Isaac Garvin | December 08, 2021 | Shvil HaBaruch, The Blessed Path
On my wife’s desk is a small ceramic bowl––white, with a thin floral pattern scrolling around it. Inside of the bowl are 152 assorted push pins, a paperclip, a small brass screw eye, two finish nails–one bent, and a puzzle piece.
The puzzle piece is small, probably from a puzzle of 1000 pieces or more. It is a perimeter piece, pale purple and dappled with varying hues of yellow. The colors remind me of something you might see in a Van Gogh but to my knowledge we have never had a Van Gogh puzzle. In fact, no one in the house can remember what puzzle this piece goes to or where this piece came from in the first place. But we keep it. We keep it because somewhere there is a puzzle with a missing piece. And it’s a perimeter piece! (At least its not a corner piece, right?) Somewhere there is a purple nighttime sky full of yellow stars that has a hole in it, or a field of lavender dotted with anemones that just can’t be completed.
Somewhere out there is a person with an incomplete puzzle…and we hold the answer.
Everyone has to make sense of their world, and those of us who have discovered our Hebrew roots and have come out of traditional organized religion have found ourselves faced with the task of completing what feels like the puzzle of our lives. Who are we? What does the Bible really say? When did the truth get lost? Where do we belong? How much of ourselves can we leave behind?
A new friend was just talking about this in an email. He referred to it as ‘the search for reconciliation of theology with what we perceive.’ He was making an observation about an apparent dividing point hinging on the relationship between Torah keeping and salvation.
I believe that where people end up going (within this movement) says a lot about how they have reconciled their theology. In many cases, I think people are either too tired to do the work this process requires and they just give up and allow themselves to fall into existing categories, or they don’t realize that there might be another option available beyond the two that already exist–Judaism and Christianity. This is why I see the majority of camps within the Messianic/Hebrew Roots movement as basically being still tied to these two “parent” religions and not being a new thing in a really substantial or defining way. Each group could be defined by the proportion of “old DNA” that they carry from one parent with respect to that of the other parent, and each would fall somewhere on a spectrum that spans between the two parent religions but does not actually contain any “new DNA.” We have personally watched individuals come out of Christianity, travel all the way across the spectrum, and end up converting to Judaism. There may be new varieties of the same old religions, but where is the “new man?”
Almost everyone who enters this movement ends up in one of two groups. The first closely resembles Judaism (the more orthodox variety) and in their actual operations I see very little difference. They use the word “messianic” but they do not submit to the headship of Ye’shua and are still operating in a hierarchical manner.
Judaism prides itself on being opinionated and argumentative. They pride themselves on their understanding of the finest points of the law but do not follow Ye’shua who said that the two greatest commandments were to love YHVH your Elohim with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself.
The second group more closely resembles Christianity. People in this group may still openly identify as Christian–Christians who have discovered the ‘Hebrew roots of the Christian faith.’ This group may have different holidays now, but they still retain a traditional Christian view regarding the work of the Messiah and the mechanics of salvation. They also still retain their Christian enmity towards the Law which reduces YHVH’s laws to nothing more than “guiding spiritual principles.” In this camp it is now permissible to keep the Torah, but still not actually necessary. Christianity prides itself on being loving and believes that this is the sign of their faith. “They will know we are Christians by our love.” But Christianity can’t hide its enmity toward Yah’s law and their hypocrisy is plainly visible to the rest of the world, though they are typically not aware of it themselves. (This seriously undermines their “Christian witness.) At its heart it is rebellious towards Yah though still trying to be kind towards their fellow man.
(There is a third option, but more on that later :)
So where do you fall on the spectrum? Have you been able to successfully put yourself in a box that fits somewhere between Judaism and Christianity? Have you found a label that does your new identity justice? Do you have an identity that you can be proud of, that satisfies your soul? And, does it match what you have perceived or felt in your heart all along?
Or, after spending considerable time and effort trying to assemble the puzzle of your new spiritual identity, do you still have some pieces left on the table that just don’t seem to fit? Maybe you feel like a puzzle piece yourself? Like a puzzle piece with no puzzle?
Teshuvah Ministries will soon be releasing new content about the Melchizedek Priesthood. If you haven’t discovered the beauty of this “third option” then please stay tuned.
Blessed be the Journey,
Isaac