Reconciling the superficial ‘oxymoron’ of being Jewish and Christian

There are many examples of things in our society that seem like “oxymorons,” but with a little understanding, some of them make perfect sense. Let’s review the definition of an oxymoron: “Two words or phrases used together that have, or seem to have, opposite meanings.”

In the U.S., each Major League Baseball team has a roster of players and a manager, who calls all the shots in managing those players. So there are players and there are managers. A “player-manager,” therefore, would seem like an oxymoron. It’s out of the ordinary, but since the MLB’s inception in 1869, there have been a total of 221 player-managers. Some of them did it quite well, as there are 59 of them who have been inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. While they were at bat or catching a fly ball they did not cease being a manager, and when they were organizing the batting lineup and selecting the starting pitcher they did not cease being a player.

Being both Jewish and Christian is no different than the player-manager scenario, except the expectations of the status quo have been around for more than 3,000 years. To be a Christian is simply a follower of Yeshua (Jesus). Many Jewish people have the idea that this Jesus guy was some blond-haired, blue-eyed westerner who wrote a book called the New Testament. Yeshua (Jesus) was a Hebrew-speaking Jewish man, who lived in the Jewish land of Israel, practiced Jewish laws and customs, worshipped the God of the Jewish patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the Jewish temple, taught in Jewish synagogues, and had Jewish followers. Furthermore, the New Testament was written by Jewish men, and the early church originally consisted of all Jewish people. It was only after Peter’s supernatural dream that witnessed God’s Spirit being poured out on the Gentiles and much debate at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) that they came to the conclusion that Gentiles could also be followers of Yeshua! So, please explain to me why a Jewish person cannot be a follower of Yeshua.

A common misconception is that when a Jewish person accepts Yeshua as the Mashiach (Messiah), he or she has to check their Jewishness at the door like a restaurant coat check. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Yeshua said, “If anyone 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” (John 14:23). He steps into our world and meets us where we are.

Out of approximately 12,000 to 17,000 different ethnicities on planet earth, I’ve personally never heard of any other ethnicity besides Jewish in which the label is commonly considered synonymous with a religion. And what’s odd about that is the fact that, although Judaism is the dominant religion in Israel, it is not the official state religion. Even in countries that have a state religion—or an official non-religion, like atheism in China—we don’t generally think of ethnicity and religion as being indistinguishable. When you hear of someone who is Chinese, you think of their ethnicity. They could be an atheist, but you don’t think of the two as being one and the same. It’s widely known that there are an estimated 100 million Christians in China. 

So, can the Jewish ethnicity co-exist with some other religion besides Judaism? Absolutely! Let’s not forget, God’s covenant with Abraham was made to him and his descendants based on his ethnicity—not on the religion of Judaism. In fact, that was about 430 years before the laws and concepts of Judaism were even given to Moses. “For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise” (Galatians 3:18).

God told Abraham, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” Nowhere in that promise is anything about the religion of Judaism. It’s all about the Jewish people, as in the ethnic group.

Paul told King Agrippa, “I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers. To this promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain” (Acts 26:6-7). 

The flip-side of that is you don’t have to be an ethnic Jew in order to practice the religion of Judaism. We have a personal friend, with whom my wife has been good friends since college, and she has no Jewish roots whatsoever on either side of her family. And yet, a few years ago, she decided to make Judaism her religion. I personally know several others who have done the same thing. We find examples of that in scripture. Ruth was not ethnically Jewish, but she told Naomi, her mother-in-law, “Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16). 

Rahab, the harlot, went with the spies and integrated into Israel (Joshua 6:25), and according to Rabbinic tradition, she converted to Judaism. It’s strongly implied in Joshua 2:11, where she made a bold confession of faith, greatly honoring the God of Israel. She proclaimed, “As soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.” 

When the Passover was instituted in Egypt, the Lord told Moses, “And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as a native of the land” (Exodus 12:48).

In my view, that proves that the Jewish ethnicity is not “joined at the hip” with Judaism, the religion. One can be independent of the other in either direction; there is no one-way “spiritual check-valve.” If a non-Jewish person can practice Judaism as their religion, why can’t a Jewish person practice a religion other than Judaism? 

In my opinion, it’s very unfortunate that even Israel’s Department of Interior does not prioritize the ethnicity of Jews—the basis on which the land was promised to Abraham and his descendants—over religion in the Law of Return. Something is not right when a totally secular, non-religious Jew can make Alyiah much easier than a Jew who practices Christianity, a religion built on the bedrock foundation of Judaism and accepts the entire Tanakh as God’s Holy Word. In fact, that’s the real oxymoron!