A Lutheran converts to Judaism – and brings her childhood Bible with her

    C. A. Blomquist’s journey into the Jewish faith began as a Lutheran child. She could not have known it then.  As an adult who has embraced Judaism, she has this to say:

[T]his year I’m going to spend some time with the book that laid the groundwork for my Jewish life— my faded, tattered copy of Egermeier’s Bible Story Book. Although the publishers likely never intended it, the book has become my own profoundly Jewish text, perfect for Shavuot study and reflection. When I read it, I will relive my first experience of Jewish study. I will picture my small blonde head bent over the text, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of lessons from the stories of my people.

    One more cite. It helps explain why the Old Testament speaks to people, and always will, in ways that others may never understand:

[T]hen there was David, my girlhood crush: David the shepherd boy, David the strong and savvy warrior, David the builder, David the flawed but righteous king. No teeny-bopper idol in Tiger Beat magazine could compete. Most of all, I loved David the poet. A weakness of Egermeier’s was that it did not contain my very favorite part of the Bible: the Psalms. So, I kept my RSV Bible at hand to consult after reading about David and gazing at the illustrations of him in Egermeier’s.

    Read the whole thing. There are Jews who feel threatened by the fact that some Jews are becoming messianic (Christian) Jews (and have the gall to continue to keep a kosher table, or keep one for the first time). There are Christians who feel threatened by the fact that some Christians are becoming Jews. Caution is in order, and if we are friends with the people in question, and we ourselves have strong religious convictions, we might pass on very strong words of warning.

    On the other hand, given the fact that people prefer the devil they don't know to the one they already know (I'm trying to be even-handed here, and bracket out the question of God's leading), conversions in all directions are to be expected.

Comments

[Carl Kinbar]

Hi John. My first reaction to a friend's abandonment of what I hold to be true and precious tells a lot. Is my reaction anger or grief? (I've experienced both.) I suspect that anger was a symptom of insecurity; it was certainly an agent of alienation. Grief helped me to pray and, where appropriate, open a dialog with my friend whom I continued to respect.

IMO, the person who "converts" is also responsible to do what it takes to maintain relationships and irenic dialog. As a Messianic Jew, I have been on that side of the equation, too. I have experienced the anger and rejection of family (only in the past - things are good with them now) and some other fellow Jews (good there, too). It took time and hard work to overcome the sense of insecurity that my faith and practices provoked.

[Harold Stassen]

I thought it was mostly Jewish men who don't want to freak out their mothers and "continue the tribe". The rabbi waves his "magic wand" and hey presto, she's no longer a shiksa! It's more about tribalism than anything, which is pretty pathetic come to think of it.

[John Hobbins]

Hi Harold,

In my experience, people often have deep and abiding reasons for adhering to a particular religious "tribe" as you call it. So I would not be quick to judge it a fashion.

My favorite conversion story is the following. I wish everyone was aware of this high profile conversion:

Music legend Madonna has turned her back on the controversial Kabbalah sect to embrace ‘the one true worldwide faith of Methodism’. The controversial singer explained the circumstances of her dramatic conversion at a hastily-convened press conference: ‘After the divorce and failed adoption bid I’d hit rock bottom. One night I found a copy of The Methodist Recorder in my hotel room, and I started reading it for solace. Halfway through the first story ‘Connexional working party report urges district chairs to convene ecumenical dialogue over fall in peripatetic lay preaching throughout the Methodist circuit’ I was in tears.’

She then accepted an invitation to a bring-and-share supper at the nearby church hall. ‘Those people had something special that I knew I didn’t have: a sort of gentle serenity, along with an absence of crazed hubris and stratospheric sense of entitlement. By the time we tucked into the lasagne, I knew I had found my spiritual home.’

Ms Ciccione (50) says she now forswears what she calls ‘exotic designer religions that nobody else can understand or afford’: ‘That Kabbalah sect kept droning on about how life was one big mysterious journey into the unknowable. I’m a single mother of three; I haven’t got time for all that ‘unknowable’ shit. To be frank, I’ve had it up to here with those premium rate mystics; give me a decent Wesley hymn and a good solid working party report any day.’

The announcement has led to a mass defection of celebrities to so-called ‘non-elitist’ religions; Richard Gere has abandoned Tibetan Buddhism, and is considering a move to Britain to be closer to his ‘spiritual kin’ in the United Reformed Church, along with fellow converts Chris Martin and Gwynneth Paltrow.

