fox | overqualification

this morning, on the escalator down to the metro, someone standing on the right as i walked by on the left tried to give me a pamphlet from Jews For Jesus. i'd seen him from a few steps up, actually, so i wasn't in the no-thank-you place i'm usually in when people try to give me unsolicited literature -- he held the thing out to me and as i went by i heard myself say "don't EVEN", and he pulled it back, and that was that. ugh, and i was cross all the way in to work.

i e-mailed them once, several years ago, because i honestly don't understand their logic. (my freshman roommate described Jews For Jesus as "overqualified"; hence the subject line.) they were actually very polite -- the exchange went something like this:

me: so "Jews For Jesus", huh. i may be missing something, but doesn't that make you, you know ... christians?
them: yes, we are christians.
me: then, would you please stop calling yourselves jews?

i think they went on to explain that they were defining "jew" as "a member of the jewish 'race'" (a concept that doesn't bother me a whole lot, but god do i hate the phrase), a child of israel, one of The Jewish People, and not (obviously) as "a practitioner of the jewish faith". so it wasn't actually a flagrant contradiction for such a person to be a christian. my feeling: whatever. then call yourselves Hebrews For Jesus, or Israelites For Jesus, or Judaeans For Jesus. stop calling yourselves jews, and i'll stop calling you lying liars who tell lies.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I do make that distinction, but it's cultural, rather than racial. In describing myself as jewish (or "culturally jewish", which I've also said), what I mean is that my heritage is Eastern European and that my forebears were Jewish. I could equally coin a word like "Jew-ish" (accompanied, of course, by a side-to-side "so-so" kind of hand-wave) to describe myself. I've also said "potentially Jewish", as distinct from "kinetically Jewish" (if there's a messiah, he hasn't come yet) -- and that'd be the only faith-type thing. I'm mainly sort of joking around with all this, and certainly only looking for a label to apply to myself. (The Cuban/cuban thing was by extension, and really just for a giggle.)

Anyway, though, going ahead with that, I suppose a person could say they were jews for Jesus. (I think it'd be difficult to be the sort of culturally-jewish that I mean when I'm talking about that and be "for Jesus", being how what I'm talking about is investment in traditions associated with Judaism without investment in the faith -- I'm not a believer, I mean to say, but I'm not an anti-believer.) But that's not what they mean at all. What they are is (a) missionaries and (b) liars. They lure people away from Judaism by telling them they're "completing themselves as Jews". But I don't care how you slice it or how it's spelled: accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah isn't completing yourself as a Jew as much as it's becoming a Christian.

i suppose their argument is that Jews are really just sitting around waiting for the Messiah.

i'm not a fan of the guerilla tactics, but a lot of religions use them..

the fact that a lot of people do it doesn't, obviously, make it okay.

i actually have no problem with people switching horses, and if the switch happened because they weren't particularly committed to the first horse and they were persuaded to change by someone with a good line, that's sometimes what happens. but, other religions tell it like it is when you convert. a muslim embraces hinduism, and he's a hindu. calling himself a "muslim for krishna" would be preposterous and offensive.

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