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Why is the Messianic Movement So Messy?
Within the Messianic / Hebrew Roots Movement there are as many different ideas on each subject as there are directions on the compass. And thanks in large part to social media there are teachers ready and willing to send unsuspecting new believers off down one of these sundry rabbit trails.
While there are many reasons for the divisions and yes, denominations within the Messy-anic Movement, perhaps the greatest problem is that lack of ability to think. This may seem insulting on the surface but let’s really look at it.
We were all for the most part raised in the church. We were well trained “what” to think but very little was done to teach us “how” to think.
Knowing “how” to think is far more important than “what” to think, because we are all liable to make mistakes. If we know “what” to think and our thoughts are erroneous, we will be hard pressed to know “why” they were wrong or how far off the mark they were nor at what point they veered from true. And we will truly have no clue how to find our way to the truth. Contrariwise when taught “how” to think, if we have ended up in error we can easily self assess, find the problem, identify it and make the necessary corrections needed.
Sadly the tools needed to teach people how to think are sorely lacking in the Messianic Movement.
We came out of traditional religion or tried to pivot within it and carried on with different teachers but the same mindset…thereby making the same mistakes with different information.
The result is recidivism...and that at an alarming rate. Jews who came to faith in Yeshua but later returned to Rabbinic Judaism because they found flaws in the Messianic doctrine or lost their congregation or never found fellowship. Christians who came to the knowledge of their so-called Hebrew Roots and were taught some form of Hebraic faith by less-than-qualified teachers and returned to the church in time from finding doctrinal flaws, having congregations collapse or trying to go it alone in a religion designed for fellowship. And of course there are those Christians who convert to Judaism and deny the Messiah because they sat under the teaching of rabbis without knowing “how” to think about matters to sort out for themselves truth and lies.
We were taught to sponge off our instructors, rather than to scrutinize their every word and claim. But such is not The Way, and this bad behavior is threatening to destroying The Way just as it is beginning to emerge again in the world.
If you account yourself, Hebrew Roots or Messianic or something of the like, this message is for you:
Take charge of your religion.
Question everything.
Especially the things you want to be true, because your biases will be blinding you.
Investigate. Challenge. Check into claims.
Try to disprove opinions and supposed facts and long-standing traditions. Not for the sake of being combative either, but for the sake of being strong and sure in your faith. So that you may know that you know what you ought to know, not because you heard it from the pastor or the rabbi or (heaven help us) some online selfappointed theologian with a large following of other sponges.
And when you begin to find the flaws and the problems analyze them too. Don’t throw everything away as refuse just because there’s an issue. Check the claims of others. Check your findings against your own biases to make certain you are not self-affirming.
We were taught in church that 2+2=5 and then we learned better that the answer was infact 4…but all too often the one who told us the true answer also taught us the equation was actually 2+3=4… if we are being sponges, when some better mathematician proves to us that 2+3=5 not 4 we may very well revert back to our initial belief in the wrong answer again.
We must expect eisegesis in the Messy-anic Movement.
We must expect prooftexting and false premises, correlation equaling causation.
We must expect logical flaws and false claims of piety to prove them.
But we must not tolerate them.
Be a Berean. Be a Calvarian. Test everything.
And then test your findings.
Just because you have the right answer doesn’t mean you have the right reason, and “without reason we can only be right by accident at best”.
question EVERYTHING
templecrier.com
Henk Wouters 6 w
there's an expression - horses for courses.
a (unfortunately rather sizeable) portion of people are not too capable of independent thought, and really in need of a shepherd.
i'm not including those who are unwilling. these people are best off just reading the Book, no human intervention required.
but then, that applies to everybody. the study of how to think is lacking everywhere, not just in the messy movement.
if the essence is whether one is a child of God or a child of the world, every single chism in the church is only a sign of the adversary succeeding in his work. in the interest of creating division, he stymies independent thought at all costs. that's why we have dogmas, those horses for every course.
balancing zero compromise with full tolerance will go a long way to resolving our dillemma. any compromise or any lack of tolerance lead to dissipation of our core mutuality. it is our convictions we must not compromise on, and others' convictions we must tolerate.
and now we can start convincing each other, an admirable endeavour, but hard work. necessary work. imperative work.
and impossible.
because who is the only one able to truly convince of that what is true? The Word, that's who. so we're back to go read the Book.
and it is what's going to happen, that's why in those days no man will tell his neighbour to 'know the Lord', but each will know Him.
your call to learn how to think will be answered, in 'those days', and as it's always darkest just before the dawn, the messier it gets the more i scan the horizon for the first rays to appear.