ATTENTION FELLOW JEWS! LISTEN UP!

OK, so it's Sunday morning and I'm turning the analog radio dial from where it was when I turned it on to where I want to listen. There are several Christian radio stations on the dial (not nearly as many as in other parts of the country) but on Sundays many other stations also play local and syndicated Sunday Church stuff.

So I'm dialing slowly because getting to the station I wanted is tricky. I hear what is obviously a sermon and the few words that I hear go something like this (paraphrasing):

Do the Jews need to be proselytized to? If not, what does that mean about other religions? Can we make an exception for one religion? Do the Jews hold a special place that separates them from others?

The speaker proceeds to explain some rather powerful messages about the staying power of the Jews as a people and religion, and of Hebrew as a spoken language, and, no surprise, concludes that this is a modern-day miracle Divinely ordained.

Then he talks a little about the official positions of the Church regarding Jews and the need and reason (or lacks thereof) to proselytize to them.

This is provided as some context But I'm not here to reproduce the sermon. So let me get to the point.

At first it sounded like the speaker was about to make the case for why Jews do, in fact, hold a special place and don't need to accept Jesus. But that's not where he went. Where he went though, congealed for me very clearly the single-most fundamental (no pun intended) difference between Jews and Evangelical Christians. This was by no means an epiphany, it's something I've understood for a long time and I knew it to my core for as long as I can remember. But, to have it spelled out so clearly and so concisely is why I'm writing.

The basic flaw is one that one cannot blame an Evangelical Christian for making. But it is a fact that every Jew must understand if they want to help other people understand the differences between Jews and these types of Christians.

Here it is: The assumption by Evangelical Christians about everyone else in the world (including Jews) is that everyone else WANTS to go to heaven. Everyone else WANTS an automatic free pass to heaven, and, everyone WANTS salvation.

The speaker's argument was that Jews believe being "chosen" = automatic salvation and automatic acceptance to heaven.

Well, that's where their argument and their efforts break down. Because, as Jews, we are not working to go to heaven, we are not working to reserve our place in heaven, we're not working for automatic salvation and a free pass to heaven. We simply cannot "accept" anything to move towards being near G*d, we must WORK FOR IT!

That's what we were chosento do!
We were chosen to WORK for the betterment of the world, not simply believe so we get to heaven (whatever that is, and whatever the alternative is ;-) ).

Bottom line: Jews don't have to believe in or accept Jesus to get to heaven, because our goal isn't the self-centered goal of getting to heaven. Our goal is to improve the world by working at and trying to follow the laws of the Torah ourselves. Not by getting others to do it, but to do it ourselves.

And this is what the Evangelical Christians don't understand. And, by the laws of unintended consequences, they fail to achieve the betterment of people and betterment of our world they strive for via their simplified belief in belief alone as the means towards being better.

By removing any personal responsibility towards work, towards fellow people, and study, and replacing it with a simple "believe and receive" standard, they've comletely missed the point on what Judaism is about and have eliminated that which makes religion have true personal meaning and fulfillment.