Choosing a Church

I'm currently attending an Evangelical church. Not my first choice, but the church that I attend has a tendency to celebrate marriages, actually, especially long lasting ones. Pretty conservative church, too, and it's growing.

I've been to Catholic churches. Don't like them. Too much feeling like going through motions without meaning. Mormanism is out the window. Huge, huge number of churches belonging to that around here. People seem nice enough, though. I wouldn't even say I belong to a particular denomination. I've church hopped before. My old church was pretty big on "the teachings" and the values they apply to normal life. Good times there. But it's a rare case, I find.

My wife and I went to the Jewish Orthodox service to see what it is like.  It is more conservative than Greek Orthodox.  Man and women are separated in the service.

I discovered that Orthodox rabbis traditionally reject someone 3 times before starting the process of conversion.  So this is what happened last time.  This means that conversion is an option, so Orthodox Judaism is an option again as a religion.

I was reasonably happy with Greek Orthodox Christianity until I read the Bible.  I read the Bible in order starting at the beginning of the Old Testament.  I loved the Old Testament.  The Old Testament is basically the story of Israel through the fall of Israel to Babylon.  It presents the complete life-cycle of a culture.  The Jews left Egypt with a slave mentality which is unsuitable for founding a country.  So they wondered in the desert for 40 years by which time a new generation had grown up that was self-directed enough to found a country.  This new generation founded Israel.  This Israel was very co-alpha, having only judges and religious leaders and no kings.  During this period, very good moral laws were developed.  As Israel became more settled and grew, it eventually had kings as its neighbors did.  It is an advantage in wars to have one strong commander.  So now Israel grew into a significant power by combining high morality with string kings.  But then the morality began to decline.  This long slow decline resulted in Israel gradually losing power until it was finally completely conquered by Babylon.  The end of the Old Testament is a reflection by those Jews who weren't killed on Jewish history and the fall to Babylon.  The Old Testament covers the cycle of a culture almost exactly as I see it, explaining how moral decline is what causes culture to fail.  The miracle is that the Jews in Babylon understood all this and wrote it down in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is surprisingly free of mythology.  I interpreted God simply as:

        God = Wisdom + Morality

This simple view is enough to explain almost everything relating to God in the Old Testament.  When God speaks, I take it as the voice of wisdom and morality speaking.  There are very few examples of God doing supernatural things.

The New Testament starts several hundred years after the Old Testament left off.  By then, the Pharisees dominated Judaism.  These are the predecessors of today's Rabbinic Judaism.  The Pharisees were power hungry bureaucrats who badly distorted the Old Testament.  Jesus revolted against this, but instead of returning to the core of the Old Testament, Jesus gave his own alternate interpretation.  Since I love the Old Testament, I am equally against both Jesus and the Pharisees.

Today we have three major religions all based on the Old Testament.  But all three claim to have the right interpretation of the Old Testament which they claim to be divinely inspired and therefore unquestionable.  Christianity has the New Testament, Islam has the Quran, and Rabbinic Judaism has the Talmud.  (The Talmud was written by many rabbis, all of whom were supposed to be divinely inspired.)  In my view, all the positive attributes of all these religions come from the Old Testament, and all these religions add with their additional books are bad rules and intolerance.

So I was thrilled to find the perfect religion for me, which is Karaite Judaism.  This is purely based on the Old Testament and says that it is up to each individual to study it and interpret it for himself.  I encourage you to google "Karaite Judaism" and learn more.

Back in the real world, Karaite Judaism is a tiny religion.  So how can one make this work practically?  Since Karaite Judaism is a form of Judaism and is therefore accepted by Rabbinic Judaism, I think the best approach is to join an Orthodox Jewish synagogue but to consider oneself a Karaite Jew.  I will try this here in El Paso and see how it works out.

So today I watched this amazing video The Hebrew Yeshua vs. The Greek Jesus that describes how the first Gospel, Matthew, is a mistranslation from Hebrew (via Aramaic).  And of course all other Gospels are based on this.  In other words, the New Testament is a bunch of nonsense, but Jesus himself was good guy who was actually trying to return to the Old Testament.  I need to learn more, but it seems now that I agree with Jesus but not with Christianity.  Where that leaves me in practical term, I don't know.

Here is a good description of the difference between Judaism and Christianity.

I went to the Orthodox Jewish service twice.  Today I met with the rabbi to discuss Judaism.  I told him upfront that I am an atheist.  He said that it makes no difference.  All that matters is doing what God wants, there is no need to believe in God at all.  I was thrilled to hear this.  Christianity is concerned with belief, not action.  Judaism is concerned with action, not belief.  So for me, Judaism is a clear winner.  I now feel sure that I will stick with Judaism, initially Orthodox Judaism, and later I will look again at Karaite Judaism.

