Read Time: 11 Minutes
Think back to the Garden of Eden, to the very beginning. There were no congregations, no bands, no buildings, no traditions. Man (and woman) simply walked with God. It was a glorious setting. Picture the natural beauty and endless rows of fruit trees. I imagine that every type of fruit and vegetable known to man was present in that garden, with perhaps even more…
The fall came when man (and woman) decided to intervene in God’s plan. Despite God’s direct order not to eat from one tree, we were deceived into believing that God didn’t quite mean what He said and that He just wants us to be happy and knowledgeable (paraphrasing for effect). Well sometimes we don’t know what is good for us.
Our interventions sometimes actually hurt us. I have countless examples of things I have tried to fix, either by hand or with my health, and most cases I end up doing more harm than good (particularly with health fixes). The fact is that man made does not stand up to God made. And well, let’s be honest, the traditions which make up Religion are man made. Relationship is God made.
Now this is not to say traditions in and of themselves or Religion is inherently bad. On the contrary, both traditions and Religion have done wonders for our society. They bolster cultural norms that can be entirely godly.
Religion, as defined by the Merriam-Webster is an organized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. But the organized system part is where man has intervened. If you search the scriptures, you will not find one commandment to form a religion or a system (collection of processes). Surely God commanded individual practices, but when we try to organize them, form a system with boundaries and walls around each practice, this is the intervention to which I am referring.
And again, I only draw the distinction, because it is important in terms of getting back to the point – what God desires. God desires what He created. He desires the pure. He desires a garden relationship with man. That is why He said ‘it is good’ so many times in the beginning!
None of this is to say that all human intervention is bad. In fact, nearly the opposite is true, most of what God commands requires human intervention and human action. We are to be partners with God in the redemption of society and His creations. And to be a partner requires what…that’s right – a RELATIONSHIP!
Rabbi Sacks describes it perfectly in his book entitled Future Tense:
“The relationship between God and the universe is creation: the work of God. Between God and humanity it is revelation: the word of God. When we apply revelation to creation, the word of God to the work of God, the result is redemption.” (p. 217).
If you saw what I saw there, it is enough to make you jump out of your seat. I’ll give you a clue – who is the Word of God? 🙂
In this context of creation, revelation and redemption, we can also frame up each relationship connection (creation-revelation, revelation-redemption, etc.) as a separate means of connecting with God. Rabbi Sacks refers to the wisdom of creation as ’chochmah’ or the worldly wisdom that represents science and humanities. He then frames up Torah or the Word of God as the wisdom for godly living, for revelation. This revelation leads to love, and the realization that He sent us a Messiah for our redemption. Who’s name literally means “God is Salvation” (Yeshua or יֵשׁוּעַ ). And he literally died on a cross for us – how about that for a physical ‘X’ marks the spot!
God wants us to search for Him. It is part of the saga of love that He has set out for humanity. We are to search for Him across the universe. Through the valleys of despair, the wilderness of wandering and wonders, and onward into His glorious Kingdom, filled with ultimate joy. What an amazing plan for our lives!
““From one man he made every nation living on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the limits of their territories and the periods when they would flourish. God did this so that people would look for him and perhaps reach out and find him although in fact, he is not far from each one of us, ‘for in him we live and move and exist.’ Indeed, as some of the poets among you have said, ‘We are actually his children.’”
Acts of Emissaries of Yeshua (Act) 17:26-28 CJB
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: But the honour of kings is to search out a matter.”
Proverbs 25:2 KJV
“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.”
Jeremiah 29:13-14 KJV
Our North Star – The Compass of Love (TORAH)
God’s Torah or the Word of God is an instruction manual – the word Torah literally translates to instruction. But the Bible is also a love story. So how can it be both?
Well, one of the most powerful ways to teach and convict one to action is through a story. Businesses and leaders do this on a daily basis. We all do this without even realizing it. Think about the last time you tried to make a point or get a reaction. What story did you tell?
So if the Bible is a love story, we can probably guess what God is trying to teach us. Spoiler alert, love is pretty important. I’ve written multiple posts about godly love alone.
One of the most quoted verses in the B’rit Hadashah is:
““For God so loved the world that he gave his only and unique Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may have eternal life, instead of being utterly destroyed.”
Yochanan (Jhn) 3:16 CJB
It is one of the most quoted because it summarizes the story in a sentence. It is the abstract or synopsis to Gods love story.
Moreover, Yeshua (Jesus or God’s son) is the word (Torah) made flesh. Through him all things were created and all things that will be saved are saved.
Yeshua is the perfect embodiment of God’s word and love story. Yeshua is our North Star, our compass that always points North – or in this case back to the Garden. 🙂
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing made had being. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not suppressed it.”
Yochanan (Jhn) 1:1-5 CJB
God’s love language is action, and more specifically righteous acts and acts of kindness. I’m preaching to myself when I say this but it is about our faith walked out. Faith that is stagnant, inanimate will only become lukewarm (and God doesn’t have nice things to say about this). We need to be following His word and acting it out to show Him love. We need to be exemplifying His Son. That is the way to grow closer to Him in love.
And for those that are concerned with legalism, we are not obeying the Torah to be saved. We are following Torah out of love for God. For more on this read the post entitled Love – Obedience – Love.
For the record, I think that is why the translation of law can be misinterpreted. I prefer instructions. Or in this case – Compass of Love. 🙂
“Human being, you have already been told what is good, what Adonai demands of you — no more than to act justly, love grace and walk in purity with your God.”
