- May 26, 2005
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I am originally from Russia, born to two Jewish parents, but I discovered faith in Jesus at the age of 22 completely on my own.
I first made conscious decision in favor of Christianity when I was 22 years old. The way it happened was pretty interesting. My mom was renting a room in Berkeley from a Jewish math professor, Jacob Feldman, who was an atheist. At that time, I was doing my first year of my Master's program in physics at University of Minnesota. I visitted my mom in Berkeley for the winter break, in winter between 2001 and 2002. Coincidentally, at that same time, math professor at university of Minnesota, Walter Littman, had visitted Jacob Feldman as well. Ironically, I haven't met him in Minnesota during my first semester there, so I first met him in Berkeley, when we both visited Jack's house.
Walter and his wife were talking about a mathematician Hillel who, while he was a little kid, was rescued from Nazi concentration camp: his parents threw him across the fense and then he found his way to the home that took care of him. Walter's wife then said "I resent the people that say it didn't happen". I asked what didn't happen? She then told me about some people that say that there is no holocaust. I haven't heard of this before, and I asked her why would they say it. She said they say it because they hate Jews. I didn't see how the hatred of Jews have anything to do with saying it. To me, that statement didn't sound hateful at all, instead it sounded something like 2+2=5. Now, I researched it later on the internet and I realized from my future research why it is politically charged: namely, as a result of the holocaust, Germany sends a lot of money to Jewish survivors, and also holocaust is the main reason the State of Israel was created. But I didn't know it at that time. Likewise, upon later research, I found the arguments that the holocaust revisionists were making as well as the rebutals of those arguments. But I didn't know any of it at the time of the conversation. So my reaction at the time was the one of simple surprise and curiosity, yet she didn't really address it.
When I asked her that question, her answer was "those are the same people who say that Jews have horns and they know how to hide them". So then I asked her why would people say Jews have horns? After all, if Jews had horns, you would see them, would you not? How is it possible for Jews to have horns without you being able to see them? Again, her simple answer was "they say it because they hate Jews". And then she refused to answer it further and just changed the subject.
When I googled it myself, I found out that the reason they say Jews have horns is two-fold:
To me, those two things didn't add up. Because I knew that Christians regarded Moses as a prophet. So if the reason Jews have horns is that they are of the devil (point number 2), and Moses also has horns (point number 1), then this would imply that Moses is of the devil. Also, point number 2 didn't really make sense on its own either because it would imply that Jesus is of the devil too. Later on I learned Christian Identity answer to this: in particular they claim that today's Jews (who are of Cain) are not true Israelites, while the true Israelites (which includes both Jesus and Moses) are non-Jewish Europeans. However, it again didn't add up: if they claim that Moses is non-Jewish European, why would Moses having horns imply that Jews have horns and not imply that Europeans do? And why would he have horns if having horns is a sign of being of the devil (which they claim Jews are, but non-Jewish Europeans aren't, while Moses is supposedly European)? Plus, regardless of how ethnicities are assigned, Moses can't possibly be of the devil by the virtue of being a prophet, so he can't possibly have horns.
However, a lot more importantly, I got scared by that verse. While, coming from Russia, I knew antisemitism exists, I didn't know it gets that extreme. I was assuming antisemites say Jews are bad people – but still people. I didn't know anybody would say that Jews are literally demonic. That, plus also I assumed antisemitism is a folklore, I didn't realize it would make it into the Bible. I guess I knew about the claim that Jews killed Christ, and I guess if someone would have asked me if its in the Bible, I would say "I guess", but I would only be guessing since I haven't read the Bible. But since nobody asked me I haven't really thought of it. But in any case, the claim that Jews killed Christ didn't sound nearly as extreme as a claim that Jews are literally of the devil, and so the latter really scared me.
Logically speaking, as an atheist, I didn't believe the Bible. However, on an emotional level, I still regarded Bible as some sort of authority. And so while generally I would dismiss everything it says, once I ran into something that extreme, I couldn't dismiss it: I got scared. And I was wondering how come other people weren't as scared as I was.
