Did you see Stuart Dauermann’s Judaism – A Non-Non-Christian Religion? If you want your theological coals stoked, go read.
If you’re lazy like me, let me summarize his premise for you, fine blog reader: you know how we view Judaism as just-another-deceived-religion invented by men? Turns out we’re wrong, says the good rabbi; our thinking there is just remnants of old replacement theology. Judaism is not just another deceived religion, it’s unlike the pagan religions of the world, he says.
Many Christians, many of us, and many of our constituents, act and think as if the seed of Jacob is a nation like any other, and Judaism a religion like any other religion, except for Christianity. This attitude is a legacy from supersessionism, infused like dye throughout the warp and woof of much of our theologizing. According to such assumptions, Jews no longer enjoy the status they once did now that Christ has come “and his own received him not.” (John 1:12)
While most Messianics are not so openly hostile towards Judaism as our Christian brothers, most of us still regard Judaism as a fruitless religion, “dead, false, devoid of the Spirit” and those who practice Judaism, “wasting their time on a religion that can neither save them, commend them to God, nor mediate to them any measure of true knowledge and experience with Him.”
Is that how you look at Judaism? Or maybe you agree with some of those views?
Well, I sure do! The way I see it,
- Judaism cannot save a person.
- Practicing Judaism won’t change a person’s status with God.
- Judaism has placed a heavy burden of increasingly-strict traditions upon the people, and in some cases have negated God’s commandments in doing so.
(Of course, I must concede the same is true of Christianity, and the Messianic movement for that matter, but that’s another story.)
Rabbi Dauermann says there is something very wrong with this approach that treats Judaism like just-another-false-religion:
But something is very wrong here. Judaism is not a religion just like all the others, any more than Israel is simply a people like all the others. Just as the Jews remain the chosen people, Judaism remains the context of this people’s trans-generational communal devotion to the God and Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah, and their covenantal bond with him. Can this be said of any other people and their religion? Of course not! No, the Jewish people are in a different category from any other people, and their religion is not simply just another non-Christian religion.
I sympathize with this sentiment, and I think he’s basically right. Judaism is not just another non-Christian religion, there is something unique here – the people, the owners of the Scripture, the people God chose for himself irrevocably.
That counts for something.
The thing I don’t get is, what implication does this have? Judaism still rejects Yeshua, and he is the way, truth, and life, and no one comes to God except through Him. I’m left scratching my head – Judaism may be unique, but if it’s missing Messiah, what does it matter? Isn’t that the most important issue?