Part 1 – Introduction
This discussion is intended to provide the thoughts for contemporary intellectual interpretation of the Torah for Jews and Gentiles – not the traditional interpretations by the religious authorities.
The following points are proposed for discussion:
- We the humans live in two worlds – in the world of God and in the world of Religion. Those two worlds are different – the world of God was created by God Himself and is governed by the God’s unwritten laws while the world of Religion is made by us the humans and is governed by our human’s mostly written laws.
- In the world of God, all people are judged by their efforts to continue the God’s creative work in building a better world for everybody along the lines of individual interpretation of God’s unwritten commandments that an individual human receives directly from God.
- To better understand the God’s commandments on building a better world for everybody we the humans created the world of Religion.
- In the world of Religion, all people are split into communities with similar interpretation (understanding) of the God’s commandments. In this world of Religion the people create the unique-for-every-community prayers and rituals aimed at getting spiritually closer to God and obtaining a clearer guidance on building a better world. All religious communities are spiritually different and therefore all prayers and rituals are different.
- The communal prayers and rituals were supposed to be a preparatory step to the real actions in building a better world along the lines of the better understood God’s commandments. However, it didn’t go this way. Many religious communities made the prayers and rituals the paramount life goal – the people in those communities are judged by their adherence to the collective prayers and rituals, not by their efforts in building a better world.
- The Jewish people were split into many spiritually fighting groups as well. Some of them interpreted the Torah commandments as the building of a better world together with and for everybody; some of them interpreted the Torah commandments as preserving their faith in a spiritual isolation.
- Two millenniums ago one of those Jewish groups, which believed in building a better world for everybody with everybody, created the foundation of Christianity.
And at this point in history the rift between the Jews and the Christians began in spite of their common spiritual foundation which encourages the building of a better world for everybody along the lines of the One-God commandments.
(To be continued)
