The rabbi is in the middle of a sermon series on the Book of Joshua. "Well, that's refreshing," I whisper. "A whole sermon series on something from the Old Testament. You would never hear that in regular church." Steven shushes me before I can climb onto one of my favorite soapboxes, the Christians-think-the-Bible-starts-with-Matthew soapbox. (p. 17 in my version)
I really think that Christians cannot understand their faith unless they have a strong understanding of whence their faith came: Judaism. This doesn't mean we need to go to such lengths to study the Talmud (although doing that wouldn't be such a bad thing, especially because Paul's ideas of slavery to the Law in Romans and Galatians would really make sense), but I think that we should make a concerted effort to be reading the Old Testament as we read the New Testament.
Here are my main reasons for advocating this:
- Jesus, His disciples, and the apostles who wrote the New Testament only had the Old Testament--if it worked for them, it surely will work for us.
- We cannot really understand what Jesus means when He says things like how He is the good sphepherd without understanding Old Testament basics such as that David (in whose line Christ was born) was a shepherd, or that in Ezekiel 34, God promises that He would shepherd His people, but that David (a symbol for the Messiah) would (see how this all comes back to Christ?).
- By reading the Old Testament, we realize that the when and the how and the who and everything else about Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection wasn't merely something God decided one day when He was bored or something, but that the plan was extraordinarily deliberate, and known from the very beginning.
Well, I'll get down from my own soapbox now. I will probably post a little later today about the dream I have been promising, but, until then, go read the Old Testament...all of it (you know, if you have time).
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