Identity Crisis: Should I align myself with "a religion"? Or with "a people"?
Posted on January 6, 2008
Filed Under Ephraim (Multitude of Nations), House of Joseph (Joes), Torah Observance, Two House (Reality) Theology
Being a shepherd for a time, I know from experience that sheep are intense social creatures. It is not just what they do, it is what they are. It is who they are, which is why there is no word to describe a singular “sheep”. They herd together in groups to find safety and comfort. And they develop what I call “Psychotic stress alienation syndrome” when isolated from the group. It is almost like they lose their “point of being” when not with “the others”.
YHVH, being the Designer/Creator of us all, of course knew we would behave like sheep in many ways, sometimes to our detriment. He knew we would need shepherds. He knew some would aspire to lead while the majority would be content to just follow, but He also knew there would be blind leaders who meant well and/or leaders who would rise in the ranks who weren’t even sheep, but instead predators dressed up to look like sheep (YHVH, being the Designer/Creator of us all, of course knew we would behave like sheep in many ways, sometimes to our detriment. He knew we would need shepherds. He knew some would aspire to lead while the majority would be content to just follow, but He also knew there would be blind leaders who meant well and/or leaders who would rise in the ranks who weren’t even sheep, but instead predators dressed up to look like sheep (Matthew 7:15).
Within the Two House movement, especially on the Joseph-side, there is an ongoing and developing Identity crisis. All the sheeple in all the various herds are curious why some of the sheep don’t align with a single group, sect, or denomination of a religion. Some are aligning with more than one group at once, while others try to go nameless or unaffiliated completely.
The reason the Two House (Ephraimite) movement will shift the general tendency of sheeple-herding is this: it isn’t about “religion” or “religious identification” anymore. It is becoming more about DNA (before you flip-out, read: Salvation and Genetics). Or rather, it is becoming more to do with: Who are your ancestors? Who are your “people” (Salvation and Genetics). Or rather, it is becoming more to do with: Who are your ancestors? Who are your “people” (Hosea 1:9-11)? And if you’re not sure of your DNA or who your “people” are, then what people do you align yourself with? What people are you a “companion” to (Ezekiel 37:16)? Note: you do NOT have to be a physical, pure-breed descendant of Jacob to be a part of the assembly of Israel (Exodus 12:37-38).
Imagine back 3,000 years to a time before Israel or Judah were taken into their respective captivities and before they turned to Idolatry. Can you fathom the broad populace then asking each other, “What religion are you?” Well, probably not. They would likely laugh, saying, “Helloooo, we’re Israelite! What part of ‘Israelite’ do you not understand? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Torah, etc… that is who we are, it isn’t our ‘religion’.”
So for our modern cultures, it is generally unacceptable to answer identity-type questions with, “I’m Israelite” or “I’m Hebrew”. People still want to know if you are “Christian” or “Jewish” or “Muslim”. Then they want to know if you are “Baptist” or “Catholic”, “Orthodox” or “Reform”, “Sunni” or “Shi’a”. Regardless, terms and catagories are always misleading in some way or another. Even the term “Jew” or “Jewish” doesn’t always represent the same thing to every one. Depending on the context, it can mean your ethnicity, your belief system, and/or your general behavior.
“What does it matter? Why can’t I just be?”
In fact, you can “just be” and you can just be “nobody” if that is how you wish to be aligned, which is the way I generally align myself, but it has a tendency to alienate “the others” who have a deep need to be intimately affiliated with something formal and larger, something with a governmentally recognized tax id, that is: an institutionalized religious system.
Religious isolation is generally easier for men, than for women… for women have a better sense of the importance of the group (there is inherit safety when in “the group” - look to the “sheep” lad), but this is dangerous when the groups themselves are led by Predatory shepherds (Jeremiah 23:1-8). Of course, that is just a generalization of men and women. I’ve seen the roles play out differently in some cases, but not wanting to get too entangled in a gender-based discussion here, I’ll move on and describe how I see myself.
