"LOOKING THROUGH GREEK EYES"

By Yochanan ben Yisrael

“I’m not a Greek,” one might say. So, why do we find it difficult to embrace the supremacy of the Most High? Whenever someone comes along and tells us to follow the commandments, we resist, usually stating, “The Law does not apply to us, because we are under grace.” We also use the excuse that we do not FEEL convicted to follow the Torah, or are not LED to do so by the Ruach Haqodesh. Where do these ideas come from? Why do we feel justified in deciding which blessings and curses we feel are acceptable and which ones we will not accept? How can we justify thinking that the Spirit of the Most-High would lead us to do anything contrary to His written Word? How is it that we can interpret the New Covenant based on the Greek writings and refuse to acknowledge the relevance of the Hebrew writings of the Torah and the prophets? How is it that we can claim to keep the Ten Commandments, yet we reject the fourth – the seventh day Sabbath – by stating that “Jesus” is our Sabbath, thus in essence negating one of the ten? How is it that we can read in the Torah and the Prophets and the Writings of the Apostles’ about the prohibition of idols, yet we have no conscience against carrying, kissing, and enshrining crosses? We see little wrong with pictures of “Jesus” hanging on our walls, but we would not dare write the Torah upon our doorposts, as commanded by the Most High? Why do we claim to love YHWH and yet continue in deliberate sin? These are a few of the contradictions that we seem to think nothing of and have found normal and acceptable in our culture. Why?

We speak Greek everyday in the common English language. “Pandemic” is derived from Greek and includes the name of Pan. According to [wikipedia.org](https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u....=https%3A%2F%2Fwikip this is the name of a Greek deity in the form of a hybrid of a goat and a man. We speak this name and many other words contrary to the command of the Most High to “not let the names of false elohym depart from our mouths,” and we usually don’t even consider that doing so is an offense to the Most High. We easily dismiss it by saying something like, “It is English, and we cannot communicate without it.” This is a fair assessment, and the point of this document is not to point fingers at others, because all of us are guilty. It is also not the point of this document to enter into a linguistics debate. The point is to expose the fact that we look at the world through Greek eyes, and we do it every day, from the moment we wake until we lay down at night. We need to be frank with ourselves and admit this, so we can correct it insofar as is possible.

Our democracy is based on Greek government political structures claiming representation of the masses. Our capitol buildings were built with Greek architecture. We have erected spires replicating phallic symbols of power on our churches and other places of worship. We have memorial statues all over the place, raising historical figures onto pedestals. We create epic tales of chivalry and heroic deeds perpetrated by them. We entertain ourselves with our addictions to sports and theater, thriving on fictional and contrived histories, glamorizing the common and deifying the entertainers by calling them “superstars” and immortalizing them in sidewalk plaques – just as the Greeks did.

As a society, we are becoming more and more immune to moral absolutes, and we tolerate those things that YHWH hates as they creep into the things that occupy our time, like tabloids and the daily news. We seek to always learn something new, and feel under-informed if we do not have that - usually ugly news about other people; gossip and slander have become our staples of daily entertainment. Entertainment, itself has to be sensational, and if it helps us to escape the daily life in emotional highs and lows, then we feel like we have accomplished something worthwhile. The stories, fact or fiction or both, mixed and mashed together into a soup of feelings which guides our thinking, teach that morality is based on how we feel at a given moment, rather than teaching that which is laid down by a supreme Elohym.

Even in our religious lives, we accept lies and sin as inevitable and normal. We excuse our lack of obedience by claiming that we are not responsible for our behavior, as if powers beyond our control are working on us to force us to do things we ought not do. We define the Most High in terms that we describe ourselves. Instead of holding ourselves to His standard, we bring Him down to our standard, stating that He “knows our hearts,” and “our hearts love Him” while our bodies do evil. We do this as if He will look upon our rebellion with tenderness and favor, even though He said, “The soul that sins will die.” We have viewed a righteous Elohym as just like one of us, driven by emotion and swayed by human reasoning.

In our thinking, we have an easy time of saying one thing but doing another. This is called Cognitive Dissonance, and we do it without a second thought, believing that we are somehow justified in doing so. We make promises we do not intend to keep, or carelessly break them later because we think we can claim unforeseen circumstances later. We think that we are entitled to what we did not work for and we expect the government to provide for our welfare, even if we do not work. We also expect others to tolerate our behaviors, even though they are incorrect, changing the definitions of terms to make them more acceptable. As an example, instead of saying the one “stole money,” we might say that one “appropriated funds,” or instead of “I lied,” it is I just “stretched the truth.”

In our holidays, we readily accept traditions and activities without really seeing or seeking out the meanings behind them. Our heathen understanding of days are divided into 24 hours starting at midnight, instead of sunset to sunset, as the scriptures show they should be. Our calendars, with the names of foreign elohym and exalted men raise in us no objection. Our year starts in the middle of winter, according to foreign ancient religious practices, yet we reject the calendar laid out in the Torah by YHWH. The common names of the days of the week are those of foreign deities, and we utter them without hesitation, because this is ingrained into our minds from the time we were tiny babies, and because we wish to be like and appease those around us.

Greek philosophy has no room for moral absolutes, but is purely derived by relativism. In relativism, there is no single Truth, but many subjective “truths” are possible. It is based on human logic and the premise that humanity is all there is, and it’s deities are contrived by men to explain our universe. We still act as though the Creator of the universe feels like we feel and is swayed by our human emotions and reasoning, while the real Truth is that we do not understand His ways - though we certainly act and behave as if we think we do.

The real Truth is, I see through Greek eyes every day, from the time I open my eyes until I close them at night, and so do you. I do not want to, but it is really the only way I know. It is how I was raised from birth and taught to think, and it won’t go away easily or quietly. It certainly won’t go away without a lot of effort and change on my part. My best hope is to immerse myself into the ways of YHWH, study His Torah, and to follow Yeshua as he walks in the light according to the will of the Father.

On Chanukkah, we read about a struggle between those who desire to please and obey the Most High, and those who despise and eschew the things of the Most High. It is essentially a battle between a Hebrew mindset or Greek mindset. In fact, we see similar struggles throughout the scriptures and in world history which show that there is “nothing new under the sun.” In a Greek mindset, the Most High is as fickle and emotional as we are and can be put into a box, so that mankind can do whatever it feels is “nice” without fear of accountability or punishment. It is our goal as true believer’s and followers of The Way to grasp and admit this fact - that we see with Greek eyes and think with Greek minds, so that we can adjust our ways of seeing and thinking to The Way in which our Creator sees and thinks, and not the other way around.

The struggle of the Maccabees and others, in scripture and in history, show us that our struggle is not a new one - it is the same old struggle of survival and Life of those who belong to YHWH; those who dare to question their own eyes and minds about the world’s ‘truths,’ then seek a return to perceiving real Life and Truth through His eyes alone. Like Yehudah Maccabee and his family, we should determine to refuse compromise with this evil world and remove all rebelliousness, idol worship and Greek mindset in our lives, then replace those old defiled Temple stones with new ones that are aligned with the will and Word of our Father in heaven. This is the true message of Chanukkah and the book of Maccabees.

May our eyes be sensitive and obedient to His Way and His will alone, casting out those of the world around us without compromise. May we heed the call of Yeshua Hamashiach who said, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness.” Amein!

Now, light the candles and let the celebration begin!