The cost of believing

Most Jewish people have one thing in common above all others. They may be religious Jews; they may be secular Jews. They may have a deep faith in God; they may be atheists. They may have studied comparative religion; they may never have given it a thought. But the thing that most of them have in common is that they don’t believe in Jesus. Not because they don’t think that Jesus is the Messiah, or because they do think He’s the Messiah. But because they are Jews, and Jews don’t believe in Jesus.

Jhan Moscowitz - he was born to Holocaust survivors, and he believed in Jesus as Messiah - explained it like this:

“Believing in Jesus means, at least initially, a betrayal of loyalty. We’ve been trained and socialised as Jewish people to be loyal to our group. Our group is us, and everybody else is them. Us, them. Them believe in Jesus. We don’t. Therefore if you become a believer in Jesus you become a them. In becoming a them, there is a sense of disloyalty to heritage, people, family.

“And so the real cost is giving up that association, being considered a traitor, being pushed out from the community. And that’s an expensive cost, especially considering that loyalty really is a virtue. The only problem is that loyalty ceases to be a virtue when it’s employed in the service of a lie.

“That’s what I generally tell people. I say, Listen, I think it’s virtuous of you to be loyal to the Jewish people, and I don’t want to ask you to be disloyal to the Jewish people, but I want you to put your loyalty above the Jewish people, to God Himself.

“You are leaving them to wrestle with ‘If this is true, what does God want you to do?’ I try to quickly add that although the Jewish people may think you are a traitor to the Jewish cause, God doesn’t think so at all. In fact, it’s the most Jewish thing in the world to believe in the Jewish Messiah.

“If God is real and Jesus is the Messiah, then whatever the cost, it’s worth knowing and worth doing.”