22 June 2022
The Covenant of Christ is not legalistic; it is mystical and requires you understand the Word from a Hebrew perspective so that your convictions make sense. At the same time, following Christ means that you must understand the Law from that mystical perspective. We read the Law of Moses to understand the nature of God's moral character, but we read it through the eyes of Christ.
The whole thing is bathed in Hebrew mysticism. If you have a long path to travel, knowing the law code of the Bible is not a bad place to start, as long as you don't dive into legalism. That is, unless you come from a Jewish background, the Law of Noah is the appropriate code to follow. There is a lot of overlap between Moses and Noah; we properly view Moses as a very specific application of Noah. Thus, Noah is the fundamental code in God's revelation, not Moses. Jesus pointed this out in His Sermon on the Mount, because He referred to a far more ancient code during the series of statements that begin with, "You have heard it said..."
Moses assumes the truth of Noah, and applies it to the unique situation of Israel. Both of them overlap in requiring that human life be lived by the heart, not by the head. Both of them require that people live in a tribal feudal covenant community. Both of them demand that any large nation start from a small covenant clan, but the experience of the Old Testament shows why a large nation can never really obey the code.
I've already stated that what most people call "racism" points to something that is required by God in His law code, so it's not a sin, but is obedience. If you lack the strength of a heart-based spiritual mysticism, then the law code is the best you have. That means you would start with a strong tribal ethnic identity. Only when you rise above law to mystical understanding by the heart can you transcend that. As long as you lack a proper grounding in Hebrew mysticism, you need the law, and the law code of the Bible assumes you understand from the Tower of Babel that you must live in close-knit ethnic communities.
That means treating folks from a different ethnic background as outsiders. You cannot treat them as covenant family. They may well be close allies, but they are not family. You are required by covenant law to discriminate -- you must differentiate between family and non-family. That doesn't excuse senseless hostility or arrogance, but it does include watchful avoidance of mixing socially. You need to ditch the idea that different = inferior, and replace it with a clear understanding of how God made us highly varied for His own purposes.
If you are obedient in the construction of a community covenant, it will provide the boundaries of separation. It is virtually guaranteed that community covenants will vary between different ethnic groups.
You cannot ignore the big differences between some ethnic backgrounds. If you happen to come from mostly an Anglo-Saxon background, you are going to exhibit assumptions and habits of behavior that arise from the distinct evolutionary adaptations those people made centuries ago. If you are more Nordic, then your community will be somewhat different, though not dramatically so. If you are from southern Europe, there will be some rather substantial differences in assumptions and behavior. If you come from any Asian or African background, there will be huge differences, not to mention significant differences between many of the Asian and African evolutionary adaptations.
If you are a genetic mutt, you'll need to consciously choose which genetic background is you, because it's not something you can just reinvent from a wild imagination. You'll have to pick which ethnic background is the most comfortable.
That's because the vast majority of covenant communities in this world will tend to reflect one ethnic identity or another. In other words, your "church" is supposed to be pretty much all one ethnic cultural background. It violates the law code of the Bible to confuse different ethnic identities, unless the bulk of your membership is well advanced into mysticism.
Learn from the New Testament record of conflicts between Jewish and Gentile Christians. The single greatest problem is that Jewish Christians were refusing to stop being Jews. They kept acting like their ethnic identity was the ultimate guide to what a church should be. And it was nearly impossible to make a church covenant that didn't choke one or the other. Jews struggled with the old strict habits of the Talmud, and the Talmud was a mess. If Jewish Christians were to develop ancient Hebrew habits, it was a whole lot more peaceful, but the Talmud was all they knew, most of the time, and that was simply wrong all the way through.
Whatever it is "racism" is pointing to is hard-wired human nature. It's not a sin, but you need to understand why God put that in our natures. It's part of the message and grace of God in stopping the Tower of Babel. Mass human unity is one of the greatest barriers to Covenant obedience, and hinders God from speaking to your heart. It will suck you in and pull you so far off course that you may never get back.
You cannot follow Christ without being clannish about your covenant community life. I pray that this corrective doctrine will spread far and wide. This is the path to social stability, one of the quintessential elements of shalom.
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