How can Christianity convince Jews to see the light?

[Confused]

Historically, Jews were oppressed/persecuted/exterminated before the coming of Jesus and they continued to be oppressed/persecuted/exterminated after the death of Jesus. They continue this same pattern even today.
Now, Christianity has flourished, has become the dominant religion. Jesus, as the Christ, has brought unity to the masses. And still Jews continue to reject Him as the Messiah.

What can Christians offer Jews that would make them see the light? Make them understand, in the context that Jews would understand within their own ideology, that Jesus is the way, the only way?

[Cathar1950]

cnorman18 wrote above:

I have to concur.

Is there God's providential love in Jesus being killed by the Pharisees?

How was Jesus killed by Pharisees? It was a Roman execution and if anything the High Priest who was not that favored by the Pharisees might have been doing his job for the Romans if there is any truth to Jesus disrupting the temple.
It sounds more like blaming the victims.
Tens of thounsands were killed by the Romans and there is some indication that the Jews were pushed into a war.

[Cathar1950]

If you believe that righteous wrath and even blazing rage can also be included under the label of "love," you might have a point;

The same God who is Just is also the same God who is Love. Yes, a loving Father would show righteous wrath at a son fallen into wickedness and discipline him out of love. Love is an attribute of God...a divine nature in Being. How can we with our human love ever come close to knowing this perfect, nature of Divine Love?
We can try to understand love through our relationship with our loved ones: our parent, our spouse, our children. Would you call the love that unite people to one another in these relationships were but just emotions? If marriage love is based on emotions, no wonder commitment shifts with the changing winds of emotions.

It looks more like an abusive father then a loving father. But I think that comes more from a poor theology then anything a God had in mind.
It seems some love of their leader united them into doing something they thought was good. Emotions usually follow actions while emotion is not the driving force it seems to be a desired outcome.
For many Christians "love" means to obey(at least for those that end up following the Bible plan and being all biblical and everything) and is a marketing ploy and excuse. I tend to think Love is a sympathetic relationship where joys and sorrows are shared as if they were your own. This would also include any love a God might have.
I question rather Christians as a whole really have any more light to shed on things then the Hebrews or Jews already had in their writings including what rabbis had to say. It seems to be the Hebrew writings that let them make the claim of not being an innovation while thinking more like the mystery religions in a Greek culture under Roman rule. Christianity seems to be a rereading and interpretation of translated Hebrew writings into Greek. Both the Jewish, Hellenistic, Gnostic, proto-orthodox as well as other schools of thought.
In the gospel of John you have an invented dialog between Peter and Jesus where two forms of Greek love are used. It is unlikely Jesus or Peter talked like that. But you never know maybe they were Hellenist Jews from Galilee (the Dead Sea Scrolls are a good example of both Persian and Greek influence) trying to give the Jews "light" and unlike his disciples Paul really understood because Christ talked to him and was Christ in him.

[cnorman18]

Yes, good questions. Is there God's providential love evident in Abel being killed by Cain? Is there God's providential love in Jesus being killed by the Pharisees? Until you understand: in justice, His upheld His word to Adam: death for disobedience; in mercy, He gives us His New Word: eternal life for doing His Will in His Son. It was in Love He created us with divine plan to share eternal life with us. Life doesn't end at death...life continues beyond this earth lifetime.


So, you conclude staying and leaving Europe is an indication of trust in God? Just like that man on a building blazing with fire praying and trust God's help, but refuse the helicopter, isn't it? If they were shown a way out, why did they refuse wisdom? Let's say the pious, faithful died faithful to God to the end...you think the less faithful who survive a few more years on earth now is at a better place than the people who were faithful to God?


True, some of us have to carry on the burden of great suffering caused by the evil, unloving acts of our own brothers and sisters in the human family. Just as Abel suffered by Cain's hands. Just as Jesus suffered by man's hands. But for your elderly friend, faith can save him. Only his faith can bring healing and forgiveness...just like in recent years, there is an account of a mother whose son was killed, but she face her son's murderer in forgiveness and reconciliation; and he eventually love her as a mother, she loves him as a son. In what seems to be great defeat under the evil ax that chops at human bonds, Love does triumph!!

I appreciate your spirit of compassion and your faith, but I think we have reached an impasse here.

Some points to consider:

Jews have no interest in "salvation." We do not think about Heaven much, and when we do, we regard it as God's business and not ours. We do not speculate about how God may judge or may have judged anyone. We have no interest whatever in becoming followers of Jesus.

These are not points for debate, and none of them are going to change. They are reasons why your answers here are of no help to us, or to me.

