Today’s Shiur at the Residenz will be given half in Yiddish and half in Ivrit. I understand little. I take in the special atmosphere and look forward to the personal greeting from the rabbi.
Today I received the following email from a Jewish friend:
“I read your e-mail with interest and touch. I admire your courage and your tenacity in pursuing your goal. I just don’t understand why you want to convert to Judaism. You already have a religion whose creed is superior to ours. Christianity, as a daughter religion of Judaism, is humanistically its logical further development. When does the word love or forgiveness ever appear in our religion? Our God is a domineering, vengeful, merciless God who wants to avenge the wrongdoings of the fathers up to the third and fourth members on their children. A contradiction and an enormity that I do not understand. So you want to take a step back. Why? What is the special attraction of our religion for you? Judaism is already contained in Christianity. You already have everything that the Jewish religion could give you. ”
The questions seem so important to me that I try to answer them in this context. Well, first I want to state that I don’t want to convert to Judaism. In human terms, I even feel some resistance that I have to overcome. But I believe that my conversion is God’s will. I have recorded the most important stages of my religious life in my curriculum vitae. If I do God’s will, I won’t take a step back. At the end of the promise there is the warning: “But be careful that you do not stop when I want to go on with you”. Why is the will of God so important to me at all? In my creed I base myself on a word from Jesus:
Matthew 7:21 New International Version (NIV) True and False Disciples
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”.
I identify as far as I am able with Jesus, who was completely dependent on his Father in Heaven.
Christianity is probably the daughter religion of Judaism, but it is inconceivable without the Hebrew Bible. God is and remains the same forever. It is only His revelations that go on. Judaism will also develop further.
Humanism of Christianity, it should be noted that it is good, but that the good is the enemy of the better. God is not just “the good God”. God is all in all. In my opinion, his playing down contributed to the draining of the church. This has largely become meaningless in our culture. The seventh letter in the Revelation to John comes to mind: Revelation 3: 14-22:
New International Version (NIV)
To the Church in Laodicea
14 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
21 To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
God is the God of history. In Christianity, the understanding of history has largely been lost. Individualism and personal salvation are in the foreground. The seventh letter is not by chance the last. We stand in the end times. God has a plan of salvation in which the Jews take the central position. His promises to the Jewish people were never canceled.
So again, I don’t want to go back, I want to go forward, where God will lead me.