I spend a good amount of time today really trying to understand why, if you’re Christian, you don’t follow Jewish holidays. After all, Jesus was a Jew, and as Christians, we are meant to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.

And after watching these videos, it made me realize just how splintered religion can get, and if we’re not careful, that can really effect our FAITH in Jesus.

So Messianic Jews still follow Jewish customs, and some going as far as to continue circumcision on their children when they’re 8. I find this very curious, because though they follow Yeshua, Jesus, they follow their own ways of doing things … in a somewhat in-between land of Judaism and Christianity.

And then I began to understand and learn that the reason Christians no longer follow Jewish traditions is simply due to anti-Semitism from Constantine’s time.

But all this studying in Messianic Judaism made me wonder, just because someone follows the words of Jesus, or customs, or beliefs, even if it doesn’t follow traditional ways of “Christianity” (like Christmas, etc).

If Christian tradition wasn’t even something Jesus himself invented, and it was through Constantine and the Niccean Creed that it even began, and Jesus fulfilled scripture as we know it, then what’s the point of following ANY traditions at all, rather than just following Jesus’ message of redemption?

Regardless if we follow Jewish customs, or Christian customs, we still believe in Christ. However, if we are to follow Christ, we are to follow what’s written in the actual BIBLE including the words of Paul, and circumcision is not necessary, and how we’re allowed to eat pork.

Spectrum of Faith

If God is God is God, and Jesus is the only separator, then it’s confusing. Because Christianity has a LOT of denominations. Either all are correct, or none are correct. I guess you could also say, some are correct. But who’s to say? Jesus is to say.

If everyone has an opinion on what Jesus’ message was, and Christmas was a made up holiday not even originating from Jesus himself, then why would ACIM be inherently wrong or Satanic? And to put it even FURTHER, how would that make ANY cult, denomination, or ideology Satanic or demonic?

The reason I find this so curious is because for a long time, I really followed a false Jesus from “A Course in Miracles” (ACIM) written by an atheist / culturally Jewish woman, Helen Schucman, which sounded a lot like a weird mashup of Judiasm, Christianity and pseudo-science with a focuses on oneness. If Messianic Judaism isn’t considered actual Christianity or Judaism, but is still legitimately following Christ, who’s to say ACIM isn’t legitimate as well? Well — let’s jump into it. In it, the Trinity is respected, Jesus is the author, and we are all on in God through the Holy Spirit. As you can see, it uses predominantly Christian language in markedly NON-Christian ways.

And to be clear, this is a “New Age Jesus” instead of following the actual belief of Jesus Christ as written in the Bible.

In ACIM — it’s not assumed that you must worship the author. It assumes that they’re born free of sin. And this is basically the entirety of ACIM, except it goes even further to say none of us are sinners in our deepest essence, but that ego is something of our own invention. Which is kind of Jewish if you think about it.

This video makes that point even more curious.

However, ACIM goes further to the point of questioning reality. In Genesis (under Judaism AND Christianity), God crates human bodies. In ACIM, God creates us perfect, and we are the ones who invented our souls, and our souls have minds, and our bodies are an illusion that extended OUT of this mind. It’s a little confusing.

What ACIM gets right, I think, is the contrast between it and the Catholic notion of being an innate sinner. But in no ways did Christ ever DENY sins existence.

In many ways, ACIM is seen as the healing to the destruction of Catholic legalism. In Catholicism, the idea of us being sinners forever needing repentance is an idea that was repeated over and over when I was growing up. The crucifixion had more prevalence than the resurrection.

In ACIM, on the other side, this idea of post-sinless-resurrection is the central focus. Basically, the entire book is about how the Holy Spirit’s effect on forgiveness through our sinlessness in Jesus’ eyes. That Jesus was the first to awaken to the idea that we all have a little piece of Holy Spirit in each of us (which is also an Orthodox Jewish idea) but that now that sinlessness can be carried out to each (which is a Christian idea) by just believing that we are sinless beings (ACIM ideology). But in Christianity, to gain the Holy Spirit is only done through the acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior and the salvation for our sins, we’re not inherently born with it.

ACIM really focuses on UNITY and ONENESS — as when I look at you, you are me — or when I look at a chair — I am part of that chair because I am just as much God as Jesus was God. Oneness was indeed mentioned a few times in the Bible, but ACIM twists it. In ACIM, the idea is that once you have the Holy Spirit living within you, you can see the oneness and unity of others basically as if you and them were CONNECTED through MIND — that you’re essentially the same person, just fragmented into little bits (which is a Jewish idea). However, it has a very Christian Science / New Thought way of going about the idea that bodily illness is an illusion, and that our bodies are an extension of MIND, and cleverly denies the existence of sin at all to suggest that we are all little gods. And so the unbelief in Satan — and more clearly, the focus on the ego as basically being Satan, so that our mind thinks of itself the ego aligning to evil rather than Satan causing the ego — is the clear delineation.

Pro-ACIM Argument

Anti-ACIM Argument

ACIM is clever in its deceptive lie in repeating the same mistake as the very 1st sin, taking a bite of apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil — to make us believe that we are capable of being God as well (when in fact, this is impossible).

Satan, in Christianity, is an actual fallen angel. In Judaism, the fall of Adam and Eve didn’t reduce our perfection in God’s eyes, but caused ego to enter. But in both, God creates all. It’s only in ACIM that it’s believed that the Garden of Adam and Eve is an analogy, and one that really talks about God being completely SPLIT OFF from the current reality of sin we see — that only humans really exist in this space of illusion, and God doesn’t have anything to do with it. And that only through the Holy Spirit do we even have communion with God at all. It’s less about Jesus, and more about the Holy Spirit, and Jesus’ only role was to the awareness of that. And how basically others are really equal to us.

It really mashes both ideas of Christianity and Judaism together, with a healthy does of pseudo-psychology and self-help thrown into the mix.

But then again, if you don’t believe in Jesus, that doesn’t mean you don’t have faith. You just believe in God in a religious sense, not a scientific sense. Even the scientific sense of faith is a faith in and of itself. It’s belief or faith in the laws of science. Everyone has belief in something. Even not knowing, is faith in the unknown.

And … whether you’re Christian, Messianic, Jewish, an ACIM follower, a non-Jesus believer, an agnostic, or even a scientist (I don’t know much about being Muslim but even Muslim’s would fall into this) — then yes, there’s FAITH there.

Faith Beyond God

Faith is in believing something in which you cannot see.

I look outside and marvel at things I cannot understand — how a tree existed, how my arms exist, how any of this exists at all. Why we are here is a question we might never know. We might know after we die, but no one knows for sure. Elon Musk has faith, but his faith is in outer-space and finding answers OUT THERE rather than in here.

True Faith

And that’s where religion fills in the gap — it gives answers to these deep questions of how we got here, and what our purpose is here on this planet. In the Bible, we’re told we all have a purpose, and explains this as it it was the actual way it is. Though we cannot prove it, other than with written evidence, that is belief.

And faith, as we spoke of earlier, is the belief in the future of it — the FAITH that Jesus will be there in the end, and we’re going to Heaven for this belief in Christ as our savior.

It’s complicated, isn’t it … but in the end, truth is truth is truth and Jesus Christ is the ONE TRUE GOD.