21 | April | 2014 | betsybeadhead

I read a post recently by a Rabbi who has a Facebook page. He is very upset about the number of Jews he knows who have embraced Jesus as the Messiah. He says that he will not call them Christians, but that they are still Jews, just mislead.

His biggest issue is not that they have found the Messiah, but that they think that a human being is God. This is idolatry in his eyes.

I get that. But the problem is, Jesus isn’t God. Well, he is, and he isn’t. Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the Torah in human form. Jesus is an aspect of God, in the same way that the Torah is an aspect of God.

The Torah is “The infinite compressed into the finite” according to David Sacks, from the podcast “Living with G-d, Spiritual Tools for an Outrageous World.”

The Torah is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh.

Jesus isn’t God, but a part of God. God is quantum. God is everywhere. If Jesus was really God in totality, then who was Jesus praying to in the garden (Matthew 26:36-56)? Who talked to him when he was baptized (Matthew 3:17), and when he was transfigured (Matthew 17-5)? Was he talking to himself?

God gave us the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, as an instruction book. It tells us how to live. It keeps us awake and aware. With these stories, we have a pattern for how to live our lives. It is like letting someone else do all the mistakes first for us. We can read these words and know “Oh, this works, do it” or “Hey, that is a big mistake, don’t do it.” With the study of gematria, you can dig down even deeper. There are people who study the letters of the Hebrew alphabet inside and outside. They assign numerical values. They look at the beginnings of the words and the middle. They find in all this study that the Torah is constantly revealing the Message of God, no matter how you divide it.

The Torah is like a fractal. No matter what part you look at – big or little, you are seeing the whole pattern. It is pretty amazing.

Jesus is like that. Jesus is a part of God, and God, and not God. Jesus is a tiny piece of the whole. But because of the nature of the whole, Jesus has the same pattern as the whole.

Get it? Not really? That is fine. I don’t really either. But I kind of do.

God is so much bigger than our human minds can comprehend. We can’t get “I am the Alpha and the Omega” at the same time. Our processor – our brain – isn’t big enough to handle it. We are black and white and 2D. We are a sheet of paper, copied on a copier. God is not only full color but as many dimensions as possible – way more than four. God is everything all together.

That just doesn’t fit here on this planet very well.

It is like trying to play a CD-rom on a Victrola. It just isn’t going to work. There is a lot more information on that tiny disk. You can put a whole encyclopedia on it. And while that Victrola looks like it can play it – it is a turntable after all, and the CD-rom is round, and there is a needle for reading it, it just is going to destroy that disc.

Now sure, Jesus says “I and the Father are one.” – John 10:30

That is what got him killed. That, and “working” by healing people on the Sabbath.

Jesus, or Y’shua as his name is more accurately pronounced, is the Torah, in human form. God can do that, you know. God can do anything.

The Torah wasn’t working. People weren’t getting it. They were following the rules but they weren’t getting where the rules were leading them. It is like they had the recipe but they weren’t putting any love into it, so the food tasted bad. It wasn’t nourishing. You have to put love into it, or you’ll get nothing out of it. If the rules lead you to be loving, then keep the rules. If they just become rules for the sake of rules, then drop the rules and try something else.

God figured that if He sent a human to explain it to live it, it would work out well. Sadly, not so much. People got really angry. People still get angry. Sadly, that is the way of people.

As for me, I see Jesus as a pathway. I see his life as an example. I believe that Jesus came to point towards God, not himself. I believe that Jesus is proof that God loves us – not because of Jesus’ crucifixion, but because of his existence. I believe that what makes Jesus different is that he proves that God isn’t “up there” but “right here” with us, right now.

And that is worth it all.

I just realized a fabulous practice. All the whining and complaining my coworkers do used to drive me up the wall. Now I see it as an awesome test.

You can’t grow if you are sheltered. If you spend your whole life insulated and protected, you’ll never mature or get strong. This is true mentally, physically, spiritually.

I was at a retreat recently and was given this meditation. If you are in a rowboat in a lake and a powerboat goes blasting by, you can get upset or you can ride it out. It is what you do with it that matters. If you get upset then you are just making it worse.

I used to think that it would be nice to not have any powerboats on my lake. I’m thinking Rolling Stones here – “Hey, you, get offa my cloud”.

I’m stuck here for 40 hours a week listening to people bitch and whine about everything. Lots of complaining. Lots. From the staff. About the staff. About the patrons. About their husbands. About their children. About everything. All they do is complain, and they don’t do anything to make their lives better.

They are “letting off steam” and I’m the one getting burned.

It gets old. I’ve pointed out that if all we do is talk about negative stuff, then negative stuff is all we will see. We have to look for the positive. This advice works for about ten minutes and then it is forgotten.

If you want to get stronger, you have to test yourself. To strengthen your balance and your ankles, do tree pose. If you do mountain pose you won’t get any benefits. You have to stand on one leg. You have to challenge yourself.

So being around all this complaining is a test. How to listen without engaging. How to be there but not really be there.

I can’t solve their problems. They have to do it themselves. They have to see them as problems first. The longer I try to deflect or dissipate their anger, fear, frustration, the more I’m delaying their realization that they are causing their own problems.

Jesus tells us to love our enemies. He says that if we just love the nice people, what good is that? Anybody can do that.

So the trick is to love the bad situation, the complaining, the whining. Be loving. Don’t fight it, don’t resist it. Don’t join it, either.

This doesn’t mean I don’t want to go rowing on a nice placid lake every now and then either. I don’t enjoy being the calm one amidst the chaos. But I have to do something with this reality.

I’m not the only person to notice this. There are a lot of people who have worked there who feel that there is a bunch of negative energy here. Perhaps the fact that there is a large sinkhole on the property is part of it. One friend says there is paranormal activity. Whatever, the reason, the result is the same. And I’m trying to find something good about this. It is either that, or join it, and I’m not hot on that.