For some time now I feel like Im wandering around without a clear direction let alone destination. I think alot about where I want to go to, what the next step for me should be, but I cant really find it.
I went through some of my old emails and got a glimpse of my spiritual journey and its quite interesting (at least for me) to see how I developed and in a sense I think by tracing this I may get a better idea of where Im heading to:
Pentecostalism
I was born into Pentecostalism, to be more precise a subsidiary of the Foursquare Church in L.A.
I started out slowly, I always knew about believing and what it entailed and felt a day would come when I would devote myself but just knew I liked being young too much and didnt want to give up on many things:) after some time an event took place which shook my world and made me fall into emptiness, the logical step was to increase my devotion to God because He would be the only One to fill up that space.
Got baptized and began fervently to read the Bible and tried to convert everybody to what I believed:) my teachers in that time were mainly Pentecostal figures like Benny Hinn, but also C.H. Spurgeon, Charles Finney, Derek Prince and although he was too soft for me Philip Yancey.
Fired up
As I said, nearly everywhere I tried to convert people and at one point I started to make flyers to spread these in the train with Bible verses on them to stimulate people to get to know God. I also made a website for this and of course paid for all this myself.
This devotion went on for some time and I longed to serve God so deeply that I was willing to sacrifice anything for it.
I tried to read the Bible on my own as I reasoned that every believer has equal access to the Holy Spirit so theres no real difference between somebody who studied or who didnt study. Besides that the idea of reading something by someone who didnt confirm all tenets of my faith, which for me included things like gifts of the Holy Spirit and the right bible version, never crossed my mind.
Heresy hunting
I dont really know when but someone from my church who saw himself as a heresy hunter started to make me aware of the only true version of the Bible; the Dutch equivalent of the King James Version. And tried to persuade me of how evil the other Bible translators were.
Young and naive as I was, I believed him and started to tell this to other people as well and found myself very focused on having the right translation. Luckily after some time I realised that he was exaggerating at the point of being dangerous so I distanced myself from him.
A new direction
I did retain the motive to find the purest truth and in some way got in touch with the idea that God hadnt given up on the Jewish people. There were various support groups for Israel so I started to read more of their stuff on websites and attended some church sessions. Soon I was completely focused on that and read the Jerusalem Post daily turning into a fervent Zionist.
I found out about churches that were focused on this, as I was missing this in my church and started to enquire about them. Soon I ended up in what is called Hebrew Christianity or by others Messianic Judaism.
If you read up till now you can imagine what happened next, I devoured everything about it, bought all books tried to learn about everything they thought in a couple of months.
I am wrong?
In some way I learned that the Jews werent abandoned and had some ideas which were really not bad for a group who didnt believe the exact same things as me.
I read more and realized that alot of the things I was taught in church were not true. The most prominent was the idea that the Torah was no longer relevant, that is to say, things like the Sabbath, keeping a kosher diet. I always thought those things belonged to the Old version of believing in God but in the new version which Jesus brought we didnt need any of these things anymore.
Well, I came to the conclusion that that was plain wrong and started to re-interpret all passages in the Bible that seemed to point to the Torah being obsolete. This became my next life goal and as you can imagine I went to the extreme in this as well and couldnt think about anything else anymore.
I got in touch with an organization called First Fruits of Zion and read all they produced in a very short time, I was a big fan and saw them and another organization called TorahResource as the only ones in this planet understanding the Bible.
Thou shalt keep the Sabbath
They taught that to be a good follower of Jesus or Yeshua as they preferred to call him, one needed to observe the Torah, that is, one needed to keep the Shabbat, kosher, etc.
As I was so devoted to following God, I didnt waste any minute and started to do it, to the best of my abilities. My parents of course were less prepared for all this so this led to many arguments. This proceeded for about a year or so after which I was completely immersed in Messianic Judaism, and in particular the teachers of the two organisations I mentioned above.
In the summer of 2007 I went to Israel for the first time and stayed there for 4 weeks, doing volunteering work and learning more about the culture and the religion.
All the while the teachers at FFOZ were becoming more and more orthodox, and I followed them to the point that I was waking up saying traditional Jewish prayers while wearing tefilin and a prayer shawl. Obviously my parents were horrified by all this and my life became more and more secluded. I didnt go out on friday night anymore, I didnt flirt with any girls anymore and saturday was practically sitting at home all day waiting until the evening.
In that period I tried to look for a place with people that had the same ideas and found this little group in The Hague with an quasi-evangelical service and some Jewish decorations. I attended it for about 5 months but as traveling is not allowed on the Shabbat, plus the average age was around 60, I stopped attending.
Research
This led to a difficult period with many discussions with my parents as this Shabbat thing isnt something you do once a year but happens every week! At some point I was so tired of the discussions that I decided I wanted to investigate whether this was really the true path, as otherwise I would unnecessarily be causing my parents anguish every week.