None of us have the right to "forgive" the events of WWII; neither does God Himself. Those who advocate forgiveness for the Holocaust must ask the six million for it, not us. There has been no repentance for those acts anyway; on the contrary, there are some living among us who celebrate, or deny, those acts, and would be quite happy to see them repeated--and the thought of offering "love" to them is an abomination. On the contrary, they should be met with as much anger, resistance, and even rage as it is possible for human beings to muster.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not "love." it is that hatred and evil and bigotry must be resisted and fought and stamped out, utterly without mercy, wherever and whenever it arises.

"Love" is not always the answer. "Love" did not liberate the camps; bullets did.

Thank you for the conversation, and may God bless you, but we are done now. Peace.

Charles

[arayhay]

Yes, good questions. Is there God's providential love evident in Abel being killed by Cain? Is there God's providential love in Jesus being killed by the Pharisees? Until you understand: in justice, His upheld His word to Adam: death for disobedience; in mercy, He gives us His New Word: eternal life for doing His Will in His Son. It was in Love He created us with divine plan to share eternal life with us. Life doesn't end at death...life continues beyond this earth lifetime.


So, you conclude staying and leaving Europe is an indication of trust in God? Just like that man on a building blazing with fire praying and trust God's help, but refuse the helicopter, isn't it? If they were shown a way out, why did they refuse wisdom? Let's say the pious, faithful died faithful to God to the end...you think the less faithful who survive a few more years on earth now is at a better place than the people who were faithful to God?


True, some of us have to carry on the burden of great suffering caused by the evil, unloving acts of our own brothers and sisters in the human family. Just as Abel suffered by Cain's hands. Just as Jesus suffered by man's hands. But for your elderly friend, faith can save him. Only his faith can bring healing and forgiveness...just like in recent years, there is an account of a mother whose son was killed, but she face her son's murderer in forgiveness and reconciliation; and he eventually love her as a mother, she loves him as a son. In what seems to be great defeat under the evil ax that chops at human bonds, Love does triumph!!

I appreciate your spirit of compassion and your faith, but I think we have reached an impasse here.

Some points to consider:

Jews have no interest in "salvation." We do not think about Heaven much, and when we do, we regard it as God's business and not ours. We do not speculate about how God may judge or may have judged anyone. We have no interest whatever in becoming followers of Jesus.

These are not points for debate, and none of them are going to change. They are reasons why your answers here are of no help to us, or to me.

None of us have the right to "forgive" the events of WWII; neither does God Himself. Those who advocate forgiveness for the Holocaust must ask the six million for it, not us. There has been no repentance for those acts anyway; on the contrary, there are some living among us who celebrate, or deny, those acts, and would be quite happy to see them repeated--and the thought of offering "love" to them is an abomination. On the contrary, they should be met with as much anger, resistance, and even rage as it is possible for human beings to muster.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not "love." it is that hatred and evil and bigotry must be resisted and fought and stamped out, utterly without mercy, wherever and whenever it arises.

"Love" is not always the answer. "Love" did not liberate the camps; bullets did.

Thank you for the conversation, and may God bless you, but we are done now. Peace.

Charles

Why isn't salvation a topic of great interest to Jews. It was for King David and other psalmists ?? What if Jesus / Yeshua is YOUR Messiah ??? Would He interest you then ??

If Yeshua is the Messiah, and I believe He is, then everyone should have their interest peaked.

I've heard it said that if one fights fire with fire, all they get is a bigger fire.
What of the 20 million Germans that died because of Hitler reign ??

Forgiveness is a very powerful thing, especially in the worst of circumstances. I am not trying to tell victims of the Holocaust what to do. I am just saying that unforgiveness is a corrosive that eats away the insides of those who carry it.

[MagusYanam]

cnorman18,

This thread has been most illuminating. I had always thought there was a great deal in being a Jew of which I simply had no idea (my father was a secular Jew who converted to Methodism in his teen years, though what I know of Judaism I know mainly from my classmates who practise it) - I'm glad I came across this thread, and read your discourse here on Judaism. Clearly it is something you are quite passionate about.

There are a couple of points on which I have a couple of quibbles. You seem to have rather flat-footedly asserted that faith is not an act of will. As you describe it, I must say that I agree - there is a streak in Christianity which does resemble the Cowardly Lion in that case. But I think that there are elements of will in faith - if you have read Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, I think the way he describes faith is very powerful, and (for me) convincing.

