In the last blog, we discussed the rapid increase of antisemitism in our nation and around the world. I threw out a few stated reasons for this hatred of Jews, while I work toward sharing my real theory for this movement in the rest of the series. We also reviewed the Biblical history of the Jewish people and recounted the promises God made to Abraham and thus eventually to the Jewish nation: to be blessed by Him and to become a blessing to all the nations of the world. The promise of blessing was not for the Jews only but was to be given away! The next phase of this conversation explores whether God fulfilled His promise to make the Jews a blessing to all the world.  

 

The Gifts of the Jews 

American historian, scholar, and writer Thomas Cahill explores the contribution Jews have made to nations around the world. He wrote a well-known book called The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. 

The Gifts of the Jews helped me understand why the Jews have been such a blessing to the nations and at the same time why they have been the most hated people on the planet. 

 

Monotheism – the Great Whole 

In a world that idolized small, capricious, polytheistic deities, the Jews heard and responded to the “Voice” of the One True God, the Creator of the universe. Cahill writes: 

The Jews gave us a whole new vocabulary, a whole new Temple of the Spirit, an inner landscape of ideas and feelings that had never been known before. Because of their unique belief – monotheism – the Jews were able to give us the Great Whole, a unified universe that makes sense and that, because of its evident superiority as a worldview, completely overwhelms the warring and contradictory phenomena of polytheism. They gave us the Conscience of the West.

When God called Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldees, he not only called him to leave a geographic place, but he also summoned him to depart from a worldview and corresponding culture; He called Abraham to leave one way of life and establish an entirely different one in its place. He called him to leave idolatry and tribal gods to follow and worship the living Creator God of the universe.  

The Creator God of the whole universe brought Abraham into the UNIverse – providing unity out of the great diversity. The Voice provided metaphysical order out of capricious chaos, thus giving us a moral universe. This moral universe gave framework to human freedom. It brought purpose out of what felt like a chaotic and purposeless universe. This revelation of God to Abraham provided us with what has become known as Judeo-Christian theism and consequently Western Civilization. 

In contrast to the soulless worldview of Modernism/Atheism and the illusionary world of Postmodernism (maya), the Jews have given us an integrated, comprehensive worldview where heaven and earth, the transcendent and the natural, meet and interact. 

Can we really grasp the implications of this? Science and the idea that we can discover new things about the created world is grounded in monotheism. Progress, the idea that we can better our lives and make choices to change our circumstances, is grounded in the concept that God is moving forward to gradually reveal Himself and redeem humanity. We cannot even go one day without thinking Jewish thoughts we didn’t even know we had!  

 

The Word of God – the Bible 

The universe is not silent. God not only spoke the universe into existence, but He also spoke through Moses. He gave the world moral law, the 10 Commandments. He gave us the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses that were the foundation of the Old Testament. It was Jews who gave us the scriptures. God gave us the written word, His divine revelation, so that we might know who He is, who and whose we are, why we are here, and His plan for our salvation in time and eternity. 

 

Our Vocabulary 

The Jews not only gave us the Word of God, but they also gave us many of our words. The Jews gave us the language for building free, just and compassionate nations. Again, Cahill explains: 

The Jews gave us the Outside and the Inside – our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact – new, adventure, surprise; unique, individual, person, vocation; time, history, future; freedom, progress, spirit; faith, hope, justice – are the gifts of the Jews.

Take a moment and reflect on each of the words above. What does each word mean? What is its significance? What would life be like, for instance, if you or your culture had no word for future or no word for hope? 

God blessed the Jews with revelation. He revealed who He was/is to them, and they stewarded those revelations through the scriptures and their own traditions. God used the Jews to be stewards of His revelatory light! That revelatory light has spread throughout the nations. Yes, God has used the Jews to bless the entire world! 

In this blog, we delved into the blessing the Jews have been to the nations.  In the next blog, we will discover how that very blessing is also the reason so many curse the Jews.   

For more read my blogs: https://darrowmillerandfriends.com/?s=Thomas+Cahill  

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