The first thing I found out was that besides the teachers at FFOZ and TorahResource nearly noone believed a non-Jew had to do this, but that wasnt enough to ease my conscience as I just thought the rest of scholars were missing the point, but it awoke me to the possiblity that actually FFOZ and TorahResource might be wrong, so I probed further. There was a certain passage in the Bible I couldnt get around (Acts 15) and I really worked hard to find the right interpretation. This is a passage in which the apostles deal with what is expected from the non-Jews.
One day while browsing the theological section of my university’s library I found this big work by David Flusser and Huub van der Sandt on the Didache. And their interpretation somehow struck the right note with me. They argued that in Acts 15 the apostles were simply directing the non-Jews to the prevailing notion of what was expected from non-Jews; which was at a minimum abstaining from murder, adultery and idolatry and as much as they could keep of the Torah they were encouraged to keep but this would be beyond the requirement. This really rocked my world, because this meant that non-Jews did not need to keep it! They could and it would be great but they didnt have to.
Freedom
In one way this was liberating as I could go out again fridaynight and didnt need to have discussions with my parents anymore. But in another way my world was less defined than before. I used to know exactly what I could and could not do but now it seemed so flexible, as it was no longer a sin if I went to work on the Sabbath or ate pork. So in some sense I lost my clear boundaries.
After this I realized it was important to read work that was more academically founded and as such I came in touch with more critical works.
Shaking my foundations
One name that had a particular influence on me was James D.G. Dunn with his book Christology in the Making. He showed in his book how many of the christological references in the New Testament actually did not imply divinity and how the idea of the incarnation (Jesus being God) was only present in one of the latest documents in the New Testament canon; the Gospel of John (cf. 1:14).
This led to a lot of confusion to me as the doctrine of the incarnation was very dear to me and the idea of it being not in the NT was outright blasphemy to me. But his presentation was so convincing I had to agree with him at some points.
I talked to various professors about my doubts but couldnt find a satisfying answer.
Now any committed Christian understands how big a crisis I was heading for; to reject this meant I would fall out of the fold! As it is one of the things salvation hangs upon! I too realised this and tried to keep my faith in it, but slowly started to see the evidence pile up against it. Until I came to a point that I couldnt possibly maintain my belief in Jesus being the Eternal Son, the second member of the Trinity, anymore, so I slowly let go off it.
In the closet
I didnt tell anyone in my surroundings about this, especially not my parents, as I knew this would be heartbreaking for them and my environment.
In that summer I went for the second time to Israel but this time for a shorter period. Again I had a great time, met a lot of people, learned a lot of new things and was happy to be close to what appealed to me.
Away from home
After that summer I went to study from September until January in Istanbul at its prestigious Bogazici University. It would be the first time I lived on my own and I was really looking forward to it.
My hopes were confirmed I had the most wonderful time overthere and again underwent quite a transformation.
While being there I think I attended church for 3-4 times in 4 months so I didnt have much influence from Christians around me. But the strange thing was that I didnt miss it, I didnt miss going to church and being involved as I didnt really feel at home in church, I felt too different.
In Istanbul a lot of my former boundaries were stretched, well perhaps just simply, crossed. I do not wish to go into details but several things which I would have never done a couple of months before I went, I did overthere. Not terrible things, I didnt use drugs or anything:P but well just different.
During my time overthere I continued to read and explore and the pull towards Judaism increased. During December I went again to Israel (I have a very generous father:D) and stayed there for 10 days, where I again had an exciting period, though this time I felt a bit more akward than before.
I felt this pull towards Judaism and a desire to identify myself with it but at the same time realised that this was not possible. The first reason being that I believed Jesus to be the awaited Messiah, the second for social reasons.
I returned to Istanbul and finished my time overthere. In the mean time I got to know this very special girl, and fell deeply in love with her:) the only complication besides the fact that she lived in Istanbul was that she did not share my beliefs, besides belief in God… but well her beautiful character and pure inner-being attracted me so much (not to mention that she is extremely beautiful:P) that I couldnt let her go anymore.
Back in Holland
So back in Holland, I continued my readings and got in touch with more academic works and at the same time I was reading a lot of Jewish books, but whereas I did so before with the motive of understanding Jesus better, I slowly started to read them for their own sake, that is to say, I read them because I considered them valuable on their own. My view of Judaism shifted from being a means to an end towards being an end in itself.
Academic approach
At the same time the academic works took over the place of the more popular and conservative works I was reading and hence abolished much of my traditional faith in the divinity of the Scriptures.
Naturally this way of approaching the text, I didnt apply only to the Christian reading but also to the Jewish reading and as a result grew skeptical of much of the traditional understanding of the text.
So I think we have arrived after 2326 words to the point I am at today:) which is probably somewhere close to the sign #
Judaism # | Christianity
In ideology I identify myself much more with some kind of version of Modern-Orthodox Judaism, but I do maintain the idea of Jesus being the Messiah and because of that I retain a connection to Christianity, though the church councils would probably deem me a heretic.
So looking back on this post what are your thoughts on where I am heading? I personally dont really know, somewhere deep inside I hope for a place of peace, internally as well as externally (i.e. my social environment) but it seems quite remote for now.
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