I expect you may agree that faith isn't something you 'have' or 'get' but something more along the lines of something describing and defining who you 'are'. When Abraham went up Mount Moriah with Isaac and prepared to sacrifice him, surely raising the knife to his son's throat - in so doing renouncing everything he had, and everything God had ever promised to him: a son in his old age, the fatherhood of a nation - was an act of enormous will. And when God gave his son back to him, such that he could receive Isaac with pleasure and gratitude, was not that an act of will as well? To tell himself that he could rest transparently in a power outside himself, to tell himself that he knew who he was, I think does indeed require a great deal of courage and will. Or, perhaps I am mistaken in what this means, having taken so much from Kierkegaard, who admitted his ignorance of Hebrew freely - I, too, am rather ignorant (to understate the case somewhat) of the original Hebrew, and the Talmudic perspective on the story.

Not necessarily. To pick a crude and obvious example, where there is love, there can also be adultery. Identifying God with Love strikes me as a pretty severe oversimplification of His nature, and edging close to something very like idolatry. There is much more to God, whether of the OT or the NT, than love.

Indeed. There is also truth, as well as justice - and adultery is neither truthful nor just. But I cannot think of love as being anything but central to the being of God, and, as you quite clearly point out, love is never really as easy as we so often make it out to be. Likewise, I don't think God is ever really as easy to make out as we so often make him to be.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not "love." it is that hatred and evil and bigotry must be resisted and fought and stamped out, utterly without mercy, wherever and whenever it arises.

The problem with hatred and bigotry and evil is that, practically speaking, fighting and stamping out without mercy is never adequate means of getting rid of them. Martin Luther King understood this well, and he was of an ancestry that had been as despised and as trodden into the ground as the Jews have been. The Civil War and the Reconstruction did not end the hatred, the bigotry and the evil that slavery had engendered against black people in the American South, however much blood had been spilled and however thoroughly slavery had been stamped out.

I don't think love is either pat or smug, any more than I think it is easy. If I may wax colloquial for a moment here, it took balls for Reverend King to get up and say that 'hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that'. Think of how that must have sounded to black people who had been suffering under the hatred of white people for hundreds of years! It took even greater balls for him to actually live out what he said, right up to the end. His love wasn't an 'I'm okay; you're okay' kind of love - Martin Luther King's love also incorporated truth, and justice and (indeed) mercy, but it was capable of combating injustice; more so, to my mind, than fighting and stamping out without mercy.

And in terms of practical achievement, I think King's success was greater than Grant's. King, by combating injustice through civil disobedience and nonviolence, achieved greater equality for black people than General Grant had by force. I would also argue, as Mark Kurlansky has, that 'it was not the Civil War that freed the slaves; and World War II did not save the Jews'.

[PC1]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

[Goat]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

They are referring to the nation of Israel. This is the 4th of the servant songs,
and the servant is identified as Israel numerous times between Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49.

[PC1]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

They are referring to the nation of Israel. This is the 4th of the servant songs,
and the servant is identified as Israel numerous times between Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49.

There are some flaws with that assumption, as Norm Geisler points out:

"First, unlike Israel, the Servant is sinless (53:9). To say that Israel is sinless is to contradict and negate virtually the entire Old Testament. The recurrent theme of the Old Testament is that Israel has sinned by breaking God's commandments and by chasing after other gods instead of one the one true God. If Israel is sinless, then why did God give the Jews a sacrificial system? Why did they have a Day of Atonement? Why did they constantly need prophets to warn them to stop sinning and to come back to God?

Second, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant is a lamb who submits without any resistance whatsoever (53:7). History shows us that Israel certainly is not a lamb--she lies down for no one.

Third, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant dies as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of others (53:4-6, 8, 10-12). But Israel has not died, nor is she paying for the sins of others. No one is redeemed on account of what the nation of Israel does. Nations, and the individuals that comprise them, are punished for their own sins."

[cnorman18]

Yes, good questions. Is there God's providential love evident in Abel being killed by Cain? Is there God's providential love in Jesus being killed by the Pharisees? Until you understand: in justice, His upheld His word to Adam: death for disobedience; in mercy, He gives us His New Word: eternal life for doing His Will in His Son. It was in Love He created us with divine plan to share eternal life with us. Life doesn't end at death...life continues beyond this earth lifetime.


So, you conclude staying and leaving Europe is an indication of trust in God? Just like that man on a building blazing with fire praying and trust God's help, but refuse the helicopter, isn't it? If they were shown a way out, why did they refuse wisdom? Let's say the pious, faithful died faithful to God to the end...you think the less faithful who survive a few more years on earth now is at a better place than the people who were faithful to God?


True, some of us have to carry on the burden of great suffering caused by the evil, unloving acts of our own brothers and sisters in the human family. Just as Abel suffered by Cain's hands. Just as Jesus suffered by man's hands. But for your elderly friend, faith can save him. Only his faith can bring healing and forgiveness...just like in recent years, there is an account of a mother whose son was killed, but she face her son's murderer in forgiveness and reconciliation; and he eventually love her as a mother, she loves him as a son. In what seems to be great defeat under the evil ax that chops at human bonds, Love does triumph!!

