all. I encourage the avid devotees in “competing camps.” Is this what a “good God” would do? Well, I say that it is.