Letter to the Christians

To a Christian friend offended by anti-christianism.

I feel for you. Really. It is hard to be disliked because of your beliefs. Maybe it will help you to see how I, a no non Christian feel all the time.

To start with, living in this society means living in a reality where someone wonderful lived and died 2000 years ago. Even non Christians are encouraged to emulate this universal figure. Jews, fopr example, try hard to find the Jewishness of Jesus, not only in the goodness of his life but even more so in the words attributed to him that we know are derived from Jewish texts. For example, The Jerusalem Post has a long piece by SHMULEY BOTEACH analyzing the most famous quotes of Jesus: ", Jesus declares in Matthew that 'whoever goes against the smallest of the laws of Moses, teaching men to do the same, will be named least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who keeps the Law of Moses, teaching others to keep them, will be named great in the kingdom of heaven.' (5:19) It was lamentable that few of our evangelical Christian brethren, in whose name Coulter purports to speak, condemned her contemptuous disrespect of the faith of their savior."

All this is fine, but Shmuley misses the point. The Christian concept of Jesus does, for most Christians, require that he was far more than a lay preacher, and it requires that we, still identified within our ancestors, di not accept his message ... even if as Shmuley says, the message was from the same God and our own texts. If Jesus was NOT rejected, if he was merely a lay acolyte of Hillel (as I suspect is the case), then the very premise of Christianity falls.

Moreover, Shmuley's view, moderated by what we do know about Jesus, leads to ideas, perhaps facts, many Chrisitnas find offensive:

1. If Jesus existed, he sure was not called "Jesus Christ." Christ is a greek word meaning anointed. While Judaism of 2 millenia ago did yearn for a leader who would overthrow the Roman yoke, the idea that the Jews rejected Jesus as a messiah makes no sense.

The word "Christ" had no "coming of the seviour" meaning in Jesus' own time. There is NO historical evidence, outside of the Christian Bible (CB), of a gentle teacher who was regarded by Romans or Jews as a savior figure dueing Jesus's time. MUCH earlier, there were similar figures ...a Yashua ben Pantera lieved abut 100 years earlier and, of course 30 years later, bar Kochba was hailed as a messiah.

2. No one knows what "Jesus Christ" said. The is extensive evidence that the citations attributed to Jesus in the Christian Bible (CB) were not made by any one person. Some of the statements, if they had been made, wold have resulted in his being stoned to death as a blasphemer. Others would have led many to regard him as a Quisling. This does not say there are not good things too, but Christians who want to claim to "know" WWJD, have a real problem.

3. The Jesus painted in the CB is a sanctimonious blasphemer. Judaism is an obligate monotheism. Anyone claiming to be a personification of God, literal son of God, or any such thing would have beens toned for blasphemy.

Worse,despite the good words of the sermon on the mount, that ACTS pf Jesus do nto include a single act of simple charity .. as opposed to miracles. If this was aman, he was not a very good man. WWJD, for most of us, means uisng magic powers to help others.

4. Many of the aspects of Christianity growing out of its role as a state religion are repulsive to those of us who are not Christian:'

a. Exclusivity. To my knowledge, Christianity was the first religion to claim to be the sole, exclusive truth and to depict a Derty who requires belief in Himself. The evil done because of this is overwhelming.

b. Destruction of the past. Wherever it has gone, Christianity has practiced cultural abalation. The thought of the dead deities and faiths of Europe, Africa, Asia, ..is saddening.

5. Many of the commonly held beliefs of Christians are deeply offensive to others:

a.The evil Pharisees. The Pharisees were the leaders of the resistance against Rome ..not surprisingly the Roman religion denigrates the people who founded modern Judaism. My son is named for the head Pharisee, Hillel. Hille is credited with inventing rabbinic Judaism.

b. Theophagy ... it is awfully impolite, but the ritual practice of the mass is distasteful. Imagine, if you will, a "native: culture that baked and ate images of babies. To a non-Christian, that is the image the mass conveys.

c. To accept Christianity is, to most, to accept the idea that Judaism was flawed.

d. Idolatry. It is deeply troubling to watch people who genuflect before atatues of Mary, Jesus, the Sainst, etc .. and then denigrate Buddhists (who have NO God), Hindus, etc,

6. Asking a Jew to be tolerant of Christianity is akin to asking me to tolerate a religion that came into being with the intent of destroying all other religions.

How did this religion come into being? The Christian religion we have today can be traced to only one clear event .. the Council of Nicea. At that meeting, the religion was codified by a Roman Council as a means to politically unite the Empire. The result was suppression of many Christianities that existed before that time.

So, while I share with SHMULEY BOTEACH a desire for amity and common cause with the Christians, I suggest that can only be found in a common commitment to humanistic ideals that grew out of the teachings he cites and laid the basis for much of what is good in Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. I suggest rather, that we .. Christians and Jews, take pride in the common concepts we have both built from the tender roots of the rebellion against Rome. We should remember that the huge success of Islam in the late 7th century, was at the expense of a flawed Christian empire. In the best of all worlds, that set of concepts. the concepts first stated by the Jews revels of the first years of the current era, are also the fundamentals not only of Islam but of the Jeffersonian Democracy, Marxist economics, enlightenment commitment to science that undelies the best of the modern world.