I’m occasionally asked if I ever consider myself a “completed Jew,” and Christians tend to be surprised when I answer no. The main reason for that is because it’s considered highly offensive to Jewish people. The gospel is offensive enough; I don’t see a need to use language that is inflammatory if I don’t have to.
But the other reason is because I didn’t come to Jesus by studying scripture, and realizing how the New Testament connects with the Old, thus “completing” my faith. That didn’t come until much later. The Christian faith is at once fantastical and reasonable, but that’s not what initially drew me towards it.
I remember Jesus being the answer to a problem that I didn’t realize was a problem at the time. For most of my life, I was living in fear of another Holocaust or pogrom, always looking over my back and seeing myself as a moving target. For me, that was normal. If you weren’t anxious, you wouldn’t survive.
To be fair, that fear and anxiety was warranted much of the time, historically. The Jewish experience has been constantly moving from one place to another, seeking safety that is almost always temporary. The generational trauma is real, but so are the pogroms that caused it.
A violent antisemitic attack near my home recently was oddly validating: the anxiety really isn’t just in my head. A Holocaust survivor was one of the victims. Her attempted extermination wasn’t that long ago. I grew up hearing how my existence today was, in effect, a middle finger to the Nazis, to Hitler.
So much of modern Judaism is shaped by “sticking it to the Nazis,” which is noble in a sense, but also motivated by a spirit of anxiety and fear that’s threatened to destroy me multiple times.
That fear and anxiety are what made me ripe for hearing the gospel. When you’re tired of running, or wondering where you’d go if you had to drop everything and flee, a savior who suffered and conquered death becomes very attractive.
When you learn that death isn’t even the end of the story, but the beginning of eternal life, and every kind of suffering has already been redeemed, you sit up and pay attention.
In Jewish culture, there is a constant refrain of “Never forget.” But what if, God forbid, there is no one to remember? What if our earthly sanctuary state is at war, and is no longer a sanctuary – where then will we go?
C.S. Lewis said if we long for something that the world cannot satisfy, it indicates that we were, in fact, made for another world.
I believe the collective Jewish experience points to that truth.
I’m not a “completed Jew,” just complete. Period.
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
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