First, we want you to know that we consider you to be our spiritual brothers and sisters. That is so because we consider your Father Abraham to be our spiritual father as well. Moreover, we also consider the other patriarchs, the prophets and many of the sages to be our spiritual fathers. We do this because we think that when God said: “honor your father and mother” he was referring to our spiritual fathers and mothers as well as our natural fathers and mothers. The way we see it, that makes you our brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n
Next, we want you to know that we consider Israel\/Judaism to be the spiritual root to which we are grafted. We take seriously what the Apostle Paul (Shaul) said in these scriptures in the book of Romans 11:13-24.<\/a><\/p>\n Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, glorify my ministry 14 in order to make my own people jealous, and thus save some of them, 15 For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead! 16 If the part of the dough offered as first fruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; and if the root is holy, then the branches also are holy. 17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, 18 do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 You will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. 23 And even those of Israel,if they do not persist in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you have been cut \u00a0from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree.<\/p>\n In summary, Jews are the cultivated olive tree, and we and Muslims are a branch cut off from a wild olive tree grafted into you. We love that imagery. Most Christians expediently skip over these scriptures because they effectively subordinate Christianity to Judaism. That kind of thinking is not well accepted in most Christian doctrines. We, however, take what God says literally. It is Christianity that is grafted into Judaism, not the other way around. Thus Jews are our spiritual fathers whom we must honor if we want life to go well for us.<\/p>\n <\/a>We are also very mindful that these scriptures warn us that we should neither boast or become proud but stand in awe of our spiritual heritage. And so we are full of awe, honor and respect.\u00a0And to make clear that those are not just empty words, we we think it important that you know the following about us:<\/p>\n So what does all of that mean to you? Probably nothing, but it means a lot to us because of how it connects us to you and our spiritual heritage.<\/p>\n Of course we do hope that our shared history does mean something to you also, and our purpose here is to explain why it is important.<\/p>\n If you read anywhere else in this website, you will learn that we have a lot of experience with religious forms and functions in general. This is so because we live in America, and, because we were raised and indoctrinated in Christian denominations, most of our relationships have been with Christians. Furthermore, acquaintance with the Scriptures that inform the Jewish religion gives us insights into the legal roots of Judaism. For all these reasons and more, you might say we have been surrounded by religion our entire lives.<\/p>\n In our readings of the Torah, and other scriptures (both First Covenant and New Covenant), we have come to understand that God is more concerned with function (what is going on inside the heart and mind) than he is concerned with what is going on in the body (ritualistic function.) And what we see, in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, is that there is a lot of external form and little to no internal function (i.e. in the heart.) We suspect that this is what Paul was referring to in Romans 11:13-24.<\/a> And it is on that issue that you will find many places in this web site that we confront in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.<\/p>\n To be brutally honest, in too many cases we see all form and no function. That occurs when obedience to religious laws<\/a> is present but obedience to God’s spiritual laws<\/a> is missing. Christians often condemn the Jews because of the many ritualistic forms that Judaism requires. They say “We don’t want to be under the law (or legalistic) like the Jews”. Christians fail to recognize, however, that ritualistic form has been present in its traditions since the days of Constantine and the antecedents of Roman Catholicism. Protestant Christians fail to recognize that the seeds of ritualistic form found in both Judaism and Catholicism are present in contemporary Christianity as well, and that various denominations have added their own traditions to those earlier forms to create their own distinctive styles of religion.<\/p>\n The way we see it, this long history (thousands of years) has moved all those religions (those that claim to be rooted in the faith of Father Abraham) far from what God had in mind when He first called Abraham and then called Israel out of Egypt and gave them the Torah.<\/p>\n The way we see it, all those religions have obscured the simplicity of what God intended with various forms (traditions) that were designed to create distinctive religious practices and traditions that could not be confused with earlier religions. The result of all this accumulated religious form is, in our opinion, radically less than what God intended for His people (Jews and gentiles alike).<\/p>\n A primary purpose of this website is to expose religious form for what it is and redirect people back to God’s original intent. That intent was and is to represent himself to the nations through a people who would be holy as He is holy by obeying his spiritual laws<\/a> written on their hearts<\/a>. Jews, in our opinion have an advantage in this process because they have the written law as part of their heritage. Muslims, Jews and Christians are all disadvantaged, however, in that their traditions have become more important than God’s purposes. If God is willing, however, \u00a0this website will help in some small way to open everyone’s eyes regarding unfruitful traditions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n LOVE, NOT CONDEMNATION<\/strong> Christians with whom we once went to church will think that we are back-slidden heathens because it appears to them that we have abandoned the faith that they cherish so much. Jews will probably not have the same reaction but there will be offense nonetheless.<\/p>\n Jews will not be much appeased in their response to this website with the knowledge that we spent several years studying about Judaism and practicing Jewish traditions, but we are compelled to tell a little of that history. We reported our forays into Judaism at some length in Moderator’s Religious History<\/a>. And, although it will probably not mean much to anyone, we will also report that we consider the years we spent reading the weekly Torah portion, weekly observance of Shabbat, annual observance of Passover, Shavuot and Succot to be very memorable and instrumental in God’s plan to bring us to the spiritual place we are today.<\/p>\n What we are trying to say is that we have not come to this place with an attitude of condemnation for Jews past or present. There is a soft place in our hearts for Jews and Israel that exists at least in part because of one Bible study trip to Israel in the late 90’s. For a time we stayed up to date on Jewish and Israeli issues through our subscription to the International Jerusalem Post. We found that this kept us much better informed about middle east issues than all the western new media. It also kept us current (more or less) on domestic issues in Israel. And we supplement all that with occasional Netflix movies on Israeli\/Jewish themes.<\/p>\n In addition to all of the above we have read the following books and keep them in our personal library:<\/p>\n\n
\n
\nWe are prepared to accept that Jews in all movements in Judaism<\/a> will be offended that we have labeled Judaism as a Defiled Religion<\/a>. And we doubt that you will not be much comforted by the fact that we labeled Christianity as a\u00a0Defiled Religion<\/a>. Nevertheless, we must report that all religions are off track.<\/p>\n