In order to answer that question, I searched more conventional interpretations of John 8:44. One thing I found was that it wasn't talking about literal biological descent, but instead it was talking about spiritual one. If one speaks biologically, then if some Jews are of the devil that would mean all are, because Jews are biologically related. On the other hand, if one speaks spiritually, then it is possible for some Jews to be of the devil and for others not to be. In fact, one can even have identical twins, one is of the devil and the other isn't. Thus, it is possible that Moses and Pharesees are genetically related, yet Pharesees are of the devil and Moses wasn't, due to their different choices. And where today's Jews stand would also depend on their choices.
To me this was very hard to grasp. Because what I pictured was somebody supernaturally changing their genetics through their choices, which appeared to be next to impossible. So I decided to research it further. Upon further research I realized that it goes back to the concept of being "born again", and the question I was asking was the very same question Nicodemus was asking (except that the context in which I was asking it was a lot more scary). Yet, the notion of being "born again" seemed abstract too (just like it did to Nicodemus) and I had no idea how to address it. So I decided that maybe it would make sense if I read the Bible in order.
However, reading Bible in order didn't lead to what I expected. I expected Bible to be similar to a textbook, where all the terms are defined, all in logical order, etc. But it turned out not to be that way. For example, when I got to Matthew 4, I was surprised how did it mention devil without defining him. And as I kept reading it just kept getting worse and worse. So then I realized that Bible is not like a textbook but instead its like a universe where I can try to gather an evidence to come up with my own textbook about it. As a research-minded person, this intrigued me.
However, at the beginning, I was doing that research as an atheist, looking at a Bible as a human artifact that I was doing antrhopological survey about. What changed my attitude was the following. As I was running the google searches on "children of the devil", google sent me to church of satan (which was irrelevant to what I was searching for, but the google picked up key words). The existence of church of satan was the other thing I was previously unaware of, and it was the other thing that scared me. So then I started to search the church of satan, to address my fears. And as I was searching I ran into two separate things:
So what I noticed was that two opposite camps (Christians and satanists) happened to agree on one thing: that atheism and satanism is the same thing. This really scared me. Even though I was an atheist, I wanted to think that in the battle of Christians vs Satanists I would side with Christians. So then I decided to stop being an atheist. I wasn't quite ready to become a Christian yet. Instead I decided to start believing in God and possibly becoming religious Jew. I only ended up becoming a Christian few months later.
The way I ended up becoming Christian was the following. After 911, my grandmother was telling me about Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and was presenting it as facts. She didn't really tell me that there are two sides to the story until a couple of months later. But then, after said couple of months, she told me "do you know that most of Europe (especially France) supports Palestine?" I was like "Why? I thought they are terrorists!" And she told me they support Palestine because they hate Jews. Then I got angry about it and stayed angry for the next several months.
Then, some time in Spring 2002, I went to the holocaust survivors message board and started to complain how antisemites are using passive aggression a lot. In particular, in my post I drew a parallel between those three things:
As far as point c goes, I now see that they didn't "forget the Old Testament"; instead, they read Paul that wrote at length why it is not to be kept. Of course, Messianic/Sabbaterian groups re-interpret Paul differently, to claim that one should still keep the law; but that is an entirely different issue. The point is that neither side "forgot" about the Old Testament, the way I claimed they did. However, back when I made that post, I haven't read Paul. Thats why I assumed Christians forgot it. And when somebody mentioned Paul in my response to that thread, I didn't even know that Paul was one of the authors of the Bible. Instead, I assumed he was one of the commentaries, and got mad as to why he said it.
In any case, while this was a board for holocaust survivors, there were a lot of non-Jews (including Christians) who were participated in it. So one of them told me that if I think Christianity and Judaism should be kept together, there are Messianic congregations that do that. This was the first time I ever heard of Messianic Judaism, and that term sounded attractive because it was exotic. So I decided to go check out Messianic congregation. The knowledge of Messianic congregations (which I obtained entirely by accident from that post) was the one bridge that I needed to be able to accept Jesus. Because when I attempted to go to Christian church prior to that, I felt an acute discomfort (although nowdays that I been Christian for a long time, I go to Christian churches and enjoy it; but this would have never happened if it wasn't for that bridge that Messianic congregation provided).