For myself, for example, I trust in the One who Christians call “Jesus” (Yeshua), although I don’t perceive him the way most Christians perceive him. I don’t see him as one who intended the masses to think themselves “saved” while continuing in Lawlessness or practicing sin as a matter of culture. In my understanding of the scriptures, he didn’t promote lawlessness, but he did encourage his followers not to follow the “doctrines of men” (Matthew 15:1-9). Since Christians and Jews generally find it difficult to discern between the Torah and Jewish tradition (largely because they haven’t read the Torah), they have incorrectly thought of “Jesus” as one who tried to remove the Torah (Law), even though he himself said he didn’t come to do such (Matthew 5:14-19). Actually, if he would have taught the people to forsake the Torah, he would have been disqualified from being the true Messiah, according to Moses (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). So… Christianity has largely become a super-religion (with many sects) that I cannot and will not identify with on many levels, although I do identify with the Messiah Yeshua. On the flip side, I don’t identify with Judaism (Jew-da-ism) as a whole either. I don’t call or think of myself as “Jewish” because I don’t embrace the “Oral Torah” which is paramount within the major sects of Judaism. Karaite Judaism does embrace only the Written Torah of Moshe, and I’ve learned much from Karaites, but most of them are fiercely anti-Yeshua.
For the record, I don’t affiliate with the British Israelism movements, although I do believe they are Israelite descendants of Joseph, but there are Joes scattered far beyond England’s boarders or her old empire.
So, you may be asking, “What do I do? How do I describe myself? Do I even need to describe or categorize myself? What does it matter if my family is freaked out because I align myself with no one religion, sect, or denomination? What does it really matter?” In the End, I think we’ll care little about what “religion” or “denomination” we embraced as our own. If my suspicions are correct, we’ll be primarily and exclusively concerned with: Do I know YHVH and did I align myself with Him and His ways, proving that I love Him by doing what He told me to do? I assure you, that is all that will matter then and should be your ultimate concern now.
Read the Torah of the Most High, understand and judge it rightly with itself using the original language when possible, and do what He says. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to see how Yeshua walked out Torah in Wisdom, in Righteous Anger, and most importantly, in Love.
Shalom Aleikhem.
External Links:
* An Identity Crisis
* Why the Church teaches that Jesus Christ is NOT the Messiah
Comments
5 Responses to “Identity Crisis: Should I align myself with "a religion"? Or with "a people"?”
Leave a Reply
~Barukh YHWH for evermore~
“Karaite Judaism does embrace only the Written Torah of Moshe, and I’ve learned much from Karaites, but most of them are fiercely anti-Yeshua.”
Now I wonder why that is, huh? Did it ever occur to you throughout your extensive studies and searches to stumble onto the insight that your Yeshua cannot be the Messiah and true prophet (let alone Son of God) according to the discernable Tanakh criteria for messiahship?
You’ve been working backwards trying — just as most every deluded Christian does — to superimpose your JC-affirming preconceptions on the Tanakh, overlooking that without the collection of writings known as the NT we would have known nothing about JC.
I propose you proceed to read through http://faithstrengthened.org/FS_TOC.html and when you have finished, maybe you will realize just why we are so “anti-Yeshua”. Heck, just the first few pages will inform you immensely and might suffice to this end.
But seeing how you believe the nonsense spouted by the “British Israelites” concerning their supposed origin, I’m not holding my breath for you to grasp why most Qaraite Jews are “anti-Yeshua”.
Have a good life.
Thank you for your comments.
Without Yeshua, there will be no restoration of the House of Joseph. I don’t elevate the NT over the Torah, but you’d be surprised how much the Two House reality is mentioned or implicated in the NT. Yeshua came for and died for the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel/Joseph, just like Isaiah 53 prophesied he would. Now, I’m familiar with the Karaite perspective on Isaiah 53, that somehow the Suffering Servant is Israel herself, but that doesn’t make any sense when you break down the text… even in Hebrew.
As you proposed, I proceeded to read http://faithstrengthened.org/FSpart1chapter01.html Much of the complaint is regarding Yeshua behaving like a Lion when he was supposed to behave like a Lamb (in your mind), and conversely, he behaved like a Lamb when he was supposed to behave like a Lion (also in your mind). He’ll be back, and through the passage of time, he will fulfill the Latter Day promises that you think he came too early for the first time.
Unlike the British Israelite view, I believe Joseph/Ephraim consists of much more than Britain or her former Empire. Out of ignorance of my writings, you equate me with them.
