Faith/Culture

While I was preparing to move to Israel, the vast majority of my friends who are believers in Yeshua were overjoyed for me (and more than a little jealous in most cases ;-)). But one of the most recurring responses was that they told me they would be interested to hear what my experience would be like regarding my identity as one of his followers. So, a few words about my experiences with it…

It has been so fun to be here because easily one of my favorite subjects of conversation is faith, and while I have found that this topic is one that many people here are shocked to encounter, the topic of religion is a very common one, and the one is not necessarily unrelated to the other. What has struck me most is the paradigm I find most common here that is in stark contrast with the one I most often encounter in the states.

Most people I meet in the USA (though most of my interactions are in the northern states…) recognize that each individual has to seek truth him or herself, and while people may disagree, we all mostly recognize it as a conscious and personal decision. Because of this paradigm, when I say to someone that I became a Christian at age 18, they nod their heads and usually ask about my process, or share their own.

When the same statement comes up here, I am met with silence and a look of utter confusion. It just happened an hour ago. My friend who I’ve been working with for six months or so said a word in English that I didn’t recognize. When I asked him to repeat it three times, he finally said, “You’re a Christian, it’s a Christian thing!” And I laughed and said I’d never heard of it, and I’ve been a Christian for 10 years. The silence again. He just stared at me. “How old are you?” “Twenty-eight.” He was baffled. “What were you for the first eighteen years? . . . Muslim?”

You see, in Israel ‘everyone’ is Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. And those labels have no connection to what you believe regarding a higher power or a spiritual reality. You are whatever you are. To say that for the first eighteen years of my life I was “nothing” regarding faith is, to my friends here, as if I said that for the first eighteen years of my life I did not live anywhere. Of course I can go on to clarify that I believed in a higher power…that in America I would be called an agnostic, etc…but all of that makes no sense to them. Here, what I was for the first 18 years would be categorized with one of the three labels above and then a sub-category label would be added: “not religious,” which can apply to any of the three. However, that would imply that now I would be called “religious” which is far from a compliment in my paradigm. Anyway…

You can just imagine the balegan that ensues if I make the statement that I much more relate to and share beliefs with biblical Judaism than Catholicsm. Almost weekly someone finds out that I read the Bible (their term for the Old Testament). Almost always their response is, “What? You’re not Jewish, are you??” They wonder why a Christian would read the Hebrew texts, and assure me that it is very uncommon. I explain that the majority of believers that I know in the states (and all of the Messianic believers I know here) read both the Old Covenant and the New Covenant and that we believe that neither is complete without the other. (The difference here, of course, is that many people who carry the label of “Christian” have nothing to do with the beliefs I associate with the term, but were just born into the label, and don’t read any specific text.) My Jewish professors last term were shocked when I could answer questions I didn’t even consider obscure trivia – questions regarding Adam, Eve, Noah, that kind of thing. Or from stories like Daniel in the Lion’s Den. I probably know more about them than your average American because I read the accounts regularly and have done studies specifically on them, but the questions they’re asking are not details—it is information you could know just as well from The Simpsons, or political cartoons, or the comic strips in the Sunday newspaper. It’s a bit surreal sometimes, to be in a “Jewish” state, but to realize the Judiasm they’re referring to is Rabbinical Judaism, not Biblical Judaism, and to realize how distinct the two are from one another.

Passover is coming up. My friend was astounded to hear that my congregation will be celebrating it and told me I am not Jewish, why would I celebrate Passover? Of course I answered that Yeshua is vitally important to me and without the first Passover there would have been no Yeshua. One of my other friends today was happy to hear I will be going to the Seder dinner and said that yes, I should experience it because I’m in Israel. I told her that my congregations at home also honor Passover not only because it is part of our spiritual ancestry, but also because we believe that God orchestrated it not only as a remembrance to Him saving His people and bringing them out of slavery, but also as a foretelling of His Messiah to come. The amount of prophecy in the Seder to Yeshua is overwhelming (I’ve heard a number of sermons on it throughout the years and am always re-shocked) and I’m not sure why more believers in the states don’t keep the Seder annually as a reminder and promise.

Anyway, most people seem really curious about my weird paradigm and ask lots of questions. And I am getting more used to making my answers more accessible – it’s hard to answer someone’s question on any topic if you don’t know where they’re coming from (I still have a learning curve regarding explaining sign language and linguistics to people, too ;-)), and as I become more familiar with the common paradigms here, I am learning to make myself more clear since I’m not dealing with my own shock (lol), which means the conversations can cover the basics more efficiently and move on more smoothly. :)

I am so so so thankful for the congregation I am a part of here. They welcomed me with open arms, have taught me SO much – with unstressed patience, and continue to “love on me” as my friends back home say, and allow me to love on them back. :) They have totally become like family and I will miss them dearly when I return stateside.