For the first 40 or so years of my life, I did not particularly believe in G-d and especially not in the G-d of Sinai. I believed in many things more or less loosely, sometimes Eastern religions, often atheism, often I had no idea. I did think there was a larger meaning in this life, but I didn't feel very confident what that was.
And then I had a crisis. Nobody knew about it at the time but me, but I was having it. I understood the futility of my life as I had been living it. I felt like I was in a prison in my own life, with no way out. It was a dead end, and everywhere I looked and knew where to look, the bars of the prison were shut against me. My reason could not find an exit route, out of this fate. And so if I was going to escape, I would have to reach for something beyond logic, beyond what my reason and my brain and my life experiences up to this point were telling me.
The windows of my prison could not be opened from inside my box. They could not be opened from inside my expectations and reason and worldview and even desires: they could only be opened from... outside. I had to take a leap into the unknown. My reason and expectations and worldview and desires WERE my box, WERE my prison. They were working against me, not for me.
And then the quote from the Gospel of Matthew came to me: whoever would save his life will lose it. He who would lose his life will save it.
I went to the Bible and it opened itself to me. I became a Christian. At some point later, I became discouraged and abandoned it for awhile, but then a near-fatal heart attack brought me back. I then began moving into a new stage.
The contradictions between the New Testament and the Old, and the inconsistent way Christians regard the Old, and indeed issues I have always had with the idea of the divinity of Jesus - that Jesus was literally G-d and all that Trinity nonsense - began to surface. I initially decided in favor of the New over the Old: the Old was an earlier and more primitive religion, the pacifism and love and forgiveness of the New Testament was the way. This was not a very satisfactory solution for me though, and so I began to dive into the Tanakh, the Old Testament, to prove to myself what it was.
And at first it was a tremendous shock and I didn't like it. This is a fierce religion: none of this forgiving trollops for adultery business. It was a fierce G-d, and a fierce depiction of the world too. A world contaminated by terrible sins. Ferocious actions G-d dictated in response to those sins. The Tanakh is a book of war. And at first, I was horrified.
There was something else too. There was a purity that my previous experience of Christianity had barely hinted at. The New Testament is fundamentally about people and their needs. That's fine, but in the Tanakh I started to see G-d as G-d, not as a solution to human need. Who G-d is, Himself.
In Page 1 of G-d encountering humanity directly after the mythological age of Genesis, G-d tells Moses at the burning bush: "ehyeh asher ehyeh." Moses asks G-d His name. How should we call You, how should we label You, what kind of god are you among the other gods? G-d does not give Moses His name. He answers:
I AM
You will not represent Me, you will not label Me. I am not something to fit into your intellectual file cabinets.
You don't get to create Me in your image, I created you in My image.
And then later: you will not represent Me as any created being. You will not represent me as anything in the sky or Earth or seas. I am not that.
And then later: Hear O Israel: the Lord our G-d, the Lord is ONE.
One. Unity. Completeness. Uniqueness. None of this Trinity horseshit. G-d was never a man. G-d never needed to turn the other cheek.
This was a breathtaking vision of the absoluteness of G-d. This, the G-d of Sinai, was G-d. The Eternal.
And suddenly all the internal conflicts and intellectual conflicts I had had as a Christian began to fade away. Because I wasn't a Christian and having to uphold that absurdity of G-d on a cross anymore. This G-d never was on any cross. This G-d crucifies, when need be.
HOLY HOLY HOLY. Holy is fierce. Holy is above us. Holy keeps separation with us when we are unclean in our actions. Holy burns. Holy is a fire. How does G-d lead the Israelites in the desert? With a tornado of fire.
Yes G-d is loving to His own. He carries them on eagles wings. He is more our Father than any human could be. But to the wicked He is a terror.
I wasn't a Christian anymore. What was I? A Jew? No, that name usually denotes Rabbinical Judaism and I was not a Rabbinical Jew. I have issues with Rabbinical Judaism that I won't go into. I was not ethnically or culturally Jewish or part of a Jewish community: I was a gentile. So what was I? What did they call gentile believers in the Book of Acts? A God-fearer.
As time went on the wickedness of society and this world became more manifest to me. My beliefs began to change. My eyes began to open. Many of the beliefs and thoughts and certainly behaviors that I once had were anathema to G-d. So now, they were anathema to me too.
The idea of having to make my way in this human system that had become so repugnant to me appalled me. I wanted a refuge, some place where I could live according to nature's laws and not have to deal with human insolence and ungodliness. Come out from among them and be separate. Touch not the unclean thing. But in order to get to that refuge, I would have to be strong: much stronger than I am. Nature is no pushover, it is not kind. I was not strong, I was weak: an old man in his sixties who spent most of his life in front of a computer. I could not do it without G-d's help.
And slowly but surely, before my own disbelieving eyes, this came to pass. I found this refuge. I am here now. G-d gave me that strength. I could now, with G-d's help, live the life I wanted to be living and should be living.
Consider this: a man who did not believe, who rebelled against G-d most of his life. G-d takes this man, who did not acknowledge Him, and slowly leads him down the right path. He slowly opens his eyes. He carries him on eagle's wings, a man who did not acknowledge Him, and set him down finally in a goodly land. What an amazing G-d! What is beyond G-d? He seized me with talons of steel when I knew Him not. and would not let me go until I could truly praise His name. Until I would never want Him to let me go. What other god is like G-d? None! At my crisis moment, my life to me was nothing but wreckage. He took over the ruins of me, and made me anew. This is G-d!
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָֽד׃
Shema Israel, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad.
Hear O Israel: The Lord your G-d, the Lord is One
בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד
Baruch shem k'vod, malchuto l'olam va'ed
Blessed be the name of His glorious Kingdom forever.