Again, however, simply going to Messianic congregation wouldn't necessarily mean believing their teachings (including the one about Jesus). The reason why I ended up believing in Jesus is that i went on a website that compared hell in three monotheistic religions. What I learned from that website is that Jews don't believe in hell at all, they just believe in different distances from God. Plus they also believe that the consequences in the afterlife (in a form of distance from God) would only last for a year. Muslims do believe in hell, but Muslims believe that people of the book (that is, Jews and Christians) are exempt from it, if they stay true to their respective religions (that is, Judaism or Christianity). However, Christians do believe in eternal hell, that both Jews and Muslims (along with other non-Christians) would go to. So I decided that if either Jews or Muslims are right, and I am a Christian, I won't have to suffer eternal torment. But if Christians are right, and I am either Jew or Muslim, then I would have to suffer eternal torment. So it is safer to be a Christian.
Now, back in my atheist days, I thought I had scientific proof that there is no God. So now that I decided to become religious (in 2002), I needed to deal with those arguments somehow. What came handy was the course on Descartes I took back in 1999 (when I was an atheist).
In most of the essays assigned for that course, they didn't ask us to actually agree with Descartes. Instead, they were asking us to write our own contemplations about the questions he was posing. Of course, we had to know, and describe, what his views are. But we were also asked to compare and contrast his views to our own views and make an argument about it. So I wrote that, while the quetsions Descartes posed were good ones, the way he addressed them was bad. In particular, he started out by being very careful not to make any leaps in logic that most people make. Yet, later on, he proceeded to make his own leaps of logic that are a lot wider than the ones others are making. I did, however, agree with him up to the point of "I think therefore I am". But I didn't agree with most of the subsequent claims he was making (including his claim in favor of existence of God, and so forth).
Now, the way I proposed to answer his questions was the following. I claimed that any reasoning is based off of axioms. So the idea that we are not sleeping is simply an axiom. Of course, this was totally different from Descarte's thinking, but since I was asked to present my own opinion, I got good grades for those essays.
Again, that is what I wrote back in 1999, when I was an atheist. But when I decided to become a believer in 2002, I decided that I can use that line of reasoning to convince myself to be a believer. In particular, since every reasoning is based off of axioms, then my idea that there is no God is also based off of axioms. So by abandoning some of the axioms that led to the idea that there is no God, and introducing some of the new axioms that would imply that there is God, I can make myself a believer.
In particular, one axiom I decided to believe in was the one that Bible is 100% true. The apparent problem with that axiom is that it seemingly contradicts archaeological findings. However, there are similar contradictions in science-proper too. A good example would be a contradiction between quantum mechanics and gravity. This contradiction doesn't lead people to say that scientists conspired to lie about their lab results, because an axiom that modern-day people (such as the ones who reported the lab results) are trustworthy surpasses the apparent incompatibility between quantum mechanics and gravity. Similarly, if I were to make an axiom that Bible is trustworthy and believe it to the point that it surpasses its apparent incompatibility with archeology, then I will end up believing in the Bible too.
I first made conscious decision in favor of Christianity when I was 22 years old. The way it happened was pretty interesting. My mom was renting a room in Berkeley from a Jewish math professor, Jacob Feldman, who was an atheist. At that time, I was doing my first year of my Master's program in physics at University of Minnesota. I visitted my mom in Berkeley for the winter break, in winter between 2001 and 2002. Coincidentally, at that same time, math professor at university of Minnesota, Walter Littman, had visitted Jacob Feldman as well. Ironically, I haven't met him in Minnesota during my first semester there, so I first met him in Berkeley, when we both visited Jack's house.