Meanwhile former Scientologist Tom Cruise is taking a sabbatical from his acting career at a Salvation Army training college in Milwaukee. In a prepared statement, he has told fans he is ‘embarking upon a guided but non pre-ordained discourse towards the ineffable Other we commonly refer to as God’ as well as learning the B-flat euphonium.

[John Hobbins]

Source for the above news item:

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/05/01/madonna-foreswears-celebrity-religion-converts-to-methodism/

[rey]

"There are Christians who feel threatened by the fact that some Christians are becoming Jews. Caution is in order, and if we are friends with the people in question, and we ourselves have strong religious convictions, we might pass on very strong words of warning."

Why do you care? I would of thought you'd be happy to get rid of a few Pelagians so you can get back to worshiping the Predestining Devil and getting drunk and having sex with your neighbor's wife without being condemned for it by those 'worksists'.

[John Hobbins]

Nothing seems to bother you more, Rey, than a God who rejects Saul and chooses David. Who loves Jacob but hates Esau. Perhaps you wish to claim that Saul and Esau deserved to be rejected whereas David and Jacob did not. Where is the evidence for that?

Your Pelagianism does not pass the simplest smell test. Augustinianism on the other hand at least has the analogy of human experience on its side.

When I marry a girl, when she marries me, it is not on the basis of a prediction of future bliss and harmony which, if they fail to come to pass, is grounds for divorce. The covenant we enter into is a covenant of grace, not of works. In that context, works may flourish, but there is no guarantee.

For the rest, you apparently want a God who compels people to choose him; in this case, a God who compels people to choose him through Christ. You want a tyrant for God. It is your God who is a devil, not mine.

[rey]

This rejection of Saul was that he didn't get to be King anymore not that he went to hell. The same with Esau. Poor Esau got the mountainous land. Oh no. Back then Esau's land may have been crap. But in modern terms, where the amount of oil under the ground determines the value, didn't he win out?

[rey]

"For the rest, you apparently want a God who compels people to choose him; in this case, a God who compels people to choose him through Christ."

Don't you mean that's what you want?

[John Hobbins]

Rey,

Your reasoning seems to be that it's all right for God to reject a flawed person like Saul to the point of driving him crazy but it's not all right for God to reject a mass murderer to the point of sending him to hell.

Both Jews and Christians, historically speaking, would beg to differ. Your beef is not with Calvinists, but with believers (and unbelievers: think Ivan Karamazov) of most times and places.

From your last comment, it is clear that you fail to understand the first thing about the doctrine of election. Compulsion is a component on occasion, just like we compel our children to do things they reject at the time, but, when they see the positive consequences, realize that they were given a great gift.

Do you have a problem with authority? Does the idea of God doing much of anything against people's wishes rub you the wrong way? I'm wondering where you are coming from.

[rey]

"Your reasoning seems to be that it's all right for God to reject a flawed person like Saul to the point of driving him crazy but it's not all right for God to reject a mass murderer to the point of sending him to hell."

You're now arguing like a Pelagian that rejection is based on works and against your own supposed position the Calvinist position in which rejection is based on a mythical dice-roll in eternity past.

When you speak of God rejecting a murderer and sending him to hell because he committed murder I agree. When you speak of God rejecting someone beforehand arbitrarily and then making him a murderer because he lost a dice-roll (as in Calvinism) then obviously I disagree.

[John Hobbins]

Rey,

It seems as if you know one thing: that you hate Calvinism. Argue your own understanding, rather than constantly caricaturing the positions of your chosen opponent.

You have a broad and unhelpful definition of "arbitrary." On your definition, the Bible speaks about election and its opposite as if the electing God is arbitrary. God's election of Jacob (Israel) is presented first and foremost as an unmerited gift. Despite Jacob's manifold failures, God chooses him. Not once, but again and again. One might argue that Jacob was better suited to the purposes God had in mind than Esau. But the Bible does not argue in that way. Rather, as Jesus would have it, God is in the business of making the first last, and the last first.

Moreover, God saves some murderers and damns others. Among the saved are Moses, David, and Saul=Paul.

On your definition, this is arbitrary, because God should be using a set of criteria in the election process that you agree with. I don't know what your criteria are, but whatever they are, I'm can't see why you think you know so much to bind God to your criteria.

One of the most amazing things about life is the freedom we have to choose. Our freedom is far from absolute, but what freedom we have means we are constantly rejecting some things and choosing others. For example, I am on a hiring committee to hire a CEO for a non-profit. We will be rejecting many and electing one. Should we just choose them all, and if not all, at least those without a felony on their records? It does not follow. Perhaps what really bothers you is the "few are those who find it" part of the Gospel.