The Old Testament

I just started reading a book called, The Bible Jesus Read, by Phillip Yancey. So far I'm loving it! When I went to Pennsylvania for a semester a couple years ago, God began in me an interest in the Jewish people. I can't really explain it - they facinate and intrigue me.

It partly began by being surrounded by them in the Pittsburgh area, but also by reading a book called Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner. She is the daugther of a Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother. After their divorce, her mother kept one promise to him, to raise Lauren in Jewish schools in order to convert to the Jewish faith when she could. Girl Meets God is her story of that journey...and then beyond, as she soon after converts to Christianity. Winner's second book, Mudhouse Sabbath, really took me over the edge as far as my interest in the Jewish community - because it lays out several things that are part of Jewish tradition or law which Christians would benefit from incorporating some means of a revised version into our own practices.

My interest has continued to deepen and expand over time. I am in a place now in which I have a deep sense of desire to spend some quality time in the Old Testament. To really know it. Yancey's book really deals with that issue - that Christians are quite unfamiliar with the Old Testament, sometimes even on the level of what would be considered "the basics". Yancey also addresses the issue that in the same way that the Old Testament in incomplete without the new, without the Messiah's arrival, so too is the New Testament incomplete without the Old. He discusses how Jesus and the people of his time read and quoted those Scriptures. It is those scriptures that revealed the characteristics of the Messiah that Jesus would one day fulfill.

Anyways, I wonder about how much we disregard Old Testament laws - dietary and such - as not pertaining to us. If we believe that the Ten Commandments apply to us (and evangelical Christians would like them to apply to the world) then why not the rest? If we believe we are now ingrafted into the benefits of God, which were once only available to the Jews because of their unique relationship with Yahweh, then should we not also be accountable to the same restrictions and limitations?

It seems as though we like to take the good, the pleasant, the "blessings" verses out of the Old Testament (i.e. "I know the plans I have for you..." from Jeremiah), even when we take it out of context to do so. But you won't find many who take the curses, the limitations, or judgment because of sin out of context, unless it applies to someone besides ourselves. That is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to Christians - taking scripture out of context for the purpose of attributing blessings on oneself.

So, I'll be studying up on that for awhile. That's what's on my heart today! I'm sure many people will disagree with me on this one, but that's ok. Like I've said, I'm interested in reading Scripture for what it says, not what I've been taught to believe it says.