This is an open-comment theology blog where I will post various theological musings, mostly in sermon or essay form, for others to read and comment on. If what I say here interests you, you may want to check out some of my books. Feel free to criticize, to critique, to comment, but keep comments to the point and respectful. Many of these posts have been published elsewhere, but I wanted them collected and made available to a wider audience.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Christians & Jews
Many modern Christian theological texts spend a lot of time making it clear that we, as Christians, don't do those things that Jews used to do. Christianity is moving beyond the mistakes of Judaism, and of the Jews. That is just what it means to be a Christian. But I spend a lot of time trying to show that we are rather quite like the Jews of old, and that the Jews had the same positives and negatives we do. The mistakes of the ancient Jews are not opportunities to criticize Judaism, either modern-day or ancient, nor to single Jews out as guilty of some particular sins that God couldn't seem to correct. The Jews of the Old Testament were people...they did things right and did thing wrong. We can learn from their successes and failures as we can any people. To the degree we see the way we commit the same sins, we free ourselves of the sin of anti-Judaism, and we find solidarity with our Jewish brothers.
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