Finding Home

For thirty years, I trusted the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus for my eternal salvation and the major tenets that went with it. I only had one problem. Raised with an iron-clad certainty in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, I had to take them seriously, studying as if they were the words of eternal life. But the more I studied, the more they seemed not to say what I had been taught. Why were there so many commands, as if God expected obedience, when the preacher said it was all about what Jesus did? How could two-thirds of the Bible speak clear praise of the Law, while the Church spoke contempt-wasn't it given by the same God who became man? Why did the Old Testament feel like it contained the fullness of human emotion and experience-full of rich characters like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David-but the New Testament felt like a series of classroom lectures? Why did Jesus say to keep the Law and tell his disciples to stay in Israel, while Paul seemed to dismiss the Law and spent his energy making Gentile converts outside of Israel? For that matter, how did Paul-never a part of Jesus earthly ministry-become the great chief apostle, over the Twelve who were publicly recognized as Jesus hand-picked emissaries? And how did their legacy become the Catholic and Orthodox churches, yet all the churches that I sat in in doubted those churches-from whom they inherited the New Testament-were even true believers? Over the course of thirty-years, from my AWANA childhood to advocating this religion as an adult in blogs and books and as a home-church leader, the questions lead me to turn and embrace the life which the followers of Jesus had once called home: Judaism.