My response to a friend from down under who criticized me for admiring Maimonides, a famous 12th century Jewish rabbi, while at the same time accusing me of "mocking" the Old Testament. I have my reasons. Let me share them with the rest of you. ✌️
Yes, it's true that, as Christian, I don't believe the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible should be on equal footing with the New Testament just as Paul correctly stated that Christians are no longer bound to the Mosaic law of his own childhood faith.
In my opinion, putting the OT and NT together in the Christian Bible is the reason many believers are confused about their faith especially many evangelicals who still think the Jews are God's chosen people who need to go back to Zion in order for the so-called rapture and other end-times events they believe will happen will materialize.
From that perspective alone, we can now understand why many evangelicals want the Jews to run the whole of Palestine by hook or by crook in order for the end-times to happen. I know it's a bit weird.
Supposedly, based on our faith, that should not be the case anymore as Christians are considered the new chosen people of God, not the Jews. At least, that's what we are told to believe.
The OT serves only as historical reference for Christians being the faith of Jesus and his disciples. I saw Judaism as the faith of the Jewish people who historically were quite parochial in their view of their God and themselves and very tribal in the belief that their God is theirs alone. And quite violent too.
Violence has no place in the Christian faith. But many Christians are confused about it and still behave like their Judaism cousins. Very tribal and parochial.
Jesus himself corrected the Jews of his time on their wrong understanding of their faith when he expounded to them the issues of anger, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and love of enemy. These are the so-called six antheses which appear to be opposite of what Moses taught. Actually, they are not. He simply corrected their misconceptions.
But, like other religions including Christianity and Islam, Judaism as an institution is hardly static. It, too, grew over the centuries both in theology and philosophy. In fact, their specific eschatology only developed rapidly at around the same time as Christianity in the 3rd and 4th century CE considering that it was around for thousands of years before that.
I respect and admire Maimonides as a person in general just like I respect and admire Gautama Buddha. He was a 12th century Sephardic Jewish rabbi who singlehandedly reordered, reorganized, humanized and summarized the written laws of his faith for the benefit of the other faithful. That's on top of his being a philosopher, astronomer and physician admired by both Jews and Muslims alike in his time.
That's why many Jews look up to him. Of course, like most Jews, he did not believe Jesus, another Jew himself, met the criteria of what their faith is expecting for the long-awaited messiah.
I don't have to share the faith of the people I admire the most as a person. I'm open-minded enough to recognize that God revealed himself in many religious traditions. But their traditions may retain much human flaws, which is quite normal.
For one, I cannot reconcile myself with the faith of the Jews based on the very parochial view of a God willing to commit genocides against other nations and expect me to believe that it is the same God Christians believe as an all-loving deity who loves ALL of humanity. That's too contradictory.
Again, the quirkiness of our many religious traditions reflects our human side. It is not all divinely perfect as it has its human imperfections as well. Even Christianity has its share of imperfections. But we can all transcend beyond those imperfections and appreciate the universal God that holds all of humanity together. It is for this reason that I remain respectful to other faiths and expect others to respect mine too.
No comments:
Post a Comment