I recently found out that there is a Messianic Center in El Paso, so I went today.  The basic idea of Messianic Judaism sounds appealing.  Jesus was Jewish and Messianic Judaism claims to return to Jesus's basic message which includes Torah observance.  In Matthew 5:17-20 Jesus says:

"Don't assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For I assure you: Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all things are accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches [these commandments] will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

All of Christianity ignores what Jesus said here and instead accepts Paul who constantly contradicts Jesus.

So I had high hopes for Messianic Judaism.  But what I saw was probably the worst service to far.    It was a Liberal Christian core with a Jewish veneer.  People wore common clothes with Jewish symbols like yarmulkes and prayer shawls.  The room had the standard things one find in a synagogue.  The service started with a small band playing.  A bunch of women went to the front and started dancing.  It looked like I imagine some of the more corrupt goddess worshipping religions of Rome must have looked.  There was singing.  Then came the Torah reading.  In a Jewish synagogue the Torah is really read so that everyone can hear the words of Torah.  But here only bits were read to support the views the "rabbi".  Of course men and women were mixed and there were much more women than men.  This service is a reminder of how easy it is to corrupt a good thing, even the Torah.  So this is another religion to write off.

Karaism or Karaite Judaism is a tiny religion based on an older form of Judaism.

Modern Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism which is descended from the Pharisees who Jesus spent his time arguing with.  This Judaism is based on Rabbinic authority where the rabbis have all the power to interpret religion.  The rabbis have codified their beliefs in the Talmud which is a huge series of books with rules regulating all aspects of life.  Some of this is just crazy mystical nonsense.  Rabbinic Judaism has the advantage that it is a strong alternative to liberalism.  But it has the disadvantage that it is full of rules that make no sense and make life less pleasant.  For example, no cheeseburgers.

Is this kind of centralized authority needed?  For a big religion, probably yes.  In Christianity, those branches that were freed from central authority by the Reformation have generally succumbed to liberalism.  But then Christianity is fundamentally flawed because it is based on faith, not good behavior, so without a central authority, there is nothing to keep it on path.

Karaism is something like the Reformation in the sense that it asks Jews to interpret scripture for themselves.  But it isn't something new.  There have always been some Jews who thought this way but gradually Rabbinic Judaism became dominant.  Karaite Judaism is Judaism for people who can think for themselves, so this is naturally for the minority.  For the majority, who can't think for themselves, Rabbinic Judaism is more appropriate.

Why is Karaism superior to Protestant Christianity?  Because Karaism is based on the Tanakh (Old Testament).  The Tanakh is the most anti-liberal book ever written.  No one can study the Tanakh and remain a liberal.  Liberals hate the Tanakh with a passion, but many liberals can tolerate the New Testament.  Also, the Tanakh is all about action, not belief.  There isn't a single commandment in all of the Tanakh about belief or faith.  All commandments are about action, what to do and what not to do.  And these rules are fundamentally conservative rules that liberals hate.

Christianity requires faith in a supernatural God.  Rabbinic Judaism requires following nonsensical rules and submitting to rabbinic authority.  Only Karaism is purely conservative without requiring any specific faith or submitting to arbitrary rules.

I have spent time recently on Karaite mailing lists.  All are small and private.  The majority of people there are fundamentalists and strongly believe in a supernatural God.  They are also very conservative.  But Karaism includes many exceptions.  Today I talked to a leading America Karaite who doesn't believe in a supernatural God.  He agrees with Spinoza's interpretation of God.  Of course he is in the minority, but the point is that Karaism allows for such people.

There is an advantage to Karaism being small.  It means that we could have an impact on it.  I personally feel that Karaism is a better starting point for an "independent sub-culture based on patriarchal values" than CoAlpha is.  Making this work would require a very different approach from CoAlpha, which I may discuss in the private forum.

On a personal level, I will get as involved as possible with Karaism, but I will continue with Orthodox Judaism locally.  I now consider my religion to be "Scientific Karaism" which means that I am a Karaite who defines God as natural law as described by science.

I attended a Karaite service in Daly City a week ago.  Most of the Karaites there are from Egypt.  The religion is clearly ethnic and not at all dynamic.  There is no interest in growing the religion at all.  The service felt similar to Orthodox Jewish service.  It is clearly conservative with no compromises with modern culture.  The seating area had 3 sections, one which was all men, one all women, and one mixed.  I don't know if this is the rule or just convention.  But I think it makes a lot of sense since this way everyone has their choice about what they prefer.  No one can reasonably complain about this seating arrangement.  During the service, right after the Torah reading, there was open discussion about it.  This consisted of very direct debate.  I have never seen such tolerance of conflicting opinion in a religious service.  The service was about 2 hours long which is shorter than Orthodox Judaism.  It had the usual type prayers as well.  It was in Hebrew, of course.  After the service was lunch.  The people seemed quite reasonable and were clearly more intelligent than those attending Chabad services.  This may be related to the fact that they generally aren't Americans.  Overall I was very impressed with the Karaite service and I can't think of anything that I didn't like about it.  This is clearly my favorite religion.