Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
My present consideration has been whether the law of Christ, the royal law, the new commandment, that we love one another as we love God, has been obviated by the considerations, interpretations and opinions of others, which when imposed, effectively became the new laws in the church.
|
I'll try not to overstate my case, nor make it antagonistic. But my sense has been that "There is neither Jew nor Greek" within a few generations became "There is no Jew, only Greek", followed by whichever non-Jewish variant had wrested ecclesiastic power in turn - Romans, Germans, Spanish, English, Dutch, Americans, etc. But in all cases, "No Jews" continued to be the watchword within the now wholly Christian church.
It is so bare, so stark, and so striking, that a casual observer of Christian history can quickly point to the first Jew who showed up in church in the modern era: a young student in the late 19th century in Eastern Europe, who'd been studying religious texts as an exercise in comparative religious literature, and in reading the New Testament, believed into Jesus Christ. I won't look up his name, but anyone can find him with a quick search of the internet. For centuries not one Jew had darkened door of the church, and the first one that finally did, caused something of a sensation. I find that rather striking.
So my observation is that something interfered with the law of Christ, if the Jews who started it all were soon shut out, even violently so. Something was very off. Billy Graham's unfortunate expressions of anti-Semitism, for example, this wasn't some aberrant feature of the broader spectrum. No, it was very much par for the course, a long and unsavory course.
And I don't mean to be provocative; but it seems as though the dominant culture callously takes its own proprietary spin on the "Neither Jew nor Greek" theme. In the case of Witness Lee and his Local Church, we laughed as he made fun of Western culture - Santa Claus, Xmas stockings, the Easter Bunny, har-har. But when it came to Chinese culture, nobody laughed if Witness Lee the church elder had unspiritual sons: "Don't touch the [Chinese] leader's family" over-rode Titus 1:6. So, my point is that "no culture" was a Trojan Horse for "my culture".
And the law of Christ, apart from the occasional lip service, mostly got set aside. It was something to be waved when convenient, ignored when inconvenient.