Mikhah (Mic) 6:8 CJB
“For it was through letting the Torah speak for itself that I died to its traditional legalistic misinterpretation, so that I might live in direct relationship with God.”
Galatians (Gal) 2:19 CJB
“Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Yeshua answered him, “If someone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Someone who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words — and the word you are hearing is not my own but that of the Father who sent me.”
Yochanan (Jhn) 14:21, 23-24 CJB
Heartland – Trekking the Ritual Forest (TRADITION)
Have you ever heard the phrase “he couldn’t see the forest through the trees?” I love this phrase, because for me it is so visual. It creates such imagery around the fact that we sometimes lose ourselves in the details, that we forget about the bigger picture. And we need to remember, as explained above, the bigger picture is about love!
Again, this is not to say that traditions are not important. Traditions are the trees in the Ritual Forest. They are like the Redwoods described in the original post on this blog (see Love, A Millennial Manifesto).
Traditions are the glue which holds all of our cultural norms together. They also serve as the color commentary and connections between feasts and family. My family, like others, has all sorts of traditions when it comes to Shabbat and the other feast days. I’m sure you do too. One commonly held tradition is to hide the afikomen for the children during Pesach (Passover). There is deep wisdom and learning behind this, but that is for another post. The point is – traditions carry their own value. We just need to keep our eyes on the prize and the purpose of our journey.
It is critical that we always remember ‘the Why behind the What.’
So next time you are focused on a task, whether routine or new, ask yourself – is this Torah or Tradition? It’s okay either way, but it helps to keep you on the path back to the Garden, focused on love.
Most importantly though, we need to ensure that our traditions do not trample on the word of God, especially if they are perceived to be godly by us or others. There are endless examples of such, but I do not want to stray too far into the weeds here. Keeping our head and chin up, let us just be aware that while all of Torah is good and perfect, not all traditions stand up to that light.
“Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ ””
Matthew 15:1-9 NIV
Yachts of Love – Navigating the Land Lochs (CHOKMAH)
As we have discovered, man made can be good; if it is done for the glory of God and not in contradiction with the word of God.
In fact, as God created the heavens and the earth, He also created everything that we call the laws of nature or natural laws and the study of such, which we call science. This would also include the “arts” or studies of humanities. This is what the sages refer to as chokmah (חָכְמָה) or wisdom. That is to say the work of God and His divine wisdom of the universe as discussed in the introduction.
The word wisdom (although there are different Hebrew words translated as such), is mentioned around 170 times in scripture. So again, it is probably important to understand! We will dive deeper into wisdom and its components in many other posts, because frankly I love the topic! 🙂
Wisdom or chokmah in this sense of the word, is all of inner workings of creation. It is the source of knowledge and understanding of our universe and our place in the world. So when we seek to understand His creation, we are seeking to understand Him. How cool is that!
Below is another great synopsis by Rabbi Sacks, specifically on how science and religion fit together:
“Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They speak different languages and use different powers of the brain. We sometimes fail to see this because of the way the religion of Abraham entered the mainstream consciousness of the West, not in its own language but in the language of the culture that gave birth to science. Once we recognise their difference we can move on, no longer thinking of science and religion as friends who became enemies, but as our unique, bicameral, twin perspective on the difference between things and people, objects and subjects, enabling us to create within a world of blind forces a home for a humanity that is neither blind nor deaf to the beauty of the other as the living trace of the living God.”
I hope this view of science and the relationship to God’s creation, we start seeing less conflict and start to understand the greater picture. As we break these land locks, we will start to navigate deep into the ocean of love.
Likewise, it should also help to frame religion further in that – God forbid – it should not be in conflict of our relationship with God. But more importantly, it should be viewed as a greater pursuit as part of our relationship with God. Now hopefully you also have a better definition and context behind “greater” and the title or subject line.
Fellowship is an important part of religion. And fellowship helps us to love others and thus serve God. If we view everything in the light of our North Star – Yeshua, and loving God with all of our heart, mind, body and soul – then we will always walk towards the Garden.
For when we love God with all of our heart, mind, body and soul, and prioritize a relationship with Him, we will find that we are able to navigate the waters of religion and lands of science (and the islands between) much easier. For we will have the winds of the Ruach at our back and Spirit in our sails!
God bless you on your journey.
Takeaways to make a way…
- Goal is to get back to the Garden state of being.
- Relationship is the bigger picture, what God created and desires.
- We can view the relationship in three contexts: Creation (His work), Revelation (His WORD), and Redemption (His WORD applied to His work).
- Relationships are God made, Religion is man made.
- Yeshua is the Word made flesh and is our North Star for how to act in obedience or follow God’s instructions.
- The divine wisdom is the underpinnings of the universe – science and humanities are the study of this.
- We cannot forget the big picture and that God created all – with this context, we can truly work for the glory of God.
Further Study with your Buddy…
For further reading on Obedience and the godly cycle of love, read LOL (Love -> Obedience -> Love
Go back to the beginning and read: Love, a Millennial Manifesto
For a deeper dive on on Love & the meaning of life, go back and read: Two Most Important Commandments: Love & Love
Questions for Reflection…
- How do you define a Relationship with God?
- How do you define your Religion?
- How can you deepen your Relationship with God as His child?
- What traditions do you cling to? Are they godly?
- How can you use the takeaways above to serve God and others in your daily life?
- How do you define wisdom?
- Where do you see God’s wisdom in your study of science or the humanities?
godlyyy 
All About relationship….with our Creator, Redeemer and fellow Believers!
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