Y'Shua vs. Jesus

I don't care what language you speak or what word you have for Y'Shua, Jesu, Jesus, Gospodyn, and so on. I think you can call him anything you want, and that He knows YOUR heart.

So, why do I think that you should really call him Y'Shua /ye-SHUH-ah/? Would I take your name John and insist on calling you Yochanan?

Think about the legal consequences if every time we went to another country, our passports was forced to be changed so that our name was in THEIR native tongue and that THEY could choose which one of their names they wanted to call us. Would you feel like your name was disrespected? This is exactly what goes through my mind every time a Christian enters a Messianic Synagogue AND insist that our services be changed to be more "Christian". This is a minority of Christians who do this, but they seem to make the majority of issues. They insist we do the entire service and songs in English. They are so against our Hebrew that they even interrupt our services to come in AFTER the liturgy. They want our service to reek of their Christian service with their Christian Conservative version of the Sermon content and length. These people are usually against the moving of the Holy Spirit. They prefer to squelch the Holy Spirit and the moving of God.

N.B.: Ask other Messianic Jews to be sure what I wrote below is correct. I did do some research on this, but I am a little tired and might inadvertently type the opposite of what I mean AND not catch it despite many rereads. Thanks!

These people are not the original "Hebrew" haters. They did not originate the removing of Judaica from the Messianic Judaic Faith, which became known as the Christian faith, and later, Messianic Jews took back the reigns and re-established the Messianic Judaic Faith. The original  "Christians" were Messianic JEWS and NOT Lutefisk eating Norwegians who only attended Lutheran Church. They actually attended - wait for it....a Synagogue! A JEWISH place of Worship! A Synagogue that spoke Hebrew and actually promoted and celebrated ALL the Jewish High Holy Days?

So what happened? Constantine became saved and made a few changes to the faith in his attempt to end discrimination and persecution of the Christians. The Martyr Life of Christians Era ended. And with it, so did much of the Jewishness of the Christian Faith. There is some debate between what is and is not true about Y'Shua.

According to Reformation Organization (http://www.reformation.org/6-changes-of-constantine.html), Constantine changed the place and time of the Resurrection of Y'Shua and the time of Y'Shua's birth. We Messianic Jews believe that Y'Shua was most likely born during Sukkot (The Feast of Tabernacles which starts tonight at sundown). Constantine is being given credit for the establishment of Christmas in December.

The Reformation period came in, and anti-semitism took root so violently, that it led to the erroneous belief that the church replaced Yisrael (Israel). This is the same as saying Y'Shua changed his name to Jesus and started eating Lutefisk and worshipping Lutefisk as the Sacrificial Lamb. Oh, are you offended yet? Did I just slam Lutherans?

The Reformation also led to the murder of the Jews who refused to convert to "Hating of Y'Shua disguised as Biblical". For the record, when I was forced against my will to stand in a Lutheran Jew Hating Church and go through stage one of Confirmation (stage 2 being the following year), I said Kol Nidre! My picture is NOT on that church's confirmation board. I looked and was relieved! Yes, the famed, worshipped Martin Luther, technically had a huge hand in this folly. Constatine started the folly, Luther urged it along, and Luthers followers put the final touches to it. NOTE: Luther himself, I'm told was NOT anti-semitic! He also was dead many years before Luther followers were murdering Jews who refused to convert. This murder of Jews was NOT Luther's doing at all! He would NOT have supported this.

What does any of this have to do with what we call our Messiah? Everything! We are arrogantly prejudice towards OUR language, OUR culture and OUR comfort zones. We are prejudice against anything that we can't easily make sense of. This is why we refuse to learn Sign Language and brag about how "stupid we are in our head and bad with our hands". Its why we refuse to learn how to be friends with and help the mentally ill. Its why we insist that the mentally ill, proabilitied (disabled) and the Austism spectrum disordered children are mainstreamed as quickly as possible. We refuse to be moved outside of our comfort zone. We want what we know and do not want to learn anything knew lest we die of shock! And yet, Hellish Horror movies are popular. Go figure! Does it matter that Christians don't watch those movies? No, not really. Society's unsaved are just as worshipful of their comfort zones as the saved are. Its just that we saved should know better! Y'Shua did NOT go around hating people, dissing people and sentencing people to the cold treatment and other horrors that are too horrorific for me to name currently.

This prejudice is why when a foreigner comes to America for a taste of freedom, we give them the American prejudice treatment of "I can't be bothered to learn how to properly say Andrzejek, so do you mind if we just call you Andrew?" or for Katarzyna, "Can I call you Kat?" And for Kytriya...."Why do they call you Kite? I just can't remember how you pronounce your name. Mind if I call you Stacy?" Stacy? Why do people think that Stacy and Kyt (pronounced Keet) are remotely the same thing?

To be perfectly clear, Y'Shua doesn't care what you call Him as long as you have a relationship with Him and have accepted Him as your Lord and Messiah. I, on the other hand, look forward to the day when anti-semitism ends and Christians stop trying to turn Messianic Synagogues into Hebrew hating churches. I think that by embracing "calling Him Y'Shua", that would help us get used to Hebrew. Note: The reason why WE Messianic Jews say Ye'SHU-ah is because unlike most of you, we believe we are not holy enough to say His name correctly. WE, unlike most of You, have embraced the Jewish tradition, Jewish Idioms and Jewish Holidays. WE have largely rejected the Christian Church's service traditions because of its removal of everything Jewish from the service.

The HUGE and GLARING exception to all this is that the Seed of Abraham, does a very English service with some Hebrew tossed in for the High Holy Days. The only part of this I am against is the lack of reciting the full Sh'ma (Deut. 6:4-9). They do get, on occasion unsaved Jews who can not afford to go to the traditional Synagogue on High Holy Days, or prefer the English as they are lousy at the Hebrew. It is for this reason, that the Seed of Abraham does this in English with little Hebrew. The other reason is the amount of time it would take to recite large portions in both English and Hebrew. I concur, but would like the full Sh'ma. I can give in to the rest of it for the greater good.

NOTE: The Seed of Abraham DOES many worship songs (and sometimes most worship songs) in Hebrew. The worship team made this change a while ago it seems. However, I do NOT get there every Saturday, so this is just my impression on the times I have attended.)

Their songs, for Yom Kippur, was very much in Hebrew and English. This I relished and lapped up every minute of. Unfortunately, I could not stay for the entire service (missed the sermon which was a special guest from Yisrael). I had a migraine coming on, and I had over an hour drive ahead of me, and my blood sugar was crashing. I decided I needed to go eat, and because it was Yom Kippur with people fasting, I did NOT stay and eat in the car like I used to do. The migraine was caused by me eating too much gluten while on holiday, and because of the potpourri that the church they rent smells of. God has NOT chosen to heal me of the Potpourri because HE believes that YOU Christians need to stop discriminating against people you HATE and get out of your comfort zones. Yes, if you insist that your loo must reek of allergens, then you, in effect HATE me. (I think God also wants Christians to STOP trying to murder the people with the "wrong" allergies.:P )

This worshipping of the comfort zone is why people insist we say Jesus and why we insist on ignoring Jewish culture. We insist that we must speak only English at all times. We in America, are a melting pot of foreigners and melt them down and rebuild them up to reek of English, our way. That means anything British English is melted out as well. I can not wait to move back home to my home land. I'm not saying the grass is greener over there, because it isn't. I will at least have my architecture to look at - my eye candy.