Thursday, July 28, 2011

Yeshua the Conquering Messiah, or the Suffering Servant

Yeshua, Jesus, from the time he was an infant, was raised in a culture that expected the Coming One, the Anointed One, the Messiah (Hebrew), the Christ (Greek), to be a conquering hero that would elevate the nation of Israel to the greatest power in the world, free from oppression from other nations, like Egypt fifteen centuries earlier, and like the hated Rome during Yeshua's earthly lifetime.

As a child, surely Yeshua's mother told him stories of all the special circumstances surrounding his birth, pumping his head full of ideas that he was special, more so than any other human ever born. And even if she didn't, she and those in the know surely treated him as if he was.

In this type of environment, it would be expected that little Yeshua would grow up to be confident, self-assured, ready to take on the world, able to love and be loved, happy.

But if on the other hand, that cultural expectation were not there, if the cultural expection had been more accurate, that little Yeshua would be born for the specific purpose of being arrested on trumped-up charges, beaten to near-death, and then tortured excruciatingly at the hands of a vile, sinful nation to complete death, what would his demeanor be? Would he not develop early on into an "emo" child, morose, dark, brooding, focused on death and darkness, having no emotional strength to be confident, to take on the world, to love or be loved, resigned, unmotivated?

The cultural expectation of a triumphant Messiah seems to have served at least two purposes:

1) It kept Satan distracted from seeing the real plan,

and

2) It provided an environment for Yeshua to develop into the man needed for the job.

Why We Don't Get Involved in Politics

Thus writes American Founding Father, James Madison:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they can not be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?
Paraphrased more simply:
It doesn't matter if the people have the freedom to write their own laws, if the laws they write are hard to understand or change frequently. It's not a "rule" if no one knows about it or if it changes often.
That's why most Americans don't bother with the political process; most of it is "over our heads".