Use Your Own Brain!

I had  an interesting, spiritual conversation with a Jewish friend of mine today. He believes Judaism. So I asked him how righteous does a Jewish person have to be, in order for him to be considered righteous. He replied, telling me that this was a tricky question. I said, "Well, there must be a dividing line where the righteous are on one side, and the unrighteous are on the other. People cannot be both righteous and unrighteous."

He said, "You can be righteous in some areas and unrighteous in others." But... a little leaven spoils the whole lump! If I put a little poison in a glass of clean water, which water in the cup would you be willing to attempt to drink? If a bunch of roaches had been in your loaf of bread, which piece of the bread would you feel safe breaking off and eating? A little unrighteousness makes a person fall short of God's perfect, holy, righteous standard, against which He will judge us. ...

I asked him if he had kept the commandments. He said, “well no one could keep all of them.”  Being somewhat familiar with Jewish thought, I knew he wasn’t thinking only of the 10 commandments, but rather the 613 Mitzvot. So I clarified... "Well, I just mean the 10 moral commandments written on stone at Sinai." I told him my guess is that he's probably broken a few. I also admitted I wasn’t proud of it, but I had, in some sense, broken them all. He said,”no you have never murdered anyone right?”  I said, well not physically, but... if that is the extent to which you understand that law, then you aren’t getting the entire meaning of the law; which more accurately reflects the awesome Holy nature and character of God.

I told him that according to my beliefs, murder is the full manifestation of a poison stream that flows from the heart of a person, which begins with hatred. If you have hatred toward your brother (i.e. showing the middle finger to someone who cuts you off in traffic), you have committed murder of the heart. This is how Jesus taught us to understand the meaning. So yes, I have committed murder in the sense that it is the end of a river that flows from hatred at the source, and I have felt and expressed that towards others in my lifetime. He went on to restate, “well, still no one can keep them all.”  I said “hold on, someone did keep them all.”  He asked, “Who?”  I said, “Yeshua.”  I gave the Hebrew name of Jesus, because my friend, being Jewish, has been bar mitzvahed, sings songs and recites passages in Hebrew... so I figured he would know this, but he did ask, “Who is Yeshua?”.

I said, “You don’t know really?” “No”, he replied. Me, "Well then how about Yehoshua?" (Another way to say Jesus in Hebrew) Him, “No, don’t know who that is either.”  I answered, "Yehoshua is the name Joshua in Hebrew, a name meaning salvation, which is the same name as Jesus!" He said, “Oh well we Jews don’t believe in Jesus”. I said, “I know you don’t, but I bet your unbelief isn’t based upon any personal investigation or independent thinking.”  He asked, “What do you mean?”  I replied, “Well I am guessing you never read the New Testament, that book which contains in writing, Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah.”  He answered “No, never have because we don’t believe the New Testament is from God”. He continued, “there must be a reason that we don’t read it in the synagogue!”  I said, “I know, but that is because, in this area of life, you blindly accept what others tell you”.

I went on to say that God gave us all our own brain to study, discern, evaluate, measure, look into things and make conclusions with independent thought, but instead of reading, studying and investigating the New Testament to see if its claims are true, you simply claim that it isn’t because someone else has told you that it isn’t... and since they are from your family or culture or ethnicity we can all tend to adopt a prideful ‘us against them’ mentality. So basically you trust others (because they are like you), to tell you whether something so important as these spiritual things are true or not, and then just parrot what they say. That doesn’t sound like independent thinking to me.

Now if you endeavored to read the New Testament (the book that you reject without ever opening it), which is the source for us to learn of Jesus, objectively and without bias... then it would be more fair after reading it to claim unbelief, than it is without even addressing the source. God gave your own brain for independent thought, and in this area you have yet to use it.

Jews are some of the most intelligent people in the world. They are few in number and yet have been awarded some 1/5th of all the nobel prizes and there are so many more accomplishments that could be named. Their accomplishments reflect amazing ability for forward and independent thinking, and I personally really admire this about Jewish people... but when it comes to their traditions and spiritual learning, many of them willingly surrender their thoughts to be held captive by their rabbis and rulers, without ever enjoying the free exercise of using their own brain!

I would encourage anyone to read the New Testament objectively and without bias and then make a decision about whether you believe what it says, and particularly about Jesus. But don’t make that decision blindly without even addressing the source that some people deny is true. Imagine never reading this article and someone tells you they don’t like it and you shouldn’t either. Then you say, I don’t like this article... but you never even read it, so how can you honestly say that? Look at the source yourself and use your own brain... Oh, and ask God for understanding and clarity. It is from Him by which those things come.