In thinking about God and the creation, incorporating mankind, we wrestle with thoughts about God related to the way life matters have emerged for us. Beginning this line of thought long ago, I tended to find excuses for God. Scripture makes it clear that he doesn’t need any excuses, and he doesn’t slink away from taking responsibility. This last eases the burden of theology, but adds problems for the person trying to put God in the best light that human beings can design for him. In the oddities of man’s contexts for life and thought, we find paradoxes and contradictions. (This frustration is often referred to in these Pages.)
Why, in the planning of God, would he choose a people to freight his Revelation to the World? And, if that is the way to achieve purpose, why choose a people like Israel? The answers to these and other related questions require more than can be accomplished here, and some answers elude us in our search. Why Israel? Were the nations written on pieces of vellum, mixed together, and one name drawn from the divine halo? God surely has a better way of doing things than to use chance. What likely was the case might appear in the patterns (divinely scientific) that God used. Just as Adam/Eve is (the twain are one flesh) representative of the human race that followed, so Israel is a compounded nation/people, comprising a real context of nations. Refinement of various passages focusing on Israel, appear to support such a thesis. In a sense all nations/peoples are Israel. Israel, the parable, is all nations. It is made to be understood and used, even if special among parables. It is analogous of all. Had any other nation been chosen for representation, it would have acted as Israel acted through the four millennia from the patriarchs.
Various influences made Israel a bit different than other nations, and Israel learned to adapt to the divine circumstances visited upon its tribes by neighbor nations. In time one of the terms given to the adaptation was otherness. This was a rather common way by which elders trained the children, especially in Europe, to find ways to live with otherness. They were a bit unlike all the other citizens in a country. Rights and acceptance were diluted/denied in places where they could live. So to survive, even prosper, they would adapt to their lot. At least they were not as low as the untouchables of India, or the slaves in the cotton fields, or others in the mixture of nations to whom they could find some pride in surviving. From time to time they had their migrations in a walk of tears, like American aborigines walking from east to west, with losses of loved ones along the way. They became resourceful, and developed the Jewish way – just as any people would do, who cherished life. When Russian Jews were driven out, with others from various locales, they tried consciously to change the otherness so to adapt to a new culture, or forced to find another otherness. Persecution rose and fell, but nothing quite like that which became known as the Night of Glass when the homes and businesses were stoned and robbed by Nazis. This opened the door to what became known as the Holocaust, when millions died, having lost all, including their children and dignity of rights. It is the story of the prejudice of mankind, and the dehumanizing of fellow mankind. Into a similar conglomeration of oppression, but not so dehumanizing, there came a loving Savior – long ago.
I was a friend to Merwin Solomon in elementary school. I talked at length with Jews when I was in New York for three years. I met and was solemnized by a waitress in Hollywood when I asked about the number tattooed on her arm. That’s my souvenir from Herr Hitler, she said. During college days, I was guest speaker at a church in Brooklyn, trusted by my college to speak to congregations. After the service I was well cared for in a home for dinner. A neighbor barged in. Her father had tried to commit suicide. She knew this to be a Christian home. Would someone come? I was asked to go, and did. The Jewish gentleman was woozy but could carry some slow conversation. We talked and I told him I wanted to pray for him. He demurred, knowing I was a Christian, but he wanted to talk with me. We did talk and I encouraged him – in Christ. In the experience I was made aware of the otherness of Christ to persons. Christ works to bridge gulfs of the otherness for Christians in world cultures. The context is difficult. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020