#My father was not a wandering Aramaen.

[sigynsilica]

So I've been tagging a few of my posts as an exvangelical. I feel I need to elaborate on that. I'm an ex-messianic "Jew" and in this essay I will explain what I find problematic about the very movement I grew up in.

Christians are polytheistic.

There's no two ways about it, and that isn't a bad thing. The bad thing is that Christians chronically put down polytheists for being heathens and heretics while worshipping three separate (but also not separate I promise) entities at the same time.

Let me elaborate. Christians believe that their deity is a three-in-one package deal. They worship God the father, who is the Big God who created the universe and typically is the one just referred to as "God," Jesus the son, who came to earth and was tortured to death as a living sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit/Ghost, who is mainly responsible for personal conviction, and has the ability to grant human beings supernatural gifts like prophecy or speaking other languages.

These are three separate entities, but also the same entity. I've heard it explained by saying that your arm is not you, but it is a part of you, in the same way that Jesus is not God, but he is a part of God. If that makes any sense. Most of the time when I ask Christians about the three-in-one unit known as the Trinity, they say it isn't supposed to make logical sense, but it's true, and you're to take it on faith.

Now that would be fine and dandy, if they didn't insist they weren't polytheistic. But they are, and they do. Throughout many religions, there are many deities that have this multiple-but-also-singular phenomenon, like the Norns in Norse mythology, or even arguably Cerberus.

Here's where the problem comes in.

Many Christians believe that it is okay for them to both worship Jesus, and dabble their toes into Jewish tradition and culture.

Judaism is monotheistic. That means that a polytheistic worldview is completely incompatible with their own worldview. It doesn't mean Jewish people can't be friends with Christians, but it does mean their separate religions are dynamically opposed. If you pray to Jesus, sing worship songs to Jesus, ask Jesus for help in times of trouble, you are not worshipping the same God the Jews are when you're doing that.

Jesus was a Jewish man. That doesn't make you Jewish for worshipping him, and it doesn't make you Jewish for worshipping in a way that you think he worshipped like. You, as a Christian, have no claim to Jewish tradition or culture.

There are more reasons than just that by which Judaism and Christianity differ, and many Christians pull random information about Jews and what they believe out of their butt and sell it as objective fact to make themselves feel better about themselves and closer to who they believe is one of their gods. For instance, I was taught it's the Jewish tradition to hold a funeral for your child if they convert to Christianity. Baloney, hogwash, and ick. Many Christians are taught that Jews believe they are saved from Hell by their works. Well let me clue you in on something... A lot of Jews don't even believe in Hell.

Anyway, my parents first got into Messianic "Judaism" (I'm going to keep putting the quotation marks there because my parents aren't Jews, they never have been, they don't claim to be, and for the most part, they won't admit this, but they're definitely still Baptists at heart) through the celebration of Passover, or Pesach. They believed that they were commanded in Scriptures to hold a Passover Seder for themselves if they wanted to do the will of God.

Here's the thing though. The very first time Passover is mentioned in the Torah (which is the first five books of Moses and the Jewish rulebook) it's stated very explicitly that you have to be Jewish to celebrate it. Well, it says you have to be circumcised, but given that there are Jews who cannot be circumcised, and there are non-Jews who are circumcised anyway, it's most definitely referring to a belief in Judaism. You've got to be Jewish to celebrate Passover.

I bring this up to illustrate that Passover in particular, and Judaism as a whole, is what we in the Pagan community would refer to as a "closed practice". That means that if you are not Jewish, you can't do the Jewish thing. It's disrespectful and rude to claim the Jewish stuff for yourself while not being Jewish.

The way it's been explained to me by a Jewish friend is that the main problem comes in a misunderstanding of the word "chosen". Yes, the Jews are God's chosen people... But that doesn't mean they're his favorites. Chosen, in this context, is referring to the way the Jewish people believe that God selected them in particular to do his commandments. It's an honor, but it isn't for everyone, and you can't become a chosen one just by doing the commandments. It's like if my dad told me to do the dishes, I am the chosen one. I am not my dad's favorite. If I wanted to honor my dad, I would do the dishes when he told me to do them. If my sister does the dishes, that doesn't make her the one my dad chose to do the dishes. She just did my job for me.

Obviously it's more complicated than that when a non-Jew decides they're allowed to do the commandments detailed in the Torah without actually converting to Judaism. It's way more problematic because in the Jewish perspective (at least from what I understand, if there are Jews out there reading this pls pls correct me if I'm wrong) y'all have your own chores to be doing. Non-Jews serve a purpose in God's world, which is why it's completely okay for you guys to not keep the laws. In fact, I know there's allowances in the Talmud that say you can sell unkosher food to non-Jews, because there's not a single problem with you eating it. Most Jews don't think people are morally wrong for eating pork, for instance. It's just something they've been asked not to do.

In my house growing up, we weren't allowed to scream unless we were in immediate danger. That doesn't make screaming inherently morally wrong. It means my mom has sensory issues and so she told us not to scream. If a kid screamed for no reason at the playground, we wouldn't have looked at him like they'd murdered someone, nor would we assume they were in immediate danger, because we all understood it was just our parents who'd told us not to scream.

It's just the Jewish people who've been told by their God to adhere to the Jewish tradition.

Just read the Wikipedia article on Messianic Judaism. Y'all aren't Jewish. Judaism is so fundementally different from Christianity that you can't just duct tape Jesus to Judaism and call it good. It doesn't work that way. You've completely misunderstood the very nature of Judaism.

And this is totally beside the fact that historically, it was the Christians who've been hurting the Jewish community for the very traditions you're now trying to edge your way into. Maybe not you personally, but I don't blame the Jewish community for being extremely wary when non-Jews start reaching for their traditions.

The both of you guys sharing half a Bible does not equate to you believing the same thing.

Furthermore, I've recently been introduced to the concept of philo-semitism. I'm by no means an expert on this phenomenon, but I'll do my best to explain it. It's a certain style of anti-Semitism that places Jews up on a pedestal and glorifies them as The Chosen People Of God (misunderstanding that word Chosen again) and claims they are doing Everything Right because that's what God told them to do.

To me this has the same vibes as saying that pre-colonization people were perfect angels who did no wrong and it was the White Guys who came in and ruined everything and brought evil into the world Pandora's box style.

The belief that a certain ethnic group is inherently better is racism. It's not the systemic racism we know and hate in it's form in the modern day, but it's very closely linked, and the people it hurts the most may not be who you think it is. If you're claiming that first-nation people can do no wrong, you're taking away their humanity. You're claiming that they aren't people, because People Do Bad Stuff. All the fricking time. It's what makes us human.

So to believe that the Jewish people are inherently better because of their Jewishness? That is a racist belief. Don't try to be like the Jewish people because you think they're spiritually superior to you. That's a racist ideology. There are practicing Jews out there who are Bad People. That's because they're humans, and some humans are just really crappy humans. Their Judaism does not inherently make them a good person in the same way that Christian faith does not make someone a good person.

And if you act on those racist beliefs by celebrating a holiday that was never yours to celebrate, you are doing racist things. The very last thing Jewish people need is for the religion that's been responsible for so many years of oppression and pain to swallow them whole, until people don't even remember that Passover is for the Jews, and the Jews only.

So yes. No matter what they say, my parents are still evangelical Christians. They raised me to be—you guessed it—an evangelical Christian. This is why I refer to myself as an exvangelical, and not ex-jewish, even though I may talk about not going home for Sukkot instead of not going home for Christmas.