I appreciate your spirit of compassion and your faith, but I think we have reached an impasse here.

Some points to consider:

Jews have no interest in "salvation." We do not think about Heaven much, and when we do, we regard it as God's business and not ours. We do not speculate about how God may judge or may have judged anyone. We have no interest whatever in becoming followers of Jesus.

These are not points for debate, and none of them are going to change. They are reasons why your answers here are of no help to us, or to me.

None of us have the right to "forgive" the events of WWII; neither does God Himself. Those who advocate forgiveness for the Holocaust must ask the six million for it, not us. There has been no repentance for those acts anyway; on the contrary, there are some living among us who celebrate, or deny, those acts, and would be quite happy to see them repeated--and the thought of offering "love" to them is an abomination. On the contrary, they should be met with as much anger, resistance, and even rage as it is possible for human beings to muster.

The lesson of the Holocaust is not "love." it is that hatred and evil and bigotry must be resisted and fought and stamped out, utterly without mercy, wherever and whenever it arises.

"Love" is not always the answer. "Love" did not liberate the camps; bullets did.

Thank you for the conversation, and may God bless you, but we are done now. Peace.

Charles

Why isn't salvation a topic of great interest to Jews. It was for King David and other psalmists ??

That is the Christian interpretation, and Christians are free to read the Bible in any way they choose; but we Jews have our own, and just as we do not dictate to Christians how they must read it, Christians have no right to dictate its proper understanding to us. It was our Book long before it was yours.

The concern of Judaism is on this life, not the next. It has always been so. We leave judgment to God, even insofar as it concerns ourselves.

When we were liberated from slavery in Egypt, we left a culture that was totally obsessed with death and the afterlife. This may be why life after death is not mentioned in the Torah, and why it remains an issue of relatively small concern among Jews today. We regard it as God's business, and we trust God; and we are content to leave it at that.

We do not believe that anyone can bear the sins of anyone else; we do not believe, and have never believed, that we are required to fulfill "the whole of the Law": and we do not believe that one can be "saved" by merely believing anything. We believe tbat God's justice and mercy are both perfect, and that's good enough for us.

Judaism is not Christianity.

What if Jesus / Yeshua is YOUR Messiah ??? Would He interest you then ??

If Yeshua is the Messiah, and I believe He is, then everyone should have their interest peaked.

I refer you to one of my very first threads here, "Why Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah."

I've heard it said that if one fights fire with fire, all they get is a bigger fire.
What of the 20 million Germans that died because of Hitler reign ??

Do you think that Jews regard them as of no importance?

Forgiveness is a very powerful thing, especially in the worst of circumstances. I am not trying to tell victims of the Holocaust what to do. I am just saying that unforgiveness is a corrosive that eats away the insides of those who carry it.

You misunderstand. The true victims of the Holocaust are dead, and will forgive no one. The rest of us have no right to speak for them and forgive on their behalf. Neither does God Himself.

[Goat]

(Not sure if this has been brought up yet)

I'd ask them to read Isaiah 53 and ask me who they think it is referring to.

They are referring to the nation of Israel. This is the 4th of the servant songs,
and the servant is identified as Israel numerous times between Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49.

There are some flaws with that assumption, as Norm Geisler points out:

"First, unlike Israel, the Servant is sinless (53:9). To say that Israel is sinless is to contradict and negate virtually the entire Old Testament. The recurrent theme of the Old Testament is that Israel has sinned by breaking God's commandments and by chasing after other gods instead of one the one true God. If Israel is sinless, then why did God give the Jews a sacrificial system? Why did they have a Day of Atonement? Why did they constantly need prophets to warn them to stop sinning and to come back to God?

Second, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant is a lamb who submits without any resistance whatsoever (53:7). History shows us that Israel certainly is not a lamb--she lies down for no one.

Third, unlike Israel, the Suffering Servant dies as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of others (53:4-6, 8, 10-12). But Israel has not died, nor is she paying for the sins of others. No one is redeemed on account of what the nation of Israel does. Nations, and the individuals that comprise them, are punished for their own sins."

Fortunately for the Jewish faith, Norm Geisler is wrong. He also should read the commentary about Isaiah before shooting his mouth off. There is a person who suffers too, but not the servant.

The reason , even if Isaiah 53 IS talking about a human, that it could NOT be Jesus is that the servant's life is extended,and has children.

Being killed on the cross certainly isn't having an extended life.

Textual analisys of Isaiah 53 can be found here, including some very important points that are mistranslations into the english by Christian translators