Walter and his wife were talking about a mathematician Hillel who, while he was a little kid, was rescued from Nazi concentration camp: his parents threw him across the fense and then he found his way to the home that took care of him. Walter's wife then said "I resent the people that say it didn't happen". I asked what didn't happen? She then told me about some people that say that there is no holocaust. I haven't heard of this before, and I asked her why would they say it. She said they say it because they hate Jews. I didn't see how the hatred of Jews have anything to do with saying it. To me, that statement didn't sound hateful at all, instead it sounded something like 2+2=5. Now, I researched it later on the internet and I realized from my future research why it is politically charged: namely, as a result of the holocaust, Germany sends a lot of money to Jewish survivors, and also holocaust is the main reason the State of Israel was created. But I didn't know it at that time. Likewise, upon later research, I found the arguments that the holocaust revisionists were making as well as the rebutals of those arguments. But I didn't know any of it at the time of the conversation. So my reaction at the time was the one of simple surprise and curiosity, yet she didn't really address it.
When I asked her that question, her answer was "those are the same people who say that Jews have horns and they know how to hide them". So then I asked her why would people say Jews have horns? After all, if Jews had horns, you would see them, would you not? How is it possible for Jews to have horns without you being able to see them? Again, her simple answer was "they say it because they hate Jews". And then she refused to answer it further and just changed the subject.
When I googled it myself, I found out that the reason they say Jews have horns is two-fold:
- There was a verse that when Moses came down from the mountain, he had light coming off of him. In certain language, the word illumination is similar to the word horns. So they mistranslated it as if Moses had horns. As a result of that mistranslation, they actually built a statue of Moses with horns, which later resulted in the stereotype that Jews in general have horns.
- In John 8:44 Jesus told Jews that they are the children of the devil, and devil has horns. This verse was further used to back up Christian Identity doctrine that in the Garden of Eden, Eve had intercourse with the serpent which resulted in birth of Cain. Thus, the only offspring of Adam and Eve was Abel, while Cain was an offspring of Eve and serpent instead. They then claim that Jews are descendants of Cain and, consequently, are children of the devil (aka that serpent).
To me, those two things didn't add up. Because I knew that Christians regarded Moses as a prophet. So if the reason Jews have horns is that they are of the devil (point number 2), and Moses also has horns (point number 1), then this would imply that Moses is of the devil. Also, point number 2 didn't really make sense on its own either because it would imply that Jesus is of the devil too. Later on I learned Christian Identity answer to this: in particular they claim that today's Jews (who are of Cain) are not true Israelites, while the true Israelites (which includes both Jesus and Moses) are non-Jewish Europeans. However, it again didn't add up: if they claim that Moses is non-Jewish European, why would Moses having horns imply that Jews have horns and not imply that Europeans do? And why would he have horns if having horns is a sign of being of the devil (which they claim Jews are, but non-Jewish Europeans aren't, while Moses is supposedly European)? Plus, regardless of how ethnicities are assigned, Moses can't possibly be of the devil by the virtue of being a prophet, so he can't possibly have horns.
However, a lot more importantly, I got scared by that verse. While, coming from Russia, I knew antisemitism exists, I didn't know it gets that extreme. I was assuming antisemites say Jews are bad people – but still people. I didn't know anybody would say that Jews are literally demonic. That, plus also I assumed antisemitism is a folklore, I didn't realize it would make it into the Bible. I guess I knew about the claim that Jews killed Christ, and I guess if someone would have asked me if its in the Bible, I would say "I guess", but I would only be guessing since I haven't read the Bible. But since nobody asked me I haven't really thought of it. But in any case, the claim that Jews killed Christ didn't sound nearly as extreme as a claim that Jews are literally of the devil, and so the latter really scared me.
Logically speaking, as an atheist, I didn't believe the Bible. However, on an emotional level, I still regarded Bible as some sort of authority. And so while generally I would dismiss everything it says, once I ran into something that extreme, I couldn't dismiss it: I got scared. And I was wondering how come other people weren't as scared as I was.
In order to answer that question, I searched more conventional interpretations of John 8:44. One thing I found was that it wasn't talking about literal biological descent, but instead it was talking about spiritual one. If one speaks biologically, then if some Jews are of the devil that would mean all are, because Jews are biologically related. On the other hand, if one speaks spiritually, then it is possible for some Jews to be of the devil and for others not to be. In fact, one can even have identical twins, one is of the devil and the other isn't. Thus, it is possible that Moses and Pharesees are genetically related, yet Pharesees are of the devil and Moses wasn't, due to their different choices. And where today's Jews stand would also depend on their choices.