We’re not going to see eye to eye regarding the Redeemer of Joseph, but I’m curious who you think the House of Joseph is, in light of Genesis 48:19 and Isaiah 49:12 in the modern world (especially since you’re a Qaraite, one who “reads”)?
O… and I almost forgot. There are many individuals in antiquity where we trust in their existence even though there are only single sources. Disregarding Yeshua because he is only found in the NT is pretty lame and also inaccurate. A source-based attack on Yeshua’s existence could also be leveled (and is leveled by secularists) on many of the primary characters of the Hebrew Scriptures.
~Barukh YHWH for evermore~
Mr. Hanok…
Yesh`ayahu 49:12 has NOTHING to do with the House of Joseph.
Your second comment is virtually the only part comprising of realistic statements that you’ve made in the comments so far. FYI I do not claim JC never existed and I’m fully prepared to accept he actually lived at the time and that some of his sayings have been recorded more or less faithfully in both the canonical and non-canonical Gospels.
Apart from your remark distancing yourself somewhat from the “British-Israelite” theological stance, you’re merely restating your Christian beliefs that impose your premade conclusion on certain texts within the Tanakh that make no reference to your Yeshu`a, thereby remaking my point.
If you had been able to take a few steps back from your emotional involvement in your beliefs and simultaneously read the Tanakh in the original Hebrew without taking those verses out of context, you’d have realized they aren’t alluding to JC whatsoever. As things stand presently, you’re also depending on faulty translations that occasionally mistranslate words to align the Tanakh with the Christian agenda such as in Yesha`yahu/Isaiah 53 where the servant is spoken of in the original as a “man of pains and accustomed to sickness” rather than something like “a man of grief accustomed to sorrow” as you’ve come to believe since you haven’t seen a truthful English rendition of these words in that chapter. Furthermore, JC’s credentials don’t hold up against the servant spoken of in Yesh`yahu 53 who is referred to as producing offspring and living to old age to name two examples.
Now even if the servant was not meant originally to be a reference to the people of Israel, you KNOW JC for his part never lived up to the entire prophesy. That you’re overlooking these facts underscores your delusion.
According to your beloved NT, JC was supposed to be “back” already in the first century CE when his contemporaries were still alive. Outside of the NT there’s no evidence whatsoever that he returned from the dead 3 days after dying on the cross, let alone any evidence he got resurrected anytime thereafter. And trust me… there would have been adequate evidence outside the NT had he really “come back” since a post-Tanakh case of resurrection of a Jew in the Land of Israel would have been a national sensation on par with the first rebellion against Rome! And yet none of the Church Fathers nor historian Josephus Flavius record a resurrection of JC. Ergo, he never “returned”.
Obviously you’re too emotionally attached to your beliefs to acknowledge the inconvenient facts I’ve discussed in this post which have been explained to you and your likes ad nauseum upwards of a millennium, so I see no point in perpetuating this discussion any longer. Therefore this is my last post here.
May YHWH steer you and your cohorts away from the acceptance of Yeshu`a and toward the truth of Tanakh only.
Must admit I’ve been a bit busy the last several months, but I guess it is better late than never.
Isaiah 49:12 contextually points to the tribes of Israel (just look at 49:6), ten of them making up the House of Joseph… so maybe 49:12 isn’t exclusively referencing Joseph, but it is certainly including them. You still have no answer regarding how 10-Israel is to be redeemed. Were they not given a “bill of divorce”? How are they to return to the marriage covenant as the Prophets say they will do if they don’t have some redemptive work like Isaiah 53 and Romans 7 describes?
I am indeed emotionally attached to my beliefs. I readily admit that. And you too are displaying much emotion on the flip-side. Just look at the tone of your comment.
And I’ve looked at such passages as Isaiah 53 in the Hebrew, and it makes no sense the way you and many anti-missionary Karaites interpret it. Many Jews, who don’t believe in Yeshua, interpret it as a reference to the Messiah. And they aren’t using emotionally charged Christian translations to derive their interpretation.
I guess we’re just going to have to wait for Eliyahu (Malachi 4) to arrive before the Great Day of the Wrath of יהוה before you and I see eye to eye on this and many other things. Hopefully by then we’ll meet and be on the same page. (=