Roots

I am embarking on a journey, blazing a new trail. Or at least it sure feels that way. Over the last year, my family - or at least my husband and I - has come to grips with the pagan origins of many Christian religious traditions. I am full aware that we are not the first to undergo such a transition, or even the first to undergo this transition for the very same reasons. We are not alone. There are others out there! And yet, there is no community of us, at least not that I've found, and not around these parts. There are few resources and unearthing the resources that do exist seems cumbersome to say the least.

Yet, it is about the roots. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are grafted into the vine. We are not Jews, either by birth or nation or even choice. We are Christians. We believe Jesus Christ was the foretold Messiah of the Jews, and of the world. By our choice to believe in Him, we are His. He is a Jew. And that makes our spiritual heritage, our roots, distinctively Jewish.

We need not become Jews first to be saved, because God's Word has proven that Jesus came for Jew and Gentile. His very lineage includes a few Gentiles. And yet, that makes Him no less Jewish. So, we struggle to know Him, even while He wants to be known. The best way to know Him is by reading His Word. And in that Word, we find command after command. It is through obeying these commands that we can know Him more, understand Him more.

When we begin to see the Law as more than a set of rules... when we see His feasts and Holy Days with purpose for our modern lives... when we come to understand that His law, His ways were designed for our benefit, as a gift and not a burden... then we begin to catch a glimpse of Him. It is also when modern Christianity stops making sense.

Many modern Christians insist we don't need to keep the law. Some even insist that we musn't keep the law, although even those individuals would admit there are some laws we need to keep. The phrase "We aren't under the law," is used all too often as an excuse to continue with modern Christian traditions that have no Biblical basis, or worse, to continue in blatant sin.

When we see the gift of the law, without the burden of acquiring salvation through it, we experience true freedom in knowing Christ. At the same time, this is also when faced with separating ourselves from the world ever more, and in some cases, separating ourselves from mainstream church traditions.

Do your own research. Examine the scriptures. Allow God to reveal Himself and His ways to you.