To me this was very hard to grasp. Because what I pictured was somebody supernaturally changing their genetics through their choices, which appeared to be next to impossible. So I decided to research it further. Upon further research I realized that it goes back to the concept of being "born again", and the question I was asking was the very same question Nicodemus was asking (except that the context in which I was asking it was a lot more scary). Yet, the notion of being "born again" seemed abstract too (just like it did to Nicodemus) and I had no idea how to address it. So I decided that maybe it would make sense if I read the Bible in order.
However, reading Bible in order didn't lead to what I expected. I expected Bible to be similar to a textbook, where all the terms are defined, all in logical order, etc. But it turned out not to be that way. For example, when I got to Matthew 4, I was surprised how did it mention devil without defining him. And as I kept reading it just kept getting worse and worse. So then I realized that Bible is not like a textbook but instead its like a universe where I can try to gather an evidence to come up with my own textbook about it. As a research-minded person, this intrigued me.
However, at the beginning, I was doing that research as an atheist, looking at a Bible as a human artifact that I was doing antrhopological survey about. What changed my attitude was the following. As I was running the google searches on "children of the devil", google sent me to church of satan (which was irrelevant to what I was searching for, but the google picked up key words). The existence of church of satan was the other thing I was previously unaware of, and it was the other thing that scared me. So then I started to search the church of satan, to address my fears. And as I was searching I ran into two separate things:
- Laveyan satanists claimed that they aren't worshipping satan. In fact, they don't believe in satan to begin with, just like they don't believe in God. They are simply using satan as a symbol, while their belief system is identical to atheism. While their intention was to redeem themselves from the accusations, they had the opposite effect on me. In particular, if their faith is the same as the one of the atheists, then this means that by being an atheist I was agreeing with them! And that thought was really scary.
- Christians claimed that, unless you are a Christian, you are an satanist. Actually I ran into a softer version of that statement that said "you are either a Christian or a Jew or a satanist" (thus redeeming the Jews from this accusation which was naturally quite important to me). But still, since I didn't believe in God at that time, I was still an atheist rather than the Jew as far as my religion was concerned. So since, unlike before, I became concerned with my religion rather than genetics, I was still scared I was siding with satanists religion-wise.
So what I noticed was that two opposite camps (Christians and satanists) happened to agree on one thing: that atheism and satanism is the same thing. This really scared me. Even though I was an atheist, I wanted to think that in the battle of Christians vs Satanists I would side with Christians. So then I decided to stop being an atheist. I wasn't quite ready to become a Christian yet. Instead I decided to start believing in God and possibly becoming religious Jew. I only ended up becoming a Christian few months later.
The way I ended up becoming Christian was the following. After 911, my grandmother was telling me about Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and was presenting it as facts. She didn't really tell me that there are two sides to the story until a couple of months later. But then, after said couple of months, she told me "do you know that most of Europe (especially France) supports Palestine?" I was like "Why? I thought they are terrorists!" And she told me they support Palestine because they hate Jews. Then I got angry about it and stayed angry for the next several months.
Then, some time in Spring 2002, I went to the holocaust survivors message board and started to complain how antisemites are using passive aggression a lot. In particular, in my post I drew a parallel between those three things:
- During the holocaust, only Axis actually exterminated Jews, while Allied countries "neglected" to rescue the Jews from the Nazis (so Allied countries didn't target the Jews, they just neglected them).
- People who oppose Israel, they aren't making up any of the bad things that Israel allegidly did that it didn't actually do. What they do instead is that they "neglect" to notice the stuff Palestinians do to the Israelis. So if you "forget" the acts of Palestinian terrorism, then Israeli response to it (without any exaggerations of said response) begins to look like aggression.
- Today's Christians don't want to say anything negative about the Jews. But they "forget" to keep Old Testament law, because they "forget" that Old Testament is part of the Bible, too.
As far as point c goes, I now see that they didn't "forget the Old Testament"; instead, they read Paul that wrote at length why it is not to be kept. Of course, Messianic/Sabbaterian groups re-interpret Paul differently, to claim that one should still keep the law; but that is an entirely different issue. The point is that neither side "forgot" about the Old Testament, the way I claimed they did. However, back when I made that post, I haven't read Paul. Thats why I assumed Christians forgot it. And when somebody mentioned Paul in my response to that thread, I didn't even know that Paul was one of the authors of the Bible. Instead, I assumed he was one of the commentaries, and got mad as to why he said it.
In any case, while this was a board for holocaust survivors, there were a lot of non-Jews (including Christians) who were participated in it. So one of them told me that if I think Christianity and Judaism should be kept together, there are Messianic congregations that do that. This was the first time I ever heard of Messianic Judaism, and that term sounded attractive because it was exotic. So I decided to go check out Messianic congregation. The knowledge of Messianic congregations (which I obtained entirely by accident from that post) was the one bridge that I needed to be able to accept Jesus. Because when I attempted to go to Christian church prior to that, I felt an acute discomfort (although nowdays that I been Christian for a long time, I go to Christian churches and enjoy it; but this would have never happened if it wasn't for that bridge that Messianic congregation provided).
Again, however, simply going to Messianic congregation wouldn't necessarily mean believing their teachings (including the one about Jesus). The reason why I ended up believing in Jesus is that i went on a website that compared hell in three monotheistic religions. What I learned from that website is that Jews don't believe in hell at all, they just believe in different distances from God. Plus they also believe that the consequences in the afterlife (in a form of distance from God) would only last for a year. Muslims do believe in hell, but Muslims believe that people of the book (that is, Jews and Christians) are exempt from it, if they stay true to their respective religions (that is, Judaism or Christianity). However, Christians do believe in eternal hell, that both Jews and Muslims (along with other non-Christians) would go to. So I decided that if either Jews or Muslims are right, and I am a Christian, I won't have to suffer eternal torment. But if Christians are right, and I am either Jew or Muslim, then I would have to suffer eternal torment. So it is safer to be a Christian.
Now, back in my atheist days, I thought I had scientific proof that there is no God. So now that I decided to become religious (in 2002), I needed to deal with those arguments somehow. What came handy was the course on Descartes I took back in 1999 (when I was an atheist).
In most of the essays assigned for that course, they didn't ask us to actually agree with Descartes. Instead, they were asking us to write our own contemplations about the questions he was posing. Of course, we had to know, and describe, what his views are. But we were also asked to compare and contrast his views to our own views and make an argument about it. So I wrote that, while the quetsions Descartes posed were good ones, the way he addressed them was bad. In particular, he started out by being very careful not to make any leaps in logic that most people make. Yet, later on, he proceeded to make his own leaps of logic that are a lot wider than the ones others are making. I did, however, agree with him up to the point of "I think therefore I am". But I didn't agree with most of the subsequent claims he was making (including his claim in favor of existence of God, and so forth).
Now, the way I proposed to answer his questions was the following. I claimed that any reasoning is based off of axioms. So the idea that we are not sleeping is simply an axiom. Of course, this was totally different from Descarte's thinking, but since I was asked to present my own opinion, I got good grades for those essays.
Again, that is what I wrote back in 1999, when I was an atheist. But when I decided to become a believer in 2002, I decided that I can use that line of reasoning to convince myself to be a believer. In particular, since every reasoning is based off of axioms, then my idea that there is no God is also based off of axioms. So by abandoning some of the axioms that led to the idea that there is no God, and introducing some of the new axioms that would imply that there is God, I can make myself a believer.
In particular, one axiom I decided to believe in was the one that Bible is 100% true. The apparent problem with that axiom is that it seemingly contradicts archaeological findings. However, there are similar contradictions in science-proper too. A good example would be a contradiction between quantum mechanics and gravity. This contradiction doesn't lead people to say that scientists conspired to lie about their lab results, because an axiom that modern-day people (such as the ones who reported the lab results) are trustworthy surpasses the apparent incompatibility between quantum mechanics and gravity. Similarly, if I were to make an axiom that Bible is trustworthy and believe it to the point that it surpasses its apparent incompatibility with archeology, then I will end up believing in the Bible too.
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